Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay

This post has 8 comments with rating of 5/58

• 
  caesar963
  August 15th, 2020
  

  Yeah, it’s not as if greed is an innate, essential human characteristic, or anything - with our selfish genes, ‘n all (I want that! That dude got more than me!). The politics of resentful envy ain’t no thang.
  Homo erectus will always desire even more via-gratification.

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  zombie13
  August 15th, 2020
  

  “and that if we think differently we can find common ground to the benefit of all.”

  Just as long as if we think the exact same thing differently, so don’t you dare think differently than the group or you are “literally Hitler”…

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  apnea
  August 15th, 2020
  

  

  Human behaviours are not mutually exclusive. Greed AND altruism. Without both none of us are here. Reciprocal altruism (all) does not impede our selfish genes, it helps them survive & make it to the next round.

  It’s cooperation that has enabled the humans to dominate. Take unrelated males from any other species of non domesticated mammals & put them in a room together & they will fight & often to the death. Put unrelated humans in that room & they can work together to build an army, the Hoover dam or eradicate smallpox(1977).

  “Greed is good” is cultural. Part of an ideology. Same as the Commie ideology of no ownership. Extremes.

  We’ll see more anti materialism & anti capitalism attitudes as the great unravelling continues & many will frame it as a moral choice, but in most cases they are just making a virtue out of necessity. That’s not bad. No one likes to lose face & obviously capitalism has failed the latest generations & is blaming the lack of opportunities on these kids- I bet the American ones are so looking forward to voting for which rich, corrupt old white man gets to be the next manager of the corporate state & oligarch’s interests:)

  Anyone wishing to delve deeper into the fascinating realm of Human behaviours can’t do better than:

  ‘Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst - Robert M. Sapolsky’

  “The result is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do…for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.”

  https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=behave+sapolsky

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  Brillo
  August 15th, 2020
  

  Reading the description of the book’s contents causes me to wonder if either of its authors have ever, in their lives, read a history book.

  The idea that we can salvage human society and culture in a world that is so fractured in those essential organs of humanity, is delusional, at best. No one, with more than two viable brain cells to bump up against each other could hardly fail to recognize, from simply the description of this book, that its premise is based on a Winnie-the-Pooh kind of logic.

  And where did those people ever come up with the self-aggrandizing title of “Progressive”? Talk about inverted Orwellian thinking! Up is down, wrong is right. Even calling them “Regressive” is too great a compliment, since their thought processes clearly lack “The science of correct reasoning” — which is Webster’s definition of “logic.”

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  caesar963
  August 15th, 2020
  

  Even related manimals in a room together can be at each others’ throats in no tempus. Or maybe that’s just the Julii Caesares clan…

  Of course altruism is a factor, and there’s a critical complementarity involved; but consider the title & premise: Greed Is Dead?

  And if I remember that deeply satirical movie speech, it nonetheless also comprised ideas like greed for life, self-improvement, knowledge - and accorded these good.

  Moreover, dancing on individualism’s notional grave is a nonsense. Individualism, and the concept of the dignified human soul, is actually the foundation of human rights. And civil, political & legal rights.
  Babies & bathwater.

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  apnea
  August 16th, 2020
  

  “Individualism, and the concept of the dignified human soul, is actually the foundation of human rights.”

  You can thank Christianity for that.

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  caesar963
  August 16th, 2020
  

  You’re not supposed to thank Christianity for anything anymore, ap. Not the hospital, the university, preserving literacy, disseminating learning, and on, and on. The accepted narrative now is that Stalin,Mao & Pol Pot accomplished these extraordinary feats. Stalin & Mao would surely agree.

  Canon lawyers developed the doctrine of human rights (from the aforementioned conceptual framework) during the 12th century. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of the Nuremberg courts (1945-46) and the doctrine of “Crimes Against Humanity” was developed from Thomas Aquinas’ framing and conceptualisation of Natural Law. No international jurisdiction or case law had existed prior to that point.

  I think that we function better as thinking beings when we know & understand our history, and the history of ideas. I fear that’s a vanishing perspective.

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay
• 
  anwartorrent
  May 5th, 2023
  

  Can you please upload the audiobook Obliquity by John Kay.

  Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism - Paul Collier & John Kay

Add a comment (please log in before commenting)