Moderating Moderation

 

The term ‘everything in moderation, including moderation’ or any slight variant has been passed down throughout the ages, has been attributed to the likes of Socrates, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, as well as Mark Twain. It now seems that this saying cannot honestly be passed down to the next generation as now it seems we to have run out of moderation.

Moderation must be looked at as being some sort of un-extreme within the constraints of ‘too much’ or ‘too little’; a middle ground as it were. Of course the two extremes define where the middle is made manifest, though this too can be quite broad depending on where an individual looks; and as such things must shift over time as the societal focus shifts from topic to topic.

A societal talking-point often used is ‘disgust’ as it is a very strong driver, though it is best used in moderation. Disgust is most likely an evolutionary trait that developed out of a sense of safety, an over abundant disregard for cleanliness has led to disease and death, while an over abundant regard for cleanliness has led to the othering of people and death; that was the Holocaust and yes Hitler is reported to have been a germophobe.   

Another societal talking-point often used in the Western world is ‘liberty’ as it is a very strong driver, though it is best used in moderation. John Locke (1632-1704), known as ‘the father of liberalism’ is accredited with saying “every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature.” Then from Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), we get "A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals." The final quote for this part comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935), who is said to have said ‘The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.’

Of the three men named above, Dostoevsky’s words are of the most interest. Locke’s words are simply a justification for the ideal of setting a jury. Oliver Wendell’s words are simply a justification for self restraint. The words provided by Dostoevsky on the other hand are what may best be described as a comparative contemplation.

The Dostoevsky quote requires a party of three parts because it can be broken down into the following: ‘outstanding citizens’, ‘criminals’, and the ‘reader’. In reading the words of Dostoevsky, one has to make the choice of which sort of citizen is granted the moral high-ground. Some people will take the side of the criminal by putting the blame on anyone other than the criminal, thus putting the outstanding citizen at a disadvantage. A criminal will often crime is, by definition, a truism. To those who lean towards denying personal responsibility, the following questions must be asked: a) what message is being sent to the ‘outstanding citizen’ when the ‘criminal’ is no longer treated as an offender, b) what message is being sent to the ‘criminal’ when he learns that his fist no longer has to stop and the nose of the ‘outstanding citizen’ and c) what sort of society will be made?

When moderation becomes overly moderated at the societal level shit happens, a thing which can be seen in real time at the time of this writing. If by chance you are reading this in the future, simply look to the news section of your search engine of choice and enter ‘New York City 2024’ to see what shit looks like. So long as history has not been scrubbed or rewritten then you the reader should see a number of stories of people being pushed in front of subway trains, at least one story of officers of the law being physically attacked, at least one officer of the law being shot dead by a criminal who had been arrested and charged twenty-one times, countless number of car jacking incidents, and stories of many outstanding citizens having a general feeling of distress. At the time of this writing 2024 is just emerging from its first quarter of the calendar year and so this the current year is nowhere near completed.

Of course there are many “experts” with many accreditations, who have written many papers that we, as a society, selectively trust to give explanation to situations. It does not take a highly accredited expert to understand what is going on, people act based on incentives and those incentives are being set, managed and enforced by persons driven by their own incentives. Of course disincentives are also a plausible tool for convincing people how to behave, though without moderation a society risks moving towards tyranny.

Typically, the Government holds ownership on the application of force within the society over which they govern; when the society decides that the government is no longer granted said license, the peasants are revolting, literally. Unfortunately, through law and regulation the Government has licensed-out the application of force to groups in need of ‘protecting’, these so called protected classes came to the realize they were handed a leg up over other members of their society and leveraged their newly licensed power.

One example of this was and still is the bastardization of English grammar through the assertion of personal pronouns. Pronouns are simply: in the first-person (I), in the second-person (you), and in the third persons (he, she, they, and them). The reader can do there own litmus test on this new grammatical paradigm by conjugating any verb, only in the present tense is required and then accept the level of their self confusion as a form of informal polling. Of course like any focus group or social-political poll ever, the extrapolation of the polled as a representative of the gen-pop must be considered and accounted for when honest societal representation becomes front of mind.

For many people the purpose of Government is to provide the citizenry that which they can not provide for themselves with the primary purported focus being on security. This creates a tantalizing conundrum for the political class as they will be tempted to make unrealistic policy promises in the race to ‘purchase’ voters.

 Many a Government will make an appeal to empathy via the phrase ‘we are thinking of the children’ and then said Government will typically add in yet another protective law that extends their control over the population at large, thus adding even more cogs to the bureaucratic machine and yet still those people will be paid.

So now the children will actually be thought of. Margret Thatcher is accredited for the phrase, ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.’ As the bureaucratic machine grows so will the payroll grow, this leaves the Government with only two choices: raise taxes, or print money; regardless of which path a Government takes, the children will suffer today or they will suffer the day after tomorrow. Overly burdensome taxes will impact the nutritional value of the foods eaten by children, especially for those who have no access to arable land as the parents will seek food at lower and lower cost. Money printing on the other hand limits the future of a child today being able to create generational wealth and security as  more money is chasing the same amount of imported goods, inflation, and thus by extension limiting the pursuit of happiness for the children’s children many days after tomorrow.

 Paraphrasing an easily recognizable historic saying, ‘with great liberty comes great responsibility’, and the second portion of this version and the original seems to have been forgotten by those who want both liberty and power. Persons, who want liberty and power without the guardrails of responsibility, self-imposed towards avoiding some sort of enforcement, are usually referred to as tyrants; historically those tyrannical people come to realize that reality kicks in right around the time that they became about seven inches shorter, as Charles I of England found out in 1649.

 Of course there will be those… (Screeching car halt or needle dragged over record sounds, take your pick.) Ending this article was becoming a challenge; until just now.

  

 A conversation ensued in the elevator just now where I was told that my holding a door for a woman could be insulting to the woman could be insulting; oddly enough this was told to me by a woman. In the telling it was stated that I could get in trouble, my retort was ‘insults are hurled and offence is taken’, a cliché I’ve explained in previous articles. The ride in the elevator wasn’t long enough for this woman to take offence and I didn’t care enough to be offended by said person; words like coddling and patriarchy where part of her rhetoric.

 What this woman doesn’t know is that I also hold the door for men, children, and pets. I don’t care who I provide kindness too, with self-proven assholes being the exception. My comment, ‘people should accept kindness when they can as there seems to be a global shortage’ fell on deaf ears. This left me wondering how the conversation would have gone if I changed the gender of the target of my kindness to male. Interestingly, the patriarchy is a problem all the while the matriarchy walks unchallenged. The centre of power can be known by witnessing who is not allowed to be challenged. I was threatened by a woman, leaving me to wonder where my Government is on this.

 Sir Thomas More: ‘This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!’ – "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

The Allegory of the Media

 This the current year is 2024 and there is a problem. Approximately 2524 years ago Plato wrote down stories about Socrates, his teacher, which included his methodology and his struggle to stand up to the sophists. There are a number of online definitions on what a sophist is and I encourage the reader to look it up so they can form their own opinion; for the purpose of this writing VOCABULARY.COM will be used.

 A sophist is someone who makes good points about an issue - until you realize those points aren't entirely true, like a political candidate who twists an opponent's words or gives misleading facts during a speech.

 The best piece of Plato’s works that describes Socrates’ struggle against the sophists, and their ways, is titled “The Allegory of the Cave”. It is strongly recommended that the reader familiarize themselves with the prose and please spend more than four minutes regardless if it involves reading or video watching.

 The basic premise of this allegory is that a group of people are chained inside a cave restricted to facing the same wall and all they can observe are the shadows of animals paraded between them and the fire behind them. The narrative continues with a single man escaping the cave and via sunlight his world changes from 2D to 3D in something better than TECHO-COLOR. The narrative continues with the man returning to the cave and attempts to convince the occupants of the cave that there is a better world outside in the sunshine and those in the cave refute the claim. The current term for this is ‘living in a bubble’.

 With the foundations now set, the argument moves on. Many of the current Legacy-Media talking heads seem to be vying for the role of Cave-Manager over striving towards the title of Caver-Liberator. Many people working in Government(s), be they elected or not, walk hand-in-hand with those Legacy-Media actors; these people too are striving to become your Cave-Managers. Another assembly of aspiring Cave-Managers is the social-media platforms that have a TOS that provides for the preferential treatment of one recognized group over another group that has not been ‘recognized’. Then, when all of these want to be Cave-Managers are in cahoots with each other, the shackles holding those in the cave will only become tighter and heavier and unfortunately some of the spelunkers will never take note until it becomes unnoticeable to them.

 There are a plethora of phrases that we have heard as of late, such as: “no person is illegal”, “safe and effective”, “man made climate change”, “trans-women are women”, “Trump is literally Hitler and we are not going to let him on the ballot in order to save our democracy”, and finally “gender affirming care”.

 These phrases are the de facto shadows on the wall of a cave managed by the sophists.

 The quoted statements above are examples of sophistry, though upon first review the statement looks legit, yet it is in fact actually off topic. A good example of this is the first quote, the actual discussion at the time was about people doing illegal things and then the argument got twisted, thus presenting only the shadow on the wall.

 The third quoted statement simply denies “the science” as it can’t explain the ice age, unless of course the ice age is now a conspiracy theory. Carbon Dioxide makes up ~0.04% of the atmosphere and has been labeled as a green house gas (GHG). CO₂ is not a poison as it is a ‘food’ for plants, much like Oxygen is a ‘food’ for the animals and O makes up ~21% of the atmosphere that contains ~78% Nitrogen (N). Being reminded of the elemental table occasionally is always a good thing.

 It seems that Green Templeton College at Oxford is home to the oldest operational weather station that opened in 1767 maintaining daily full records since 1815. Now open your minds-eye and imagine what Green Templeton Collage looked like in 1815 with regard to paved roads, parking lots, and concrete buildings with black tar based roofs, all of which are heat sinks that are now surrounding the meteorological centre. The Canadian government has a weather website at HTTPS://WEATHER.GC.CA and the reader is strongly encouraged to visit the site, scroll down to the ‘Averages and extremes’ section and note the highest and lowest temperature information provided is limited to the years between 2006-2014; following that, apply the Socratic Method.

 The Socratic Method takes an argumentative approach towards seeking truth by asking the two smallest of all questions, HOW and WHY. The basic premise is that the student puts forward an assertion and the interlocutor/philosopher requests the how/why the student knows what they just asserted. That first question is followed-up by the philosopher, without vexation, asks ever more pointed questions driving the student closer and closer to a re-evaluation of the source of the student’s assertion. The penultimate step is for the philosopher to revisit the original question/assertion made by the student and echoes it back where the student responds after the philosopher’s questions and their own contemplations; and when you can, please be your own interlocutor.

 Socrates articulated using critical thinking based on philosophy and logic as the pursuit of truth over and above the sophistry of rhetorical devices. For this, he was found guilty of ‘impiety’ and “corrupting the young”; for this he was sentenced to death. Impiety is when someone is doing things that their church, synagogue, temple, mosque, school principal, government or parents would find unacceptable. Obviously in the Socrates’ time only temples, government and parents would be applicable. He was then required to carry out his own execution by drinking hemlock, thus showing that current ‘cancel culture’ quite mild by comparison.

 “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”

- Socrates -