I’m feeling guilty about having steered this blog so far west of its supposed subject during the past few months (or more?)  And now I have worser news: I will probably be even further below poetics and poetry here for the foreseeable future although I’ll try at least once in a while to mention them.  Blame it on the stars, mainly the constellations Mars and Venus and Venus are in, because they iz inciting me something awful now that, as I told you yesterday, I’m in my first house, to fare forth on mine Final TruthQuest, to wit: a definitive total verosophy.  Okay, the opiate in me from the pill I took a little while ago (do to the advice of the stars) is making me exaggerative.  What I intend to do (as long as my opiates last) is try for an at least semi-unified babblation of my views on all the important stuff, but principally My Political View (which, for some reason, I feel is clarifying), and my knowlecular psychology, starting with my theory of awarenesses–unless I feel like taking on an essay I’m itching to write about my theory of the nature and evolution of cerebrevaluceptuality, and music as the first True Art.  Oh, a third very important project I expect to take on is a definitive description of my theory of temperament types and its application to those on both sides of the Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ).

Dang, the stars and the opium got me wanting to do all of these at once right now: instead, I will jump into the main thoughts that have been bothering me of late, because of too much reading about that idiot Obama (and his Republicans, who are avoiding being as idiotic as he only because they lack his power, which I add in hopes it will somewhat assuage you lefties who have a better opinion of Barry than I).  But I’m also taking off from The Pity Party, a book I’m reading that’s basically for (intelligent) adherents to the tea party by William Voegeli that I mostly agree with and will be referring to more than once.  (Hey, it’s the first book I’ve begun reading on my new Kindle!  The Kindle is part of the preparations I’ve made for mine TruthQuest, an important result of which, I hope, will be two or more books of mine available for Kindle at Amazon before 2016.  The SAQ should be the first of these, for I think I’m much closer to being able to finish my definitive thoughts on that than I am on the other subjects.)

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I doubt I’ll say anything new about politics but gotta say it anyway.  First Dogma: no system of government is worth a damn.  Second Dogma: all systems of government are equally worthless.  By that I mean that no over-all pleasure-to-pain ratio for the population of any tribe, regardless of how it is governed (or, in the case of those who were free of governments of any kind far in the past, or have somehow managed to be free of it now) is more than five or ten percent better or worse than any other’s.  The pleasure-to-pain ratio, by the way, is–according to my Third Dogma–my sole way of comparing the effectiveness of one system of government with another (see this blog entry of mine. There’s something in it about this ratio. You may find something else about “pleasure-maximization” in this essay, too, although it’s already out-of-date (due to my adding magnaceptuality and practiceptuality to my theory).

It is important to note that I evaluate a system of government on the basis of the pain and pleasure of everyone in it.  That will always include people whose pleasure-maximization ratio is very high, thanks to the government.  In other words, each system will have winners and losers, cancelling each other out.  Having a system half totalitarian and half free (to put it roughly) the way ours is, doesn’t help: it just reduces the unhappiness of the masses at the expense of the ruling class.

Something else is important: the fact that the system of government an individual has to put up with will seldom be as significant a determinant of the individual’s pleasure-maximization ratio as the individual himself.  Assuming, as I do, that genes count.  If so, some will find a way to reasonable happiness no matter how bad their government is, others will be miserable no matter what form their governments take.

One way of classifying governments is to try to measure the freedom-to-security ratio experienced by their subjects–or, better, the freedom-to-security ratio they seem to favor, all governments allowing some freedom to some of its people, along with the security (or enslavement for their own good) the majority of every government’s people benefit from.  A somewhat novel way of considering this ratio is as male individualism versus female collectivism, or–relatedly–as male aspiration versus female compassion.

This, in any event, is where my thoughts about William Voegeli ‘s ideas of “liberal compassion” have taken me.  The introduce that, let me quote portions of the letter I wrote Voegeli after reading an essay of his in a (free) conservative pamphlet I get from Hillsdale College, an institution notorious for refusing all government hand-outs so it is free to run itself the way it wants to instead of the way the government does:
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Dear Mr. Voegeli:

I recently read your analysis of liberal compassion in Imprimis with enjoyment.   I was especially interested in it, though, because I’ve for some time been trying to work out an explanation of why so many people are liberal (as now defined) and find your explanation an excellent one.  But I feel it is only one of several equally applicable explanations.  Since I’m forever responding to essays in periodicals, I quickly wrote the following response to yours.  I only rarely send any of my responses to the authors I’m responding to, or anywhere else, however, being doubtful that anyone would be interested in what I have to say.  I’m also sure that what I have to say about politics would offend a great many people.  I’ve elected to send the following response to your essay to you, however, because I think there is an outside chance you may actually like some parts of it, even if you conclude fairly quickly that I am a crank.  (I sincerely don’t know whether I am or not but have enough self-confidence to believe that if I am, I’m a superior crank.)

 . . .

I wrote my response to your essay two weeks ago, thinking from what you wrote for Imprimis, you would be more likely to sympathize at least a little with my ideas than any other writer I might try them on.  Still, it took me till today to dare send my response to you.  I will understand if you find it of no value, and will not further bother you again if so.  But I would greatly appreciate your at least letting me know you’d prefer not to discuss any of it with me if that is the case.  In any case, keep up the good work against liberalism!

Re: Liberal Compassion

In a recent issue of Imprimis, a pamphlet published by Hillsdale College, William Voegeli has an excellent piece called, “The Case Against Liberal Compassion,” which concludes that a main motive of liberals is not so much a need to improve the lot of the poor and otherwise needy, but to be perceived as persons who want to do that.  This neatly explains why such liberals seem not to care how effectively the welfare state carries out its acts of compassion, by making sure that a maximum of the taxes spent on the effort is efficiently used, for instance, and even (subconsciously, I’m sure) hope it will never fully succeed–because they need people in need to be compassionate about.   About my only difference with Voegeli here is that I feel he fails to appreciate the many reasons other than a need either to be compassionate or to be perceived as a compassionate person that various people become liberal, such as the compulsion of many of them simply to regulate, or have a government that regulates.   Many conservatives have this failing, too, the kinds of regulation favored being the main difference between the majority of present-day conservatives and liberals, not the need to regulate.

Related to this is a need for sameness, which I think is why leftists promote egalitarianism and economic equality—not out of any kind of genuine compassion but to make everyone the same, to protect leftists from too much human diversity.

Be that as it may, my main reason for writing this is that Voegeli’s essay gave me what I think is an Interesting Thought: that liberal compassion (whether a genuine motive or only something a liberal wants to be perceived as feeling) is actually standard innate female compassion–and that there is such a thing as male compassion that liberals seem unaware of.  It is an empathetic identification not with the sick, poor, bullied, etc. but with—this I haven’t clear in my mind yet but do have a fair impression of: failed quest-seeking.  More commonly, blocked quest-opportunity.  Simple example: female compassion for inner city have-nots consistently triumphs over male compassion for those who want to conquer outer space.  That is, liberals (most of them) have no compassion for those who need adventure rather than hand-outs.  Closely connected (although in a minor way) is the female compassion which causes liberals to over-protect explorers: no trips to Mars until we’re 99.999% certain of the total safety of the crews involved.

Those with stronger female than male compassion (and every healthy person has both kinds) will have extreme trouble with foreign policy because they lack much genuine feeling for those suffering significant enslavement (and/or suffering from lack of wilderness, and here is where I have problems with conservatives, at least those for maximal “development” of wilderness).   Indeed, I suspect few of them would even be able to consider the possibility that any sort of male compassion could exist.

It’s all extremely complex: I just now thought of another factor: that those with female compassion often have it so badly that they assume that anyone lacking it to the degree that they have it can be cured by reason.  In foreign affairs, this means negotiation, never use of the military.  In any case, if I am right, or even not entirely wrong, it seems to me that conservatives ought to publicize their kind of compassion as such to a greater degree.  Our country sorely needs people motivated by both kinds of compassion.

I wrote that a month-and-a-half ago, and Mr. Voegeli actually replied to it–favorably.  So I bought the Kindle edition of his The Pity Party and hope to write a review of it at Amazon.  I expect that to get a reasonable number of money men to back me for the Republican nomination for President.

Amazing; the opiate loses its effect after four hours, and I took my dose of it almost five hours ago, but am still hilariously funny.   It’s not giving me the zip to go on, though.  More tomorrow.

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