The confidence of the people

El Cabrero is on the road these days, but the blog is still rolling. The current theme is the philosophy of the ancient Chinese sage known in the West as Confucius, whose ideas are still influential in many parts of the world and merit a serious look.

While "Confucianism" has sometimes been classified as a religion, that is a label that doesn't fit too well. He was above all concerned with earthly things and political life.

While ancient Chinese philosophers like Confucius did not directly espouse democracy, they did call for good government that served the interests of the people. Some people have argued that the ancient Chinese idea of the "Mandate of Heaven" is similar to later Western ideas of the social contract. The basic idea is that a government is legitimate and enjoys the Mandate as long as it serves the people but loses legitimacy and the Mandate when it does not.

Here's a passage from The Analects:

Tzu-kung asked about government. Confucius said, "Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people. Tzu-kung said, "Forced to give up one of this, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon the armament." Tzu-kung said, "Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people.

That's something lots of tyrants have found out the hard way.

NOTE: I'm still on the road so there are no links. This post will not reflect any breaking news. Let's hope it's all quiet on the Western Front.

Conscience and power

Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society is a masterpiece of anti-utopianism. The book, like much of his other work, is an extended polemic against naive and overly optimistic views of human nature and society.

While he doesn't hold to the idea of the "total depravity" of humanity, he takes the idea of sin very seriously. By sin, he doesn't mean disobeying this or that divine rule but rather the self-centeredness which causes people to do harm to others, the creation and even themselves. And if individual humans have sinful tendencies, groups are much more selfish and imperialistic.

He also argued that human motivations are inherently ambiguous and people often do the most harm when they think they are being the most righteous. Oppressors often quite sincerely believe that they are acting for the good of those they oppress--and some of the oppressed might do the same given the chance.

If that's the case, then while we might make this or that social improvement, society will always be an arena of struggle:

there is good reason to believe that the sentiments of benevolence and social goodwill will never be so pure and powerful, and the rational capacity to consider the rights and needs of others in fair competition with our own will never be so fully developed as to create the possibility for the anarchistic millennium...

While democracy represents a great advance over other forms of government, it still doesn't and can't eliminate the element of struggle:

Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.

EASY STREET. Here's economist Dean Baker's latest rant on Wall Street.

ONE TO WATCH. WV Governor Joe Manchin has issued a call for a special session of the legislature to convene today. One item is health care related in the wake of national health care reform. The most contentious issues are those related to education.

CLIMATE. Here's some coverage of the new energy/climate bill that has just been introduced in the US Senate.

ONE SHOT DEAL. There's more scientific evidence that life on earth arose exactly once and that all living things have a single common ancestor.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED