Some rules to live by.

[davywavy]

1. Anything which looks too good to be true almost certainly is.
But people still send money to Nigerian scammers. Sigh.

2. Despite appearances, Wasabi is not a dip like Guacamole and should not be treated as such.
Aren't you glad you have me to tell you these things?

3. Always be personally responsible for your own income.
If you rely exclusively upon mummy & daddy/partner/the social or similar source of income which you have no influence over, sooner or later you're going to get burned. Take control of your own finances.

4. Any person who thinks that you will be interested in hearing about how mummy and/or daddy didn't love them enough the first time you meet them has an above-average chance of being nuts. Do not get involved.
If a friend tells you personal things then that's what friends are for. If a stranger tells you personal things then they're probably attention seeking, and not in an good way.

5. If there is a pattern in your life which you don't like then the mostly likely cause of it is you. Change yourself before you try to change others.
Aristotle once said that we are what we repeatedly do. Smart feller, Aristotle.

6. Anyone who tells you they have magic/psychic/divine/other powers is either lying or deluded.
They are, you know. And if you think you do, then you're deluded too.

7. If you split up with your other half, quit your job and stop paying your rent, don't expect any sympathy when you complain of being single, skint and homeless.
I'm often amazed by how often people do stuff like this.

8. Treating people like they're stupid is the best way of getting them to act as if they are.

9. Whatever you want to do, don't procrastinate.
What do you want to do? Whatever it is, go and do it right now. Why are you reading your friends list? Stop it.

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That's a fair summary of my philosophy. I think that's why I despair of humanity so much, because so few people follow it...

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Curiously, it's mine too. I guess it's likely that our definition of an arse varies, mayhap...

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Not at all; if you agree wiht the above rules, then our 'arse' definition probably maps pretty well. What we disagree on is the best way to deal with people being arses. I beleive that, given the opportunity, people are aspirational and can and do achieve great things through application of personal industry. My perception of your philosophy is that it is based upon a much lower opinion of people.
I know you won't agree with that perception, btw, but that's ultimately why I disagree with your philosophy so much.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

I actually think that the key difference is where we see the boundaries of personal responsibility. My perception of your beliefs is that they basically state that if everyone works for themselves and pushes themselves forward, then the state of society will improve as a consequence ("a rising tide lifts all ships" and all that), whereas my beliefs state that specific attention is needed to societal infrastructure to make sure it improves too.

It's an independence vs. interdependence thing, in my view.

People can and do achieve great things through application of personal industry, but if the environment (in a psychological rather than ecological sense) around them isn't conducive to that, then their capacity to achieve is impaired.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Okay, it's unarguable that rising tides do lift all ships, and I'd say it's pretty much unarguable that the incidence of real poverty (as opposed to things like Oxfam's made up definition, which infuriates me) in this country is now a vanishingly small proportion of the population.
I'd say this is as a result of the deregulation to 20-25 years ago, and i think this is backed up by figures from the National Office of Statistics that despite any Thatcherite 'lack of society', measures of social exclusion fell from 1991-97 and have risen since, and the proportion of pensioners classified as excluded also fell from 1991-97 and have risen since.
What I reckon this indicates is that in a social environment in which people are encouraged to take responsibility for their own lives they are more likely to do so, and when the state promises to take care of them then the proportion of the population falling through the safety net actually increases. This is because personal and private industry are in the main more efficient and effective than state enterprises, as Blair admitted in his speech last week.
I'd rather live in a society which tell people their lives are their own responsibilty and in doing so results in some falling through the net, than a society in which the state promises 'social justice' and in so doing results in more people falling through the net as incentives to care for themselves are undermined.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Don't forget, I'm not inskauldrak!

What I actually mean is that people should look out for one another. While the separation of people and state (and state and Government) is something which infuriates me, it's not really what I was talking about.

Community projects and small-scale social enterprises need to be much better facilitated by legislation. Similarly, the involvement and privileges of multinationals need to be curbed to facilitate non-profit-focused human development.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Community projects and small-scale social enterprises need to be much better facilitated by legislation.

That I agree with wholeheartedly. Enterprises in which the people involved feel they have an personal interest are (I'd say without excpetion, but there's bound to be opne) more efficient than those that don't. Look at things like the Co-op and the John Lewis Partnership. They're very efficient economic entities, fully capable of competing.
This is why things like the 'stakeholder society' are doomed to fail. Society is too big for anyone really to feel like they have a personal stake within it. The Thatcherite ideal of the shareholder society, wherein everyone owned a part of society was probebly the best stab at achieving this on a societal level, and that was at best partially successful.

As regards multinationals, I remember you saying to me a while ago (and I didn't reply to that comment, which I meant to), about a friend of yours buying a shirt from company X for a tenner and the chinese peasant who made it got about 1p for doing so. To that I say: There will always be people willing to profit from slavery. If people are willing to buy from companies which use slave labour in China, then it's no surprise that there are companies using slave labour in China. I don't buy their stuff. Holding the behaviour of a company up to criticism when someone is buying their stuff isn't the soltuion.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

The trouble with a shareholder society is the difficult in quantifying the value of things like ethics or human welfare (except in terms which leave you open to the Fight Club equation); by casting everything in purely profit-based terms, the whole thing goes to hell. Even Mr. Cameron now claims to believe that happiness is the best measure of success.

The Co-op are pretty awesome, I agree; I'm a member of my local one, and also bank with Smile. I very nearly applied to their graduate scheme, until I realised I didn't want to become a funeral director.

Your point about multinationals stands in theory, except that it relies on consumers having full access to the relevant information. People are willing to buy from companies they don't realise are using slave labour in China, because they don't see the problems. Advertising and marketing play on fairly basic psychological tricks to enhance the perceived value and reduce the perceived costs and there's no counterbalance to this.

Also, as long as incorporated entities hold a solely profit-focused obligation to their shareholders (essentially making the whole thing into a plutocracy) then ethical considerations will be edged out and glossed over.

The solution? Introduce a credible social aspect into corporate decision making and accountability (by which I don't mean lame-ass public-relations-focused Corporate Social Responsibility policies) and perhaps even limit advertising and marketing.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

You'll be surprised to herar this, but I'm largely in favour of banning advertising to kids. if people aren't deemed capable of making legally informed decisions before they're 16, why are we expecting them to make financially informed decisions?
However, banning accurate advertising to adults is way too nannyish for me. I know the stuff I do about buying products because I took all of 30 seconds to learn it. We'd be better off, erm, expecting people to take personal responsibility for their purchasing than assuming they're too dumb to think for themselves. I think it would be remarkably funny to find a company who'd been done for slavery in their production methods and then bring a class-action suit against their customers as accessories.

Cameron is right; basically, as I say before, the number of people within our society who do not have access to all the material goods that any reasonable person could ask for for health and wellbeing is vanishingly small - and I'm yet to be convinced that those who don't have such access don't as a result of economic factors. As a result, redistribution of weath of pretty much any sort is an idea long past it's sell-by date. It's how those centrally administered funds are administered that is the issue.
As you've done psychology, you'll know the immense psychological benefits which accrue when people feel they are independant and in control of their own lives. Encouraging people to feel that - and thus reducing their reliance upon the state and also reducing state intervention in their lives - is a sure way towards greater social happiness.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with accurate advertising to adults. It's the conflation of sex/success and the benefits of a given product that annoys me, as well as the incompleteness of advertising. Accurate advertising must surely include the details of its production. See, I'm all in favour of an ethical rating system, such as corporatewatch operate, to keep consumers informed.

Let's not forget, Mr. Wade, that you are an intelligent, well-educated middle-class white male. You know the stuff you do about buying products because you were aware there was more to learn and aware of how to learn it.

Cameron is right, although I don't believe he means it as anything other than an election ploy.

Again, I'm not writing this as a socialist but as an evolutionary anarchist, so you must consider that my angle here is to facilitate people's development until everyone's willing and able to take full responsibility for their own actions, given their own full understanding of the consequences of those actions.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem onto others. Ultimately, no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

'There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation'

Yes and no. Babies and the severely learning disabled, to list two fairly non-contentious examples, have no obligations, but they are nonetheless legally (and, I would suggest, morally) entitled to be fed, clothed and sheltered, simply on the grounds of being human beings. Perhaps it's more more to do with the ability to contribute to one's own welfare: one could reasonably argue that those who can, should. The tricky bit is figuring out who can and who can't (as opposed to who can or can't be bothered).

That said, with you all the way on the imbalance between some people's understanding of their rights as opposed to their responsibilities - because a few years of dealing with stroppy adolescents will persuade anyone of that. I'm not sure that it's what they've been 'given to understand', though - it's astounding how much some people only take in the information that suits them and ignore or forget the rest.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

There's an excellent essay by ( I think) Douglas Hofstadter where he says that in debate it's always best to assume that anything the other person says is prefaced with the phrase "all else being equal" so, no, babes and the mentally subnormal don't fit the structure I threw out, but all else being equal it's not an unreasonable expectation that people should accept responsibilities are the commensurate of rights - or those capable of integrating within society should accept that, anyway. The incessant bleating of 'I know my rights' by the latest drooling troglodyte to be trotted into the police station round the corner from my office leads to me agree with your suggestion that people only hear what they want to hear - they know their rights, but they must have skipped the bit where other people's were mentioned.

Not to mention that I'd say that babies and the disabled would count as your 'neighbour', in the Christian if not the literal sense, and I did suggest that people accept a responsibility of care for their neighbour?

[uninvitedcat.livejournal.com]

Fascinating discussion! Hope you don't mind, but I'm friending you (I've wandered over from snapesbabe's LJ).

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Welcome.