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Dude...40% Voted for by Auxiliar, Stella Cadente.
However much I hate Maslow, I must concede that there is a hierarchy of needs. I wouldn't go so far as to put the Christmas ornaments on it that he does, but he was headed in the right direction.
Most people feel hungry first and meditative later. While some people may sit quietly, along with the rest of mankind they have given up on the hungry. Remember the words of the Grand Inquisitor, read your Dostoevsky. If it were anyone other than Jesus, who remains silent throughout the story, to refuse Satan's promises (of the end of world hunger, the beginning of world peace, and his own religious certainty) we would call him a fascist for rejecting one of them if not all of them.
Man lives by many things, some greater than bread and some less pressing than bread. Search for profit, which is just the pejorative connotation of getting use out of something and giving up something else, incorporates both these greater and lesser things. We profit every time we expend time to come up with a great thought. We profit every time we do someone a service and are able to live by this work.
All of this results from the manner in which we think, that is in the indispensable terms of cause and effect. Kafka's hunger artist is the posterboy for all of this. Kafka's hunger artist is someone who makes a living by showing people that he can starve for however many days on end. In the time he spends in front of the paying public, sometimes in a cage for dramatic effect and sometimes on a stage, he realizes that he can't help but be good at this. He tailspins in to self-disgust, and the paying public is equally disgusted, the public that wonders why there's nothing in the cage and then looks closer. He self-destructs, and his cage is allocated to house a panther.
If we deny that we have what Ricardo called "comparative advantage," that there are some things that each of us individually or corporately does better than others, if we find disgust with it, then something like the panther, then something that isn't so enlightened to find disgust in it will take our place. The greedy will prey on the less greedy. They used to say of Rockefeller, that his motto ought to have been, "Let us prey."
This profit perhaps wasn't responsible for Michaelangelo's David, who is cracking under his own individuality, but if improvement is to be gauged in terms of the hungry then it must embrace the line of thinking that allows for greater profit rather than for Hunger Artistry. Even a charity ought to obey the laws of cost-benefit analysis, if it wants to keep more people from dying or starving. As long as there are no choices, "profit" is unethical. When there are choices, and one becomes more helpful for less work, societies should allow for the charities to choose, just as much as it must tolerate the profiteers.
Humanity can improve itself without profit as a motive, but, on a societal scale, it will fall to a society that has profit as a motive. Within such a society with profit, man can much more easily improve himself without profit as a motive - just look at Montaigne in his castle and Plato in his comfortable wealth. We can think outside this motivation, but it shouldn't extend too far past the workings of a minority of unprofitable people within a profitable society.
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NoVoted for by Dwn.
Not as long as greed exists , unfortunantly, greed will always find a way to steal in the name of its own interest, and calculating greed will find ways into power and wealth, and then that power will begin to legislate its wealth even more, all governmental bodies legalize thier own stealing from the people that they rule , then proclaim it not a crime because they have made it law
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advantageVoted for by grant.
Wheres the advantage (profit) in improvement? Why the motivation to improve? If one counts themselves as humanity one would need to look at onself to consider whether this self needs improvement. I dont get it. I'm already perfect.
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No Profit/SlaveryVoted for by GaryCGibson.
Profit is a necessaary econimc component within a free enterprise criterion. In primitive cultural anthropology human societies existed without owning things because that simply wasn't relevent, yet in a more advanced society with complex activities profit is required to afford abstract and unspecified economic products in order to continue the business of living. Galbraith wrote many works on economics of use.
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Of course there are various levels of wealth and of the use of wealth that are worth considering. Over-concentrations of wealth oppress people in many historical contexts prevent their betterment and fair social opportunities. Their are those that exploit workers such as slaves claiming that they need no profits, but have their needs met, and from each according to his ability and to each accordings to his need (a good whipping, corn or gruel, a bed of nails, breeding with a suitable hag for Magnum like progeny) is an excellent communal ethic, so long as a superior social class is present to guide the chillin in their labors.
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Exploiting human beings is the main problem, and a secondary problem is vitimizing the environment, considering it a commons that isn't personally meaningful in micro-economic circumstance. Greed can send one to hell perhaps, but well used profit allows one to regulate one's labors and investments, and to pursue better philosophical activities, religious or political activities in some cases or whatever one believes is right.
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Stella Cadente
August 16, 2006
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