Topic: About the Chart
Revising the Nolan Chart Suggesting a better version of the Nolan Chart to serve more efficiently in the future.by Christian Prophet
(libertarian)
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
" 'I will forgive you if you meet my needs, for in your slavery is my release.' Say this to anyone and you are slave. And you will seek to rid yourself of guilt in further bargains which can give no hope, but only greater pain and misery." ~ Jesus Christ
The fundamental question of political philosophy is: how much slavery are you willing to live with?
If you are willing to fight battles over who pretends to be "master" and who appears to be "slave," then it doesn't matter whether you call yourself liberal, conservative, moderate, authoritarian, or libertarian ... for in any case you are willing to enslave yourself by holding fixed ideas as to what is right and what is wrong for yourself, and others.
The only freedom, the only non-slave state of being, is a totally open mind which listens inside and says: "Here is what my spirit is guiding for ME. I have no idea what the spirit of others is guiding for THEM." Live and let live.
The Nolan Chart gives the impression that liberal, libertarian, conservative, and statist … sticking out in four directions … are extreme positions. Since life is constantly teaching us that every time we try to hold an extreme position we are proven wrong, anyone who is not still too young to have learned life's lesson has built a natural subconscious inclination to want to be somewhere in the middle between extremes. If most people who give little thought to politics happen to see the Nolan Chart, they will without much thought think of themselves as centerists or moderates.
Not to say the Nolan Chart has not served a purpose, but a much more valuable chart for the future would probably present a horizontal dimension on which would be plotted various forms of slavery: liberal, conservative, statist, centerist, libertarian; and then representation of a vertical dimension which indicates "live and let live" rising above all enslaving philosophies.
Interestingly, this is happens to be the symbolism of the Christian cross, where the horizontal cross-bar represents earth, or self-enslavement by the belief in good and evil ("....but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." ~ Gen 2:17). The vertical post represents rising above earthly pain, fear and guilt; freedom from the belief in good and evil; live and let live. Although most Christians probably do not live up to such an ideal, true Christianity teaches transformation to total freedom.
Anyway, it would not serve to use a Christian cross in politics, but if someone with artistic talent would revise the Nolan Chart to show another dimension, with a horizontal plane of slavery positions and a freedom dimension which rises above all slavery thought systems, above all "fixed in stone" positions altogether, such a revised chart might prove to be even more valuable than the original Nolan Chart.
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The Christian cross symbolizes nothing. It is a visible reminder of the belief that in order to repair the damage done by man's rebellion against him, God became an actual man, suffered an actual death on an actual cross, and actually rose from the dead and actually ascended into heaven. This has pretty much been the case for two millenia.
A mistaken attempt at moral relativism. So if you encounter a Hitler, a serial killer, or some guy shooting up young people on campus we should keep a totally open mind, and live and let live, after all we don't know what spirit is guiding them.
The explicit idea is that all moral concepts are equally valid, but then you pronounce a moral value saying that we should rise above believing in good and evil. In other words, it is good not to believe in good (and evil).
The problem I have with mysticism is that it is anti-reason. It advances beliefs in the superstitious and the imaginary. Why? Simply to destroy man's capacity to use reason - "Do not eat from the tree of knowledge..." Because knowledge and reason invalidate the mystic's unproven premises.
This essay exemplifies this line of thinking. 2000 years later and some of us are still wallowing in the muck of irrationalism.
I'm sorry, but after reading this three times and filtering out the buzzwords, feel-good phrasing, illogical statements, and self-contradictory premises, the translation I got was:
"If you have strong beliefs you're wrong, so the only thing to do is not actually care about anything since it doesn't matter. Any position that is absolute equals slavery."
Nevermind it was absolute positions on liberty in many countries that got rid of slavery in the first place. Nevermind that every textbook I've ever read says the fundamental question of political philiosophy is what is your view of the focus and role of government.
The biggest problem I have with this article is simple: you're taking extremely straightforward text from the Bible with clear meanings and twisting it into what you think it should mean regardless of the actual meaning. The Bible doesn't need you trying to place it into political theory, that isn't what it's for.
Posted By: Christian Prophet
Date: 2008-02-20 16:43:38
An enlightened spiritual teacher would probably argue that using absolutely perfect logic using premises based on evidence from the 5 senses (or today's scientific instruments) is NOT reason, but insanity. Read "The Spiritual Foundation of Liberty" [ [link edited for length] ].
True, there is no reason to defend superstition, but there is need to check your premises before you label something superstition, otherwise you are falling into the very trap you would like to think of yourself as a champion against.
It's not the "Tree of Knowledge," it's the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Knowledge is what spiritual teachers advocate opening one's mind to. Real knowledge, not the illusions shown to us by the senses. What the Bible is teaching very clearly is if you are stuck in the human condition you do not have all the facts, you do not know everything everywhere past, present, and future. Therefore if you only relied on the intellect, you have no clue as to what is REALLY good or evil.
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