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To: koan who wrote (760110)	12/30/2013 3:42:46 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 1575354

Personal freedom has to be weighed against the needs and wants of society. Kirk: Spock! Spock: The ship... out of danger? Kirk: Yes. Spock: Don't grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh... Kirk: ...the needs of the few... Spock: ...Or the one. I never took the Kobayashi Maru test until now. What do you think of my solution? Spock: I have been and always shall be your friend. [Holds up his hand in the Vulcan salute] Spock: Live long and prosper. Koan's Illogic: “The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few” Posted by Ari Armstrong at 12:49 pm ET With this week’s DVD release of Star Trek into Darkness, now is a good time to evaluate or revaluate the oft-stated Star Trek claim, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” (or “the one”). This claim is made in various scenes in the films, including in the latest one. Let’s first consider some instances and the relevant contexts. In The Wrath of Khan (1982), Spock says, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Captain Kirk answers, “Or the one.” This sets up a pivotal scene near the end of the film (spoilers follow). With the Enterprise (ship) in imminent danger of destruction, Spock enters a highly radioactive chamber in order to fix the ship’s drive so the crew can escape danger. Spock quickly perishes, and, with his final breaths, says to Kirk, “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .” Kirk finishes for him, “The needs of the few.” Spock replies, “Or the one.” In the next film, The Search for Spock (1984), the crew of the Enterprise discovers that Spock is not actually dead, that his body and soul survive separately, and that it may be possible to rejoin them—which the crew proceeds to do. Once restored, Spock asks Kirk why the crew saved him. Kirk answers, “Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.” This is, as Spock might say, a fascinating reversal of the message in the previous film. How can these ideas be reconciled? We find an answer in the next film, The Voyage Home (1986). At the beginning of this film, Spock’s mother, who is human (his father is Vulcan), asks him whether he still believes that, by logic, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. He says yes. She replies, “Then you are here because of a mistake—your friends have given their future to save you.” (The crew had broken the law and had gone on the run in order to rescue Spock.) Spock says that humans are sometimes illogical; his mother answers, “They are, indeed!” Later in the film, when crewman Chekov is in trouble, Spock insists that the crew save him, even at risk of jeopardizing the crew’s vital mission to save Earth and everyone on it. Kirk asks, “Is this the logical thing to do?” Spock answers, “No, but it is the human thing to do.” Although Spock reaffirms his claim that the needs of the many logically outweigh the needs of the few, he suggests that sometimes we must do the “human” thing, not the logical thing, and put the needs of the few (or the one) first. So Spock, Kirk, and Spock’s mother have affirmed the idea that acting logically and acting “human” can be at odds—and that acting logically means always putting the needs of the many first. This is the alleged reconciliation of the apparently conflicting ideas with which we started. But this logically is not a reconciliation at all. In logic, (a) there can be no divide between acting logically and acting human; and (b) as Ayn Rand discovered and explained, the needs of the individual are what give rise to the need and possibility of value judgments to begin with. Our capacity to use logic, to integrate the evidence of our senses in a non contradictory way, is part of our rational faculty—the very faculty that makes us human. Obviously, we also have the capacity to be illogical, but that is because our rational faculty also entails volition, the power to choose to think or not to think. We also have the capacity to experience emotions, which are automatic responses to our experiences in relation to our values. (Various other species have an emotional capacity as well, but our values are chosen, so even on this score we are substantially different.) Our emotions, though real and important, are not a means of knowledge; they are automatic reactions to experiences in relation to our value judgments. Our means of knowledge is reason, the use of observation and logic. In regard to the Star Trek example, the reason Kirk was right to help Spock is not that doing so was “human” as against “logical”; rather, he was right to help Spock because, given the immense value that Spock is to Kirk, both as a friend and as a colleague, and given that the mission to help Spock was feasible, helping him was the logical and thus human thing to do. In this case, Kirk’s emotional ties to Spock aligned with his logical evaluation of Spock’s value to him. It is possible for a person’s values to be out of line with his rational judgment, but in such cases his rational judgment remains his means of knowledge, and his emotions should take a backseat until he reassesses his values and brings them back into line with his logical assessment of the facts. Once we see the relationship and potential harmony between reason and emotion, we can see that Spock’s claim that being logical is (or can be) at odds with being human makes no sense. What of Spock’s claim, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”? Logic requires that some evidence be offered in support of such a claim—but Spock offers no evidence in support of this. He just asserts it. Which “many”? Which “few”? “Outweigh” on whose scale? For what purpose? To whose benefit? Why is his or their benefit the proper benefit? Spock does not address such questions; he simply asserts that logic clearly dictates his conclusion. But it doesn’t. Far from being an expression of logic, Spock’s claim that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few is an arbitrary assertion and a restatement of the baseless moral theory known as utilitarianism, which asserts that each individual should act to serve the greatest good for the greatest number. (For a critique of utilitarianism, see my essay on the moral theory of Sam Harris, TOS, Winter 2012–13.) What logic actually dictates is that if human beings want to live and achieve happiness, they must identify and pursue the values that make that goal possible. As Ayn Rand points out, life makes values both possible and necessary. We need to eat—in order to live and prosper. We need to wear protective clothing and find shelter—in order to live and prosper. We need to pursue a productive career to gain goods and services—in order to live and prosper. The principle holds true in more-complex cases as well. We need to build friendships to gain a wide variety of intellectual, psychological, and material benefits—in order to live and prosper. We need to experience great art to see our values in concrete form—in order to live and prosper. The pattern holds for all our values. Logically, the only ultimate reason we need to pursue any value is in order to live and prosper. (See Rand’s essay “ The Objectivist Ethics” for her derivation of this principle.) How does this principle apply in the Star Trek examples? In the case of Kirk’s dangerous mission to help Spock, Kirk logically concludes that, given the full context of his values, saving his dear friend is worth the risk involved. What are we to make, then, of Spock’s final actions in The Wrath of Khan? Does he sacrifice his own life and values in order to serve the needs of the many? No. Khan, piloting a damaged ship, sets off a device that will soon cause a massive explosion that will destroy his own ship along with the Enterprise and its entire crew. Captain Kirk says to his chief engineer, “Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we’re all dead.” It is at this point that Spock leaves the bridge, goes to engineering, and enters a radiation-filled room in order to repair the ship’s warp drive. As a result of Spock’s actions, the Enterprise speeds away to a safe distance from the explosion—but Spock “dies.” Spock does consider the needs of his friends and shipmates in making this move. But he does not thereby sacrifice his own values or even his own life. His only alternative is to die with the ship anyway. Instead of dying and having all of his shipmates and friends die too, he chooses to uphold and protect the values that he can and to uphold his commitment to serve as a Star Fleet officer—a position that he chose knowing and accepting the risks involved. Although in this case Spock must pick the least bad of two bad options, he makes the choice that best serves his interests and thus his life. The only principle consistent with logic and thus with humanity is that if we want to “live long and prosper” (as Vulcans often say) we must use logic and pursue our life-serving values. Fortunately, contrary to Spock’s occasional illogic, this is what he actually does. And this is why so many people love him. It’s only logical. Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, theobjectivestandard.com

To: koan who wrote (760110)	12/30/2013 9:14:57 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1575354

This is how leftism always leads to tyranny: Personal freedom has to be weighed against the needs and wants of society.

To: koan who wrote (760110)	12/30/2013 9:28:09 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By THE WATSONYOUTH Respond to of 1575354

Leftists DON'T mean well! Sean Malone begins a predictably tendentious essay, Arguing with Republicans, with a claim I see, read, or hear all the time when people explain why they actually spend time arguing with the colonized minds of the Left. He cites the irritating situation of "debating with leftists, liberals and progressives who's poor grasp of economics and annoying tendency to support style over substance has turned a good many of them into socialist weasels. These boilerplate claims of ‘economic ignorance’ and ‘style over substance’ are as constant as disclaimers in drug ads. But they are either false or ignorant or both. Grown-up and fully functional LeftLibProgs know economics very well indeed, and never mistake style over substance. If this is actually Sean’s experience he’s 1) shoveling seaweed against the tide, and 2) spending too much time debating with LeftLibProg children. It’s common for LeftLibProgs to say, in passing and without much feeling, that all their proposed hopeful changes to the economic system of the United States and the developed world is “for the greater good.” But it is not and it never has been that way. It is and it always was “for their greater good.” In passing they also know to the deepest diseased marrow in their bones that their proposals also lead to a weakened and, they hope, destroyed America. This is also touted as being “for the greater good,” but again it is always and only “for their greater good.” I’ve read, known, lived with, talked with and to LeftLibProgs since I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. That phase included a whole raft of demented Young Socialists, Latter-Day Wobblies, du Bois Clubs, and seedy Communists right down to the execrable Bettina Aptheker, demented daughter of high-ranking American communists and first cousins Fay Philippa Aptheker and Herbert Aptheker. Bettina, never an attractive person in body or soul, was a classic LeftLibProg of the era, and she knew her economics down to the last jot and tittle and penny. It was just that her sense of economics all aimed, as LeftLibProg economics always does, to the stealth re-concentration of wealth, the destruction of the USA, and the rise of “The Party.” In this way, even though she is now sunk into the obscurity she so richly deserves, she’s still a poster child for the Iron Lung economics of LeftLibProgism. She’s still selling her scarlet oobleck today because, when it comes to LiftLibProgs, “Once the needle goes in, it never comes out.” The justification for the destruction of all capitalist systems and, in train, the United States for Bettina was never "for the greater good," although she was articulate enough to spin this straw into gold for the kids that listened to her. Instead it was always for the good of “The Party” which, at that time, included her family pretty much in the way that Saddam Hussain’s economic plan for the future of Iraq centered on his family. LeftLibProgism was then, as it is now, just a gangster play. It always has been anywhere it has been implemented. Whenever the objection is made that LeftLibProgism has failed everywhere it has been tried, the response is always that it just wasn't tried on a large enough scale. This is the argument that the cure for bad pop music is to just make it louder. The implied endgame is that only when the entire world is remade in the LeftLibProg model, "world without end always," will the promised utopia arrive. Hence the wrecking ball of LeftLibProg economics must be swung against the pillars of civilization until the whole structure comes tumbling in upon itself. With help from the scions of greed at the far end of maxi-capitalism this vision currently has a whisper of a hope of actually happening. This is why the sclerotic public unions here and abroad are so increasingly violent and strident in their demands. It’s an economics not based on a rising capitalist tide lifts all boats, but one based on the ancient dictum of Lenin: Who-Whom? Lenin, with his knack for hortatory pungency, reduced the past and future alike to two pronouns and a question mark: "Who—whom?" No verb was necessary. It meant who would prevail over whom? And the question was largely rhetorical, implying that the answer was never in doubt. Lenin and those who followed him would prevail over "them," whoever they were. -- Communism: The Specter and the Struggle - TIME The LeftLibProgs are not at all clueless about their economics. They know exactly what Iron Lung economics do to societies. They wreck them while funneling all wealth to the members of "The Party." You know, the ones driving their limos in their special lane in the middle of the road; the ones on the private plane far, far overhead that never get the proctological moment at the security checkpoint. Neither is this class that would be masters about “style over substance.” They are about using the “style over substance” on it’s infinite number of chestless and thoughtless acolytes to bring the “substance” of “The Party” into power, and to keeping “The Party” in power. Kids and adult-adolescents may think it's about “The Family of Man” and “the greater good,” but it’s really always and eternally about "Who-Whom?" The leadership of the LeftLibProgs knows their economics right down to the last pile of ash in the ovens of Auschwitz and the last shattered skull in the muck of The Killing Fields. Posted by Vanderleun at December 29, 2013 9:34 PM americandigest.org Before Obamacare was passed and was still being argued over, I was listening to Ed Schultz on the way home from work. He was explaining to a listener that yes, the Massachusetts version of Obamacare was driving the state into insolvency, but that was only because only the whole country was big enough to do the Obamacare job correctly. I thought this was Schultz's own stupid argument. I didn't know it was standard fare. Thanks for that new bit-o-knowledge. Posted by: Harry at February 27, 2011 1:32 PM The two most poisonous ideas in Conservative cirsles are "the Left just doesn't understand" and "my neighbor is a lib and he's not for Communism." Idea #1: Really, 100 years of overthrowing the current order and getting worse, draining the life out of the economy and making things worse? If the Left hasn't noticed this is the uninterrupted history of their ideas, they are worse than stupid. If you had a neighbor that kept having their child drown in the backyard pool, and that neighbor didn't learn to put up a locked fence or watch their other children more closely, would you be able to think your neighbor just doesn't understand? The Left is, at best, willfully ignorant of the predictable outcome of their plans. The truth is all that we cherish about Western Civ is exactly what they are working to destroy and they know it, they just don't tell you that's what they believe. They tell each other that's what they believe and we hope it's not true. Idea #2: Your neighbor/co-worker/family member who is a lifelong Liberal is no more the definition of what the Left is doing than a US Army Pvt working in a logistics warehouse stateside is the definition of what the US Army is trying to accomplish in a war. Most liberals don't know and don't care what their side is doing. Most liberals have just been taught everything nice is liberal and conservatives are everything that is bad. They aren't interested in if and how they are being used to wreck Western Civ so they persist in just feeling good about every issue, regardless of outcome. If all of the nice liberal got together they couldn't alter the direction of the DNC, even if they wanted to. The Dems have been taken over by the radicals abd the nice liberals have been driven out. Those that remain in the party are die-hards and the extra-stupid. As a man of The South post civil rights era I know what it looks like when people are examining their behavior and ideas trying to learn from past mistakes. Our part of the country was the very definition of racism. Racism was common and acceptable when I was a kid. Now, even many or most rednecks know better than to speak as a racist and rednecks in the South even chastise others when they hear racism. You don't see anything like this in the dead-ender commie-libs in the DNC. They aren't even trying to not be a dupe of the Western Civ destroyers. They relish overthrowing WC. Like the feminists they may say they expect to destroy male culture and it will only equalize pay and housework among the sexes, but they know better. They know working their plan will destroy the system. They just expect once the system is destroyed they will make a Utopia. That is why the Left and Muslims cooperate toward the same end. Like Nazis and Bolsheviks, they both think they will outsmart their partner and take over once their common enemy is dead. They know exactly what they are doing. Don't be the last Jew on this cattle car to recognize where we are headed. Posted by: Scott M at February 27, 2011 2:11 PM I gave up a long time ago trying to argue with the liberals. I usually just let them vent, and when they run out of steam, I just mock them. It isn't hard. Find one of their stupid, Utopian ideas and just take it out to its logical conclusion. And mock them. But never ever show them respect. Don't even hope you can persuade them. Posted by: Jewel at February 27, 2011 2:50 PM I thought the Left was distinguished by a refusal to learn from past history. This even applies when they might benefit from a historical analogy. For example, almost nobody referred to the Whitewater hearings as a Star (or Starr) Chamber even despite the fact that it was both a semi-plausible analogy and a cute sound bite. After Hurricane Katrina, I saw far fewer comparisons to the Berlin airlift, even by people who might have used it to prove the U.S. government had magical powers that Dubya was refusing to use. They refuse to use historical analogies even when the analogies can be useful. That points to stupidity as an explanation. "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." --- Robert Heinlein Maybe I'm just being naive... Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at February 27, 2011 5:12 PM ........... Posted by: vanderleun at February 27, 2011 9:40 PM Lefty economists do understand economics. They know exactly how to raise costs to reduce consumption. Watch Obama on YouTube talk about jacking up energy costs. Even years ago the Lefties were like 12 year old girls at a Justin Beiber concert when they talked about carbon taxes and EU level gasoline taxes to support the burgeoning alternative energy pipedream. Even during the Great Recession almost all Lefty economists claimed not to want to raise taxes on producers because of the adverse economic impact. The Lefties sure know low prices at Wal Mart will attract customers and high prices at Whole Foods keep out the riff-raff. You have to always keep in mind what Lefties say to each other, where those ideas come from, and what Lefties say in mixed company (them and us). Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, which explains why the Left is so perfectly wrong all of the time. They know what they are doing, their script is well-rehearsed, and the non-Left is desperate to believe Left and Right are just taking different roads to the same end point. The Left is waging a war and the Right is trying to win a debate. The Left plays by prison rules and the Right plays by Mayberry rules. It is not possible to oppose the Left in a manner that avoids the vicious counter-attacks from the Left. Your opposition to them is the only evil they've ever recognized ............ Posted by: elaine at February 28, 2011 11:10 AM As Solzhenitsyn pointed out: the Gulags were not an unfortunate side effect of Communism - the Gulags were the whole point of Communism. Bill Ayers, President Obama's close friend estimates he will have to kill 25,000,000 million Americans to create his Communist Utopia. If you examine leftists closely you will recognize them as all of life's losers - who want to run everything - specifically because they aren't qualified to run anything; it is their explicit lack of qualifications that makes them 'the select'. If you owned a McDonald's franchise would Barack Obama even make it onto your short list of people to hire as an assistant manager? It is not by accident that such an utterly unqualified person became President of the United States. Posted by: An Observation at February 28, 2011 11:14 AM In the Weather Underground's Manifesto, they clearly discuss the elimination of anyone who is too supportive of capitalism and cannot be re-educated. This includes everyone who owns a small business, runs a large company, works in middle or upper management of a large company, or is in the military. (Back then, they also included the "pigs" and teachers, but now that the public sector unions protect both those groups, they're probably reliable leftists.) It also includes people middle-aged or older, who simply are too set in their ways. I'd maintain that's far more than their 10% estimate (which in today's terms number in excess of 30 million souls). I'd say the number of malcontents they'd have to eliminate is far closer to 1/3 or more, meaning a minimum of 100 million deaths. So they'll have to kill one third of the nation's population, just to eliminate anyone who could conceivably be a problem to them reaching their goals. We aren't fit to live in their utopia, in other words. Okay, but my question remains: once they've eliminated the malcontents, who are, coincidentally, the people who run the engine which drives our economy, where does the money come from to support the poor they've used as their useful idiots? Where does the money come from to build their great utopia and run it, once capitalism is kaput? I get that some of it comes from collecting the worldly goods of those they've eliminated. But that's only going to go so far, and once it's spent, there's no seed money to "grow" more. When you have 200 million people to support, because they're either the habitually poor who refuse to work, or they're the elite who've lived off the backs of the working and entreprenuer classes (who you've eliminated because they can't be bent to your will), where does the money come from? I also get that death is the end result of progressism, whatever mask or label it's currently wearing. It parades around as environmental/green radicalism, in PETA radicalism, in islamofacism... in short, there are plenty of cults which rhapsodize about killing their enemies. It's rather ironic that Bill Maher says that such desire to kill your enemies (or wax poetic about such) comes exclusively from the right, because I can't recall conservatives/libertarians coolly discussing vast swaths of the population they want to kill, just because they disagree with them. Do I think liberals are dangerous? Yes. Do I wish they'd die? Sure. Am I going to go out and kill them to get my wish? Only if they start something or announce they're going to round up anyone they don't think is a useful member of society, and make it clear that "useful" means agree with their ideology. What I'm driving at, though is this: whatever their goals, whether it's killing their enemies or reaching utopia, it's clear there's not much rational planning going on here. It's like underpants gnome thinking. You have step one and step three that are clear in your mind, but getting from one to the other... not so much. What would the logistics look like for killing one third of the population? Do you starve them, as Stalin did in the Ukraine? If so, how do you do this to people who often grow at least a portion of their own food and have weapons to hunt for more? Do you put them on trains and send them to some kind of slaughter facility, as Hitler did? How long will that go unreported? Do you poison the drinking water or release Anthrax into the air? If so, are you willing to risk killing those who do or would support you, along with those you know don't? Killing 100 million is going to be no easy feat for them... ......... Posted by: Teri Pittman at September 20, 2012 6:20 PM When a person can lie and when caught, can double down and has no shame, what is left ? The Left has no shame.

To: koan who wrote (760110)	12/30/2013 2:46:05 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1575354

Generally more personal freedom helps meet the needs and wants of society far more than more government control does. More government control does however meet the needs and wants of busybodies who like to stick their nose in to other people's business better than free market capitalism, or freedom generally.