Practice for November 9, 2015
Collaboration or comments would be appreciated
- A key phrase is better served when “and” is replaced, so we changed to “personal liberty with
domestic goodwill”—PLwDG. Each member of a civic people pursues
personal goals appreciating that other people also pursue their personal
goals. Members don't expect others to be personally like-minded, with
one exception: Just as each person works for their living, each person
works for PLwDG. The consequence is an overall culture of a civic
people, among whom no-harm factional cultures flourish and the rule of
law limits criminals and such aliens to civic order.
- In
the last library meeting, Mona instructively asked, “What incentive
will motivate most people to collaborate?” The collaboration then was
“safety.” By using physics-based ethics to collaborate on civic
morality, most people can at last have a common goal: I want safety and I
want you to enjoy safety, too (borrowing from Rousseau). Subsequently,
influenced by Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values,
2010, we added to safety well-being even though we don't agree that
Harris's approach assures well-being. Well-being is both physical and
psychological; civic and personal. Thus, a civic person not only takes
care of personal health, hygiene,and motivation but civic connections
and domestic peace. For example, each person seeks personal peace with
his or her sexuality, religion/none, societies and other private
pursuits, without attempting to impose those satisfactions on other
civic people. Yet civic people candidly share heartfelt opinion if they
choose to. For example, significantly for me, Daniel Liebeskind, D.M.A.
candidate in piano performance at LSU, helped me perceive that my past
commitment not to use the word “science” (in order to not alienate
fundamentalist believers) was limiting my chances to communicate. Thanks
to Daniel’s persistence, I freed myself to write: Science is a study
and therefore fallible, whereas physics as I define it—energy, mass and
space time (EMS) simply is. Humans invite ruin and reject benefits when
they defy physics, regardless of their motives, be they material,
religious, scientific, or other opinion-based ethic. For example,
deciding to wait out a tsunami can prove ruinous. Current or future
physics might correct or refine my EMS detail, but the essence will
remain: reality emerges from physics. Civic collaboration is powerful;
thank you, Daniel.
- Physics—energy,
mass and space-time, from which everything emerges, started 13.8
billion years ago. We highlighted key emergences from cosmic chemistry
to ethics in the last library meeting. In future discussions, after that
introduction, people might relate better to global, cultural evolutions
over the last 10,000 years and for the USA honing quickly to Western
political developments over the last 800 years as they influence
political opinion. Out of this consideration has emerged our proposition
that opinion-based ethics begs reform to physics-based ethics.
- I
discovered an informative scholarly essay, “We the People: The Original
Meaning of Popular Sovereignty,” Andrew G. I. Kilberg, 2014. Kilberg
concludes: “The framers . . . created a balance of . . . the state
peoples and the national people . . . with each class checking the
other. The Constitution did not consolidate or destroy the states. All
the state peoples—together as one sovereign national people—delegated
power to the national government.” Essentially, Kilberg's fifty-page
scholarly work seems to render a person powerless since she or he
abdicated to the state peoples and the federal peoples. We see this
state versus federal competition daily, for example, in David Cresson's
support for state's rights respecting red snapper fishing (letter to the
Advocate editors, Nov 9). Federal fishing regulations are a travesty
and U.S. Rep. Garret Graves is acting for the people. Kilberg’s opinions
strengthen my view that political dysfunction can be lessened by a
civic people collaborating for civic morality and then individually
voting for representatives who serve the people rather than serving
governments. To put this another way, a civic people, by establishing
PLwDG, balance a civic people. This concept is evident to us in the
preamble, by virtue of the civic contract, and the totality "We the
People of the United States," is the ideal consequence of that contract.
- We created a blog in which to archive these monthly opportunities to collaborate. The URL is cipbr.blogspot.com/
and the title is “A Civic People of Baton Rouge.” The blog offers
published discussion by way of the comment form at the end of each post.
So far, I have not seen a convenient way to use MailChimp for
discussion; readers may reply, but only the sender can read the reply.
Your comments on how to facilitate collaboration would be especially
appreciated.
- Also
in the last library discussion, Mona suggested a discussion on how
physics informs civic morality respecting abortion. We are planning that
discussion, tentatively for February. We can collaborate from either my
premise or from someone’s alternative proposition. Either way, my essay
at promotethepreamble.blogspot.com/2015/05/abortion-is-civically-moral.html
addresses issues I imagined. I hope someone with expertise in
gynecology will collaborate. My premise is that, while abortion is not
desirable especially to the pregnant woman, physics informs that she has
sole responsibility in the decision to terminate. I am very excited
about this meeting, because it presents the opportunity to for civic
collaboration on a difficult, vital topic for five decades.
- A civic people need reliable expertise. We add to the list started last month as follows:
- Sentencing
reform is a current vital topic impacting not only offenders but their
families and us. Here’s an authoritative resource in favor: acufoundation.conservative.org/center-for-criminal-justice-reform/ .
- Income
inequality is a vital topic about which we work on a proposal for
incentives for children to take charge of their learning for
understanding, and a TED talk informs listeners: www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson?language=en#t-73987 .
- Any
study of ideas might start with the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Start with a word search, for example, “morality,” at plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
. I have yet to read an essay there that is not informative, thorough,
and difficult. I usually make myself a MSword file so that I can
highlight, comment, and add definitions.
- Persons interested in opinion-based ethics might start with the American Bar Association public outreach at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/dialoguesruleoflaw.html
. I find fault with a lot of their opinions about opinion--the British
common law idea of the path to justice. I think what you find in this
resource will help interest you in physics as the basis for civic
morality. Humankind discovers the system of interrelated first
principles for benefiting from the emergences from physics and thereby
establishes physics-based ethics, slowly replacing opinion-based ethics.
To deny physics is to invite pain, misery, and perhaps ruin.
- Clearly,
discovering useful resources is a task wherein collaboration would be
most helpful, since I live in a mind tunnel. So if you are interested in
sharing this part of the work, please pitch in.
Reminders from last month’s email
- Collaboration: its benefits are fantastic!
- Paraphrasing the preamble to the constitution for the USA (develop a paraphrase you would collaborate with)
- Using physics to discover ethics and collaborate for physics-based ethics--civic morality
- I will do something to create a record of useful resources. Again, creative or actual help would be appreciated.
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