Please listen to the following audio-files (from the Archives)… which will be discussed this Sunday September 22, 2013:
How does turning the world into a heartless jungle promote 'happiness'?…
01.25.12 “The Pursuit of Happiness” - Pt. 1…
“The Pursuit of Happiness”- Pt. 2
[…see also: Staying Focused on Designing A Future… On Not Getting Divided… “Initial thoughts for the September 8, 2013”…where partial transcripts of The Waking Up Radio Show are located, and: Conversation with Joel McIver and “Unpacking Robert Reich’s Baggage”]
Bentham's Strategic Verities:
05.11.13
In Waking Up when this argument began…
…I made the case that we-the-people…
…must have a plan.
Back then I hadn’t…
…though now I have…
…learned what I’d been saying…
…was also said…
(…to ‘power’…)
…by Bentham….
And while ‘power’s…
…and our…
…moral principles and goals…
…are exactly opposed…
…there are strategy-truths…
…that must be given their due…
…and numero uno…
…is having a goal.
Jeremy Bentham asked…
…as should we…
…how do you invent…
…an entire society?
He wrote many pieces on what he called…
“…the art of invention…”
…and though dissections all…
…it was his thought first and last…
…an obsessional gift…
…a devotional service…
…which he gave without stint.
But we serve a different master… ‘life’… earth… and our principles are anti-hierarchical and bend toward freedom…
…if we choose to envision it.
So let’s give thanks that Bentham… who told us to focus on ‘vision’… gave… set down for ‘power’ the verities… of bringing ‘vision’ from imagined mind… to being the day-to-day-reality-of-our-lives.
Here are the first five of Bentham’s strategic verities to adhere to… if your goal is to create something new… (generally abbreviated… and in one instance with an ‘opposite’ stated in brackets)…
…from his piece “On the Art of Invention”:
Momento 1. Whatever be the art which, or in which, you think to invent, keep steadily in view the particular end at which it aims, the effect the production of which it has for its object. Keep your eyes fixed upon the end. In two Latin words, Respice finem.
Momento 2. Beware of intellectual servility. In other words, take reason not custom for your guide…
Momento 3. Be on your guard against the confederated enemies of all good […all life]…
Momento 4. In relation to every part of your subject, and every object connected with it, render your ideas as clear as possible. Lux undique fiat.
Momento 5. For means and instruments, employ analogy. Analogias undique indagato.
(These latter points are to magnify impact… to bring as many in… as you can.)
For comment on the above I’m using my words from the December 30, 2012 Waking Up Radio Show:
I suspect that… after Plato and before Machiavelli… Bentham is their Bible… And Bentham is largely but restating Plato.
In her “Introduction” to A Bentham Reader, Mary Peter Mack says that John Stuart Mill was wrong when he said that Bentham failed to give credit where he borrowed…. But Bentham tellingly doesn’t mention Plato… only Aristotle…. His “greatest happiness principle” is in many ways Plato’s “Idea of the Good”, which Karl Popper describes as “the sun and the source of light in the world of forms” (page 145 of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1: The Spell Of Plato) (which word [‘form’] Plato used to mean “a thing in its essence”, the ‘original’)… and then set about ranking them).
So he uses “greatest happiness” as Plato uses “the idea of the good” as the measure by which you gauge… or the compass by which you distinguish… where you are along the way… the path… to ‘perfection’….
Our bodies are our compass. When we can wake up every morning and ask ourselves, “what do I want to do today?”… knowing that everyone in the world can wake up with that question… we’ll know we’re free… possess the leisure we need… to notice and care for each other… and the earth.
But to get there, we have to want it… want it more strongly than ‘power’ wants our servility….
But once we want it… we can form a plan… and work together to achieve it… mind-to-mind… hand-to-hand.
Surely we’re ready to grow up now? …ready to reclaim our precious bodies and our earth… from 'power's self-consuming demons?
(These verities were discussed during the May 12, 2013 radio show. Here is that excerpt:
Reacting to what 'power' does is not going to get us a future based on freedom (leisure)...)
So what is this ‘prize’ that is our future?… we’ll be asking. And on this question I hope you’ll read the text of a Conversation with Joel McIver… that I just put up… that I had with the British writer on rock music, as part of his research for the biography he’s writing of the band Rage.Against.The.Machine. I hope you’ll read it because I think it’s a pretty good short explanation… of how it is that ‘power’… over the generations… has been successful in keeping us from achieving our well-deserved prize of generalized human leisure.
Well, all right now, make us know it.
NEWSE (The Nascence to End Work Savings Endowment)
P.O. Box 3952
Berkeley, CA 94703
phone: 510.420.8054
nas2endwork@gmail.com
(See also: Getting To Our Future Freedom – 2) and You Know How I Know 'Localization' or 'Democratic Economics' Is A Con?)