Originally posted here : https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6850772685568401408/
Politicians keen to strip individuals of agency try to transfer it to abstractions without agency. Classes do not exist as physical things but individuals do. A class can be identified by wealth, culture, religion, or bodily features. Quite ghastly.
This is most convenient for ideologues intent on domination. In a cake-and-eat it approach, abstractions are fit for group punishment. Individuals stripped of agency are blamed and punished en masse, regardless of belief, kindness, intention or humanity. It is malicious, unjust and inhuman to smear wholesale guilt on people.
But classes are crucial in the inter-subjective. There, skin colour can be super-important; for others, it’s money and, for millions, it is caste. Caste is a class(ification). It is possible for a class to have agency in the inter-subjective but a non-sense in the physical world.
We share an interest in respect for individuals. Being individual is common to all, except ideologues who need rescuing from close to total servility and denial of their own humanity. The individual and the collective are not opposites, as if supporting one denies the other. This cruel and somewhat stupid attitude often held by highly educated people, is based on ignorance of the inter-subjective.
A long line of, usually, academic theories from Marxism through to today’s Relativist philosophies and Woke prompt people to dismiss common humanity with the immature blyth certainty of spoilt 13 year old know-alls
When you hear people talking politics as if it were all about oppression of one abstraction over others, listening between the words, what they really mean, is the denial of individual agency and human morality in favour of mass guilt, and punishment backed by an attitude close to criminal judgementalism. And guess who will carry the banner of this poisoned ‘justice’?
I am astonished that we put up with such unjust and cruel behaviour. Perhaps it is because there has been virtually no progress understanding how society works for over 70 years. Where science and technology made massive advances, thanks to Relativist philosophers, and I suspect political influence, we are now threatened by people intent on forcing inter-subjective affairs onto physical reality.
As non-logic, a product of the suspension of the rule of non-contradiction exists in the inter-subjective, they are trying to force illogicality onto reality. Colonisation of the sciences is part of the project. At best, this is a recipe for injustice, and social disaster at the worst. They play with fire, like 13 year olds left alone with a box of matches.
Pushers on phones use phenomenal technology to sell drugs. Meanwhile, abstractions are on the way back thanks to people worse than thieves intent on the destruction of knowledge and society to sate their lust for moral supremacy. Deniers of humanity usually, a few years on, wish they had never been so stupid.
Their press releases surely won't admit it, but NOAA's PREDICTED SUNSPOT NUMBER AND RADIO FLUX data appears to show a 'full-blown' Grand Solar Minimum running from the late-2020s to the 2040s (at least):https://t.co/hW4fh05tsv
The main strength of the doctrine of Individualism is “Locality of failure”. Under the doctrine of responsibility for self, failure is local to the individual. The individual is connected probably with 5 or 6 other people who can provide some assistance.
However, when a collectivised system fails i.e. a system where everyone is relying on everyone else, then everyone is in the same boat and there is no one capable of bailing anyone else out, let alone the whole system.
This is why all forms of coerced collectivism throughout history have killed 100’s of millions of people.
Individualistic capitalism on the other hand has created the greatest levels of wealth because it is the most robust and most immune to failures of all kinds and this is because the individual is the most fundamental component of society.
I’ve been invited to an online event this evening with the foreign
Secretary @DominicRaab. I am tempted to pay my £10 but I am fairly
sure I will hear nothing but a load of platitudinous sphericals,
since his performance on Hong Kong so far has been woeful.
Hong Kong is the
most significant issue facing the world now. A major power, which is
also a totalitarian anti-state, has openly abrogated, not only an
international treaty, but also its own internal law (Thanks Dom for
pointing that out in Parliament the other day. Maybe you could have
pointed that out publicly and loudly a few weeks ago and prevented
the new Security Law being introduced ??)
The battle over Hong
Kong is a microcosm of the battle humanity faces in the 21st
century. We simply cannot allow totalitarianism to win.
Given
the descent of western society, under #WuFlu lockdown, into Orwellian
dystopia, it seems apt to quote him :
“Sometimes
the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”
Communism
is deceitful, coercive and destructive to any healthy society. The
Chinese Communist Party, since taking power in 1949 has destroyed
China. The Chinese like to think of themselves as one of the longest
surviving civilizations. However the China that existed before Mao no
longer exists.
“When
Mao took power,
he changed the official name of the state to the People’s Republic
of China. In so doing, he declared that the old government’s debt
to American lenders was defunct. By the stroke of a pen, he wiped out
what in today’s money amounts to $1.4 trillion in debt, by
declaring that the old China that signed the obligations no longer
existed.
Strangely,
when the Hong Kong lease agreement between Queen Victoria’s British
Empire and the old China expired in 1997, past contracts were
suddenly valid again.
Mao
didn’t just change the name of the country. He destroyed its
culture too. Chinese people are often proud of the fact that the
continuity of Chinese symbols for thousands of years allows modern
Chinese to read documents from the archaic era.
Except
that they can’t, because Mao insisted on introducing simplified
Chinese symbols, which ruined the only salient feature of the
language: its continuity with the past. Now, the Chinese still have
to learn thousands of symbols just to read a newspaper, but they have
lost the ability to read documents from the past. [Of course Hong
Kong, Taiwan and Macao, the parts of China untouched by Mao’s
philistinism, still use traditional characters]
This
severing of history was a feature, not a bug. Mao urged his devoted
followers to destroy any remnants of the past, and they set about
doing what communists are doing in America right now: destroying all
statues, temples,
and cultural artefacts.
Taiwan,
the last stronghold of Chiang, is the only remaining genuinely
Chinese place that is untouched by the cultural revolution”.
So
Mao secured Party control over all aspects of Chinese life and in so
doing, turned the country into the rootless, cultureless, moral
wasteland it is today. There is no private property ownership because
if any business is sufficiently successful to pop up on the radar,
the nearest Party member will steal it take it over
“for the people”.
The
world is now connected and computerised. And since the Chinese don’t
recognise individual property, all Chinese technology is a threat.
Consider this brilliant post on Reddit (which is now partially owned
by Tencent so say goodbye to free speech there)…
Some
tech hacker dude checked out TikTok the Chinese video app aimed at
children and young people.
“So
I can personally weigh in on this. I reverse-engineered the app, and
feel confident in stating that I have a very strong understanding for
how the app operates (or at least operated as of a few months ago).
TikTok
is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social
network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts,
or your device… well, they’re using it.
Phone
hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen
dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
Other
apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in
their analytics payload – maybe using as cached value?)
Everything
network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access
point name)
Whether
or not you’re rooted/jailbroken
Some
variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly
once every 30 seconds – this is enabled by default if you ever
location-tag a post IIRC
They
set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding
media”, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero
authentication
The scariest part of all of this is that much of the logging they’re doing is remotely configurable, and unless you reverse every single one of their native libraries (have fun reading all of that assembly, assuming you can get past their customized fork of OLLVM!!!) and manually inspect every single obfuscated function. They have several different protections in place to prevent you from reversing or debugging the app as well. App behavior changes slightly if they know you’re trying to figure out what they’re doing. There’s also a few snippets of code on the Android version that allows for the downloading of a remote zip file, unzipping it, and executing said binary. There is zero reason a mobile app would need this functionality legitimately”.
OK
that’s a bit techy but they’re scanning every detail of you,
your device and its usage and sending them back to base. To coin a
phrase, “All of your base are belong to us”.
The
Chinese people do not recognise property rights because they are
actively not
enforced or upheld by the government or considered
valid within the
political systemic thinking.
So
of course if you’re a Chinese tech firm building an app you’re
not going to even recognise that limits exist on what you can and
can’t extract from a user’s device. The concept is entirely
alien.
So
when Boris gave his speech at the UN last year addressing the
impending onset of technological totality and wondered (and
I
paraphrase since I’m sure he mentioned Prometheus
or
some other greek bloke a couple of times) whether it would free us
or enslave us, I
can tell you for sure, unless we actively resist and object and
oppose any and all trespasses on individual liberty via
technological means we’ll
end up as slaves. I’m not sure that the leadership have grasped
this and am thus pretty gloomy about humanity’s general prospects
if we let Hong Kong fall.
So
that’s where we are. The decision to offer British citizenship to
the BNOs is faintly laudable but also reeks of surrender. We’re not
going to take the measures required to prevent China from breaching
its Treaty
obligations and destroying freedom in Hong Kong, which should include
extensive and immediate economic and financial sanctions against all
of China through the establishment of a coalition of regional powers
plus CANZUK and the US. Accepting 3m is all well and good. But what
about the other 4 million. Screw them ?? It’s incoherent and short
sighted. China is a threat and needs to be tackled.
The
decision facing humanity now
is
how we organise ourselves as a species. The choice is between a
system based on coercion versus standing against all coercion and
promoting free association and cooperation founded in individual
liberty. The CCP does not have a role to play in any
future
of the
world I want my children to inherit.
The
grim reality is that I don’t think we have leadership of the
calibre capable of preventing it.
The range and complexity of issues surrounding the Covid19 pandemic has opened the debate about globalisation. These factors include the origin of the virus in Wuhan, the fact that the CCP covered up the virus and have behaved reprehensibly, e.g. buying up supplies of PPE throughout the world before going public, not to mention flat out lying about the numbers of dead, and the response of governments throughout the world, although particularly in the UK, to alleviate the economic impact of the lockdown.
There is an emerging realisation that reliance on China is a bad idea. Alongside the reprehensible way the Chinese have interacted with the world following the outbreak, the crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong has shown Xi’s regime to be a force for evil in the world. The unlawful seizure of Hong Kong is analogous to Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland, with the difference that it is unwelcome by the population of Hong Kong and we know where that eventually led. Anyway, it seems fairly probable that the pressures on globalisation which have been unleashed will only grow. We contend that these pressures were one of the major inputs in Brexit and logically point to a new future founded in localism.
Brexit was the assertion of control by a people who refused to be governed by a system over which they had no control and which was ultimately unanswerable to them. This genie is out of the bottle now. Our Italian friends will get it next, hopefully.
Technology is huge part of this. Technology is largely not subject to control by central authority (OK maybe the anti gravity and zero point energy stuff is controlled by the guys in Nevada or wherever 😉 ) but the everyday stuff is tumbling from the future into our lives. Technological advance has already created the conditions for localism; enhanced communication enabling instantaneous peer to peer communication, enhanced technology such as 3D printing putting vast capability into the hands of more and more of the population increasingly cheaply. These open the way for a resurgence of ‘cottage industry’ and micro societies, only on a far more efficient level. #WuFlu could just be the catalyst. There is also a whole discussion on cryptocurrency and the emerging parallel economic ecosystem based on blockchain tech.
As our grasp of the bigger picture and our role within it becomes more comprehensive, consensus is emerging that in order to preserve civilised society we cannot treat people as being economically expendable and outsource their livelihoods based solely on a narrow measure of profit (ie one which ignores certain costs), such as importing cheap labour under free movement or by offshoring to a mafia run state like China.
I believe we will eventually start to evolve a theory of organisation where we ‘think as a species’.
Each of us is voluntarily and individually responsible for adopting behaviours that promote overall well-being, without the requirement for centralised coercion. Individual self interest is not incompatible with this, since causing harm to our neighbours is harmful to the environment of which we ourselves are a part. If a new economic model is to emerge in keeping with this strain of thought, people in the UK will start to act with ‘economic localism’ as a way of reflecting these ideas.
The UK (our ‘somewhere’, the one we can influence) is big enough that we can viably operate all areas of the economy. We can have all kinds of industry. We can have a thriving agricultural sector. We can provide enough fish from our waters etc. We can be self sufficient. But we can also continue to trade globally within this framework. But further, the damage to the financial system required by the suspension of the preexisting economic model, as evidenced by ‘Rishi’s splurge’, will wake people up to alternatives. These include blockchain based distributed monetary systems as opposed to ‘fiat money as debt’. Money is nothing but ‘effective demand’ thus this technology will also impact political interactions; collective ‘centre of opinion’ will eventually come to be arrived at by blockchain token voting, i.e. true verifiable consensus, supported by digital IDs, with anonymity secured by cryptography.
The old pre-digital world ended probably about 20 years ago. A lot of dead wood will be razed by this pandemic. Scarcity will decrease and economics (the science of scarcity) will also change irrevocably.
I saw a recent post in CapX which I found utterly laughable.
It suggested that we should create a new Hong Kong in the UK and relocate hundreds of thousands of people here. No disrespect to the Hong Kong BNOs, but idea that we can institute a 15% tax rate in a specific area of the UK because it would be good for economic growth (which is true) and not then institute a 15% tax rate throughout the UK as a whole is intellectually dishonest. It simply won’t happen.
I have detected amongst much of the social media comment, a kind of adoption of the narrative that ‘there is nothing we can do because it’s China’. There’s a sense of resignation permeating our politics.
I spoke to a Singaporean friend today and his comment was that ‘HK is a shithole now. There’s no way China is going to back down’.
This need not be true.
First of all, China is in breach of an international Treaty, the Sino British Joint Declaration of 1984. This was to resolve the issue of the 150 year lease of New Territories, which was due to expire in 1997. At the time, Deng Xiaoping assured Maggie Thatcher that he was steering China towards a more democratic system of government and under these influences, the UK also agreed to hand over Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, which had been ceded in perpetuity to the UK, on condition that Hong Kong independence would be maintained for 50 years until 2047.
The 2019 institution of an arrest warrant applicable in Hong Kong which would not be subject to Hong Kong judicial review, even where the alleged crime for which extradition was sought was not a crime in Hong Kong was the first trespass on Hong Kong law. The UK remained silent.
Ever since then the situation has deteriorated.
Trumps speech earlier however was electrifying.
These guys get it totally. Boris and Raab should be ashamed of themselves.
But anyway here’s the thing. We can still retrieve the situation.
China under the CCP is viewed with suspicion and hostility by powers in the region.
Therefore, the obvious approach is for the Anglosphere 5 to form a political coalition with other regional powers, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and even Vietnam, and it would probably also include Thailand and Singapore to form an economic blockade against China.
The world’s economies are currently all disrupted, so fear of economic damage is no longer an impediment to instituting economic sanctions against China. All those countries should jointly issue notification to China of their immediate rescinding of recognition of China’s membership of the WTO and institute an immediate customs halt on all imports from China.
The central banks of all those countries should immediately prohibit all the banks licensed within their regulatory orbit from accepting or making any payment to any Chinese or Hong Kong bank.
At the same time they should issue a demand that China immediately vacates the illegally occupied Spratley islands.
They should demand that Carrie Lam immediately stands down as leader of the Hong Kong government.
They should demand that Hong Kong holds free and fair elections to replace the CCP placemen in the Hong Kong legislature.
Given the failure by the British to consult Hong Kong people before handing over Hong Kong and Kowloon, when 70% of Hong Kong people were in favour of British rule, and given the fact that China has now explicitly abrogated the Treaty, they should also demand that the Hong Kong people be given a referendum on whether they want independence from China, to stand as a free and independent nation in perpetuity.
This will bring about the collapse of Xi’s regime. This should certainly now be the world’s objective. He is a nasty thug whose government has imprisoned Uyghurs and Falun Gong and murdered them for their organs.
Do not be under any illusion about the barbarity of the Chinese Communist Party. As president Trump alluded to in his speech tonight, as discussion around the handover occurred, and following the conclusion of the 1984 agreement, the world had hoped that the spirit of liberty in Hong Kong would come to infect the whole of China.
Five years later, this nascent yearning for freedom by PRC Chinese was brutally put down in Tiananmen Square. Chinese army soldiers shot unarmed protesters. Armoured vehicles crushed their bodies and minced them into a pie of human flesh and bone which was then incinerated and the ashes flushed into the sewage system. Utter inhumanity.
The virus has shown that all humanity is connected. What happens anywhere happens everywhere. I don’t know if this is true, but supposedly President Kennedy had a placque somewhere with the inscription, “Where We Go One, We Go All”. This is certainly now true. The Chinese Communist Party is a threat to all of mankind, which makes the attempt by Cameron and Osborne to cosy up to the murderous mafia don Xi, all the more sickening.
Hong Kong is a microcosm of the issues facing the world and the parallels with Brexit are screaming at us. We have to act now. The people of Hong Kong absolutely have the right to their freedom, just as do we all.
I am deadly serious. This is as important as facing down Nazism and the Soviet Union in the 20th century and as technology more than ever before in our history has the power to enslave or free us, our choice now in favour of freedom is required to determine what kind of future humanity will have.
