I was having a cuppa in a supermarket the other day and was drawn to consider the blatant irrationality of our modern society when I saw two very attractive girls dressed in denim jeans that were all torn and had no knees as they had been deliberately cut and frayed by the manufacturer. From my perspective two very attractive people were choosing to make themselves less attractive, although I am sure they have the opposite perspective. I have never understood fashion, and cannot understand the trend for wearing clothing that I would automatically consign to the bin. Why would anyone consciously choose to spend good money on something that has been debased? I accept that I am probably missing something. I have mentioned before how I always marvel at people who will quite consciously spend time clearing a table in a supermarket café, or some other eating place, transferring the used plates etc.to a clean table because they want to sit at that particular table in preference to simply choosing the clean table in the first place. This is the first clue if you wish to understand the failure of free market economics. If you base your theories on false assumptions then you will reach false conclusions, and the false assumption that lies at the heart of modern economics is that the human being is a rational consumer. There is nothing rational about buying torn clothing. I am reminded of Thomas Carlyle who told us that if we teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' we will get an economist, and Albert Einstein who reminds us that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Modern economics are based upon the theoretical assumptions that each individual who goes out to purchase any good, product or service exhibits a thorough knowledge of the market and makes rational consumption decisions on matters such as price, quality and alternatives. Market economics assumes a rational economic decision maker who is well-informed and who makes judgements on economic information before applying logical and reasonable conclusions about consumption. In other words, when I go shopping for anything in particular, I ensure that I know all of the shops and businesses who are offering the goods I am seeking, I am fully aware of the prices each seller is charging for such goods, I am aware of the different prices and quality of the different alternatives available for any particular good and I make my purchase after taking all of that information into account and reaching a rational conclusion as to what is in my best interest. In other words, as we are all rational consumers, no-one simply goes into a supermarket and purchases all of their weekly needs in that one shop unless they can get everything in that one shop that meets their rationally motivated conclusions as to price, quality, alternatives etc. However, if there are cheaper alternatives that satisfy our needs at a quality we desire in other stores, then we will purchase those particular commodities elsewhere and therefore our weekly shopping will be a series of transactions in different stores. What is important for this discussion is that those assumptions about human behaviour resulting from the rational nature of consumption patterns are built into the mathematical models that dominate modern economics.
I trust the reader, contemplating their own experience of shopping and consumption, may be prepared to agree with me that all of the above are actually ideal constructs that quite obviously bear little or no relation to reality, and that, at the very beginnings of an analysis of free market economics, it is obvious, even to someone who knows nothing about the discipline of economics, that such assumptions are quite divorced from the real world. For example, I have two nieces who each have around 200 pairs of shoes. I know many other people who have similar completely irrational consumption obsessions, indeed I display some of them myself; although not as extreme as my nieces (I have, at the time of writing, 25 hats, but can assure the reader that I have only one head). The irrational nature of the human becomes very dominant when they go shopping, and a whole industry called marketing has developed to exploit that very irrational behaviour. Marketing strategies do not produce irrationality; they only encourage it, because that is the default position of the human being, and one of the primary encouragements directly aimed at exploiting our irrational nature is advertising which excels at convincing us that we need something that we don’t actually want. People have the capacity for rationality and reason, but they do not start from that position. Everyone loves a bargain, but a bargain is not a bargain unless you actually need the thing you are buying, it is pleasant and satisfying to get a ‘bargain’ but to call it a bargain is an abuse of language unless you needed it in the first place, and, if I see a bargain in a hat, then I commit myself to the self-delusion that I ‘need’ it to justify that I simply want it, just as my nieces are totally convinced that they need every single pair of their shoes. As I said, I recognise such irrational behaviour in myself. However, it is taken for granted by economic theorists that the human economic actor is rational, understands the market and seeks to maximise utility (satisfaction). When economists call economic decision-making rational they mean that whenever people make such decisions they weigh the costs against the benefits, and, if the benefits outweigh the costs they will act positively and if the costs outweigh the benefits they will act negatively. However, if I was to apply rational decision-making to buying a new hat when I already have over two dozen but have only one head then it is inconceivable that I could ever conclude that the benefits will outweigh the costs. That however has never stopped me from buying a hat.
My rejection of the fundamental premise of free market economics with respect to the concept of the rational consumer, is just one of several objections I harbour towards the premises that underpin market economics, premises I consider to be false hypotheses. I also reject the modern economic interpretation of utility, the nature of the individual, the concept of diminishing marginal utility, and I have many issues with their various interpretations of the writings of Adam Smith. Should anyone be interested in my thoughts on such matters, I would be delighted to share them with you. Unless the foundations of free market economy are shown to be intellectually barren then our world will continue its slide into barbarism. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday, 16 September 2016
The Free Market - The Ideology of Psychopaths
I completed a book in early 2015 about free market neoliberalism that no-one seems interested in publishing, and I'm sure none of you are interested in reading. My reason for telling you this is that in the book I discussed the disproportionate influence of psychopaths at the top of the organisational structures of modern society, including business and politics. One of the things I wrote back in 2014 was
"Neoliberal free market economics can only be implemented and administered by sociopaths, or people prepared to employ sociopathic behaviour and characteristics, people who have no concern for, nor empathy with, other people, unless those others are in like mind and in agreement with them. That is because such people never recognise that other people have rights, and regard their own self-serving behaviour as, not only permissible, but desirous for the wider social context. The behaviour, both economic and political, that led to the financial crash in 2008 was classic sociopathic, indeed as we will just see, some people regard it as psychotic. This behaviour displayed a complete selfishness and a total disregard for other people and the wider society. It was unrestrained recklessness and greed and displayed a complete disregard for what most people recognise as common decency. For the British elite, enough is never enough. The political and economic establishment regard it as their right to behave as they do."
Now, you are all aware that I have long considered both Mad Tony and the Camoron as sociopathic and probably psychotic, indeed I came to the conclusion that the Great Bliar was quite mad in 1998. Now, British governments, have been engaging in a series of ruinous wars since my psychotic friend entered Downing Street in 1997, and a House of Commons Report published yesterday delivered a damning verdict on the Camoron's attack on Libya. Todays' Guardian newspaper writes
"David Cameron’s intervention in Libya was carried out with no proper intelligence analysis, drifted into an unannounced goal of regime change and shirked its moral responsibility to help reconstruct the country following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, according to a scathing report by the foreign affairs select committee. The failures led to the country becoming a failed a state on the verge of all-out civil war, the report adds. The report, the product of a parliamentary equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, closely echoes the criticisms widely made of Tony Blair’s intervention in Iraq, and may yet come to be as damaging to Cameron’s foreign policy legacy".
It was Albert Einstein who wrote that the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same mistakes whilst expecting different outcomes, and, if you hold a psychopath like Mad Tony up as your role model, as the Camoron repeatedly told us he did, we should not be surprised that you produce the same disastrous results. I raise this matter because research has been published from a collaboration of forensic psychologists from Bond University in Queensland Australia and the University of San Diego that identifies that one in five corporate bosses are psychopaths, defined as displaying clinically significant psychopathic traits, in proportionate numbers to those found in prisons. Such people all display characteristics such as an inability to empathise, superficiality and insincerity. They make the perfect candidates for the Westminster pigsty. The research says that 'a type of “successful psychopath” who may be inclined to unethical or illegal practices has been allowed into the top ranks of companies because of the way firms hire' and I would argue that exactly the same thing happens in politics, particularly in the UK with the centre vetting all candidates in all of our major parties. This research has just been presented at the Australian Psychological Society’s annual congress in Melbourne. The congress was also told that “Being a psychopath might predispose someone to short-term success. They tend to be charming and flamboyant, which makes it easier to be successful in the short-run, although that may be purchased at expense of long-term failure.” and that while psychopaths account for only a minority of the workforce they could wreak havoc on organisations because "Their personality usually leads them to exploit every avenue open to them, whether it's in a criminal setting, or within organisations,"
I do not wish to appear insulting, but I was writing this stuff at least three years ago, and my point was one that our researchers appear to have overlooked, that the imperatives of free market economics require sociopaths and psychopaths to implement them because sensible people who have moments of rationality can see the logical outcomes of free market systems and refuse to accept them. Thus, even if you are not a natural sociopath, should you prostitute yourself and debase your intellect by accepting the call of free market socio/political and economic ideologies for your own personal advancement, you are impelled to adopt socio/psychotic personality traits and practices if you wish to be successful. You must forsake your humanity and your decency and apply yourself to the debasement of your fellow human beings and the destruction of social order, and if you seek political office you are required to adopt the characteristics of a gibbering bombastic charlatan, in other words you become like Mad Tony, The Camoron, Boris the Spider etc.
It is self-evident that neoliberalism, both its economic and political variants, has failed, but we are either too lethargic or too browbeaten to challenge it in a meaningful way. We have just been informed that bonuses in the UK topped £44 billion pounds last year, even greater than at the height of the financial crisis, in other words, we have learned nothing and have done nothing to reverse the drivers of our misfortunes, therefore condemning ourselves to repeat history. Thus, whilst the elite reward themselves with fortunes for incompetence, the average British worker, who has not had a wage increase for the last six years, still votes for these psychopathic gangsters. You get the governments you deserve. Roll on Scottish independence, you have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
"Neoliberal free market economics can only be implemented and administered by sociopaths, or people prepared to employ sociopathic behaviour and characteristics, people who have no concern for, nor empathy with, other people, unless those others are in like mind and in agreement with them. That is because such people never recognise that other people have rights, and regard their own self-serving behaviour as, not only permissible, but desirous for the wider social context. The behaviour, both economic and political, that led to the financial crash in 2008 was classic sociopathic, indeed as we will just see, some people regard it as psychotic. This behaviour displayed a complete selfishness and a total disregard for other people and the wider society. It was unrestrained recklessness and greed and displayed a complete disregard for what most people recognise as common decency. For the British elite, enough is never enough. The political and economic establishment regard it as their right to behave as they do."
Now, you are all aware that I have long considered both Mad Tony and the Camoron as sociopathic and probably psychotic, indeed I came to the conclusion that the Great Bliar was quite mad in 1998. Now, British governments, have been engaging in a series of ruinous wars since my psychotic friend entered Downing Street in 1997, and a House of Commons Report published yesterday delivered a damning verdict on the Camoron's attack on Libya. Todays' Guardian newspaper writes
"David Cameron’s intervention in Libya was carried out with no proper intelligence analysis, drifted into an unannounced goal of regime change and shirked its moral responsibility to help reconstruct the country following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, according to a scathing report by the foreign affairs select committee. The failures led to the country becoming a failed a state on the verge of all-out civil war, the report adds. The report, the product of a parliamentary equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, closely echoes the criticisms widely made of Tony Blair’s intervention in Iraq, and may yet come to be as damaging to Cameron’s foreign policy legacy".
It was Albert Einstein who wrote that the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same mistakes whilst expecting different outcomes, and, if you hold a psychopath like Mad Tony up as your role model, as the Camoron repeatedly told us he did, we should not be surprised that you produce the same disastrous results. I raise this matter because research has been published from a collaboration of forensic psychologists from Bond University in Queensland Australia and the University of San Diego that identifies that one in five corporate bosses are psychopaths, defined as displaying clinically significant psychopathic traits, in proportionate numbers to those found in prisons. Such people all display characteristics such as an inability to empathise, superficiality and insincerity. They make the perfect candidates for the Westminster pigsty. The research says that 'a type of “successful psychopath” who may be inclined to unethical or illegal practices has been allowed into the top ranks of companies because of the way firms hire' and I would argue that exactly the same thing happens in politics, particularly in the UK with the centre vetting all candidates in all of our major parties. This research has just been presented at the Australian Psychological Society’s annual congress in Melbourne. The congress was also told that “Being a psychopath might predispose someone to short-term success. They tend to be charming and flamboyant, which makes it easier to be successful in the short-run, although that may be purchased at expense of long-term failure.” and that while psychopaths account for only a minority of the workforce they could wreak havoc on organisations because "Their personality usually leads them to exploit every avenue open to them, whether it's in a criminal setting, or within organisations,"
I do not wish to appear insulting, but I was writing this stuff at least three years ago, and my point was one that our researchers appear to have overlooked, that the imperatives of free market economics require sociopaths and psychopaths to implement them because sensible people who have moments of rationality can see the logical outcomes of free market systems and refuse to accept them. Thus, even if you are not a natural sociopath, should you prostitute yourself and debase your intellect by accepting the call of free market socio/political and economic ideologies for your own personal advancement, you are impelled to adopt socio/psychotic personality traits and practices if you wish to be successful. You must forsake your humanity and your decency and apply yourself to the debasement of your fellow human beings and the destruction of social order, and if you seek political office you are required to adopt the characteristics of a gibbering bombastic charlatan, in other words you become like Mad Tony, The Camoron, Boris the Spider etc.
It is self-evident that neoliberalism, both its economic and political variants, has failed, but we are either too lethargic or too browbeaten to challenge it in a meaningful way. We have just been informed that bonuses in the UK topped £44 billion pounds last year, even greater than at the height of the financial crisis, in other words, we have learned nothing and have done nothing to reverse the drivers of our misfortunes, therefore condemning ourselves to repeat history. Thus, whilst the elite reward themselves with fortunes for incompetence, the average British worker, who has not had a wage increase for the last six years, still votes for these psychopathic gangsters. You get the governments you deserve. Roll on Scottish independence, you have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday, 13 September 2016
No wonder politicians are despised.
I have come to the preliminary conclusion that the new British Prime Minister Theresa May is a bit of a thicko and is already proving to be quite incompetent. She is another example of well schooled but not particularly well educated. Today the global charity Oxfam published a survey that highlights how the richest 1% of the British population, some 634,000 people, are now worth 20 times as much as the poorest fifth, some 13 million. This means that Britain is the most unequal country in the developed world. Since 1979 and Thatcher's success at the polls, successive governments, all committed to free market economics, have systematically destroyed a wealthy, cohesive and liberal society to produce inequality that is simply obscene, the destruction of the entire manufacturing base of the nation, the reduction of the British police to one of the most criminal organisations in the west, guilty of two of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in British history, the destruction of a productive economy with Britain consistently dogged by a level of productivity that can only be described as abysmal, a low paid and even lower skilled workforce, a housing sector that is in permanent crisis, a public sector that has been decimated and is the victim of a systematic war against it from the pigsty, and the inevitable meltdown of the NHS. What was Prime Minister May's first policy decision in the face of all this crisis that she faces? She has announced that she is going to reintroduce grammar schools, which is a form of elite selection of school pupils at age eleven, that has been responsible for some of the worst aspects of the obscene inequalities that we suffer from in this increasingly loathsome nation. That gives us all the insight we need into the character and priorities that this new government represents. It is ideological insanity from the worst form of class warriors, and exposes their continuous and continuing hatred of ordinary working people. As the Bible tells us, By their fruits shall ye know them.
As an example of the honesty, the dignity and self-respect of the British politician we need look no further than the last Prime Minister. The Camoron promised us that if he lost the EU referendum he would 'stick around' to ensure that the British got the best deal possible from Europe; he resigned within six hours of the result being finalised. He then told us that he loved being the MP for his constituency of Witney and would continue in the job he loved as long as the people of Witney wanted him, he has resigned as an MP just two months after telling us that. His was the responsibility of the disaster of the EU referendum and he is ultimately responsible for the surge in hate crimes against foreign people in England since the referendum, as he unleashed and did nothing to counter, the hatred of foreigners and the extreme xenophobia of Nigel Farage, Boris the Spider and their crew of vile semi-fascists.
I told you in a recent post that civilisation is a fragile thing and I fear that both Britain and the United States are becoming increasingly uncivilised. I repeat without apology that this is a result of their adherence to an uncivilised ideological system of free market neoliberalism. All civilised activity, and this includes economic activity, must be founded on law and justice. Our political economy on both sides of the Atlantic are about as unlawful and unjust as they can be. There is no, nor can be, any form of morality or justification to be found in any system that not only allows, but encourages, the gross abuse of division and inequality, not only in terms of wealth, but in terms of inclusion that we find in either Britain or the USA. Again I repeat, that both these societies spend as much effort excluding large amounts of their own populations from meaningful participation in the society as they spend on any other activity. I am afraid that Britain will have to suffer a serious breakdown in economic, social and political terms before it filters through that the system is corrupt beyond repair. Until then we will continue to elect people like Theresa May and Boris the Spider. I can only hope that the Scots have the intelligence to waken up to the coming shambles and grab their liberation before its too late. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
As an example of the honesty, the dignity and self-respect of the British politician we need look no further than the last Prime Minister. The Camoron promised us that if he lost the EU referendum he would 'stick around' to ensure that the British got the best deal possible from Europe; he resigned within six hours of the result being finalised. He then told us that he loved being the MP for his constituency of Witney and would continue in the job he loved as long as the people of Witney wanted him, he has resigned as an MP just two months after telling us that. His was the responsibility of the disaster of the EU referendum and he is ultimately responsible for the surge in hate crimes against foreign people in England since the referendum, as he unleashed and did nothing to counter, the hatred of foreigners and the extreme xenophobia of Nigel Farage, Boris the Spider and their crew of vile semi-fascists.
I told you in a recent post that civilisation is a fragile thing and I fear that both Britain and the United States are becoming increasingly uncivilised. I repeat without apology that this is a result of their adherence to an uncivilised ideological system of free market neoliberalism. All civilised activity, and this includes economic activity, must be founded on law and justice. Our political economy on both sides of the Atlantic are about as unlawful and unjust as they can be. There is no, nor can be, any form of morality or justification to be found in any system that not only allows, but encourages, the gross abuse of division and inequality, not only in terms of wealth, but in terms of inclusion that we find in either Britain or the USA. Again I repeat, that both these societies spend as much effort excluding large amounts of their own populations from meaningful participation in the society as they spend on any other activity. I am afraid that Britain will have to suffer a serious breakdown in economic, social and political terms before it filters through that the system is corrupt beyond repair. Until then we will continue to elect people like Theresa May and Boris the Spider. I can only hope that the Scots have the intelligence to waken up to the coming shambles and grab their liberation before its too late. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
Wednesday, 7 September 2016
In today's world a vow is a lie
I consulted my Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus 2000 which informs me that a vow is "a solemn or earnest pledge or promise binding the person making it to perform a specified act or behave in a certain way". I raise this because that was the name that all Britain's top politicians, including the Prime Minister, gave to the document, which they all signed, presented to the Scottish people in the last week of the referendum in 2014. As you will all remember, the Prime Minister broke that vow within one hour of the result of the referendum being announced. Again I do not need to remind you, none of the conditions of the vow have been actioned.
I remind you of this because during the EU referendum the Leave campaign gave the gullible British public three guaranteed promises, that immigration would be controlled by an Australian type points system, that the £350million per week that would be saved by our withdrawal from the EU would go directly to the NHS and that Britain would no longer contribute to the EU budget. This week, the Prime Minister renaged on all of these guarantees. I repeatedly tell you of the character of British politicians, but I do not tell you this simply as an exercise in damning the Westminster pigsty. I tell you this because politics in this country is in serious crisis, and one of the biggest elements in this crisis is the appalling character of our political class. They are shameless and pathological liars, devoid of any kind of dignity or self-respect. It is simply impossible to believe a word that comes out of the mouth of any member of the pigsty represented by the three main parties and UKIP, Britain's indigenous fascists. All of our political parties employ spin doctors. A spin doctor is a professional liar, that is their job, to lie consistently and persistently and to coach their political masters in how to lie convincingly.
I cannot speak for the United States or any other nation, but it is glaringly obvious that Donald Trump lies as a matter of habit and if he is not in possession of a fact will simply invent one regardless of how extreme or impossible. He is possibly going to be the next President of the USA. This is a matter of great concern. All supposedly democratic nations are founded on trust, but particularly Britain in the absence of a written constitution. In addition, the management of any enterprise will determine the culture and the behaviour of the organisation by their own conduct and behaviour. As a result if the British and American people see that it is standard practice to lie and deceive, particularly if such lies and deceptions are successful and go unpunished, then they will copy such behaviour. If the leadership of any organisation refuse to be constrained by the moral codes and practices of the organisation then they will signal approval of such behaviour and the people down the line will refuse to abide by codes and practices that they rightly see as being hypocritically imposed. This is how the Westminster pigsty is destroying the fundamental culture of the British people, the norms, values and moral structures, and how behaviour is becoming increasingly anarchic and amoral.
Outside of the pigsty, the biggest culprits are the press and media. The British tabloid press routinely and daily, encourage and inflame hate and prejudice. They lie shamelessly. No-one in the British establishment ever seeks to uphold honesty, truth, decency or dignity, and this is another legacy of the Blessed Margaret. Thatcher is directly responsible for the destruction of our value system and for the contempt that the pigsty holds for ordinary people and their welfare. She set the parameters for political and public conduct in the modern era and introduced the blatant class warfare that has resulted in the inequalities and divisions we see all around us. Because of Thatcher and her partner in crime Reagan, we now have the 1% who own more wealth than the other 99, and the tragedy is that their supporters and devotees still justify this obscenity. The gullible British seem to be quite content with such a situation, but, as the rest of the world are signalling, this situation cannot continue to last much longer. If we are to avoid the war of all against all, then our political system will have to be challenged and reformed as a matter of urgency. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
I remind you of this because during the EU referendum the Leave campaign gave the gullible British public three guaranteed promises, that immigration would be controlled by an Australian type points system, that the £350million per week that would be saved by our withdrawal from the EU would go directly to the NHS and that Britain would no longer contribute to the EU budget. This week, the Prime Minister renaged on all of these guarantees. I repeatedly tell you of the character of British politicians, but I do not tell you this simply as an exercise in damning the Westminster pigsty. I tell you this because politics in this country is in serious crisis, and one of the biggest elements in this crisis is the appalling character of our political class. They are shameless and pathological liars, devoid of any kind of dignity or self-respect. It is simply impossible to believe a word that comes out of the mouth of any member of the pigsty represented by the three main parties and UKIP, Britain's indigenous fascists. All of our political parties employ spin doctors. A spin doctor is a professional liar, that is their job, to lie consistently and persistently and to coach their political masters in how to lie convincingly.
I cannot speak for the United States or any other nation, but it is glaringly obvious that Donald Trump lies as a matter of habit and if he is not in possession of a fact will simply invent one regardless of how extreme or impossible. He is possibly going to be the next President of the USA. This is a matter of great concern. All supposedly democratic nations are founded on trust, but particularly Britain in the absence of a written constitution. In addition, the management of any enterprise will determine the culture and the behaviour of the organisation by their own conduct and behaviour. As a result if the British and American people see that it is standard practice to lie and deceive, particularly if such lies and deceptions are successful and go unpunished, then they will copy such behaviour. If the leadership of any organisation refuse to be constrained by the moral codes and practices of the organisation then they will signal approval of such behaviour and the people down the line will refuse to abide by codes and practices that they rightly see as being hypocritically imposed. This is how the Westminster pigsty is destroying the fundamental culture of the British people, the norms, values and moral structures, and how behaviour is becoming increasingly anarchic and amoral.
Outside of the pigsty, the biggest culprits are the press and media. The British tabloid press routinely and daily, encourage and inflame hate and prejudice. They lie shamelessly. No-one in the British establishment ever seeks to uphold honesty, truth, decency or dignity, and this is another legacy of the Blessed Margaret. Thatcher is directly responsible for the destruction of our value system and for the contempt that the pigsty holds for ordinary people and their welfare. She set the parameters for political and public conduct in the modern era and introduced the blatant class warfare that has resulted in the inequalities and divisions we see all around us. Because of Thatcher and her partner in crime Reagan, we now have the 1% who own more wealth than the other 99, and the tragedy is that their supporters and devotees still justify this obscenity. The gullible British seem to be quite content with such a situation, but, as the rest of the world are signalling, this situation cannot continue to last much longer. If we are to avoid the war of all against all, then our political system will have to be challenged and reformed as a matter of urgency. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday, 5 September 2016
Beware the well-schooled but ignorant
A friend tasked me over a cup of tea to expand on the concept I have raised about how many people may be well-schooled but are not very well educated. The first and most obvious point is that whilst schooling, at all levels, is an important part of an education, it is not in itself an education, which is a lifelong process. What schooling taught me was the methodology of how to educate myself. Karl Popper tells us that education is a process of unlearning and that was my experience as I had to unlearn many things, often things that were deeply embedded in me due to my socialisation. My schooling taught me the basic tools and strategies of how to both unlearn and relearn. A university degree does not make you an authority on any subject, all it does is introduce you to that subject and it is then up to you whether you develop your knowledge and expertise or sit content with the limited understanding that you were introduced to.
Take the British elite, people like Mad Tony, David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris the Spider etc. who were so central to British politics over the past few decades and who have managed to bring Britain to the brink of bankruptcy and divided it to the point that the United Kingdom may not last much longer. Such people are not particularly educated as they are people whose schooling was exclusive, who lived and learned in an all-white, all-male, all-middle to upper class environment and were raised and nurtured in a world so divorced from the world that the rest of us inhabit in that we are in effect two separate nations. Their daily lives are an extension of that world, a world that deliberately excludes non-whites, non-males, non-middle and upper class, and so they have no experience of the real world, and, what is worse, have no intention of ever gaining such experience. They are in charge of the nation's public transport which they never use, they are in charge of the NHS which they never use, they are in charge of the nation's public education which they despise and don't understand. They were schooled in a completely different way from most of British society and therefore have a socialisation process that cannot relate to the majority of the British people and that provides them with a towering sense of entitlement, that the privileges they enjoy from their lifestyle are theirs by right, particularly the right to be considered as our natural rulers. They then spend the rest of their lives in a similar environment where they are cushioned and protected from the kind of everyday pressures and experiences that the rest of us deal with on a daily basis. Importantly, they never meet other people, ordinary people, different people from different backgrounds and cultures, unless such people are of the same privileged background as themselves. They are uninterested in other people, in other cultures, classes, experiences and so they build a cultural environment for themselves that excludes the undesirables, the people who are different from themselves, the others. This manifests itself in their political acts when they finally gain power, their hatred of Europe, of immigrants, of the Scots, the Irish etc. It is most noticeable in their social policies, their hatred of working people, of the unemployed, the disabled etc. These people who we falsely attribute the accolade of educated are in fact the know-nothings, well-schooled but uneducated. They have none of the experience that marks the educated person, they have none of the curiosity, the passion for enquiry, the desire to learn of difference and diversity that marks the educated mind. They are actually quite sad.
I spent my life in education and it never ceased to amaze me how many people go to university and think that when they graduate they have learned their subject. I realised that when I graduated I was only beginning to learn, that what I didn't know was so vast that it made me realise how ignorant I was and I entered education with trepidation due to the knowledge of the depth of my ignorance and of a fear of being found out. University was only the beginning of my education, it was not the end. Most of my colleagues in education never ever bothered to develop their learning and so didn't even really begin to master the subject they were supposedly educated in. I actually worked with graduates who are supposedly educated but didn't even vote, who if they did vote normally voted Conservative. As John Stuart Mill told us, not every Conservative is a stupid person, but most stupid people are Conservatives. We put our trust in the well-schooled at our peril. One of the educated people I enjoyed reading was the most famous criminal lawyer in American history, Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow had no legal training, and no formal qualifications, but he was one of the most legally educated people you would be fortunate to meet. He would not get the chance to practise in today's world of elitist exclusivity, a world that mistakes schooling with education and talent. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Take the British elite, people like Mad Tony, David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris the Spider etc. who were so central to British politics over the past few decades and who have managed to bring Britain to the brink of bankruptcy and divided it to the point that the United Kingdom may not last much longer. Such people are not particularly educated as they are people whose schooling was exclusive, who lived and learned in an all-white, all-male, all-middle to upper class environment and were raised and nurtured in a world so divorced from the world that the rest of us inhabit in that we are in effect two separate nations. Their daily lives are an extension of that world, a world that deliberately excludes non-whites, non-males, non-middle and upper class, and so they have no experience of the real world, and, what is worse, have no intention of ever gaining such experience. They are in charge of the nation's public transport which they never use, they are in charge of the NHS which they never use, they are in charge of the nation's public education which they despise and don't understand. They were schooled in a completely different way from most of British society and therefore have a socialisation process that cannot relate to the majority of the British people and that provides them with a towering sense of entitlement, that the privileges they enjoy from their lifestyle are theirs by right, particularly the right to be considered as our natural rulers. They then spend the rest of their lives in a similar environment where they are cushioned and protected from the kind of everyday pressures and experiences that the rest of us deal with on a daily basis. Importantly, they never meet other people, ordinary people, different people from different backgrounds and cultures, unless such people are of the same privileged background as themselves. They are uninterested in other people, in other cultures, classes, experiences and so they build a cultural environment for themselves that excludes the undesirables, the people who are different from themselves, the others. This manifests itself in their political acts when they finally gain power, their hatred of Europe, of immigrants, of the Scots, the Irish etc. It is most noticeable in their social policies, their hatred of working people, of the unemployed, the disabled etc. These people who we falsely attribute the accolade of educated are in fact the know-nothings, well-schooled but uneducated. They have none of the experience that marks the educated person, they have none of the curiosity, the passion for enquiry, the desire to learn of difference and diversity that marks the educated mind. They are actually quite sad.
I spent my life in education and it never ceased to amaze me how many people go to university and think that when they graduate they have learned their subject. I realised that when I graduated I was only beginning to learn, that what I didn't know was so vast that it made me realise how ignorant I was and I entered education with trepidation due to the knowledge of the depth of my ignorance and of a fear of being found out. University was only the beginning of my education, it was not the end. Most of my colleagues in education never ever bothered to develop their learning and so didn't even really begin to master the subject they were supposedly educated in. I actually worked with graduates who are supposedly educated but didn't even vote, who if they did vote normally voted Conservative. As John Stuart Mill told us, not every Conservative is a stupid person, but most stupid people are Conservatives. We put our trust in the well-schooled at our peril. One of the educated people I enjoyed reading was the most famous criminal lawyer in American history, Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow had no legal training, and no formal qualifications, but he was one of the most legally educated people you would be fortunate to meet. He would not get the chance to practise in today's world of elitist exclusivity, a world that mistakes schooling with education and talent. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday, 4 September 2016
We now have a free market in ethics
I have just been watching a current affairs programme that was asking a panel of what we love to refer to as experts, whether it was ethical for doctors to go on strike. What I found interesting was that none of the expert opponents of the doctor's case for strike action were themselves from the medical profession or had ever worked in ordinary jobs where they would meet with the working terms and conditions of service that ordinary working people must work under. The two most prominent opponents of the doctors were both journalists from right-wing Tory supporting newspapers who never fail to exhibit a visceral hatred of working people and of any form of industrial action that may make their cosy existence just that little bit more inconvenient than they consider it should be. It is programmes like this that never fail to remind me just how selfish the dominant free market ideology has made the British people and how we are no longer entitled to call ourselves a civilised nation.
I think I have written here before how I watched the most senior British television news commentators on the two most prominent British current affairs programmes, Channel Four News, and Newsnight, ask teachers representatives if there was ever any justification for teachers going on strike. Forgive me if I am repeating myself, but the same question applies to doctors. This is an age-old trick employed by the media where of course the blatant implication of such a question is that there is never any justification and the onus is now on the teacher or the doctor to prove that there is. It is now considered as morally wrong to have your life disrupted in any way, regardless of the circumstances. I was just sorry that they had never asked me.
You see, this is a powerful example of moral relativism and how our affective interests will cause us to act like imbeciles! In April 2011 all schools in the UK closed for a Royal wedding. No talk of disruption here, this was a celebration. So, closing a school for a royal wedding is good and to be welcomed, but closing it in the defence of people’s livelihoods and those same children’s standard of living is bad. A very close friend of mine had an important hospital appointment cancelled because of the aforementioned Royal wedding. His appointment was to discuss his diagnosis with cancer. The appointment was then delayed for four months, in other words, his cancer treatment was not only delayed for four months but his whole life was disrupted and suffered from the stress he and his family were living under by being placed in a medical and psychological limbo because of a royal wedding. However, he was expected to understand that this was not disruptive; it was a celebration for which he should have been patriotically grateful, and, if the delay in treating his cancer had caused him to die, then he could die happy in the knowledge that his death was in the service of his country and its magnificent royal family.
Now, had his appointment been disrupted by industrial action by the medical staff (or even worse, by the ancillary staff, because after all they are genuine working class) that would have been an unpardonable crime. That is an example of the moral sickness that prevails in modern Britain and the utter garbage I had to listen to this morning that made me switch off after ten minutes. Almost all schools in the UK are utilised as polling stations for elections. As a result, schools are regularly closed for local, parliamentary and European elections. That of course is not disruption either, disruption only occurs when teachers close the school for selfish reasons such as attempting to protect their jobs, which is not a justifiable activity. As far as Britain’s ruling class and its political and chattering classes are concerned, a royal wedding or an election is obviously justifiable disruption in both schools and hospitals; protecting your interests and the long term interests of your profession is obviously not. This anti-strike position is the coarsest form of moral blackmail, but based on very dodgy morals. As David Hume showed, it is morality based on feeling, on emotion rather than reason, which as Sigmund Freud tells us, causes us to act like imbeciles. We feel that as one of the participants in the issue is an adult (the teacher) then it is morally wrong to involve the other participant (the pupil) because that participant is a child, or in the doctor's case, one of them is ill and the other responsible for effecting treatment and/or a cure. Any rational look at the problem may well show that the action by the adult or the doctor may be in the child’s and the patient's best interest in both the short and the long term, but that is never addressed because our affective interests take control of our thinking and rationality goes out the window. We must ask the question, if the commentator was correct and it is morally and socially indefensible for teachers and doctors to go on strike, what are the teachers and doctors to do? Are they simply to accept whatever employers and the government wish to do to them and lay foundations of terms and conditions of work that the child and future generations of patients will eventually inherit should it enter the teaching or medical profession? What about the children of the families affected by such attacks on their living standards, and with reference to medicine, for the future of our health services as well as the conditions of employment for doctors? Finally, what about the morality of a ruling elite who will utilise children and patients as weapons in their never ending pursuit of their own wealth and interests? This is what is meant by a free market, if you have an ethical problem simply redefine it on your own terms and propagandise it through your control of the media until it becomes the accepted wisdom and damn the consequences. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
I think I have written here before how I watched the most senior British television news commentators on the two most prominent British current affairs programmes, Channel Four News, and Newsnight, ask teachers representatives if there was ever any justification for teachers going on strike. Forgive me if I am repeating myself, but the same question applies to doctors. This is an age-old trick employed by the media where of course the blatant implication of such a question is that there is never any justification and the onus is now on the teacher or the doctor to prove that there is. It is now considered as morally wrong to have your life disrupted in any way, regardless of the circumstances. I was just sorry that they had never asked me.
You see, this is a powerful example of moral relativism and how our affective interests will cause us to act like imbeciles! In April 2011 all schools in the UK closed for a Royal wedding. No talk of disruption here, this was a celebration. So, closing a school for a royal wedding is good and to be welcomed, but closing it in the defence of people’s livelihoods and those same children’s standard of living is bad. A very close friend of mine had an important hospital appointment cancelled because of the aforementioned Royal wedding. His appointment was to discuss his diagnosis with cancer. The appointment was then delayed for four months, in other words, his cancer treatment was not only delayed for four months but his whole life was disrupted and suffered from the stress he and his family were living under by being placed in a medical and psychological limbo because of a royal wedding. However, he was expected to understand that this was not disruptive; it was a celebration for which he should have been patriotically grateful, and, if the delay in treating his cancer had caused him to die, then he could die happy in the knowledge that his death was in the service of his country and its magnificent royal family.
Now, had his appointment been disrupted by industrial action by the medical staff (or even worse, by the ancillary staff, because after all they are genuine working class) that would have been an unpardonable crime. That is an example of the moral sickness that prevails in modern Britain and the utter garbage I had to listen to this morning that made me switch off after ten minutes. Almost all schools in the UK are utilised as polling stations for elections. As a result, schools are regularly closed for local, parliamentary and European elections. That of course is not disruption either, disruption only occurs when teachers close the school for selfish reasons such as attempting to protect their jobs, which is not a justifiable activity. As far as Britain’s ruling class and its political and chattering classes are concerned, a royal wedding or an election is obviously justifiable disruption in both schools and hospitals; protecting your interests and the long term interests of your profession is obviously not. This anti-strike position is the coarsest form of moral blackmail, but based on very dodgy morals. As David Hume showed, it is morality based on feeling, on emotion rather than reason, which as Sigmund Freud tells us, causes us to act like imbeciles. We feel that as one of the participants in the issue is an adult (the teacher) then it is morally wrong to involve the other participant (the pupil) because that participant is a child, or in the doctor's case, one of them is ill and the other responsible for effecting treatment and/or a cure. Any rational look at the problem may well show that the action by the adult or the doctor may be in the child’s and the patient's best interest in both the short and the long term, but that is never addressed because our affective interests take control of our thinking and rationality goes out the window. We must ask the question, if the commentator was correct and it is morally and socially indefensible for teachers and doctors to go on strike, what are the teachers and doctors to do? Are they simply to accept whatever employers and the government wish to do to them and lay foundations of terms and conditions of work that the child and future generations of patients will eventually inherit should it enter the teaching or medical profession? What about the children of the families affected by such attacks on their living standards, and with reference to medicine, for the future of our health services as well as the conditions of employment for doctors? Finally, what about the morality of a ruling elite who will utilise children and patients as weapons in their never ending pursuit of their own wealth and interests? This is what is meant by a free market, if you have an ethical problem simply redefine it on your own terms and propagandise it through your control of the media until it becomes the accepted wisdom and damn the consequences. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday, 1 September 2016
Nothing much has changed since 1776
I have been pondering the type and quality of politician that are prominent in today's world and it is quite alarming. There are fewer and fewer people in powerful positions that command any kind of respect or convey a sense of confidence. For example, I have been watching the news coming out of the Philippines with a mixture of disbelief and alarm. Their new president, Rodrigo Duterte, rejoicing in the sobriquet Duterte Harry, has given anyone who feels free to do so, the permission to kill drug addicts, drug dealers and the head of drug gangs. If anyone is found to have killed a drug addict etc. he has promised them immunity from prosecution. I am reminded of a nation in the not so distant past who gave immunity to anyone who killed Jewish people simply because they were Jews. This is the kind of situation I try to emphasise when I speak about the nature and role of government and the state. Here we have the president of an important nation simply cancelling the whole concept of the rule of law and the presumption of innocence and is apparently doing so with the support of the majority of the population. There are already wholesale executions in the Philippines without the tiresome business of due process. This recalls the words of Pastor Niemoller who wrote that "First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.....etc." Once he has gotten rid of the drug dealers and addicts, who will be next? You see once you allow death squads loose with no restraints, it is very difficult to get them to stop.
I have just watched Donald Trump announcing that he is going to build an impenetrable and beautiful wall right across America's southern border, and that, although they don't know it, the Mexicans are going to pay for it. Now, first, there is no such thing as an impenetrable wall, next, there is no such thing as a beautiful wall, and next, how does he plan to get the Mexicans to pay for it? He is also going to deport 2 million people in his first day in office, that is what he said, not me. How on earth do people like that ever come to national prominence in any country, never mind in a country like America that is supposedly educated and civilised? I said some weeks ago, that I am beginning to suspect that he may just win in November. If he does, then America is going to become very interesting because the last time any national leader spoke like Mr Trump, that nation ended up invading the Soviet Union, and, rather than deport 2 million people, simply gassed them.
In the United Kingdom we are witnessing the government preparing to exit the European Union and they still have not a clue what they are going to do, or how they are going to replace the institutional and structural arrangements. The British are cursed with some of the most hapless and incompetent politicians on the planet who have stoked the same kind of racist rhetoric and immigration hating sentiments that Mr Trump is doing and brought division, hate crimes and xenophobia onto the streets of this country in a way I would never have believed could have happened. I say again, I am ashamed to be British and now refer to myself as Scots in all literature and official forms. The British government have managed to reduce the medical profession, the epitome of the British public school culture and bourgeois value system, to striking and other forms of industrial action, again things I would never have believed possible. These are the same people who fulminate against the miners, railway workers etc when they go on strike and who pen indignant letters to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail under such pseudonyms as 'disgusted of Chipping Norton' but who are now seeking the support of ordinary working people against a government who are simply incompetent bullies who wish to destroy the NHS as a precursor to privatising it. This is their well-tested blueprint, in order to destroy the mining industry, the steel industry and the railways so that they could be privatised, they had to wage war against the workforce and destroy their unity and organisation. The doctors still have not guessed what the government is up to, but it is as plain as day to me, and, in the end, the gullible British public will turn on the doctors just as they turned on the working class and the doctors will lose.
Civilisation and order are very fragile things. Civilisation is clearly breaking down in the Philippines, is becoming very shaky in the United States and is under threat from an uncivilised set of Tory gangsters in this sorry country amusingly known as the United Kingdom. This is the inevitable result for all nations who persevere with the debased and uncivilised ideology of free market neoliberalism. Unless this loathsome ideology is overcome and defeated we are headed for the war of all against all. I remind you of the words of Adam Smith, published in 1776, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." There are indeed no people more vile than the masters of mankind in our own time, but they rule by an ideology that is just as vile as their characters and is the root cause of the hatred and disunity we see all around us. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
I have just watched Donald Trump announcing that he is going to build an impenetrable and beautiful wall right across America's southern border, and that, although they don't know it, the Mexicans are going to pay for it. Now, first, there is no such thing as an impenetrable wall, next, there is no such thing as a beautiful wall, and next, how does he plan to get the Mexicans to pay for it? He is also going to deport 2 million people in his first day in office, that is what he said, not me. How on earth do people like that ever come to national prominence in any country, never mind in a country like America that is supposedly educated and civilised? I said some weeks ago, that I am beginning to suspect that he may just win in November. If he does, then America is going to become very interesting because the last time any national leader spoke like Mr Trump, that nation ended up invading the Soviet Union, and, rather than deport 2 million people, simply gassed them.
In the United Kingdom we are witnessing the government preparing to exit the European Union and they still have not a clue what they are going to do, or how they are going to replace the institutional and structural arrangements. The British are cursed with some of the most hapless and incompetent politicians on the planet who have stoked the same kind of racist rhetoric and immigration hating sentiments that Mr Trump is doing and brought division, hate crimes and xenophobia onto the streets of this country in a way I would never have believed could have happened. I say again, I am ashamed to be British and now refer to myself as Scots in all literature and official forms. The British government have managed to reduce the medical profession, the epitome of the British public school culture and bourgeois value system, to striking and other forms of industrial action, again things I would never have believed possible. These are the same people who fulminate against the miners, railway workers etc when they go on strike and who pen indignant letters to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail under such pseudonyms as 'disgusted of Chipping Norton' but who are now seeking the support of ordinary working people against a government who are simply incompetent bullies who wish to destroy the NHS as a precursor to privatising it. This is their well-tested blueprint, in order to destroy the mining industry, the steel industry and the railways so that they could be privatised, they had to wage war against the workforce and destroy their unity and organisation. The doctors still have not guessed what the government is up to, but it is as plain as day to me, and, in the end, the gullible British public will turn on the doctors just as they turned on the working class and the doctors will lose.
Civilisation and order are very fragile things. Civilisation is clearly breaking down in the Philippines, is becoming very shaky in the United States and is under threat from an uncivilised set of Tory gangsters in this sorry country amusingly known as the United Kingdom. This is the inevitable result for all nations who persevere with the debased and uncivilised ideology of free market neoliberalism. Unless this loathsome ideology is overcome and defeated we are headed for the war of all against all. I remind you of the words of Adam Smith, published in 1776, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." There are indeed no people more vile than the masters of mankind in our own time, but they rule by an ideology that is just as vile as their characters and is the root cause of the hatred and disunity we see all around us. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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