Altrusism is also Self-Interest ...That's a missing link in politics today

[Armstead]

One of the traps Democrats, liberals and progressives have fallen into is the notion that you have to choose between self-interest and altruism. That's a CONservative frame that puts everything in the wrong context.

Put crudely, Republicans, right-wingers and Corporate CONservatives have the underlying message that they will help YOU have a better life, while those bleeding-heart liberals and "mommy Democrats" are for THEM at YOUR EXPENSE.

They create phony choices: Do you really want to give up the money for your new SUV so the liberals can turn it over to some fat, lazy loudmouth welfare queen? Do you want your business to fail because the government forces you to pay ridiculously high wages to undeserving employees?

What Democrats and progressives have lost sight of -- or at least lost the ability to communicate -- is that altruism and self-interest are actually the same. We all do better when we all do better.

We don't make it clear that fighting for the rights of all workers is fighting for your rights as a worker. WE don't make the casse that the "safety net" is there for YOU, not some lazy layabout. Economic rules that prevent abuses and monopolistic corporate monoliths protect YOUR business and your opportunities.

It goes on and on....But I think a key to getting beyond this morass is to restablish the connection between the Greater Good and how it makes life better for You as an individual, as well as everyone else.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Anti-Altruism comes from the Ayn Rand Right

She was the prime force behind promoting a philosophy of the virtue of greed. Because of her, instead of having numerous porly-known philosophers to consult to justify greed, Libertarians and Conservatives of all stripes simply need consult a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal or "The Ideology of Selfishness.

Of course, Rand's version is based on a number of erroneous, fallacious, and ignorant arguments, but when did she ever let that stop her?

--p!

[Armstead]

4. Yes she was paranoid about The Collective...

But what conned conservatives seem to miss is that the kind of corporatism we have today is also contrary to the rugged individualism she espoused.

[democrank]

2. What`s that saying?

"All for one and one for all."

[Armstead]

3. In contrast to the Conservative mantra "Every man for himself"

[omega minimo]

8. "Of the People, By the People and For the People"

.......not the Corporations (pretending they are "people")

[Armstead]

10. "Fight the Power"

Chuck D Public Enemy

[omega minimo]

11. "People Got The Power"

:patriot: Patti Smith :grouphug:

The piece missing from the puzzle, and the "assumed altruism" of your other post, is the assumption of IDENTIFICATION WITH the Robber Barons that the People have been suckered into. Even tho "trickle down" became "trickle on" decades ago, folks don't seem to get that Global Corporate America don't give a shit about them. Will it really take economic collapse for people to "wake up"? Fucking pathetic.

That goes back to the identification with Fat Cats and the "government is bad" bullshit. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT.

People don't understand how the American governmental system works, yet they cling to their fantasies about fundamental protections-- even while they know that the "checks and balances" have been disappeared!!!-- which keeps their fuzzy blanket of denial nice and cozy, while they continue to identify with the Robber Barons that are destroying their lives, destroying their country and destroying their planet.

[Armstead]

15. You're right about that

The times I've been able to stomach Rush Limbaugh, that's a big theme of his. "You too are among the wealthy fightiong against those proles."

He makes those middle aged middle-manager guys or a guy with some little entrepreneurisal venture cleaning rugs feel like they should identify with the president of GE.

[Armstead]

5. Asa Paul Wellstone put it

This is an excerpt fro a 1998 speech of his. "Beyond Symboli Politics":


http://www.geocities.com/~demcrat/frame32.html


"...The Republicans argue that when it comes to the most pressing issues in people's lives, starting with how we care for the people we love, there is simply nothing that we can or should do as a society. I call them the "New Isolationists." They are isolationist not in terms of international affairs, but in terms of human affairs. They believe in aloneness as a kind of virtue. They seek to cloak greed and selfishness behind the mantle of "individual opportunity." The credo of the New Isolationist may as well be: "Buddy, you're on your own!"

The New Isolationism is a great philosophy if you're a corporation. It's a great philosophy if you are a multi-millionaire. With our current campaign finance system, those kinds of people can make the big political contributions that get them big attention in Washington.

But it is completely wrong for the vast majority of Americans. That's what's so often backwards about what people say at college graduations. Too often, people tell the graduates, you've been to a great school, now it's time for you to make it on your own. That's wrong. That's turned around. It wasn't independence that got those graduates to the proud moment they face, but interdependence. Their interdependence with family, with teachers, with fellow students, those are the values that got them to that proud graduation day, and those are the values that will sustain them later in life.

And too many Democrats think that it is, for purely short-term expediency reasons, politically important to favor tax cuts, and to oppose real solutions because (quote) "we cannot afford them."
But real solutions are what we stand for. We must stand for the proposition that we can and should place a priority on funding those goals -- of education, health and good jobs -- that truly matter in people's lives.

I don't mean to say that we have to seek a Federal Government solution for every problem. The dispute is not about big government versus small government. It's about good government, and smart government, and humane government...."

[omega minimo]

9. The "New Isolationists" = the old "Robber Barons"

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. *ENLIGHTENED* self interest.

Some how or other that's hard to communicate to that elusive "swing vote". It always seems to miss the forrest for the trees. And the RW capitalizes on that; is supremely skillful at exploiting that misconception... that the general welfare does not also serve the welfare of the individual.

We need to learn more from them about shaping political attitudes and behavior. They are quite good at it.

[Armstead]

7. Swing voters THINK they're voting for enlightened self-interest

The CONservatuives have done a good job of making an illusory connection between self-interest and the rteal interests of the majority.

The CONservatives claim that it is enlightened self-interest to support "trickle down" and "supply side" economics. "If the rich get richer everyone will benefit."

They've magically combined the message of greed with a phony form of assumed altruism based on greed.

It is a hard thinbg to break, but as the results become more patently obvioous -- i.e. white collar workers seeing their jobs outsourced -- that might help break through that CON job they've bought into.

But Democrats and progressives have to pound home the fact that there are alternatives, and point out the difference between the CONservative con job and the real intgerests of the majority, including themselves.

[Jose Diablo]

12. Altruism is a high survival trait

It is what has allowed humanity to rise above the law of the jungle. Observe the animals, it is instinctive to them and actually all social creatures. Either we work together, or we die as individuals.

So if we believe in social evolution, then we can begin to understand how instinctive traits like altruism can lead to survival of the herd, or if you will, the specie. If the individual does not possess altruism, then that individual is cut-off from the herd and predators will pick it off, thus eliminating those individuals without instinctive altruism. But with us humans, we are trained to have altruistic ideas, by our culture. If our culture fails to train for altruism, then that culture dies, along with its individuals and the cultures with altruism survives because altruism is a high survival trait for cultures.

Thus 'social evolution' is biological evolution brought to the social level of interaction between members of a specie. Think of 'social' as a layer above the biological layer. As the biological layer is above the physical layer of atoms and molecules. And the atoms and molecules are about the cosmological random-deterministic quantum level.

Reality is a layered structure of laws or rules stacked one above the other governing that layer of reality, with the spiritual/intellectual/mental or if you will, the layer of ideas at the top.

We are communicating these ideas now, through the screens and keyboards.

[LiberalAndProud]

13. False choices.

Security vs. Liberty
Self Interest vs. Charity for All
Ignorance vs. Happiness

That is the Republican platform in 2006.

1984 +22

[Armstead]

14. Science versus Religion

[mdmc]

16. kick

for the philosophy

[buddhamama]

17. *ding ding ding*

and the prize goes to Armstead. "by George, i think he's got it!"

i couldn't agree with you more. :thumbsup: