Okay, I considered posting this to the libertarian thread, but I realized that this applies to pretty much any form of government.
My question: Is coercion necessary?
I think we can all agree that coercion shouldn’t happen, just like everybody should be happy. But, in a realistic world where we all have to live under the same roof (read: sky) some amount of coercion is necessary.
Granted, it’s a simplistic argument, but I think it’s true. But feel free to shoot it down if you feel it’s necessary.
I’m also going to ask the question that the above begs: When does restriction become coercion?
If coercion weren’t necessary, it wouldn’t be scary. Because that would mean everybody is a decent person. However, that’s not the case. Therefore, coercion is necessary.
Exactly, it would be like one of those despicable reruns of Star Trek where Data reaffirms the wonders of humanity, and that bratty Wesley Crusher saves the whole ship. Makes me sick.
If you couldn’t tell, I was being only pseudo-serious. Let me put it this way, if you picked me up and dropped me into a so-called “utopian” society, I think I would react hostily and defiantly. But maybe that’s just me. It’s a really provocative question, because after all isn’t that what we strive for as a society (ostensibly at least)?
Now the only true utopia that comes to mind is that of Adam and Eve, living in God’s paradise. I haven’t studied it all that much, but it seems to me there is a fundamental defiance in both Eve and Adam. So you can say the serpent is a catalyst, yet nevertheless, Adam chooses to partake of the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the only act which, as deemed by God, results in the expulsion from Eden. Why does Adam do this? Humbly, I think its an awakening of consciousness. Where as before Adam and Eve were souless, like machines, afterwards, Adam and Eve become much more recognizable as humans. For example, they feel shameful and hide behind fig leaves.
Where does this leave us? I think I interpret the myth of Eden, and by association utopias, as human’s free-will, the fruit of consciousness, as rejecting absolute authority and subserviance that a utopia requires.
So the imperfect world, is mythologically our fate as humans. So the perfect world that we would aspire to is unachievable. To carry this futher just for fun, by my analysis, the return to Utopia would require a sublimation of consciousness (somehow). I think this is consistent with how literature portrays so-called Utopias, such as Brave New World…A fair trade-off? Not for me.
You’re making the assumption that people can’t be nice and still have free will. If, hypothetically, everyone were just nice by nature, it would be of their own free will. I mean, they could choose to do evil. But if they’re good natured, then why would they want to?
it is a group of people who believe in no coercion whatsoever - including coercion of children. This AFAICS leads to the parents spending half their lives negotiating with the kids to find a ‘common preference’.
they also believe in the non coercion of adults -fairly barking mad stuff IMO
Thanks for the link Primaflora. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I emailed it to some of my friends who also had kids. My hellspawn would love Daddy and Mommy to embrace this approach. Maybe they’d like to experiment with my kids while I take a few weeks off in the Bahamas!
I can’t believe people are being paid to come up with this drivel.
Freak don’t call me Prima! contentious enough for ya?
One incredibly offensive thing about the TCS crowd is that they deny the existence of conditions such as ADHD and autism. They appear to believe that these conditions are caused by tyrannical parents (that would be why my two kids are on the autism spectrum I guess).
Their debating style is to redefine the English language so that words don’t mean what the majority of us use them to mean.
Anyhow for a good mind squicking, subbing to the tcs list is always good for a laugh.
But IMO TCS is the logical extreme of non coercion and it sucks. Plus it would make parenting such hard work that all the fun would be taken out of it…
In any discussion of ethics, you ought to define your terms. What do you mean by “coercion”? In the context of libertarianism, for example, coercion is the initiation of force or fraud. We consider it a bad thing. In the context of socialism, it is the means by which jealous people with material fetishes loot and pillage one another. Believe it or not, they consider it a good thing.
I would ask you not to misrepresent socialism Lib. thanks.
For a good read on coercion, I would seuggest Engels work on the use of =“http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1877-AD/p2.htm#c2”]Force in history. Although it does deal more with naked coercion rather than the more subtle forms that you find all around you.
According to Meriam Webster’s restrictions becomes coercion when backed up by force or the threat of force. In primitive society, you did not have, with few exceptions, coercion. You had rules and restrictions but, they were enforced by the community as a whole. You broke the rules, usually you were lightly punished or sometimes banished. With the rise of a minority in control, with the rise of a proto-state with it’s own distinct interests, the use of coercion becomes nessecary. It becomes nessecary becasue the interests of the minority in power do not alway go in harmony with the interests of the majority. The only way they can keep control is through coercion, through threats of force and so on. As long as we do live in a class based society coercion is nessecary. the amount of coercion depends on the type of society, and who is in control. Under capitalist society, quite a bit of coercion is nessecary. Under a socialist society, since the majority is in power, quite a bit less is needed.
Make sense?
Much more than in most political theoretical structures, radical feminism raises these questions. If you’ve only thought of rad-fem as “chick issue stuff” or “man-hating extremists sound off”, reset your assumption filters and read some.
Marilyn French, BEYOND POWER, pp. 444-5:
[QUOTE]
The only true revolution against patriarchy is one which removes the idea of power from its central position, and replaces it with the idea of pleasure. Despite the contempt in which this quality has been held for several millennia, pleasure, felicity–in its largest and deepest sense–is actually the highest human good…
To restore pleasure to centrality requires restoring the body, and therefore, nature, to value…If women and men were seen as equal, if male self-definition no longer depended upon an inferior group, other stratifications would also become unnecessary…
The foregoing is a sketch of feminist beliefs…the movement is not aimed at overthrow of any particular government or structure, but at the displacement of one way of thinking by another…Feminism increases the well-being of its adherents, and so can appeal to others on grounds of the possibility of greater felicity. Integration of the self, which means using the full range of one’s gifts, increases one’s sense of well-being: if integration of one’s entire life is not always possible because of the nature of the public world, it is a desirable goal. Patriarchy, which in all its forms requires some kind of self-sacrifice, denial, or repression in the name of some higher good which is rarely (if ever) achieved on earth, stresses nobility, superiority, and victory, the satisfaction of a final triumph. Feminism requires the entire self in the name of present well-being, and stresses integrity, community, and the jouissance of present experience.
Marxist/socialist thinking, self-appointed “revolutionary” theory for empowering the masses, is NOT anti-coercion, any more than its attempted implementations such as the Soviet Union were or are.
See my major theoretical paper which deals extensively with the question of coercion; juxtaposes radical feminist theory to marxist perspectives to question their tacic and overt assumptions about power and coercion; and goes after some sacred sociological cattle having to do with stratification and power as inevitable aspects of viable social structure–
Well. Let’s see. Quite a few things wrong with what you’e saying. Let’s take them one at a time
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Ah but you did.
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Well. I never said that was a tenet or principle of socialism. So the fact that I said them doesn’t make a wit of difference. Let’s look at them anyway.
Coercion. to restrain or dominate by force
Now, tell me how shoplifting a loaf of bread involves either of these actions? hmmmm? Notice, I never mentioned robbery in my thread. That would indeed involve the act of force. Is it coercion? Not really. Because you aren’t dominating, you are simply threatening. I don’t want to get into that though.
Yes. The use of coercion was needed to take the wealth. Coercion is used to take it back. lesse? I call that chickens coming home to roost. I neve called it a good thing. I called it an action that given the circumstances is understandable. Somewhat akin to a man in his home shooting an attacker. Now, this is hardly the forum for you to try and explain exactly what my views are. If you want to deal with looting, go do it in the other thread, if you want to deal with socialism go do it in the other thread. Again, do not attempt to represent socialist views.
Also, I never said that stealing was a good thing. I put it on par with littering. Definetly somethign we don’t want to teach our children to do.
I don’t know. Maybe the same way I’m thinking of the skinny guy in Men in Prison.
Arrrgh. Lib, don’t use literary references from books I haven’t read. Could you explain your quote.
contentious enough for ya?