Stu: Provision is good. Satisfaction is better.Qx: Uh-huh
Stu: A job provides. It doesn't always satisfy.
Qx: Carry on.
Stu: Most socialists apparently find mere provision unsatisfying.
Qx: Whoops! How about your first bit which states "Provision is good. Satisfaction is better."? In other words you also "find mere provision unsatisfying".
Stu: People of good character, the kind of character created through trials, understand that even mere provision isn't something they are entitled to and they thank God they have a job.
Qx: Really Stu? I wonder where all that Protestant, pseudo-Christian talk got the majority of people in South Africa for instance. It basically gave reasons for the white, capitalist minority to continue their exploitation of everybody else. Apparently, most people know better.
It's crazy to thank God for having a job when a job is just a job and within a capitalistic system that means alienated labour which only offers a glimmer of satisfaction. Sure I can get along with a manager and co-workers, good mutual feelings can transpire and all that but in the end it's alienated labour. After all human beings create their own history and when the work day ends I doubt if anybody gets snatched up in a Rapture.
Stu: Why isn't that the right way to think?
Qx: Because it basically justifies exploitation and oppression and goes against democracy. It also serves to keep people "in their places". So yes, mere provision is a right and so is education and that's what will waken people up to the folly of the ideas you hold so dear in regards to capitalism.
Stu: Why must good character and those who advocate it be treated contemptuously by these would be messiahs?
Qx: There are no "would be messiahs" who criticize that position. Just people who understand the humanist ideals that strike at the heart of the corporatism you have been promoting. By the way, "good character" is really rather subjective is it not? Even the nazis had a notion of "good character" and they got treated pretty contemptuously.
Stu: Because good character thwarts their agenda by creating people who don't need them. Same old thing!
Qx: If you can claim that "agenda" is the same as criticism then you've done some great semantical and theological gymnastics here. Of course this is nothing new and Max Weber's THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM is a great starting point in order to understand Stu's postings.
Also, here are some other outtakes from previous postings that shouls be comented upon.
Stu: because you lack the initiative to work for yourself. That sir, is immoral. Better for you to get very hungry and find out what a blessing that menial job really is.
This is a very curious statement to say against Barry. After all, does Stu know Barry? Does Stu even have the right to condemn Barry by is assumption that Barry lacks the intitiative to work for himself? How does Stu know this? He doesn't on all three counts.
