Ask Chomsky:

[daveman]

You will excuse Chomsky anything, won't you?

 

[uscitizen]

I will not excuse anyone anything. I just know he called the Iraq war better than most anyone else especially anyone in our government.

And he has a good handle on the corporatization of journalism.
Bill Moyers also has a good segemnt on the decline of american journalism.

 

[georgephillip]

You will excuse Chomsky anything, won't you?

Probably not anything, Daveman, but Chomsky's contribution to progressive thought makes it highly unlikely I would condemn him based on one article written by a Hoover Institute research fellow.

We're all innocent until proven guilty, and I don't think a $2 million net worth for half a century of work is anything that requires my forgiveness.

I was surprised by the allegations of blue chips in Noam's retirement portfolio, and also the allegation he raised his speaker's fee after 9/11. It's possible a large percentage of his income goes toward security expenses for himself and his family. Those of us who don't receive regular death threats probably have little idea how much private security costs those of us who do.

Finally, if Noam would start spending winters in Pasadena like Einstein in the 30s AND start speaking for free around the LA basin, his name recognition and earning potential might eclipse Sarah Palin's.

 

[georgephillip]

I will not excuse anyone anything. I just know he called the Iraq war better than most anyone else especially anyone in our government.

And he has a good handle on the corporatization of journalism.
Bill Moyers also has a good segemnt on the decline of american journalism.

Whatever mistakes Chomsky and Moyers may have made, they've proven repeatedly they aren't for sale to the highest bidders. If the internet can be farmed in a way to give real thinkers like Chomsky and Moyers a platform to rival Glen Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's, conservatives and liberals would all benefit.

 

[uscitizen]

I will not excuse anyone anything. I just know he called the Iraq war better than most anyone else especially anyone in our government.

And he has a good handle on the corporatization of journalism.
Bill Moyers also has a good segemnt on the decline of american journalism.

Whatever mistakes Chomsky and Moyers may have made, they've proven repeatedly they aren't for sale to the highest bidders. If the internet can be farmed in a way to give real thinkers like Chomsky and Moyers a platform to rival Glen Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's, conservatives and liberals would all benefit.

Exposing the truth benefits everyone except those who are benefitting by keeping it hidden.

 

[georgephillip]

I will not excuse anyone anything. I just know he called the Iraq war better than most anyone else especially anyone in our government.

And he has a good handle on the corporatization of journalism.
Bill Moyers also has a good segemnt on the decline of american journalism.

Whatever mistakes Chomsky and Moyers may have made, they've proven repeatedly they aren't for sale to the highest bidders. If the internet can be farmed in a way to give real thinkers like Chomsky and Moyers a platform to rival Glen Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's, conservatives and liberals would all benefit.

Exposing the truth benefits everyone except those who are benefitting by keeping it hidden.

Would you agree that most of those who benefit the most from keeping truth hidden do so for economic reasons?

 

[uscitizen]

Whatever mistakes Chomsky and Moyers may have made, they've proven repeatedly they aren't for sale to the highest bidders. If the internet can be farmed in a way to give real thinkers like Chomsky and Moyers a platform to rival Glen Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's, conservatives and liberals would all benefit.

Exposing the truth benefits everyone except those who are benefitting by keeping it hidden.

Would you agree that most of those who benefit the most from keeping truth hidden do so for economic reasons?

Or power/control. I would consider that and money to be the 2 main reasons.
Of course there is a strong link between power and money....

for instance a religious person might keep sins hidden for fear of losing power.
A partisan pundit might keep party sins hidden for the same reason.

 

[georgephillip]

Exposing the truth benefits everyone except those who are benefitting by keeping it hidden.

Would you agree that most of those who benefit the most from keeping truth hidden do so for economic reasons?

Or power/control. I would consider that and money to be the 2 main reasons.
Of course there is a strong link between power and money....

for instance a religious person might keep sins hidden for fear of losing power.
A partisan pundit might keep party sins hidden for the same reason.

For the last 500 years the obvious and strong link between power and money has been based on a hidden "truth" that may be anything but truthful.

Anglo-Saxon Capitalism spread by subduing and dividing the planet, "...devastating indigenous people on every continent and, while they were at it, pushing the natural world to the brink of eco-collapse..."

The prime hidden truth involved was that the earth and, by extension the universe, were not living organisms in the way of human beings.

What if they got that part wrong too?

"The assumption of the laws (of science),"...is that we're in a non-living universe. We ought to start over. We have a science that starts with deadness. It's time to revision science -- in a living universe."

A living spirit of "participatory consciousness among radically diverse thinkers" is something the internet seems designed to foster. If we're at a transition point between the conquistators and nanotech, healing our disconnects between one another and the natural world won't be easy or simple.

"Everyone is indigenous....Perhaps knowing this is the first step in envisioning the Next 500 Years.

 

[lizzie]

For the last 500 years the obvious and strong link between power and money has been based on a hidden "truth" that may be anything but truthful.
Anglo-Saxon Capitalism spread by subduing and dividing the planet, ….

That’s the history of the planet, and not the past 500 years. Capitalism has, in effect, allowed the peasants to gain at least a minimum amount of say in how the history of the world is written.

"The assumption of the laws (of science),"...is that we're in a non-living universe. We ought to start over. We have a science that starts with deadness. It's time to revision science -- in a living universe."
　
A living spirit of "participatory consciousness among radically diverse thinkers" is something the internet seems designed to foster. If we're at a transition point between the conquistators and nanotech, healing our disconnects between one another and the natural world won't be easy or simple.
"Everyone is indigenous....Perhaps knowing this is the first step in envisioning the Next 500 Years.

These are examples of what I referred to in my earlier post. Chomsky is a dreamer and philosopher, which are great qualities (imo), but he doesn’t have a grasp on the realities of human nature as a whole. Regardless of the advance, or not, of Capitalism, humans would still be the same as we have always been. There are always those who desire money and power, whether they are tribal kings, feudal lords, businessmen in suits, or politicians in DC.
Where I take exception with Mr. Chomsky (and I agree with several of his ideas) is that his ideas won’t work in the real world. For them to be successful, would necessitate that a high percentage of individuals be thoughtful, reasonable, and of solid moral quality, but that is far from what we are working with as a world population. Most people can’t exist in a mutually cooperating society because they don’t have the personal integrity to be happy and satisfied in that atmosphere.

 

[daveman]

For the last 500 years the obvious and strong link between power and money has been based on a hidden "truth" that may be anything but truthful.
Anglo-Saxon Capitalism spread by subduing and dividing the planet, ….

That’s the history of the planet, and not the past 500 years. Capitalism has, in effect, allowed the peasants to gain at least a minimum amount of say in how the history of the world is written.

"The assumption of the laws (of science),"...is that we're in a non-living universe. We ought to start over. We have a science that starts with deadness. It's time to revision science -- in a living universe."
　
A living spirit of "participatory consciousness among radically diverse thinkers" is something the internet seems designed to foster. If we're at a transition point between the conquistators and nanotech, healing our disconnects between one another and the natural world won't be easy or simple.
"Everyone is indigenous....Perhaps knowing this is the first step in envisioning the Next 500 Years.

These are examples of what I referred to in my earlier post. Chomsky is a dreamer and philosopher, which are great qualities (imo), but he doesn’t have a grasp on the realities of human nature as a whole. Regardless of the advance, or not, of Capitalism, humans would still be the same as we have always been. There are always those who desire money and power, whether they are tribal kings, feudal lords, businessmen in suits, or politicians in DC.
Where I take exception with Mr. Chomsky (and I agree with several of his ideas) is that his ideas won’t work in the real world. For them to be successful, would necessitate that a high percentage of individuals be thoughtful, reasonable, and of solid moral quality, but that is far from what we are working with as a world population. Most people can’t exist in a mutually cooperating society because they don’t have the personal integrity to be happy and satisfied in that atmosphere.

All leftist Utopian schemes are doomed to failure because they don't take human nature into account.

 

[georgephillip]

If we take Wiki as a neutral starting point: "Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent (essential attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is...), distinguishing characteristics, including thinking, feeling and acting that humans tend to have."

While there have been "successful" individuals in human culture for thousands of years (tribal chiefs and feudal lords) capitalism has elevated the value of greed above cooperation and empathy.

In August of 1998 Chomsky offered these insights On Human Nature and capitalism:

"Question: Do you think that different social and economic circumstances either block or reinforce certain dispositions -- that, for example, whatever there might be in the way of a natural tendency towards selfish and aggressive behavior is reinforced by the capitalist market society?

"Chomsky: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society allowed people like Joseph Mengele to flourish rather than people like Einstein or Freud. The market is a radical experiment which violated fundamental human needs and capacities. You can see this in the violent struggles that were required to impose market conditions on people. In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.

"Question: Granted the truth of what you say about our distinctively human capacities for freedom and co-operative action, how come we are so open to that kind of manipulation and deceit? How come we remain both globally and locally so caught up in oppression?

"Chomsky: It's a serious question. Why are we born free and end up enslaved?"

 

[lizzie]

If we take Wiki as a neutral starting point: "Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent (essential attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is...), distinguishing characteristics, including thinking, feeling and acting that humans tend to have."
While there have been "successful" individuals in human culture for thousands of years (tribal chiefs and feudal lords) capitalism has elevated the value of greed above cooperation and empathy.

I don’t believe that capitalism has elevated the value of greed, but is rather an outgrowth of evolutionary principles themselves. Nature’s law says that what doesn’t succeed, dies off. In the world of man, the success incorporates not only the physical nature, but the emotional and mental ones as well. Human nature is dual, because we have self-consciousness. It’s a blessing and a curse, but it’s reality. In humans, you will see acts of lowest savagery as well as those of highest self-sacrifice, and every human has both negative and positive attributes. Much of what people do, think, and believe is subconscious, and we all have a predatory instinct as well as a giving one at one level or another. So, I think Chomsky has not carried his thoughts out well enough to include all of our natural instincts and urges.

　
"Chomsky: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society……….

The small changes in German society were born of monetary and financial ruin, and a national sense of shame and dispair, following WWI, and at the time that they were trying to recover, in stepped a man who appeared to be the answer to their collective prayers.

"Question: Granted the truth of what you say about our distinctively human capacities for freedom and co-operative action, how come we are so open to that kind of manipulation and deceit? How come we remain both globally and locally so caught up in oppression?
"Chomsky: It's a serious question. Why are we born free and end up enslaved?"

The only truly free man is one who depends on no one for his own survival. That being said, not many people would want that kind of life. Why are we oppressed? My answer: because most of us require it.

Nice post btw.

 

[SW2SILVER]

Chomsky has questions. Never answers. America Kills. Depleted uranium? Well, time will tell. Personally, I think Noam is overrated.

 

[uscitizen]

We need questions or we will never develop answers.
Many supress the questions and only know how to blindly follow a party.

 

[georgephillip]

Thanks to everyone for your responses/rebuttals/answers/and questions. Before I attempt to reply individually to your posts, I would like you to consider what I consider the most potent observation Chomsky makes in On Human Nature:

"Question: ...Can I ask you about your position on the possibility of ecological constraints on the realization of human needs? Do you think -- even if there were the political will to achieve it -- that it might be impossible, for ecological reasons, to provide the necessary conditions for continued human flourishing?

"Chomsky: Humans may well be a nonviable organism.

"Question: Do you think they are?

"Chomsky: It's very likely. From an evolutionary point of view, higher intelligence seems to be maladaptive rather than adaptive. Biologically successful organisms have a rigid character and are well adapted to a certain environmental niche. If higher intelligence helped adaptation you would expect it to have arisen over and over again. However, it didn't. It arose in a single, not particularly successful organism, Homo Sapiens. And while human population exploded, human societies developed in a way that has caused enormous damage to the environment. The human race could destroy itself and much organic life as a result."

 

[lizzie]

"Chomsky: It's very likely. From an evolutionary point of view, higher intelligence seems to be maladaptive rather than adaptive. …..

I don’t believe it’s higher intelligence per se which is maladaptive, but the inability to reconcile our intelligence with the emotional aspect of our nature. Intelligence and reason would make it apparent that we can’t breed in an out-of- control manner unless we are capable of obtaining all our necessities for living, within the bounds of what is reproducible in the food chain that insures our survival. Social constructs have insured that we place emotional reasoning over intelligent reasoning, because we can’t reconcile what we love emotionally with what is practical.

" If higher intelligence helped adaptation you would expect it to have arisen over and over again. . "

There is no reason to assume that higher intelligence helps adaptation in and of itself. It also requires fitness of body, emotional make-up, and will. Chomsky seems to believe that intelligence and reason are the only things that contribute to fitness. I don’t see that as the case.

"And while human population exploded, human societies developed in a way that has caused enormous damage to the environment. The human race could destroy itself and much organic life as a result."

Nature always exacts a toll for stupidity, on a grand scale, or small, whichever is necessary to restore balance. We like to believe that we can control nature and keep defying her laws, but we are only kidding ourselves. Every living thing is food for nature, and every living thing must kill, or take advantage of the demise of another living thing, in one way or another for its survival. In nature, you must earn your right to live- only humans are stupid enough to believe that anything is a "right", just by birthright, besides the right to think and believe what we want.
　
　

 

[SW2SILVER]

Ok. Here is a burning question I would like ask N. Chomksy: The rationale behind the Vietnam war. Please.

 

[georgephillip]

If we take Wiki as a neutral starting point: "Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent (essential attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is...), distinguishing characteristics, including thinking, feeling and acting that humans tend to have."
While there have been "successful" individuals in human culture for thousands of years (tribal chiefs and feudal lords) capitalism has elevated the value of greed above cooperation and empathy.

I don’t believe that capitalism has elevated the value of greed, but is rather an outgrowth of evolutionary principles themselves. Nature’s law says that what doesn’t succeed, dies off. In the world of man, the success incorporates not only the physical nature, but the emotional and mental ones as well. Human nature is dual, because we have self-consciousness. It’s a blessing and a curse, but it’s reality. In humans, you will see acts of lowest savagery as well as those of highest self-sacrifice, and every human has both negative and positive attributes. Much of what people do, think, and believe is subconscious, and we all have a predatory instinct as well as a giving one at one level or another. So, I think Chomsky has not carried his thoughts out well enough to include all of our natural instincts and urges.

　
"Chomsky: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society……….

The small changes in German society were born of monetary and financial ruin, and a national sense of shame and dispair, following WWI, and at the time that they were trying to recover, in stepped a man who appeared to be the answer to their collective prayers.

"Question: Granted the truth of what you say about our distinctively human capacities for freedom and co-operative action, how come we are so open to that kind of manipulation and deceit? How come we remain both globally and locally so caught up in oppression?
"Chomsky: It's a serious question. Why are we born free and end up enslaved?"

The only truly free man is one who depends on no one for his own survival. That being said, not many people would want that kind of life. Why are we oppressed? My answer: because most of us require it.

Nice post btw.

lizzie:

When you say capitalism is an outgrowth of evolutionary principles and nature's law says that what doesn't succeed, dies off, why are Goldman Sachs, GM, and Bank of America still in existence? Why are the descendants of German, British, and US financial elites who backed Hitler still vetting political candidates in all three "democracies?" In an earlier post you claimed capitalism has given "the peasants...at least a minimum amount of say into how the history of the world is written." I think Chomsky would argue it's been the resistance to capitalism that has given us a little insight into how History is written. I would add capitalism rewards the negative predatory instincts each human being possess in order to perpetuate a Financial Survival of the Fittest based on a perversion of human nature.

The Weimar Republic's descent into Hitler's hell-hole is one example Chomsky offers of days when The Center Did Not Hold:

"All of this evokes memories of other days when the center did not hold. One example that should not be forgotten is the Weimar Republic: the peak of western civilization in the sciences and the arts, also regarded as a model of democracy. Through the 1920s the traditional liberal and conservative parties that had always governed the Reich entered into inexorable decline, well before the process was intensified by the Great Depression. The coalition that elected General Hindenburg in 1925 was not very different from the mass base that swept Hitler into office 8 years later, compelling the aristocratic Hindenburg to select as Chancellor the “little corporal” he despised. As late as 1928 the Nazis had less than 3% of the vote. Two years later the most respectable Berlin press was lamenting the sight of the many millions in this “highly civilized country” who had “given their vote to the commonest, hollowest and crudest charlatanism.” The center was collapsing. The public was coming to despise the incessant wrangling of Weimar politics, the service of the traditional parties to powerful interests and their failure to deal with popular grievances. They were drawn to the forces dedicated to upholding the greatness of the nation and defending it against perceived threats in a revitalized, armed and unified state, marching to a glorious future, led by the charismatic figure who was carrying out “the will of eternal Providence, the Creator of the universe,” as he orated to the mesmerized masses. By May 1933 the Nazis had largely destroyed not only the traditional ruling parties but even the huge working class parties, the Social Democrats and Communists, along with their very powerful associations. The Nazis declared May Day 1933 to be a workers holiday, something the left parties had never been able to achieve. Many working people took part in the enormous patriotic demonstrations, with more than a million people at the heart of Red Berlin, joining farmers, artisans, shopkeepers, paramilitary forces, Christian organizations, athletic and riflery clubs, and the rest of the coalition that was taking shape as the center collapsed. By the onset of the war perhaps 90% of Germans were marching with the brownshirts.



"The world is too complex for history to repeat, but there are nevertheless lessons to keep in mind, and even memories. I am just old enough to remember those chilling and ominous days of Germany’s descent from decency to Nazi barbarism, in the words of the distinguished scholar of German history Fritz Stern, who tells us that he has the future of the United States in mind when he reviews “a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.”

Finally, your observation about the only free man "is one who depends on no one for his own survival" seems exactly right to me. It's a little beyond scary that virtually all humans require oppression in one form or another for their security, but it has the feel of truth.

 

[Toro]

If we take Wiki as a neutral starting point: "Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent (essential attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is...), distinguishing characteristics, including thinking, feeling and acting that humans tend to have."

While there have been "successful" individuals in human culture for thousands of years (tribal chiefs and feudal lords) capitalism has elevated the value of greed above cooperation and empathy.

In August of 1998 Chomsky offered these insights On Human Nature and capitalism:

"Question: Do you think that different social and economic circumstances either block or reinforce certain dispositions -- that, for example, whatever there might be in the way of a natural tendency towards selfish and aggressive behavior is reinforced by the capitalist market society?

"Chomsky: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society allowed people like Joseph Mengele to flourish rather than people like Einstein or Freud. The market is a radical experiment which violated fundamental human needs and capacities. You can see this in the violent struggles that were required to impose market conditions on people. In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.

I never thought I'd defend marketing, but to say that it is based on "deceit" and that it turns people into something they aren't to buy things they don't need is a value-laden statement that grossly misunderstands human wants and needs. The Mad Men understand human nature better than Chomsky.

Its also ridiculous to blame what happened in post-WWI Germany on "the market." The German government destroyed the value of the mark. That is a gross distortion of history.

Capitalism is the best system to supply human needs and capacities. No other system comes close to it.

 

[georgephillip]

Ok. Here is a burning question I would like ask N. Chomksy: The rationale behind the Vietnam war. Please.

"Reviewing the record of American intervention in Indochina in the Pentagon Papers, one cannot fail to be struck by the continuity of basic assumptions from one administration to the next. Never has there been the slightest deviation from the principle that a noncommunist regime must be imposed and defended, regardless of popular sentiment. The scope of the principle was narrowed when it was conceded, by about 1960, that North Vietnam was irretrievably "lost." Otherwise, the principle has been maintained without equivocation. Given this principle, as well as the strength of the Vietnamese resistance, the military power available to the United States, and the lack of effective constraints, one can deduce with precision the strategy of annihilation that was gradually undertaken."

For what it's worth, my opinion is "the strategy of annihilation" was enhanced by the profit margin on every bomb that fell on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Vietnam: How Government Became Wolves