War of the Words

Something we talked about in seminar last week: Can corporations be understood using Hobbes's leviathan model?

Easy answer from me: yes. A corporation (if we look at it in a vacuum), is structured much like a leviathan, with people working towards a goal, rewarding good and punishing bad. This seems simple enough.

Many corporations are in competition (or war) to be the biggest, richest and market share holders. You could call the biggest corporation (like Walmart as Jud suggests) the leviathan who asserts power over the others (or even the government and consumers, etc).

However, as Stephen Ogden notes, these corporations have to answer to higher powers, most obviously, the government within which they operate. So according to Ogden, there can be only one Leviathan. I think this problem is easy enough to reconcile.... why don't we just call corporations sub-leviathans? I don't see any reason why we can't just apply the "model" to bodies that work within a leviathan themselves.

As an example, our classroom is a leviathan, with Ogden as the main policy-maker, where students fear punishment for bad papers, poor attendance, etc. But, Ogden must answer to higher powers, such as the English Department, the University, the provincial government, etc ad nauseum. Every entity has a higher power to answer to... unless you are God... even if you don't believe in a God, you have to live within the laws of nature, gravity, thermodynamics, etc. Everybody has to work within a system and there can be no system that encompasses everything... can there?

People that don't follow the rules of the systems, well, they are the ones we call renegades, outcasts, satanists, and they are punished accordingly -- well, sometimes they are.

Hey bloggers, in the spirit of sharing and altruism, I wanted to share this comic strip with you all.



Don't always feel obliged to post something great or even something relevent.

Hey Jason: great job on the last 3 postings. I will post some thoughts soon, but I haven't had a chance to translate my thoughts into words yet and I don't have time now. However, I will note that this post will only take me about 10 minutes to type out, which makes me a little puzzled... why haven't we got more people posting? It isn't like it's a Herculean effort. I'm not posting anything profound here. Post something! Tell us about your pets. Whatever...

Something regarding what was said at the end of seminar today. I paraphrase: "It is admirable for the Holy Son to submit to the Holy Father -- by choice"... "We can't understand this concept, because we've been too influenced by Hobbsean-type rhetoric that tells us that to submit is being oppressed and is regrettable."

Do I understand correctly?

Well, my problem is this: even if we can praise and admire the Son for being submissive and faithful, is this really the case? If the Father and Son (and HS) are really just parts of the same whole, isn't this just like saying that my left hand is submissive to my right hand? Is God (the trinity) just playing a trick on us by giving us this divine example of submissiveness? Do the Father and Son really have free will, considering they are only derivatives or manifestations of something more important?

Maybe I don't understand the idea of trinity correctly, but it seems to me that Father and Son are just playing out some skit for our benefit. It reminds me of the skit that Satan and Beelzebub play out for his host of minions... you know the one.

Did anyone else read from the writings of Joseph Arminius from GodRules.net that Dr. Ogden posted on the class blog? Fantastic stuff! I really enjoyed the bit that I read.

Regarding free will, he says this:

III. THE FREE-WILL OF MAN

This is my opinion concerning the free-will of man: In his primitive condition as he came out of the hands of his creator, man was endowed with such a portion of knowledge, holiness and power, as enabled him to understand, esteem, consider, will, and to perform the true good, according to the commandment delivered to him. Yet none of these acts could he do, except through the assistance of Divine Grace. But in his lapsed and sinful state, man is not capable, of and by himself, either to think, to will, or to do that which is really good; but it is necessary for him to be regenerated and renewed in his intellect, affections or will, and in all his powers, by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, that he may be qualified rightly to understand, esteem, consider, will, and perform whatever is truly good. When he is made a partaker of this regeneration or renovation, I consider that, since he is delivered from sin, he is capable of thinking, willing and doing that which is good, but yet not without the continued aids of Divine Grace.

So, as I understand this, he says man doesn't have free will. Without the controlling hand of Divine Grace, we'd commit all sorts of atrocities. We need a powerful force to keep us in line (like a dictator). How, then, do we explain all the atrocities and sins that do occur? Maybe they are part of the plan.

Anyhow, I also recommend you check out GodRules.net. Some interesting stuff -- movie reviews are great!

Jason brought up a good point in one of his comments to my thread on free will. That is,

Now i pretty sure that i'm the only one in the group with children but the issue of children means that there are people depending on me. and if i mess up then other people will be paying for my mistakes.

If I were someone who felt strongly about the metaphysical side of things (wink wink, nudge nudge), I would say that Jason has pointed out that humans do seem to have something which seems like "social responsibility". That is, my actions affect other people in a certain way and that matters to me.

Why is that? Why do I bother breast-feeding my baby (evolutionary arguements welcome)? Why don't I tear pages out of library books? I think I have a certain "love" for humanity that compels me to not shit in my neighbor's yard (unless it's an emergency). It's certainly within my ability to do a lot of things that might be in my self-interest that I don't do. Is this a limit to my free will? Then again, why is there a padlock on the cords of this public computer? Why would someone steal something when it has been offered for public use? Hmm... I can see this getting into moral relativism. That would be fun.

For the record, I don't have a baby or a milk-producing breast.

Hey BlogReaders and BlogAuthors, follow my ruin:

- John Milton is the author of Paradise Lost
- God is the author of John Milton
- God is therefore responsible for his everything in the poem

There is definitely some evidence of God's influence / design on the narrative. Think about the epic voice who calls upon the muse of the Holy Spirit in the beginning of book one. The epic voice, which takes us through Heaven and Hell, quite literally, appears to be partisan to the God camp. Who IS this epic voice? God? Milton? Some other omniscient presence? I see a sort of heteroglossia to the epic voice here, which is somewhat contrary to Bakhtin's treatise on the epic vs. novel, but I would argue that Milton's epic is not the standard type of epic that Bakhtin treats.

In this sense, how can God, as author of everything but especially PL, possibly be heroizing Satan? I think Satan's character is given as a poor role model for humanity (if an attractive one).

P.S. What is the point of a Post Script in a "movable type" environment?

P.P.S. If you have seen the movie Author! Author! (1982), we can talk about that too, but I don't really see how it's relevant.