Buddhist economics

[stuartw2112]

You're too hard on yourself Alan! Is original thinking even possible? I'm a cut and paste artist too! Would be happy to discuss Marxism and Buddhism, though I'm no expert on the latter (or the former even!). Cheers

[twc]

Those cited Buddhist ‘philosophers’ interpret Western science from their hostile Buddhist ‘philosophical’ standpoint, just as LBird interprets Western science from his hostile ‘philosophical’ standpoint.Both wilfully hijack Western science’s achievements to their own ‘philosphical’ ends, and twist it at the most superficial level.Both stand superior to the working scientists who laboured to build Western science, cumulatively over the centuries, shoulder upon shoulder, and brick by brick.Both are blind to the productive world that Western science created for them, and that they nonchalantly inherit.Both are oblivious of the substantiation of Western science’s achievements by society’s incorporation of Western scientific thought and technology into society’s daily practice.Both of them, despite themselves, repudiate Marx’s thesis that Man must prove the power of his thinking in practice!  All is thought for them — the non-doing, or do-nothing, ‘philosophers’.Let these ‘philosophers’ show us the achievements of Buddhist ‘science’ in practice.  Let them show us Buddhist ‘science’ in the service of Buddhist ‘philosophy’, as handed down over the ages from the sacred Buddhist texts of universal wisdom.  Let them show us!Then we might have sufficient grounds for taking their ‘science’ more seriously than mere bluster.Maybe paucity of Buddhist ‘scientific’ demonstration, but profusion of ‘philosphical’ mysticism, may give pause to LBird’s and the Buddhist ‘philosophical’ effrontery of pontificating to Western scientists, who grapple daily with the production of Western science, about how such Western scientists should “thank them” (LBird’s words) for putting them on the right track, by telling Western scientists —who are “thick as dog s**t” (LBird’s indelicate description of those he aims to influence) — how they should really conduct the very thing they think most deeply about daily.Maybe LBird might also demonstrate how Western scientists aim to take over the world — under Socialism mind you — and perform vile experiments on us all (LBird’s confirmed words).Ah, the passive ‘thinker’, priding himself in the activity of his imagination.  Ah, imagination is cheap.  Let imagination prove itself in practice, sustain itself in society, before anyone bothers to take imagination as definitive in any but a tentatively useful social sense.To ‘philosopher’ LBird and the Buddhist ‘philosophers’, Western science has only crass utility.  Western science’s intrinsic value falls short of their ‘philosophical’ expectations.Instead they ‘philophically’ deprecate Western science as a scrap heap for mercenary substantiation of their own ‘philosophical’ world views.  They are the worst kind of scientific plagiarists.To Western science, ‘philosopher’ LBird and the Buddhist ‘philosophers’ are sunk by their own practice as soon as they seek ‘philosophical’ confirmation in the very scientific process they ‘philosophically’ scorn.  Their arrogance prevents them from sensing the irony of their attempts to validate themselves through the achievements of detested Western science.Western science succeeds precisely by repudiating the ‘philosphical’ stance of LBird and the Buddhist ‘philosophers’.The most sickening aspect of LBird’s pontification on Western science is its dogmatic casuistry.  For LBird, the distinguishing characteristic, or telltale signature, of ‘philosophically’ correct science — his so-called ‘proletarian science’ — is that correct “proletarian science’ always changes observation to suit its theory.No doubt good medieval Catholic ‘science’ tried the same ploy, and no doubt good Buddhist ‘science’, in subservience to its holy scriptures, has no choice but to adopt the self-same LBirdian casuistry that LBird trumpets as closed ‘scientific’ method (or scientific fraud) to counter open Western science.LBird, who by now has reduced himself to reading merely in order to seek comfort in the slightest hint of confirmation of his own views, takes the devoutly catholic cosmologist Carlo Rovelli as supporting LBird’s ‘philosphical’ relativism.  Little does LBird appreciate how superficially he reads.Let us examine Carlo Rovelli on the cultural clash between Western science and oriental science.From “The First Scientist — Anaximander and his Legacy”, Carlo Rovelli,  Chapter 9 — Between Cultural Relativism and Absolute Thought.In the third century BCE, Eratosthenes measured the Earth’s circumference, as shown.A contemporaneous Chinese astronomical text describes a comparable measurement based instead on an oriental flat Earth.

Rovelli wrote:

In the seventeenth century, Jesuit Matteo Ricci brought to China the Greek and European astronomy.  The two world visions finally came into direct contact.  When Western astronomers came to know of the Chinese calculation, they responded, on the basis of their own belief system, with a smile.  As soon as they learned of the Western calculation, Chinese astronomers immediately, ¹  and on the basis of their own belief system, changed their worldview, recognising the Western conception as superior.⁽¹⁾ This took place long before European colonialism in the Far East.  Ricci died in 1610.

Sure, this is by no means the last word on the fascinating subject of oriental science, but it merely demonstrates O’Bird’s delusion that Rovelli submerges absolute thought to ‘philosophical’ cultural relativism.It also demonstrates that Carlo Rovello went out of his way — he deliberately makes a point of saying so — to demonstrate the power of Western science relative to so-called ‘sciences’ that cow-tow to ‘philosphical’ or religious dogma.

[LBird]

Isn't it surprising that twc should be so hostile to the democratic control of production?Of course, twc holds to the elitist ideology that 'science' is not a class-based activity, and that the world we live in has not been built to the needs, interests and purposes of the bourgeoisie.Apparently, to twc, 'scientists' are above politics, and if we workers try to take political control of science production, then the modern 'Western' world will collapse.'Western', obviously, is just a bourgeois ideological term for 'Bourgeois', which hides the real class content of 'Western' civilisation.Anyway, here's what Rovelli actually has to say about twc's wonderful 'scientific knowledge':

Rovelli, The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy, wrote:

This reading of scientific thinking as subversive, visionary, and evolutionary is quite different from the way science was understood by the positivist philosophers… (p. xii)Facile nineteenth-century certainties about science— in particular the glorification of science understood as definitive knowledge of the world—have collapsed. One of the forces responsible for their dismissal has been the twentieth-century revolution in physics, which led to the discovery that Newtonian physics, despite its immense effectiveness, is actually wrong, in a precise sense. Much of the subsequent philosophy of science can be read as an attempt to come to grips with this disillusionment. What is scientific knowledge if it can be wrong even when it is extremely effective? (p. xv)But answers given by natural science are not credible because they are definitive; they are credible because they are the best we have now, at a given moment in the history of knowledge. (p. xvi)

http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Scientist-Anaximander-Legacy/dp/1594161313Only the democratic social producers can determine what is 'best', that is, 'best-for-us'.twc, however, thinks that only he and his 'scientific' elite 'know what's best' for the rest of us. Beware, as Marx warned, in his Theses on Feuerbach, of those, like twc, who would separate society into two parts, the smaller superior to the larger.

[Anonymous]

Scientist are workers with expert knowledge that  we can accept or not accept. They are not elites.  They will have the same vote as anyone else and the same access to knowledge and other resources as anyone else. You have already agreed on this in another thread. You received cheers and applause. Are you now backtracking as usual.?? Are we back to ALL 'producers' being experts in ALL fields?

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

Scientist are workers with expert knowledge that  we can accept or not accept. They are not elites.  They will have the same vote as anyone else and the same access to knowledge and other resources as anyone else. You have already agreed on this in another thread. 

Yes, and I still agree with you, Vin.So, since all will have the 'same vote' and the 'same access to knowledge', then surely only all will produce their social knowledge?

Vin wrote:

You received cheers and applause. Are you now backtracking as usual.??

You don't seem to realise the political content of what you are arguing for, Vin. I'm not 'backtracking', I'm confirming 'no elites', 'same votes and knowledge', just as you argue for.

Vin wrote:

Are we back to ALL 'producers' being experts in ALL fields?

You're repeating robbo's 'What LBird says', here, Vin.You (and the others) simply must get used to reading what I write, and not taking robbo's version of 'What LBird says' for what I write.I've only ever said that all 'experts' must be able to explain their expertise to 'all', and that only 'all' can determine whether that explanation fits with the needs, interests and purposes of 'all'.If 'experts' either can't explain, or argue that we can't understand, then we must reject those 'experts'.There is no 'science' or 'knowledge' or 'Truth' that can exist without the active participation of the social producers.To argue otherwise, is to go against Marx, and to support an 'elite' with a supposed 'special consciousness' that they claim is not available to the masses.I've used the analogy of 'Latin, priests and peasants' to explain the current situation of bourgeois science's 'Maths, physicists and workers'. Once the myth, that only priests reading Latin could tell peasants what the Bible said, broke down, there was a revolution. The Bible in the vernacular, published by revolutionaries, provided the starting point.And once the myth, that only physicists reading Maths can tell workers what the World is, breaks down, there will be a revolution. Perhaps Marx in the vernacular…

[Author]

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