From reading Pollock's book on Spinoza:
Men are also gained over by liberality, chiefly those who have not wherewithal to buy the necessaries of life. But helping every one in need is far beyond the means and convenience of any private person. For a private man's wealth is no match for such a demand. Also a single man's opportunities are too narrow for him to contract friendship with all. Wherefore providing for the poor is a duty that falls on the whole community and has regard only to the common interest. ---Spinoza, Ethics
Funny, later I heard Michael Moore talking to Wolf Blitzer about his new movie about the problems inherent in capitalism:
How do you respond to the people who charge you with hypocrisy? You made a lot of money in this free-enterprise capitalist system and now you're railing against it.Isn't that amazing? That...I've done ok and I still wanna do these things to help people who have it worse off than I. That I'm actually following through on the religious principles I was raised with that I will be judged by how I treat the least among us.
The other bit I liked in the Ethics, sounds like Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics:
Now man's power is very much confined, and is inifitely surpassed by the power of external causes; and therefore we have not any absolute power of converting to our own use things outside us. Yet we shall bear with an even mind that which happens to us against the conditions of our own advantage if we are aware that we have done our part of the business, and that the power we possess could not have gone so far as to avoid those evils; and that we are part of the whole order of nature and bound thereby.
Thanks to Kateri.
One way to compensate would be a "controlled napping" policy, based on NASA research more than two decades ago. It found that pilots were more alert and performed better during landings when they were allowed to take turns napping during the cruise phase of flights. Other countries have adopted the policies, but the FAA has not.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090901/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tired_pilots
Pilots, whatever. Can we institute that generally. PLEEEEEEASE?
