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    Thread: Celine's Laws.

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      Celine's Laws.

      Hagbard Celine is a philosopher, nautical engineer, humorist and a gentleman. In his last written works, specifically Never Whistle While Your Pissing he emphasized his three laws.

      Celine's First Law:

      National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity.

      Reflecting the paranoia of the Cold War, Celine's First Law focuses around the common idea that to have national security, one must create a secret police. Since internal revolutionaries and external foes would make the secret police a prime target for infiltration, and because the secret police would by necessity have vast powers to blackmail and intimidate other members of the government, another higher set of secret police must be created to monitor the secret police. And an even higher set of secret police must then be created to monitor the higher order of secret police. Repeat ad nauseam.

      This seemingly infinite regress goes on until every person in the country is spying on another, or "the funding runs out." And since this paranoid and self monitoring situation inherently makes targets of a nation's own citizens, the average person in the nation is more threatened by the massive secret police complex than by whatever foe they were seeking to protect themselves from. Celine points out that the Soviet Union, which suffered from this in spades, got to the point that it was terrified of painters and poets who could do little harm to them in reality.

      At the same time, given the limitation of funding and scale, the perfect security state never truly emerges, leaving the populace still vulnerable from the original threat while also being threatened by the vast and Orwellian secret police.
      Celine's Second Law.

      Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation.

      Hagbard Celine rephrases this himself many times as "communication occurs only between equals." Celine calls this law "a simple statement of the obvious" and refers to the fact that everyone who labors under an authority figure tends to lie to and flatter that authority figure in order to protect themselves either from violence or from deprivation of security (such as losing one's job). In essence, it is usually more in the interests of any worker to tell his boss what he wants to hear, not what is true.

      In any hierarchy, every level below the highest carries a subtle burden to see the world in the way their superiors expect it to be seen and to provide feedback to their superiors that their superiors want to hear. In the end, any hierarchical organization supports what its leaders already think is true more than it challenges them to think differently. The levels below the leaders are more interested in keeping their jobs than telling the truth.

      Celine, in Never Whistle While Your Pissing, uses the example of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover saw communist infiltrators and spies everywhere, and he told his agents to hunt them down. Therefore, FBI agents began seeing and interpreting everything they could as parts of the communist conspiracy. Some even went as far as framing people as communists, making largely baseless arrests and doing everything they could to satisfy Hoover's need to find and drive out the communist conspiracy. The problem is, such a conspiracy never existed in any form. Hoover thought it did, but any agent who dared point out the lack of evidence to Hoover would be at best denied promotions, and at worst labeled a communist himself and lose his job. Any agent who knew the truth would be very careful to hide the fact.

      In the end, Celine states, any hierarchy acts more to conceal the truth from its leaders than it serves to find the truth.
      Celine's Third Law:

      An honest politician is a national calamity.

      Celine recognizes that the third law seems preposterous from the beginning. While a dishonest politician is interested only in bettering his own lot through abusing the public trust, an honest politician is far more dangerous since he is honestly interested in bettering society through political action, and that means writing and implementing more and more laws.

      Celine argues that creating more laws simply creates more criminals. Laws inherently restrict individual freedom, and the explosive rate at which laws are being created means that every citizen in the course of his daily life does not have the research capacity to not violate at least one of the plethora of laws. It is only through honest politicians trying to change the world through laws that true tyranny can come into being through excessive legislation.

      Corrupt politicians simply line their own pockets. Honest idealist politicians cripple the people's freedom through enormous amounts of laws. So corrupt politicians are preferable according to Celine.
      I've been reading a lot of Hagbard Celine lately, and I figured I would share his main ideas. LET THE DISCUSSION BEGIN!

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      Screw you all! This is truth!

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      The only issue I take is with the last bit, since dishonest politicians create plenty of burdensome laws as well.

      p.s. Hail Eris*5 (heh)

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      What's up <span class='glow_006400'>[SomeGuy]</span>'s Avatar
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      I agree with the first law, but doing away with national security seems dumb, because it would leave us out in the open. Maybe gradually transitioning to a secret police force would make sense, but then you never know who you can trust with certain things. It would be a bit more intrusive with undercover cops being everywhere. We would eventually get to a point where the government would be making everyone uneasy with their opinions and free speech/actions would be less available for fear of saying something stupid in front of a secret police officer. Even though national security may make people uneasy, we will have to deal with it because secret police would make everyone paranoid and more insecure than national security does.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Xaqaria View Post
      The only issue I take is with the last bit, since dishonest politicians create plenty of burdensome laws as well.

      p.s. Hail Eris*5 (heh)
      *Gasps*

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      MIND BLOWN! Also thread revived.
      On LD hiatus. Probably will start again around new years.

      Or, you know -- randomly throughout this year and next.

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      What's up <span class='glow_006400'>[SomeGuy]</span>'s Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by TunaSammich View Post
      MIND BLOWN! Also thread revived.
      Necrojerk. Stop it.

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      Quote Originally Posted by [SomeGuy] View Post
      Necrojerk. Stop it.
      Sorry, I just wanted to let the poster know it was really interesting. I guess the way I said it really looked like a troll. D: Sorry.
      On LD hiatus. Probably will start again around new years.

      Or, you know -- randomly throughout this year and next.

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      What's up <span class='glow_006400'>[SomeGuy]</span>'s Avatar
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      Heh, it's okay. Let's start this again:

      I agree with law one, but it's better than having secret police.
      Spoiler for Reason:":


      What do you think everyone?

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      Honestly, maybe us as a people are over-policed. The ridiculous amount of time and money that the government puts into keeping a watchful eye on EVERYONE is really invasive and... ridiculous? I mean, look at how incredibly surveilled the main cities of England are. They have a camera on practically every corner, and with rapid and leaping advances in computer technologies, the government can literally have a complete video of every step you took from when you left your house to when you entered a privately owned building in which the government cannot place cameras. It's quite frightening really.
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      Quote Originally Posted by TunaSammich View Post
      Honestly, maybe us as a people are over-policed. The ridiculous amount of time and money that the government puts into keeping a watchful eye on EVERYONE is really invasive and... ridiculous? I mean, look at how incredibly surveilled the main cities of England are. They have a camera on practically every corner, and with rapid and leaping advances in computer technologies, the government can literally have a complete video of every step you took from when you left your house to when you entered a privately owned building in which the government cannot place cameras. It's quite frightening really.
      First they start with cameras at lights to catch people going through reds, and they slowly infringe on our human liberties and rights until it's too late and we don't have them anymore

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      What's up <span class='glow_006400'>[SomeGuy]</span>'s Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by grasshoppa View Post
      First they start with cameras at lights to catch people going through reds, and they slowly infringe on our human liberties and rights until it's too late and we don't have them anymore
      Lol, well done.

      They are getting a little too involved...but I can't blame them for eavesdropping as long as they have reason to think that you're "connected".

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      Quote Originally Posted by [SomeGuy] View Post
      Lol, well done.

      They are getting a little too involved...but I can't blame them for eavesdropping as long as they have reason to think that you're "connected".
      Hey, this thread was meant for, and designed by paranoids!

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      Hey hey hey, they don't NEED a reason to spy on you, nobody knows about it. That's why we need people supervising them... D:
      On LD hiatus. Probably will start again around new years.

      Or, you know -- randomly throughout this year and next.

    15. #15
      What's up <span class='glow_006400'>[SomeGuy]</span>'s Avatar
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      Spy on teh spies.

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