Resentment and Wealth

So, since Resentment of the injustice at having vastly wealthy individuals (and/or corporations) is what really fuels Egalitarianism, one wonders how we can get the public at large not only to realize this is true, but how to get them to act on it. As mentioned in class, one a group of people gets pushed hard enough, they will fight back. However, I'm wondering how we could actually get people to act on their resentment before it gets to the potentially violent revolution point. We know that Resentment is about not just getting a better life for yourself, but getting a better life for everyone.

So how do we actually get people in gear to do this?

Self-Interest, Selfishness, and... Magic

So, while in class we seem to have isolated the idea that Selfishness is Self-Interest taken to harmful (to others, or even the self) levels, I wonder on how the selfish actions of one character could potentially be viewed as positive for a larger group. One possibility is with the idea of capitalism, where selfishness would be considered a positive trait (doing everything you can to become the richest person, no limits), however, there is also the idea of having one person, motivated purely by selfishness, who does something that results in good for the rest of the population. I'm not sure how it could come about, but would it count as a "good" action, without being altruistic?

Also, on the ideas of Selfishness and Self-Interest, there is some study of the difference in the trading card game Magic: the Gathering. In Magic, there are five colors of magic, White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green (arranged clockwise in that order as a circle), each color with it's own positive and negative attributes. In the case of Selfishness, this is a core value of Black, however Black is also capable of just as much good or evil as all the other colors (White, for example is all about protection and order. At it's worst, it creates a xenophobic, totalitarian police-state), supplying the idea of self-interest being positive, but not necessarily being nice about it. In comparison, Red, which has Freedom as a core value, is very self-interested in everyone it considers a friend, or anyone who is under oppressive rule, and would cause a revolution against a tyrant simply because one person is being oppressed. In this case, we have someone who causes the removal of a tyrant (good and potentially altruistic action) but who did not do it for the sake of creating a better government, but for the sake of preventing one person from living under a hardship. Would that be considered altruistic, and if so, on what scale?

Pragmatic Empericism??

So it seems that after the first two days of discussing how or if "pragmatic empiricism" creates a neutral ground to debate naturalism and supernaturalism. From what conclusions we have come to in class, it seems that "practical empiricism" favors naturalism by virtue of removing a large chunk of what supernaturalists can talk about. Since supernaturalism requires faith in something that has no evidence, and the belief in said thing is subjective at best, we have to remove it from the discussion, thereby giving Naturalists the advantage.

In the interests of a "fair” or at least "neutral" playing field, we would need to find an alternate style of debate. However, the question of should we even try to level the playing field has not come up.

Since Supernaturalism cannot be proven, is subjective, and only has a bias in our lives because we have decided for some reason that it deserves one, it really isn't something that can be used in a logical debate, because all of it is founded on that which cannot be proven by repeated experimentation.

Perhaps the best answer to agree to leave the concepts of Naturalism and Supernaturalism eternally separate, because there really doesn't seem to be a way to fairly debate the two.