Comments on: Self-Control Is Slavery

By: In Mala Fide

In Mala Fide — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:05:17 +0000

Linkage is Good for You: Not Safe for Work Edition…

Since you’ve all been good boys and girls, I’ve decided to reward you with the first-ever NSFW LIGFY. (I dare you to say that five times fast.) You’ll find it……

By: Gene Callahan

Gene Callahan — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 06:03:24 +0000

I’ve sometimes thought that if Aristotle was shown the modern factory worker, he would not have thought, “Ah, so my thesis that slavery is necessary is wrong,” but, “Ah, you’ve devised an ingenious new form of slavery.”

By: bill benzon

bill benzon — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:37:53 +0000

Self-control is but a label in search of a mechanism. What kind of mechanism could it be if it can vary from one social regime to another?

In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud argued that the super-ego arrived with agriculture and, in his theory, the superego has self-control functions. Of course, “superego” is just another label for some mechanism we don’t understand. But, at least it points to a mechanism. The task now is to figure out how that mechanism works. That’s not going to be so easy & I rather doubt that it’s going to show up on an fMRIs — though, of course, we’ve got endless learned prattle about how the frontal cortex exercises executive control over our activities.

By: Philo

Philo — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:22:38 +0000

“Our descendants may evolve even stronger self/culture-control of behavior.” It does seem that this will be the direction of evolution, so long as evolution continues. Our “natural,” “near-mode” behavior was adaptive to conditions that no longer exist, and it was only imperfectly adaptive–far from optimal–even there. “Controlling ourselves” (“self-control”) is overriding those natural impulses in our own interests. Natural selection, because it is adaptive, should produce descendants for whom these natural impulses are less unruly.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:52:33 +0000

They could consume us for raw resources.

By: Summerspeaker

Summerspeaker — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:25:14 +0000

For what purpose? We would have nothing practical to offer them.

By: db

db — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:05:03 +0000

until we are enslaved by our robot overloards

By: Summerspeaker

Summerspeaker — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:53:12 +0000

This is Michel Foucault’s thesis given a more positive spin. As you might expect, I come closer to his assessment of the situation than to yours. Rather than reach new heights of conditioned self-control in the future, I hope automation frees us from drudgery.

By: William L.

William L. — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:07:03 +0000

It seems that “self control” is used here in a slippery way – it seems to be defined as the implantation of societies norms in lieu of your own IN ADDITION to the enforcement of the norms deemed most dear to your self.

I somehow think that the latter not the former is self control. Whether you adhere to societies norms is your own choice irrespective of the consequences of that choice and the persuasiveness if those consequences. The adherence to your choice equates to self control.

Thus an anarchist may have self-control if he can adhere to his own choices, and a prisoner may have no self control if he cannot.

Obviously enough you can corrupt a person’s choices through lies (in all forms). Here is where debate is formed and the need distinguish wisdom from intelligence. Assuming religion is corrupting or turns subsumes a persons choices with the choices of another is assuming quite alot in defining what a religion is or what it stands for. Moreover it assumes that presence or absence of a formalized religion denies a personalized use of what may equate to a religion.

By: ad

ad — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:04:45 +0000

IIRC, slave imports into the US and the British Empire were illegal from 1807. The US, Barbados, and several other slave colonies had ceased to import slaves before that date. Barbados was a net exporter.

This in spite of the fact that the great majority of imported slaves were men, who tended not to bear many children.

The life expectancy of a newly landed slave in the Caribean was ~ 20 years – four times that of a newly arrived european.

(It is in Philip Curtin somewhere, but I don’t have the exact references.)