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1 hour ago, Dustin86 said:

New Buddha, things have not changed. Resources are still limited. Tribes are still fighting for control of the limited resources within geographical areas on this globe. So what we need is an enlightened, technocratic, "realpolitikal" tribe to secure the interests of the West in a hostile world.

This is not the case.  150 years ago oil had no use, and was regarded as a nuisance when struck while digging a well for water.  Now it is a major source of energy.  The same goes for countless other resources that had no known uses in the past and are now valuable.  The same will also be true for unknown "resources" in the future.

RESOURCES ARE NOT LIMITED.  ECONOMICS IS NOT A ZERO SUM GAME.  To believe so it to fundamentally not understand economic history.

And, are you under the impression that the Germans, Swiss, French, Czech, Hungarians, Greeks, Slovaks, etc., all share the same "Western" values as those of the United States?

Rand saw that the values that brought forth the United States (derived from the Glorious Revolution) did not have a sound philosophical foundation, and she sought to provide one.

Your argument for a "technocratic" tribe is too vague to be credible.  What exactly does that mean?  Are you trying to make a case for "scientific" centralized planning?  We've been there and done that.  It didn't work.

Edited by New Buddha
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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Are you saying that some types of tribalism work? If so, why did the other tribalist ideas not work?

The other "types of tribalism" did not work because they embraced crazy ideas such as Islam and Christianity (I for one am glad that Christianity is now leaving the West because if you read what is actually in the Bible it is very violent and very similar to Islam.)

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And more importantly, what makes it tribalist as opposed to a strong nation or coalition? 

Let me put it this way: When I have talked to libertarians and Objectivists in the past and asked them how they can survive without a real national army, they always tell me how the atomized individuals in their libertopia can just get together and pay for some Blackwater style organization to provide full armed services for them in leiu of a real armed forces. This would never work. It would collapse within 24 hours if it had to face the full might of a real army.

We need a real army, and a real army means, for one thing, conscription. And conscription would never be workable except in the context of the nation-tribe. Does that make it clearer?

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4 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

The other "types of tribalism" did not work because they embraced crazy ideas such as Islam and Christianity

Christianity and Islam aren't crazy, they're irrational. As is your belief that we're genetically hardwired to think in a way that validates your ideology.

There's no difference there. You never even made an attempt to substantiate it with anything. In fact you're making the same argument they're making:

-look at the pretty butterfly...it must've been made by God, let's ignore all the rational, well thought out alternative explanations that might make us uncomfortable and invalidate our long held beliefs;

-look at all the collectivists killing each other...they must be genetically hardwired to think that way, let's ignore all the alternative explanations that might make us uncomfortable and invalidate our long held beliefs.

4 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Let me put it this way: When I have talked to libertarians and Objectivists in the past and asked them how they can survive without a real national army, they always tell me how the atomized individuals in their libertopia can just get together and pay for some Blackwater style organization to provide full armed services for them in leiu of a real armed forces.

Oh great, more mythical Objectivists living in the back of your head, helping you build giant straw men. Only one problem with that: Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and Ayn Rand was in favor of a strong, and very real national army.

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4 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

We need a real army, and a real army means, for one thing, conscription. And conscription would never be workable except in the context of the nation-tribe. Does that make it clearer?

What are you talking about? There is no conscript army in the world that could ever even come close to defeating the current, all volunteer US military.

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9 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Let me put it this way: When I have talked to libertarians and Objectivists in the past and asked them how they can survive without a real national army, they always tell me how the atomized individuals in their libertopia can just get together and pay for some Blackwater style organization to provide full armed services for them in leiu of a real armed forces. This would never work. It would collapse within 24 hours if it had to face the full might of a real army.

Those would be AnCaps. I agree, this wouldn't work. I mean, Rand as an example was pretty pro-military, and not as "libertopia" private mercenaries. Doesn't mean conscription, e.g. a draft, is required for a military. I'm not sure I'd call your idea here a nation-tribe really. Conscription, maybe. Part of my thinking here is that co-operation is a better term here, albeit with what I see as the ineffectiveness of a draft. Good soldiers desire to fight, no? And bad soldiers wouldn't care.

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On September 10, 2016 at 9:16 PM, Dustin86 said:

 

People are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups and group rights, . . .

 

 

Dustin86:

I am curious to know if you believe in innate knowledge?  Your statement above implies that you do.   The concept of rights is a high-level concept hierarchically.  To say "people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of group rights" obliterates that hierarchy.  

What does it even mean to say that "people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of group rights?"  The rights of whom? You say the group or the tribe.  Where and when, historically, did one tribe and another think and deal with each other in terms of rights?  Who oversaw these dealings, and who enforced them?  You are applying this pseudo-concept of rights used today to the entirety of history and prehistory, to a time before this concept had even been formed.

If you truly believe in innate knowledge, this discussion will never get anywhere without us first coming to common ground on this issue; meaning, you coming to terms with reason.  If you do not believe in innate knowledge, you should try to acknowledge this error and correct this contradiction. Otherwise, this discussion is null and void (at least for me).

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Jesse,

Every single professor I have ever run into in both college and graduate school believes that human beings have some innate knowledge at birth. To my knowledge it is only ultra hardcore Marxist-Leninist true believers that believe that people start out as "tabula rasas". Not even liberals. Liberals are all about tribalism nowadays, especially if the tribe in question claims some sort of historic oppression.

Edited by Dustin86
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3 hours ago, Jesse Abbott-Dallamora said:

 What does it even mean to say that "people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of group rights?" 

Jesse, probably what I should have said is "people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups, period."

Objectivism operates within a framework of individuals and individual rights. The problem is that 99% of the world's people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups, not individuals. Or to use Objectivist terminology, 99% of the world's people are genetically hardwired to be what you guys call "collectivists". It is only an extremely small sliver of people who don't have this hardwiring.

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7 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Jesse, probably what I should have said is "people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups, period."

Seriously, stop repeating this without at least citing -some- scientist who claims this. I can't even evaluate if what you say is true, and it's a pretty major claim. As to innate -knowledge-, there aren't many people who claim this. Objectivism is closest to Constructivism in terms of foundation, a credible and relatively mainstream psychological theory in contrast to Nativism which is also mainstream but proposes mostly innate capacities or cognitive structure.

Don't just state facts but refuse to back them up when asked. The only research I know about leaning towards ingroup preferences, part of a theory proposed by Jonathan Haidt. One, it isn't a theory about genetic predisposition. Two, it's a lot more than a "small sliver" who have weak ingroup preferences.

Forget Objectivism, your claim about "genetically hardwired' is unsupported. Besides, the framework you speak of is based on the philosophical premise that reason is man's means of survival. Whether people are inherently collectivist is another question.

What do -you- mean by "thinking in terms of groups"?

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9 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Jesse, probably what I should have said is "people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups, period."

Objectivism operates within a framework of individuals and individual rights. The problem is that 99% of the world's people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups, not individuals. Or to use Objectivist terminology, 99% of the world's people are genetically hardwired to be what you guys call "collectivists". It is only an extremely small sliver of people who don't have this hardwiring.

Several people in this thread have been asking you for the evidence that collectivist or tribalist thinking is hardwired and you have yet to cite even one piece of concrete data to support this claim outside of saying that every professor you know believes it.  Why do they believe it?  What's their evidence?  

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3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Seriously, stop repeating this without at least citing -some- scientist who claims this.

It really isn't hard to find "-some- scientist who claims this". A simple google search has revealed a study from the University of Arizona on this subject:

http://www.asu.edu/news/research/prejudicestudy_053105.htm

Here is a quote I find interesting:

Quote

"By nature, people are group-living animals – a strategy that enhances individual survival and leads to what we might call a ‘tribal psychology’,” says Steven Neuberg, ASU professor of social psychology, who authored the study with doctoral student Catherine Cottrell. “It was adaptive for our ancestors to be attuned to those outside the group who posed threats such as to physical security, health or economic resources, and to respond to these different kinds of threats in ways tailored to have a good chance of reducing them.”

 

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1) That isn't about "hardwiring"

2) What you may call tribal psychology, sure, but this doesn't necessarily mean tribalism/collectivism. No one (except maybe a nihilist?), not even Rand, denies a need or benefits of living in a society. Whether people see people in an outgroup as a threat is not always rational. So, the idea is that prejudice comes about by judging some outgroup as a threat, which is intended to help survival. This may or may not be based on a rational standard. Cooperation is not what we mean by tribalism, though. To some degree, an irrational standard may be better than none at all, so sure, some collectivistic tribes may win out, if we mean 5,000 years ago. There's not evidence I know of to say individual rights standards are inferior for survival at the least. It depends on if real outgroup threats are identified. (Aside from the fact so many cultures vary in all sorts of ways the "ingroup" is valued.)

It'd be better if you cite a book or actual study. I can't assume I know what you base your claim on, and so far you misconstrued science.

Edited by Eiuol
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18 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

 

It really isn't hard to find "-some- scientist who claims this". A simple google search has revealed a study from the University of Arizona on this subject:

http://www.asu.edu/news/research/prejudicestudy_053105.htm

Here is a quote I find interesting:

 

It's not interesting. Or relevant. Quote the part where it says that 99% of people are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups.

Edited by Nicky
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