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After 2001: Our Neotech World

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On concluding the hearing, the members seemed ready to approve this minor, routine variance. But then spoke a younger commissioner, a stocky, flush-faced government environmentalist living in a wealthy neighborhood atop a hill, far from the property owner. He turned enough to observe the property owner from the corners of his eyes. Then with twitching jowls, he stated that the property owner's needs and desires meant nothing in his considering the variance. He then cited three ambiguous, ordinance clauses with arbitrary interpretations -- impossible interpretations that no home owner could ever satisfy. ...He chose the exercise of power for the sake of gaining unearned power by destroying the creation of values.

In prompt rebuttal, spoke an older commissioner. A trim, leather-faced workingman living in the same modest neighborhood as the property owner, he pointed out that no objective reason to deny the variance existed, especially after everyone in the neighborhood and all others who could possibly be concerned approved. ...He chose the creation of values over the exercise of power.

To fully understand the profound difference between those two commissioners, one must know that they are appointed by politically elected officials and meet four hours each month without pay. If they receive no pay, what do they receive? They receive political power and civic recognition with little expenditure of time and effort. Thus, the motivation for such people entering the world of government authority varies between political enhancement and civic achievement. From those beginnings, from that political atom, emerge two types of people: One desiring to gain power and a political future by destroying values. The other desiring to enhance the civic needs of the community and its citizens by protecting values. ...The first type gains authoritarian power by destroying values of others; the second type resists authoritarian power by protecting values of others. The first type consists of bad-intentioned value destroyers. The second type consists of well-intentioned, but misguided value producers.

The first type subconsciously orients around Plato's philosophy -- a subjective, mystical-based philosophy. The extent a person adopts Plato's views is the extent that he or she holds that:

  1. Standards for morals and ethics are products of changeable opinions rather than products of objective reality.

  2. Power is to be used as an end in itself to determine who through their "wisdom" -- through their feelings, whims, wishes, "intuition" -- should rule or control others.

  3. Facts, honesty, and logic are relative, arbitrary, disposable.

  4. Principle does not matter: ends justify the means.

By nature, Plato nourishes not only all despots and dictators, but politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government. Plato justifies the striving for power at the expense of the rights, property, and life of others. Plato provides the rationalization for all laziness, dishonesty, and value destruction -- for all subjective, unjust non sequiturs and actions used to usurp power and values from others. According to Plato, the rights and needs of individuals are secondary to any external "authority's" desire to usurp values and power. Indeed, Plato assigns virtue to sacrificing individual rights and needs to any arbitrary "higher cause", "higher power", or external "authority". ...Thus, Plato is the philosophical father of mysticism and neocheating.

The second type subconsciously orients around Aristotle's philosophy -- an objective, reality-based philosophy. The extent that a person adopts Aristotle's view is the extent he or she holds that:

  1. Standards for morals and ethics are products of objective reality rather than products of changeable opinions.

  2. The well-being of society is enhanced to the extent that individuals are free to produce objective values for themselves and others.

  3. Facts, honesty, and logic are absolute, unchangeable, eternal.

  4. Principle matters: ends do not justify the means.

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