When Wealth Inequality Arose (Evils of farming)

[C C]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2...ity-arose/

EXCERPT: [...] Neolithic burial sites offer evidence of  the growing divide between the rich and the poor. On the Balkan Peninsula, in a city called Varna, burials show that in the fifth millennium BC (about 1,000 years after the rise of agriculture in the region) “some of the earliest evidence of extreme inequality in wealth,” according to a paper published in May. One individual “was buried with more gold than is known from any site prior to that time,” the authors say....

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[Syne]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[confused2]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I wish I hadn't seen that.

[Syne]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I wish I hadn't seen that.

Why? The only reasons I can fathom only reflect poorly on you.

[RainbowUnicorn]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

i like that saying.
if i go to the doctor i dont want the local lawyer sitting in for my doctor on their day off.


ofcoarse once you make laws that are forced on to free people and those free people are not paid for being forced to comply with those laws where they have neither choice nor compensation...
then its a completely different reality.

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taking a minute to look at the relative meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

stalinism which he was referring to was just Facism wearing a new dress.

the premis of removing intellectuals from positions of authority as the great purge of knowled is quite a signifigant point of the meaning that he means.

one can easily argue that freedom from being ruled over by law & thus free to take anything you like from others IS freedom and as he meant it.
equaly to both extents that seperate the individual from any social cohesion.

The irony of the concept is that individuals are not just randomly created by random colliding atoms.
they are created by a social group which is attached and has only existed as being part of a community.
attempting to remove the concept of socialism as a community looking after its self and replacing that with some type of illusion of the self reliant baby is .... rediculous.

considering he was supposedly a poet, thus the notion of the concept of conflicting iedological political and social paradigms thrown against each other to expres a metaphor of personal critique.

[Secular Sanity]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

taking a minute to look at the relative meaning

Here's an answer from Quora.  Do you disagree with this?

What irreconcilability did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn perceive between equality and freedom?

"It's very simple. He is saying that, because people are of different temperaments and abilities, if they are allowed to continue on their chosen paths without interference, some will attain greater success in life than others, have a differing set of life experiences, and end up in different places overall. Thus, freedom gives birth to inequality.

If, on the other hand, everyone seems to be getting the same result regardless of the effort they put into their work, lives more or less the same life, and dies without meaningfully changing their circumstances, it implies that there is an outside force that is either suppressing their individuality and talent, preventing them from deploying their talents as they see fit, or despoiling them of the fruits of their labor in order to keep them slotted in a particular rung on the ladder of society. Thus, absolute equality implies the presence of tyranny.

To sum it up: freedom implies the freedom to fail AND to succeed. Equality, as conceived here, implies that both failure and success have been done away with."

[RainbowUnicorn]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

taking a minute to look at the relative meaning

Here's an answer from Quora.  Do you disagree with this?

What irreconcilability did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn perceive between equality and freedom?

"It's very simple. He is saying that, because people are of different temperaments and abilities, if they are allowed to continue on their chosen paths without interference, some will attain greater success in life than others, have a differing set of life experiences, and end up in different places overall. Thus, freedom gives birth to inequality.

If, on the other hand, everyone seems to be getting the same result regardless of the effort they put into their work, lives more or less the same life, and dies without meaningfully changing their circumstances, it implies that there is an outside force that is either suppressing their individuality and talent, preventing them from deploying their talents as they see fit, or despoiling them of the fruits of their labor in order to keep them slotted in a particular rung on the ladder of society. Thus, absolute equality implies the presence of tyranny.

To sum it up: freedom implies the freedom to fail AND to succeed. Equality, as conceived here, implies that both failure and success have been done away with."

in the nature of philisophical doctrine of the minds social explitive, one finds mathamatics to be quantatatively aluring.

Leaning on Einstien a little one must ask if the force of the outsider is acceptable in both negative AND positive ?

Newton would suggest that freedom is only possible between 2 points while inequality is simply a concept of time.


sumatively one is left asking if Tyrany as a positive influence is still defined as Positive or Negative by the observer OR the expereincer.

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NOTE i am omitting the concept of environmental influence as a factor of the individualistic actuation though is quite clearly needed to be defined to illicit a conduct of motive paradigm.

[C C]

considering he was supposedly a poet, thus the notion of the concept of conflicting iedological political and social paradigms thrown against each other to expres a metaphor of personal critique.

Can't help but wonder about a larger issue of what writers put on paper (or what others derive from their work) versus what they do and advise in other mediums. If a decade or two younger, Solzhenitsyn might as much have been revealed eventually as another Aung San Suu Kyi that the West had been errantly(?) heaping adoration upon.

Difficult to say that just because Solzhenitsyn and Putin had visionary fellowship with each other, and the latter is even following some of his proposals, that he and Trump would fare similarly in fireside chats. Nationalism transpiring in another country shouldn't even be contingently up for grabs as a good thing if that state also has a history of rivalry and hostility with one's own. Putin's own souring toward Trump surely indicates that the past template of operation is more important than placing initially hopeful expectations on a new leader who seems to be going against the grain. So probably with Solzhenitsyn by now, if he was still alive, if he'd have ever bothered like Putin to project any optimism on Trump giving Russia a better deal to begin with.

[...] At the same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his [Solzhenitsyn's] reactionary preference for Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox religion. [...] Unhappy with the economic and social malaise of the Yeltsin era, Solzhenitsyn expressed his admiration for President Vladimir Putin's attempts to restore a sense of national pride. Putin signed a decree conferring on Solzhenitsyn the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his humanitarian work and personally visited the writer at his home on 12 June 2007 to present him with the award. (Wikipedia)

Russia’s Soviet-style leader is following the advice of the USSR’s most famous dissident
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...syn-115088

[...] The admiration was mutual. After praising Solzhenitzyn at the Kremlin ceremony for devoting “practically all his life to the Fatherland,” Putin visited the writer at home, telling him how much of his program for Russia was “largely in tune with what Solzhenitsyn has written.” And recent political developments show that Putin indeed has followed many of Solzhenitsyn’s ideas, particularly in the area known as “the near abroad,” or the former USSR. [...]

[Syne]

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

ofcoarse once you make laws that are forced on to free people and those free people are not paid for being forced to comply with those laws where they have neither choice nor compensation...
then its a completely different reality.

No, it isn't. Complying with law changes neither the variety in capacity nor what it would take to enforce equality. It would actually take a much more tyrannical enforcement of law to even attempt to make such equality a reality...which ultimately results in people being lined up against the wall and shot, much like the 60 million Russians Solzhenitsyn lamented.

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taking a minute to look at the relative meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

stalinism which he was referring to was just Facism wearing a new dress.

He offered just as much, if not more, criticism of Marxist-Leninist communism as he did Stalinism. So unless you can cite a reference specifically showing this referred solely to Stalin, or you believe communism to be inherently fascist, you're fascism supposition is out of luck.

one can easily argue that freedom from being ruled over by law & thus free to take anything you like from others IS freedom and as he meant it.

Not so:

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative

The irony of the concept is that individuals are not just randomly created by random colliding atoms.
they are created by a social group which is attached and has only existed as being part of a community.
attempting to remove the concept of socialism as a community looking after its self and replacing that with some type of illusion of the self reliant baby is .... rediculous.

He was an outspoken critic of all things communistic.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Communism’s deadliest foe
"Alexander Solzhenitsyn did more to demolish the moral and intellectual case for Communism than any of its critics, writer or statesman, poet or legislator of the world, acknowledged or not."

Marxism-Leninism basically accepts that socialism is a stage of communism:

"Originally and for a long time the concept of a socialist society was regarded as equal to that of a communist society. However, it was Lenin who defined the difference between "socialism" and "communism", explaining that they are similar to what Marx described with the lower and upper stages of communist society. Marx explained that in a society immediately after the revolution, distribution must be based on the contribution of the individual, whereas in the upper stage of communism the from each according to his ability, to each according to his need concept would be applied." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2...cteristics



“Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis--race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain 'equality'--the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today's free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance--the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

considering he was supposedly a poet, thus the notion of the concept of conflicting iedological political and social paradigms thrown against each other to expres a metaphor of personal critique.

IOW, you'll read into it whatever you like, regardless of what words actually mean.

Difficult to say that just because Solzhenitsyn and Putin had visionary fellowship with each other, and the latter is even following some of his proposals, that he and Trump would fare similarly in fireside chats. Nationalism transpiring in another country shouldn't even be contingently up for grabs as a good thing if that state also has a history of rivalry and hostility with one's own. Putin's own souring toward Trump surely indicates that the past template of operation is more important than placing initially hopeful expectations on a new leader who seems to be going against the grain. So probably with Solzhenitsyn by now, if he was still alive, if he'd have ever bothered like Putin to project any optimism on Trump giving Russia a better deal to begin with.

[...] At the same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his [Solzhenitsyn's] reactionary preference for Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox religion. [...] Unhappy with the economic and social malaise of the Yeltsin era, Solzhenitsyn expressed his admiration for President Vladimir Putin's attempts to restore a sense of national pride. Putin signed a decree conferring on Solzhenitsyn the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his humanitarian work and personally visited the writer at his home on 12 June 2007 to present him with the award. (Wikipedia)

As a matter of principle, every culture should be proud enough to be nationalistic, just as every family proud of its family name, community of its sports team, etc.. Any tendency toward hostility is independent of this, and cannot reflect poorly on nationalism itself. That is a conflation of motives.

According to Solzhenitsyn, Russians were not the ruling nation in the Soviet Union. He believed that all the traditional culture of all ethnic groups were equally oppressed in favor of an atheism and Marxist-Leninism. Russian culture was even more repressed than any other culture in the Soviet Union, since the regime was more afraid of ethnic uprisings among Russian Christians than among any other ethnicity. Therefore, Solzhenitsyn argued, Russian nationalism and the Orthodox Church should not be regarded as a threat by the West but rather as allies.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_...ationalism

[Secular Sanity]

I found this interesting.  I've never thought about it this way before.

Why 'Bushman banter' was crucial to hunter-gatherers' evolutionary success

…Barely a day goes by when proponents of greater taxation, universal income and other initiatives aimed at addressing systematic inequality are not accused of inciting the “politics of envy”. Doing so is an effective way of closing down debate; envy is, after all, among the deadliest of the “deadly sins”.

Yet politicians inclined to dismiss inequality in this way may do so at their peril. For the evidence of our hunting and gathering ancestors suggests we are hard-wired to respond viscerally to inequality.”