Ed,
Two other points about the present political system that might be
mentioned is that: (a) the active membership of local political
parties is only a small fraction (10%?) of what they used to be
50/100 years ago; (b) politicians have become less and less
representative of the real economic world around them. A significant,
and rising, proportion of our new MPs are individuals who've
graduated with non-scientific or non-technical degrees and have spent
their time as "research assistant" interns within Westminster without
ever having experience as an employer or employee in the world that
actually generates the money that pays for their keep.
Keith
At 13:51 25/07/2012, you wrote:
In some agreement with Keith, I don't see the increase of
opportunities for the young as being a matter of political ideology
or politics or even a matter of what the modern human sciences are
telling us. The thing that has generated opportunities that enable
young people to get ahead and transcend the barriers that prevented
their parents from doing so are massive changes in the
socio-economic world. I was a depression baby, born in western
Canada to immigrant parents in the early 1930's. I remember adults
talking about how gloomy things were. One of my cousins, ten years
older than me, wanted to go to university or at least get some form
of higher education. He was told to forget about it, that's for rich kids.
Then came the war and the postwar years. There was an explosion of
opportunities, even a kid like me, born poor and without much hope,
wound up at university with ever so many kids from similar
backgrounds. My major regret at the time was that the wide open
world I was now in came at the cost of the lives of some six million
Jews and millions of other people. There is another, a more
pervasive regret that has dogged me and I'm sure many other
depression babies. The fact that my earliest growing up took place
in a word of almost zero hope has made me a rather gloomy person --
expect the worst; there is no best.
I would disagree with Keith on his view that the plight of the
African child in the diamond or gold mine is a product of bad
luck. I'd argue that his or her plight is a product of centuries of
colonialism and capitalist repression which at some point has to be,
and hopefully will, be swept into the dust bin of history, though
right now I can't say how that might happen. I would, however,
totally agree that political parties, whether right or left wing,
will have very little to with it. I see political parties as
corporate entities looking after their own interests and not those
of the public, though there are large exceptions. It will likely
take some major conflagration, a major war perhaps, to enable the
African child to walk out of the gold or diamond mine, get an
education, and become something other than a socio-political
causality. If we can do it, he or she can do it, though I have to
admit it will be much harder for them.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 11:22 PM
Subject: [Futurework] A Plague on Both Houses
The rapidly accumulating evidence of the modern human sciences is
now telling us with increasing clarity that the fundamental
assumptions of both left- and right-politics are fallacious. Even
the wonders of a "mixed economy" or a "third way" -- as individually
promoted by both Labour and Conservative prime ministers in this
country in the last 20 years -- have proved to be risible.
Differences of poverty, opportunity and political power remain much
the same as always in any advanced country whatever type of
government, sometimes slightly reducing when great effort and
spending is made under a socialist government, more usually
expanding when eyes are taken off the ball in so-called
free-enterprise government..
The whole debate can be reduced to a simple example in which the
observations, large-scale surveys and lab researches of
educationalists, psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists,
geneticists and evolutionary biologists are all in almost total
agreement. It is that, at the time of puberty, the adolescent is the
recipient of his or her personality and potential skills. He or she
is hardly at all the creator of those specifications. The individual
has had very little to do with laying down those specifications nor,
apart from luck, the way that those specifications subsequently play
themselves out and largely determine the experiences and happiness
in the remainder of his or her lifetime.
Excluding the luck of a lottery draw or inheriting a million from an
unknown relative, there are three main lucks in life. They're all
interlinked but are sufficiently different in their effects that
they can be discussed separately. The first is the emotional,
informational and cultural environments mainly imparted by parents
but also influenced by school-teachers in the early years of
childhood. By the age of puberty, any social or intellectual skills
not laid down by then will never be fully recoverable in later life,
no matter how hard one tries.
The second luck is the nature and abilities of one's post-puberty
peer group to whom the individual now devotes much more attention
as, together, they approach adulthood. It is in this period that the
individual can now develop and enhance the comparative advantage of
his or her best skills, testing them against others in the peer
group and finding a role within it. As the prospect of adult life
draws closer, friends made in this period are usually friends for life.
The third luck is the nature and abilities of, usually, just one or
two patrons (often one's parents) who have a sufficient span of like
social contacts which enable a young adult to finally find an
initial lodgement in an adult group which, to a greater or lesser
extent, is normally protective of entry by any young hopeful. This
third luck also includes the size of the income made available in a
particular group, or the intrinsic interest of a job, and also
whether that particular specialization continues to be favoured by
the changing economic environment.
To summarize:
1. Unless a socialist government interferes in the intimate family
life of every child from his or her earliest months and years in the
hope of equalizing opportunities then inequalities of personalities
and abilities are broadly set by the age of puberty. No amount of
good intent by governments can change this.
2. A right-wing government cannot make claims of virtue for its
apparent heroes. Those individuals are the product of good luck
just as an African child working and dying in a diamond or gold mine
is the product of bad luck.
Politics is already in a bad way. It's not likely to get any better
in the coming years as we try to work off the immense private,
corporate and governmental debts that the policies of both left-wing
and right-wing governments have lumbered us with. The modern human
sciences are telling us quite radical things about what we really
are like. The new politics will probably be concerned with how power
can be confined within groups -- where it is more accessible to be
pulled down if necessary -- rather than between groups as now. I
can take this no further. For now, until the findings of the human
sciences spread around for a generation or two, I would join the
refrain of an increasing number of the young. It's not very
constructive, I'm afraid: A Plague on Both Houses!
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
----------
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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