First of all: Once again: I AM NOT RELIGIOUS. I DO NOT ESPOUSE ANY RELIGION. Seriously, you lecture me about "Not P does not equal the opposite of P" and yet you assume that because I don't believe morality is relative, I must be religious. Tough concept, indeed. For you, apparently.
At no point did I assume that you're religious. I said I stated some things because religious people often say a certain thing I wanted to address. You might be religious or you might not be. Not all things are a direct response to you. My response did assume that some people are religious, which could have been you. Seeing your responses, it's obvious that logic is a very tough thing for you.
My preferred alternative to moral absolutism is actually moral subjectivism, not moral relativism, but I know you've been brainwashed to think everybody's a relativist if they aren't an absolutist. I think ethics are entirely subjective, based on circumstance
OK, here's another tough concept for you: If you believe that morality changes based on subjective interpretations and/or circumstance, guess what? You're a moral relativist. You believe that things can become more or less moral relative to other things.
You'll note that I defined moral relativism differently, (based on the sociological literature, actually) and said that I would accept your definition for the sake of argument. You have left out that point. I said call me a moral relativist if you want. It's thus not a tough concept for me, as I actually accepted it explicitly in my reply.
But again, reading comprehension and logic are not your strong points.
That's the whole idea behind moral relativism. You can call it what you like, but that doesn't make it different. As I previously stated, you can not say something is wrong...unless there is an absolute definition. You can only say it's wrong for this circumstance. That implies that there is a circumstance under which your action is not wrong. Thus, relativism. Do you really not understand that?
I did say things are wrong under particular circumstances. I call it circumstantialism, and related to subjectivism, and, again, I even let you call it relativism, even though it's not how the term is used in the academic literature. The academic version of relativist is scoped much more narrowly. It's more of a "they are right, to the people in that particular society, and thus outside judgments are inappropriate."
See, in this forum, I get the chance to say whatever I want in response, so I really have nothing to fear from you.
Why should you have anything to fear from me? What, am I going to reach through the Internet and grab you? Not only did I never for one second believe you had anything to fear from me, or I from you, it never even entered my head that anyone would be fearful of anyone else on the Internet. Talk about your wastes of time. Thanks for letting me know, though. I don't know why you did, but you went to the trouble, so thanks.
I said that because you said I feared a statement of yours. If that's a waste of time, then maybe I shouldn't bother directly responding to your words, and I should respond to a mind-reading of what you think you said to me. That's of course very difficult.
I can if I want to.
No, see, that's part of the difference between 'relative' and 'absolute'. You can say something is wrong in a particular circumstance, but you MUST qualify it.
And I'm perfectly fine qualifying things. I think all "should" statements have an implicit "to me" or "if I got what I wanted" on them. I don't think there are any "should" statements that cannot be qualified. You think some don't need qualification. That's where we really differ. To you, I _am_ a moral relativist, and I think that's simply enough to fully explain human behavior. You've _assumed_ (as in supposed) an entity that need not be supposed: that there's some sort of
Not all moral systems have the same moral code you have.
Yes, I know. Why not? Your answer, then, although you were too scared to come out and say it, is that morality is relative. If this is the case, then no action can be defined as wrong. Maybe that's why you didn't want to just answer the question. Note that I am not saying that it isn't possible.
My point was actually, not that the alternative to moral absolutism is relativism. It's a common mistake to think that "not P" equals the opposite of P. Fortunately, "not P" actually means "anything other than P". It's a tough concept, I know.
My preferred alternative to moral absolutism is actually moral subjectivism, not moral relativism, but I know you've been brainwashed to think everybody's a relativist if they aren't an absolutist. I think ethics are entirely subjective, based on circumstance, and require balancing equity with social awareness. A relativist as typically defined is one who thinks that if one society thinks a thing is good then it's good for that society, which innately promotes non-interference. On the contrary, if I think you're doing something immoral, I think I should be allowed to subjectively press a charge of social harm and come up with subjective systems for moral analysis. We can do a lot better than we are now.
In fact, the particular subjectivism I think makes the most sense is actually moral situationalism. One example of writing that encompasses this ethical system is Clerence Darrow's Crime and Criminals. I really don't mind you calling it relativism, either, if you mean by definition not absolutism. If you think I'm scared of you calling it that, then I'm really not. See, in this forum, I get the chance to say whatever I want in response, so I really have nothing to fear from you.
Moral systems do not have to be absolute.
If they are not, then you can not label an action as wrong.
I can if I want to.
It just is moral in a different code.
I can think my moral code and system of ethics is good for everybody and not be an absolutist. You see, instead of defining particular actions to be bad, I define particular circumstances and actions together to be more full information with which to make a decision.
This is to what I object.
Feel free to object all you want. That doesn't mean you're correct.
I intuitively know that some things (not necessarily things our society targets) are wrong, period. What I want to do is find a repeatable test for why, or proof that I am simply wrong.
So, it's subjective to your own intuition. That's a great step forward in your own understanding if you can grasp that.
That's a HUGE assumption you've been making in your entire thread while at the same time you accuse others of assumptions they don't have.
Um, no it is not. I have stated very clearly many times that I DO NOT KNOW if morality is absolute or relative, or from where morality originates. Therefore, I can NOT be pushing the assumption that it is absolute, although I have admitted many times that I intuitively believe this to be the case.
I'm not impressed by the semantics here. You believe it to be the case, but you're "not assuming" that it is. You contradict yourself already. By saying that you don't know if it's absolute, you've retreated from treating your belief as a fact. Once it's not an established fact, then it is by definition an assumption -- you're assuming it to be the case. Assumptions don't necessarily mean that you hold them as facts. Assumptions can be hypothetical. Your use of the hypothetical as a retreat doesn't nullify my statement that it's an assumption.
I have stated that I cannot prove this, so how is that my pushing an assumption?
Religious people often think that repeating things they cannot prove so that
I know I'm a little late to the game, but I've been busy working.
The thing is that anyone who is older than five (at least, mentally) realizes if you go around stealing stuff all the time, it's going to encourage others to steal from you, and that's no fun. The Golden Rule (or something like it) is found in just about every human society that has ever existed. It's not a matter of religion; it's just common sense.
You make a number of assertions here. Let me detail them:
1. Morality is realized universally - Do I really need to provide you examples to prove this wrong? 2. It is a universal constant that theft incites theft against thieves - I believe history is full of examples of successful thieves. They don't seem to have had that problem. 3. The golden rule is universal - Please provide a few pieces of evidence for this. I don't believe your assertion.
He actually didn't say they are universal, only vastly implemented. His argument thus doesn't fail when you have counter-examples, nor even very successful ones, particular since game theory shows that strategic equilibrium is attained, not universality.
Now, I'll respond: The number of people who do immoral things disproves your assertion. If what you said were true, then very few people would ever steal. The idea that theft is wrong is encouraged by religion and is not found in nature. Animals steal from each other all the time. It is beneficial to the thief. From an evolutionary standpoint, theft would lead to greater success were it not for societal penalties against it. In the same way, any act to protect weaker people from stronger is counter to evolutionary theory and thus does not come from nature. From where does it arise?
"counter to evolutionary theory". This is the informal genetic fallacy of logic -- that an explanation is a moral imperative. Not only that, but because of kin selection theory, it's actually expected that in some cases the weaker are expected to be protected by a stronger.
Beyond that, there's a bunch of crazy bastards out there (and these days, they tend to be armed with AK47s) who will happily put a bullet through your kneecap just to see the expression on your face. Your only hope of defending yourself against these hordes of psychos is to band together with other people who are, shall we say, a little more sane. But these people aren't going to want to band together with you if you steal from them. And thus, we have the entire basis for civilization, without resorting to invoking the invisible Wahoo in the sky.
Your assertions: 1. Many people are murderously psychotic - Not statistically. You're FAR more likely to be murdered by a government (society) than an individual. Note: Wars are not started by individuals (most of the time) 2. Society was formed to protect people - That was only one benefit. Actually, farming did more than banding together for protection. Of course, you're just talking out of your ass anyway. 3. Thieves are unwelcome in societies - Not particularly. It depends on from whom they stole and what they stole. 4. You are assigning the viewpoint to me that society was formed for religious reasons. This is not only factually incorrect, it's also not a viewpoint I've espoused.
To respond: All moral codes have their roots in religion. Not always the SAME religion, mind you. However, whether the rules are coming from a guy in the sky or an imp under the earth, they are still external sources for moral codes. That isn't to say that some pieces of some moral codes aren't a good idea, or aren't beneficial on their own. However, the idea that they are codified doesn't come from nature. I've mentioned that before. You cannot set up an experiment to prove the law of theft. You can't set up an experiment to prove that violence is wrong. You just can't. You cannot examine a plant and show how it follows the 'do no harm' code of physicians. These things are societal constructs, not natural la
It appears that you can't read this particular patch style. The lines with + mean added, the lines with - mean removed.
The lines without either mean that's context for the differences.
If you look at the original patch, no attribution was removed. The attribution was in the context lines.
It looks like the.c files were handled appropriately and it was merely the.h files that had the license completely ripped out. The.c files were dual-licensed and said you could choose either. They just removed the BSD license as that was "choosing" GPLv2. The.h files are just some interfaces and don't change often anyways, so the BSD license is good enough for them (they should have left those). The.c files are the actual implementation, which would change between operating systems.
Here's a link to the actual diff as provided in the original article:
You'll also note that the dual-licensed code had the committer's copyright notice on it. In some cases it was only his notice, originally. With the data immediately available, maybe he stripped it out in a commit before this one, but they don't seem to be accusing him of that. They are mainly accusing him of ripping out the BSD license from a couple.h files since they didn't have the dual-license notice in them. If they aren't dual-licensed under both, you can relicense as GPLv2, but you have to include the BSD notice under its own terms. The GPL itself even says not just attribution, but the original notices themselves must be preserved. One additionally might say that since the GPL says to preserve the original notice, that even in the dual-license case you must preserve the BSD license in order to initially comply with the GPL, although that's a requirement of the GPL and not a dual-licensing/BSD provision. A dual-licensing (as you can see in this case) clearly says you can pick either, since the word "Alternatively" (e.g. the ath5k_reg.h license) implies if you chose the following path, you can ignore the provisions of the previous path.
In summary, it looks like a lot of this was nit-picking over how to actually do the license notice preservation, rather than preserving somebody's attribution. I imagine it'll be fixed up in very little time and few people will care about this in more than a day or two.
Anyone who thinks publicly owned monopolies are not a bad thing has never been subjected to public transportation in Chicago. Anyone who thinks publicly owned monopolies are a bad thing have never used the public transportation in Portland, Oregon. (trimet.org)
(But anyways, they aren't a monopoly -- you're free to drive if you want.)
I'm going to quote myself here just so we're all clear on what I said:
I consider it fascism at its most insidious: government owning a stake in a private corporation, and allowing it to run privately, without public oversight. You then replied with:
Leftests use the term to mean whatever they want it to mean. Always ignoring Fascisms Socialist core (Mussolini etc).
Fascism like many other forms of Socialism involves the government owning industry and running it as it sees fit.
Speaking of ignoring definitions, I guess you didn't read the part where I said "without public oversight". If the government were running industry as government saw fit, it would actually have public oversight and thus be socialist, not fascist (yes, fascism is both a form of socialism and a form of capitalism -- the merger of state and corporate power).
Greed within healthy competition produces very good results. The other guys greed acts as a check on mine, and vice versa.
Wishing greed away is the fundamental flaw in socialist thought.
I consider myself in favor of mostly free markets in the vast majority of cases, but I'm also socialistic in many ways, but not completely. I think there are exceptions to both extreme views, and we need to get beyond "socialism" vs "capitalism".
So I'm all for checks and balances, but what happens when there are no checks or the balances are out of whack as you'd find in a private monopoly that uses its monopoly power as an ESS (Evolutionarily Stable Strategy) for anti-competitive behavior? I always hear "eventually it'll work itself out". But that's just ignoring the fact that they've found an ESS that can take out virtually _any_ competitor (by definition of ESS) unless it's already big and powerful enough to shift into the market. If your theory depends on big corps battling big corps for various niche monopolies, then where is the independent entrepreneur in all of this? What if the various big corps decide to get together and do price fixing or monopoly splits by geographic region? Then we really have no control. I'm reminded of the corporate wars in "Rollerball" where the world was ruled by five corporations, like "The Energy Company", essentially together.
We're all essentially screwed unless we can maintain some control over the aggregation of power. Even if you don't like Marx, you have to admit that as an economist he correctly foresaw the problem of the aggregation of capital.
The 1800s are essentially obsolete -- let's move beyond the economic theories of two centuries ago and be rational, instead.
The headline seems quite valid unless you're a fundamentalist market libertarian that can never find fault with a corporation since it's always the government's fault. Government granted and enforced monopolies are the opposite of free market libertarianism.
What do you expect would happen when the government jails anyone who tries to compete? Yes, it is the government's fault. That's an interesting point, but it doesn't really change the sentence that you're quoting, and I would take it a step further and make the point that Russ Beaton (econ professor at Willamette University) once made: "The best economies have no monopolies but the goal of every good enterprise is monopoly; therein lies the contradiction of unlimited capitalism.". The free-market libertarians in this thread are telling me that it's not SBC's fault that it bribed government officials and/or made back-room monopoly deals, just as Russ pointed out.
Why? The government-granted monopoly was bought by a free market of greed and corruption. I'm being told that it's just the government's fault for being anti-consumer. The corporation being anti-consumer is just part of the formula for being pro-consumer. This contradiction runs to the core of their doublespeak.
I've been trying to make your exact point that free market libertarianism is incompatible with monopoly business structures as being unethical, but that's not the message the libertarians are telling me. It's just always the government's fault to them when the libertarian formula breaks down (as it often does). Even though it's the predicted end of unrestrained capitalism, it's the government's fault it was not restrained. I just want to know from the libertarians just what is allowed to be limited by the government. I know the philosophy is to limit "harm", but how is lack of communication (as in this case) truly a harm in their ideology? Are we allowed as a democracy to weigh it based on the situation? Are de-facto monopolies outlawable? To most FML's, the answer I get is often no. Maybe not with these guys, I don't know yet. Perhaps one of them will want to espouse a consistent philosophy in a comment.;)
And oddly enough, to the "free-market" libertarians, I'm "stupid" for thinking differently than they do. When I call an insult that I'm stupid as "naive", I'm then moderated as flamebait. Where are the mods on the clearly insulting posts? If the FML's had a point, they'd stick to the discussion and not try to attack my intelligence with petty insults. Since responding to the insults is worth down-modding, I'll probably not bother responding to posts with petty insults anymore.
But alas, you're a libertarian ideological fundamentalist, so if the corporation did something bad, they didn't do anything "actually" bad. Eh, no. The purpose of a corporation is to make money. As much money as they can get their greedy little paws on. It's the stated purpose. In black and white. Anyone with half a brain and an honest heart realises that's the purpose of a corporation and treats it accordingly. Why do you say "no" when you essentially agree with my characterization? Your point is that they didn't do anything "actually" bad. You and your sibling commenter both think that greed can be good within the confines of government regulation, which I don't disagree with. My point is that greed that goes into illegality _isn't_ within the confines of government, even if it's due to lack of government enforcement of their own laws.
That's where we seem to truly differ in opinion. You directly imply that restraint of government is the only method we have for constraining corporations. I think we actually have other methods, for example: a culture of not violating laws, even if you could, a consumerist culture that shunned corporations that exploited government loopholes, etc. You seem to disagree with that (though I'll let you change your mind, if you would like). In the second case, greed that's not controlled by government may actually be a negative influence upon the corporation's returns, which you might say makes your point, but you'd definitely not agree with corporations having a general culture of lawfulness. You'll likely argue that if one corporation doesn't do it, the other corporations will do it, thus destroying the market. But note that in the first case, the second case might eventually develop anyways, and the corporation would have to repair its public image.
Since there does exist a minority, though large one, of people who do believe in promoting a culture of corporate responsibility, then I think even today, corporations are required to weigh the costs of benefits of unethical behavior.
It's a lot more complex than you simplify by just defining greed to be ethical with very limited constraints. If you have a more nuanced approach, like I do, you can actually think these ramifications through, instead of blindly following the path of fundamentalist libertarianism. Even if I were a greedy corporation, I'd be wary of having somebody like you lead the company because of your inability to think deeply about the social problems.
The justification for the bribes was that the bribes were required to make money for their shareholders. That is all the justification required for SBC's actions. This is where we fundamentally part opinions. I think it's unethical and pathological behavior to put the shareholders above the law. You don't.
but the ultimate source of the problem was corporate greed that lead to the collusion of government and a corporation, Oh, don't be stupid.
Corporate greed has always existed in one form or another since the dawn of the human race. Greed is human nature. The utter utter stupidity is not to take it into account, and that's where free markets come in.
You pit one greedy bastard against a dozen other greedy bastards. Everyone benefits from the hard work of the group of greedy bastards.
The fault lies with the either utterly stupidity or corrupt politicians who granted the monopoly. It has nothing to do with libertarian ideology and everything to do with understanding human beings. Oh don't be naive.
Your general premise is "People will do bad things, thus they aren't at fault for their badness if they are allowed to do it."
So if people are part of the government, and they allowed this bad thing, they aren't at fault for their badness too, since the people allowed them to?
So, it's back to the people who didn't intervene against these politicians who are at fault -- but they did a bad thing by doing that, and who allowed them to be passive?
You see where this is going?
I think I've got the more coherent point that both the government and the corporation were complicit and both were wrong.
But alas, you're a libertarian ideological fundamentalist, so if the corporation did something bad, they didn't do anything "actually" bad.
Yeah, they should have mentions the government is the majority shareholder and got the lion's share of the profits... Yeah, I see that now, thanks. As I said, the article wasn't very clear.
I consider it fascism at its most insidious: government owning a stake in a private corporation, and allowing it to run privately, without public oversight.
Despite what minor bribes probably took place, that was the major bribe for the government.
No. They did what companies do, make money for their shareholders.
The 'bad guys' here are those who accepted bribes to ignore their responsibilities. Paying bribes in Africa is just SOP.
That doesn't make it ethical. In some places even common travelers have to bribe just to stay out of jail, but (and I hate to be tautological) if there's no justification for the bribe, it still remains unjustified.
Both are at fault, not just one side. I guess most people seem to think fault is always limited an individual actor, but causation doesn't work that way even most of the time.
They couldn't have committed the malfeasance they're accused of with out the ANC letting them. A few bribes would have done the trick. Problem is not muli-nationals; it's corrupt goverment officials who sign "exclusive" contracts. It's easy to tax foreign companies and allow multi-comptetitor access to markets. Problem is 3rd world kleptocracy.
Yeah, totally.
You're right, of course.
CLEARLY, those who actually executed the bribes are not at fault in this case, even if it was illegal.
This shows why monopolies are bad and a more liberal economic policy is better This shows why private monopolies and back-room arrangements are bad. Public monopolies (public utilities, private utilities with public reporting requirements, etc.) are not shown to be bad by this case.
Liberal economic policies help in a lot of things, but utilities are one of the cases where it's an infrastructure investment that still is most efficiently done cooperatively, particularly since you have to deal with public rights-of-way and all that. Services on top of the infrastructure should be liberalized, of course.
We really do need to get people to think beyond left and right more these days and more on what works best for the particular situation.
How South Africa's Government Pillaged South Africa's Economy It's not clear from the article that South Africa's government gained anything from this (there's a small note about (greedy) "management smarts" being imported, but it is very clear how SBC gained enormously). The headline seems quite valid unless you're a fundamentalist market libertarian that can never find fault with a corporation since it's always the government's fault.
A public process in this arrangement, as the article points out, would have caught this and corrected it. Public governments are thus not indictable. Yes, you can indict the government for letting it happen, but the ultimate source of the problem was corporate greed that lead to the collusion of government and a corporation, where if done systematically it would be called fascism.
Ultimately, it's still SBC's fault, despite whatever proximate causes/contributors enabled it.
It's not the pleasure that's the problem... Drugs and alcohol are pleasurable too you know, that doesn't mean that they can't become problematic.
Personally I quit teh pr0n because I eventually ended up having incredibly screwed up thoughts run through my head, the kind of stuffs rapists are made out of. =P So don't tell me there's nothing wrong with it, I know first hand what can happen to kids if you put strange/sexually violent thoughts in to their heads. On the other hand, I had parents who entirelly supressed all that kind of stuff, and I ended up associating sex with sin and darkness and bad and such, so it's no suprise that when I couldn't help but obey my nature that it all came out skewed. So for a solid three months, as an eighteen year old male teenager, I willingly supressed every sexual thought I had, until I decided I had the will to maintain I healthy balance. Now I'm fine, for the most part.
Do the cases like me in the world merit a block on porn? God no. But you argue beyond the blocking of porn.
I actually pointed out that porn specifically had built-in constraints. The one I pointed out had to do with relationship sex being much more pleasurable than masturbation and thus a systematic limit. The human body has others it has developed over eons. For example, males have a refractory period after ejaculation and females have ovulatory heat and highly selective sexual drives due to their biased investment in children.
As far as drugs, those are exploiting evolutionary heuristics and as such are more dangerous, but we have developed systems that help control this too, although they aren't completely accurate (as in Marijuana's case). Limiting drugs to prescription use has actually worked out fairly well (but note that treatment programs for those that fall through the cracks are much better than criminalization).
Porn is definitely not something, due to its systematic limits, that we should be controlling as badly as people want to control it. In your case, it's likely that your Christian upbringing is actually responsible for your thoughts, and that porn is the victim of religion again.
As for the cherishing guilt thing about Christians, you clearly, like many others, missed the point. Take a look at a few of the writings of Paul... Such as First Corinthians 10:23, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not." Care telling me where that fits in to cherishing guilt?
I think you simply don't understand Paul. In First Corinthians 7, he makes quite clear my point that anything not for the benefit of Christianity is bad. Sexual pleasure in particular is shunned by him completely there. He makes an exception that fits with my theory perfectly: That if you have to fornicate, do it in marriage (unstated is that a child of constant Christian parentage is easier to brainwash).
Back to First Corinthians 10, let me unambiguize Paul in a less cryptic translation: "All things are of [men's] laws, but not all things are expedient, nor are they edifying." He's simply saying that regardless of the legal situation of things, some are good and some are bad. That your translation uses the term expedient for his negative is telling, too. Expediency just means that it's more efficient, with a connotation that it's without regard to good or bad. That implies to me that efficiency is likely to lead to badness, which is exactly the assumption that I'm arguing against. In any case, even if you read it without that context, it's still damning to your point: he's making the point that despite legality, there's a set of restrictions of what you _should_ do, and in actual context, the "should" includes sexual restrictions of pornography: it's still a sin if you think of it in your heart. I would only hope you know what I'm referring to in that last sentence.
Interpreting that quote as you do merely illustrates another point I made in this thread that
If it makes you feel better, like many humans, I'm capable of quoting something somebody said before me that was a succinct example of a point I'm making without agreeing with everything else they said.
Quite aside from Nietzsche, although he agreed with me, Christianity started as a Greek Mystery Cult (although I called it a Hellenistic Mystery Religion, the technical, non-loaded term), and has since evolved, but it hasn't strayed too far from its roots since the Bible, while not a complete encapsulation of Christian thought, is fairly well accepted as the definer of Christianity. Yes, there have been lots of changes in Christianity, and modern Christianity looks nothing like it used to (at many points in its history -- although when I say "its", I know it's actually a large tree of denominations).
But ultimately, my point is valid in that its theological foundation still rests (unless you're a fringe Christian) quite squarely with the salvation theology developed by the Hellenistic Mystery Religions.
I don't think Christianity is capable of providing any tool for explaining rationally to or raising mentally sane children. Yes, some Christian denominations allow other things into their belief system that are not Christian in origin, but that is a non-Christian and secular aspect of their particular denomination. Liberal Christians, for example, follow many non-Christian ideological systems (Marxism/Liberation Theology isn't Christian) and American Evangelicals of the Right follow many non-Christian ideological systems, too (economic liberalism is definitely not Christian). They think it is, but they are deluding themselves. They're picking and choosing passages that are merely one part of myriad contradictions and conducting exegeses that aren't part of the theological core of their own religion. This is in fact, the major danger of catechisms that claim universal application (fundamentalism) like Christianity and Islam.
And yes, too, somebody is probably going to ask how I am morally/ethically/correctly able to arrogantly proclaim what is Christian since I'm not a Christian? I study Christianity and other religions very deeply, from an historical perspective. No, I don't believe them, but that doesn't diminish my ability to understand history -- in fact, my lack of faith gives me a more unbiased perspective into their evolutions and synchretisms than they will ever have. Most Christians are really simpletons who know very little about their religion, or, if they have a sophisticated understanding of their own religion, they have just been able to compartmentalize the passages that barely agree with their own world view, however created.
That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?
I'll respond to your post since there is more to say and I can reply to yours and the other one at the same time for one of my answers. First, nothing nor no one (such as myself) says a person can't be happy. I only was talking about not getting pleasure from porn. Are you implying that you have no other source of pleasure? I feel bad for you.
In Christianity, pleasure is only good if it aligns with somebody else's pleasure for its their gain -- the religion's mythical (and surrogate) headmasters.
Any incidental pleasure is always denied because it takes joy away from life, and if joy can only be found within the fold, all the better for the psychological meme of religion.
As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.
There are so many other people who have the exact opposite feeling towards religion and Christianity in particular that I'll leave it up to you to realize that Nietzsche doesn't know what he is talking about and more likely has a biased opinion of something he knows nothing about.
Others have already pointed out that you must not know who Nietzsche was.
I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.
Hmm, seems you need to fix your reading comprehension problems. I never said that pleasure in and of itself is bad. I said pleasure from porn is bad.
Because it's pleasure not found in alignment with your religion. The pleasures are so small and so restricted to brainwashing, that ultimately the pleasures are very few. About the only acceptable pleasure is making future brainwashed offspring, and even then, religion has historically debated the merit of such pleasure.
I'll pause for a few seconds while you re-read my post now with that context in place......................back? Ok, good. Now, God gave us sex to not only enjoy but also procreate however those 2 goals are supposed to be done at the same time, not separate. We shouldn't take advantage of the procreation capability to just enjoy meaningless sex. That's where the issue of pleasure comes from. There are millions of things to take pleasure in but taking ONLY pleasure in something like sex is not it's intended purpose. Of course, we humans will mutate anything for our own pleasure (quite relevant in this case). How often we have watched horrific violence time and again because we find it entertaining? This particular topic of porn was in the context of children watching it on the Internet and not adults watching it to enhance their sex lives so with that said why would someone want to watch something alone and get pleasure out of it when they could enjoy it more if they could share it with someone? Again, humans are lazy so we take the easy way out. We'll pleasure ourselves because it is just too time consuming to find someone to enjoy it with. I can't imagine what will happen in 2029.
When children get sexual urges, you would have them restrict them for years. That's repression.
I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.
I do too but I also am not that interested in the materliastic aspects of this world to which you think exposure helps someone become unrepressed. They really aren't that great in the whole scheme of things. Sure, if you are a mindless drone you will take part in those things solely for their immediate rewards but more intelligent people will look past the immediate pleasure and see the greater good.
Again, materialism is by definition, anything not aligned with your religion, so you are implicitly being anti-worldly, and anti-pleasure of anything not "spiritual".
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
(s/apothecary/apocryphal) To be consistent, I was borrowing a phrase from Nietzsche's 75 Aphorisms, but I'll give you the context:;)
The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity--and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.
He referred to Christians as apothecaries, metaphorically, mixing poison that makes this life so bad -- to get people to think the next life will be better.
I do believe your confusing porn with something emotional and meaningful, like say a relationship. Its a quick physical release, nothing more.
It's the hedonistic pleasure part of porn that is the problem. Teach children to not engage in materialistic pleasures and they won't be so interested in porn.
That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?
As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.
I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.
I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.
Just look at what you Christians cherish -- pity, guilt, sin -- not to mention guilt through inheritance, which no rational society anymore recognizes.
May Christianity be the last, dying Hellenistic Mystery Religion.
No, it's not worth 3000 lives to live in a surveillance state.
Is it worth 10000 lives to live in a Fascist dictatorship?
When does it end? How much is 300 million people's freedom worth? Scratch that -- you've said, somewhere between 0 and 3000 lives, but not more than that, otherwise we'd need to wait for a second 9/11.
But... how many soldier's lives were lost and innocent Iraqi civilians murdered by shock and awe? I'm sure neither of them count, but it's a lot more than 3000.
Another thing you do is lead the question -- "wouldn't affect you, probably". It always affects people. There isn't a surveilled citizen that hasn't had their life altered by monitoring. The people with the data _always_ find a way to put it to use you never intended or authorized, eventually. Don't forget the fact that the data is often wrong or misinterpreted, and we'll reap those consequences, too.
Personally, I'd rather live in a free state where I feared terrorists bombing symbols of their own exploitation (that I could easily avoid) than under a surveillance state, where I lived in constant fear of government reprisal, intimidation, mis-monitoring, and misinterpretation, no matter where I was.
I guess that's the difference between Bush supporters (trolls) and Bush haters (insightfuls).
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First of all: Once again: I AM NOT RELIGIOUS. I DO NOT ESPOUSE ANY RELIGION. Seriously, you lecture me about "Not P does not equal the opposite of P" and yet you assume that because I don't believe morality is relative, I must be religious. Tough concept, indeed. For you, apparently.
At no point did I assume that you're religious. I said I stated some things because religious people often say a certain thing I wanted to address. You might be religious or you might not be. Not all things are a direct response to you. My response did assume that some people are religious, which could have been you. Seeing your responses, it's obvious that logic is a very tough thing for you.
My preferred alternative to moral absolutism is actually moral subjectivism, not moral relativism, but I know you've been brainwashed to think everybody's a relativist if they aren't an absolutist. I think ethics are entirely subjective, based on circumstance
OK, here's another tough concept for you: If you believe that morality changes based on subjective interpretations and/or circumstance, guess what? You're a moral relativist. You believe that things can become more or less moral relative to other things.
You'll note that I defined moral relativism differently, (based on the sociological literature, actually) and said that I would accept your definition for the sake of argument. You have left out that point. I said call me a moral relativist if you want. It's thus not a tough concept for me, as I actually accepted it explicitly in my reply.
But again, reading comprehension and logic are not your strong points.
That's the whole idea behind moral relativism. You can call it what you like, but that doesn't make it different. As I previously stated, you can not say something is wrong...unless there is an absolute definition. You can only say it's wrong for this circumstance. That implies that there is a circumstance under which your action is not wrong. Thus, relativism. Do you really not understand that?
I did say things are wrong under particular circumstances. I call it circumstantialism, and related to subjectivism, and, again, I even let you call it relativism, even though it's not how the term is used in the academic literature. The academic version of relativist is scoped much more narrowly. It's more of a "they are right, to the people in that particular society, and thus outside judgments are inappropriate."
See, in this forum, I get the chance to say whatever I want in response, so I really have nothing to fear from you.
Why should you have anything to fear from me? What, am I going to reach through the Internet and grab you? Not only did I never for one second believe you had anything to fear from me, or I from you, it never even entered my head that anyone would be fearful of anyone else on the Internet. Talk about your wastes of time. Thanks for letting me know, though. I don't know why you did, but you went to the trouble, so thanks.
I said that because you said I feared a statement of yours. If that's a waste of time, then maybe I shouldn't bother directly responding to your words, and I should respond to a mind-reading of what you think you said to me. That's of course very difficult.
I can if I want to.
No, see, that's part of the difference between 'relative' and 'absolute'. You can say something is wrong in a particular circumstance, but you MUST qualify it.
And I'm perfectly fine qualifying things. I think all "should" statements have an implicit "to me" or "if I got what I wanted" on them. I don't think there are any "should" statements that cannot be qualified. You think some don't need qualification. That's where we really differ. To you, I _am_ a moral relativist, and I think that's simply enough to fully explain human behavior. You've _assumed_ (as in supposed) an entity that need not be supposed: that there's some sort of
Not all moral systems have the same moral code you have.
Yes, I know. Why not? Your answer, then, although you were too scared to come out and say it, is that morality is relative. If this is the case, then no action can be defined as wrong. Maybe that's why you didn't want to just answer the question. Note that I am not saying that it isn't possible.
My point was actually, not that the alternative to moral absolutism is relativism. It's a common mistake to think that "not P" equals the opposite of P. Fortunately, "not P" actually means "anything other than P". It's a tough concept, I know.
My preferred alternative to moral absolutism is actually moral subjectivism, not moral relativism, but I know you've been brainwashed to think everybody's a relativist if they aren't an absolutist. I think ethics are entirely subjective, based on circumstance, and require balancing equity with social awareness. A relativist as typically defined is one who thinks that if one society thinks a thing is good then it's good for that society, which innately promotes non-interference. On the contrary, if I think you're doing something immoral, I think I should be allowed to subjectively press a charge of social harm and come up with subjective systems for moral analysis. We can do a lot better than we are now.
In fact, the particular subjectivism I think makes the most sense is actually moral situationalism. One example of writing that encompasses this ethical system is Clerence Darrow's Crime and Criminals. I really don't mind you calling it relativism, either, if you mean by definition not absolutism. If you think I'm scared of you calling it that, then I'm really not. See, in this forum, I get the chance to say whatever I want in response, so I really have nothing to fear from you.
Moral systems do not have to be absolute.
If they are not, then you can not label an action as wrong.
I can if I want to.
It just is moral in a different code.
I can think my moral code and system of ethics is good for everybody and not be an absolutist. You see, instead of defining particular actions to be bad, I define particular circumstances and actions together to be more full information with which to make a decision.
This is to what I object.
Feel free to object all you want. That doesn't mean you're correct.
I intuitively know that some things (not necessarily things our society targets) are wrong, period. What I want to do is find a repeatable test for why, or proof that I am simply wrong.
So, it's subjective to your own intuition. That's a great step forward in your own understanding if you can grasp that.
That's a HUGE assumption you've been making in your entire thread while at the same time you accuse others of assumptions they don't have.
Um, no it is not. I have stated very clearly many times that I DO NOT KNOW if morality is absolute or relative, or from where morality originates. Therefore, I can NOT be pushing the assumption that it is absolute, although I have admitted many times that I intuitively believe this to be the case.
I'm not impressed by the semantics here. You believe it to be the case, but you're "not assuming" that it is. You contradict yourself already. By saying that you don't know if it's absolute, you've retreated from treating your belief as a fact. Once it's not an established fact, then it is by definition an assumption -- you're assuming it to be the case. Assumptions don't necessarily mean that you hold them as facts. Assumptions can be hypothetical. Your use of the hypothetical as a retreat doesn't nullify my statement that it's an assumption.
I have stated that I cannot prove this, so how is that my pushing an assumption?
Religious people often think that repeating things they cannot prove so that
The thing is that anyone who is older than five (at least, mentally) realizes if you go around stealing stuff all the time, it's going to encourage others to steal from you, and that's no fun. The Golden Rule (or something like it) is found in just about every human society that has ever existed. It's not a matter of religion; it's just common sense.
You make a number of assertions here. Let me detail them:
1. Morality is realized universally - Do I really need to provide you examples to prove this wrong?
2. It is a universal constant that theft incites theft against thieves - I believe history is full of examples of successful thieves. They don't seem to have had that problem.
3. The golden rule is universal - Please provide a few pieces of evidence for this. I don't believe your assertion.
He actually didn't say they are universal, only vastly implemented. His argument thus doesn't fail when you have counter-examples, nor even very successful ones, particular since game theory shows that strategic equilibrium is attained, not universality.
Now, I'll respond: The number of people who do immoral things disproves your assertion. If what you said were true, then very few people would ever steal. The idea that theft is wrong is encouraged by religion and is not found in nature. Animals steal from each other all the time. It is beneficial to the thief. From an evolutionary standpoint, theft would lead to greater success were it not for societal penalties against it. In the same way, any act to protect weaker people from stronger is counter to evolutionary theory and thus does not come from nature. From where does it arise?
"counter to evolutionary theory". This is the informal genetic fallacy of logic -- that an explanation is a moral imperative. Not only that, but because of kin selection theory, it's actually expected that in some cases the weaker are expected to be protected by a stronger.
Beyond that, there's a bunch of crazy bastards out there (and these days, they tend to be armed with AK47s) who will happily put a bullet through your kneecap just to see the expression on your face. Your only hope of defending yourself against these hordes of psychos is to band together with other people who are, shall we say, a little more sane. But these people aren't going to want to band together with you if you steal from them. And thus, we have the entire basis for civilization, without resorting to invoking the invisible Wahoo in the sky.
Your assertions:
1. Many people are murderously psychotic - Not statistically. You're FAR more likely to be murdered by a government (society) than an individual. Note: Wars are not started by individuals (most of the time)
2. Society was formed to protect people - That was only one benefit. Actually, farming did more than banding together for protection. Of course, you're just talking out of your ass anyway.
3. Thieves are unwelcome in societies - Not particularly. It depends on from whom they stole and what they stole.
4. You are assigning the viewpoint to me that society was formed for religious reasons. This is not only factually incorrect, it's also not a viewpoint I've espoused.
To respond:
All moral codes have their roots in religion. Not always the SAME religion, mind you. However, whether the rules are coming from a guy in the sky or an imp under the earth, they are still external sources for moral codes. That isn't to say that some pieces of some moral codes aren't a good idea, or aren't beneficial on their own. However, the idea that they are codified doesn't come from nature. I've mentioned that before. You cannot set up an experiment to prove the law of theft. You can't set up an experiment to prove that violence is wrong. You just can't. You cannot examine a plant and show how it follows the 'do no harm' code of physicians. These things are societal constructs, not natural la
It appears that you can't read this particular patch style. The lines with + mean added, the lines with - mean removed.
.c files were handled appropriately and it was merely the .h files that had the license completely ripped out. The .c files were dual-licensed and said you could choose either. They just removed the BSD license as that was "choosing" GPLv2. The .h files are just some interfaces and don't change often anyways, so the BSD license is good enough for them (they should have left those). The .c files are the actual implementation, which would change between operating systems.
.h files since they didn't have the dual-license notice in them. If they aren't dual-licensed under both, you can relicense as GPLv2, but you have to include the BSD notice under its own terms. The GPL itself even says not just attribution, but the original notices themselves must be preserved. One additionally might say that since the GPL says to preserve the original notice, that even in the dual-license case you must preserve the BSD license in order to initially comply with the GPL, although that's a requirement of the GPL and not a dual-licensing/BSD provision. A dual-licensing (as you can see in this case) clearly says you can pick either, since the word "Alternatively" (e.g. the ath5k_reg.h license) implies if you chose the following path, you can ignore the provisions of the previous path.
The lines without either mean that's context for the differences.
If you look at the original patch, no attribution was removed. The attribution was in the context lines.
It looks like the
Here's a link to the actual diff as provided in the original article:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/28/157
You'll also note that the dual-licensed code had the committer's copyright notice on it. In some cases it was only his notice, originally. With the data immediately available, maybe he stripped it out in a commit before this one, but they don't seem to be accusing him of that. They are mainly accusing him of ripping out the BSD license from a couple
In summary, it looks like a lot of this was nit-picking over how to actually do the license notice preservation, rather than preserving somebody's attribution. I imagine it'll be fixed up in very little time and few people will care about this in more than a day or two.
That's why the impeachment proceedings are generally going after Dick first. If you get him first, then you can go after Bush on the same materials.
You know who then becomes president? Yep, that's right.
(But anyways, they aren't a monopoly -- you're free to drive if you want.)
Leftests use the term to mean whatever they want it to mean. Always ignoring Fascisms Socialist core (Mussolini etc).
Speaking of ignoring definitions, I guess you didn't read the part where I said "without public oversight". If the government were running industry as government saw fit, it would actually have public oversight and thus be socialist, not fascist (yes, fascism is both a form of socialism and a form of capitalism -- the merger of state and corporate power).Fascism like many other forms of Socialism involves the government owning industry and running it as it sees fit.
Greed simply is.
Greed within healthy competition produces very good results. The other guys greed acts as a check on mine, and vice versa.
I consider myself in favor of mostly free markets in the vast majority of cases, but I'm also socialistic in many ways, but not completely. I think there are exceptions to both extreme views, and we need to get beyond "socialism" vs "capitalism".Wishing greed away is the fundamental flaw in socialist thought.
So I'm all for checks and balances, but what happens when there are no checks or the balances are out of whack as you'd find in a private monopoly that uses its monopoly power as an ESS (Evolutionarily Stable Strategy) for anti-competitive behavior? I always hear "eventually it'll work itself out". But that's just ignoring the fact that they've found an ESS that can take out virtually _any_ competitor (by definition of ESS) unless it's already big and powerful enough to shift into the market. If your theory depends on big corps battling big corps for various niche monopolies, then where is the independent entrepreneur in all of this? What if the various big corps decide to get together and do price fixing or monopoly splits by geographic region? Then we really have no control. I'm reminded of the corporate wars in "Rollerball" where the world was ruled by five corporations, like "The Energy Company", essentially together.
We're all essentially screwed unless we can maintain some control over the aggregation of power. Even if you don't like Marx, you have to admit that as an economist he correctly foresaw the problem of the aggregation of capital.
The 1800s are essentially obsolete -- let's move beyond the economic theories of two centuries ago and be rational, instead.
What do you expect would happen when the government jails anyone who tries to compete? Yes, it is the government's fault. That's an interesting point, but it doesn't really change the sentence that you're quoting, and I would take it a step further and make the point that Russ Beaton (econ professor at Willamette University) once made: "The best economies have no monopolies but the goal of every good enterprise is monopoly; therein lies the contradiction of unlimited capitalism.". The free-market libertarians in this thread are telling me that it's not SBC's fault that it bribed government officials and/or made back-room monopoly deals, just as Russ pointed out.
Why? The government-granted monopoly was bought by a free market of greed and corruption. I'm being told that it's just the government's fault for being anti-consumer. The corporation being anti-consumer is just part of the formula for being pro-consumer. This contradiction runs to the core of their doublespeak.
I've been trying to make your exact point that free market libertarianism is incompatible with monopoly business structures as being unethical, but that's not the message the libertarians are telling me. It's just always the government's fault to them when the libertarian formula breaks down (as it often does). Even though it's the predicted end of unrestrained capitalism, it's the government's fault it was not restrained. I just want to know from the libertarians just what is allowed to be limited by the government. I know the philosophy is to limit "harm", but how is lack of communication (as in this case) truly a harm in their ideology? Are we allowed as a democracy to weigh it based on the situation? Are de-facto monopolies outlawable? To most FML's, the answer I get is often no. Maybe not with these guys, I don't know yet. Perhaps one of them will want to espouse a consistent philosophy in a comment.
And oddly enough, to the "free-market" libertarians, I'm "stupid" for thinking differently than they do. When I call an insult that I'm stupid as "naive", I'm then moderated as flamebait. Where are the mods on the clearly insulting posts? If the FML's had a point, they'd stick to the discussion and not try to attack my intelligence with petty insults. Since responding to the insults is worth down-modding, I'll probably not bother responding to posts with petty insults anymore.
That's where we seem to truly differ in opinion. You directly imply that restraint of government is the only method we have for constraining corporations. I think we actually have other methods, for example: a culture of not violating laws, even if you could, a consumerist culture that shunned corporations that exploited government loopholes, etc. You seem to disagree with that (though I'll let you change your mind, if you would like). In the second case, greed that's not controlled by government may actually be a negative influence upon the corporation's returns, which you might say makes your point, but you'd definitely not agree with corporations having a general culture of lawfulness. You'll likely argue that if one corporation doesn't do it, the other corporations will do it, thus destroying the market. But note that in the first case, the second case might eventually develop anyways, and the corporation would have to repair its public image.
Since there does exist a minority, though large one, of people who do believe in promoting a culture of corporate responsibility, then I think even today, corporations are required to weigh the costs of benefits of unethical behavior.
It's a lot more complex than you simplify by just defining greed to be ethical with very limited constraints. If you have a more nuanced approach, like I do, you can actually think these ramifications through, instead of blindly following the path of fundamentalist libertarianism. Even if I were a greedy corporation, I'd be wary of having somebody like you lead the company because of your inability to think deeply about the social problems.
Corporate greed has always existed in one form or another since the dawn of the human race. Greed is human nature. The utter utter stupidity is not to take it into account, and that's where free markets come in.
You pit one greedy bastard against a dozen other greedy bastards. Everyone benefits from the hard work of the group of greedy bastards.
The fault lies with the either utterly stupidity or corrupt politicians who granted the monopoly. It has nothing to do with libertarian ideology and everything to do with understanding human beings. Oh don't be naive.
Your general premise is "People will do bad things, thus they aren't at fault for their badness if they are allowed to do it."
So if people are part of the government, and they allowed this bad thing, they aren't at fault for their badness too, since the people allowed them to?
So, it's back to the people who didn't intervene against these politicians who are at fault -- but they did a bad thing by doing that, and who allowed them to be passive?
You see where this is going?
I think I've got the more coherent point that both the government and the corporation were complicit and both were wrong.
But alas, you're a libertarian ideological fundamentalist, so if the corporation did something bad, they didn't do anything "actually" bad.
Whatever.
I consider it fascism at its most insidious: government owning a stake in a private corporation, and allowing it to run privately, without public oversight.
Despite what minor bribes probably took place, that was the major bribe for the government.
No. They did what companies do, make money for their shareholders.
That doesn't make it ethical. In some places even common travelers have to bribe just to stay out of jail, but (and I hate to be tautological) if there's no justification for the bribe, it still remains unjustified.The 'bad guys' here are those who accepted bribes to ignore their responsibilities. Paying bribes in Africa is just SOP.
Both are at fault, not just one side. I guess most people seem to think fault is always limited an individual actor, but causation doesn't work that way even most of the time.
Yeah, totally.
You're right, of course.
CLEARLY, those who actually executed the bribes are not at fault in this case, even if it was illegal.
Liberal economic policies help in a lot of things, but utilities are one of the cases where it's an infrastructure investment that still is most efficiently done cooperatively, particularly since you have to deal with public rights-of-way and all that. Services on top of the infrastructure should be liberalized, of course.
We really do need to get people to think beyond left and right more these days and more on what works best for the particular situation.
A public process in this arrangement, as the article points out, would have caught this and corrected it. Public governments are thus not indictable. Yes, you can indict the government for letting it happen, but the ultimate source of the problem was corporate greed that lead to the collusion of government and a corporation, where if done systematically it would be called fascism.
Ultimately, it's still SBC's fault, despite whatever proximate causes/contributors enabled it.
It's not the pleasure that's the problem... Drugs and alcohol are pleasurable too you know, that doesn't mean that they can't become problematic.
Personally I quit teh pr0n because I eventually ended up having incredibly screwed up thoughts run through my head, the kind of stuffs rapists are made out of. =P So don't tell me there's nothing wrong with it, I know first hand what can happen to kids if you put strange/sexually violent thoughts in to their heads. On the other hand, I had parents who entirelly supressed all that kind of stuff, and I ended up associating sex with sin and darkness and bad and such, so it's no suprise that when I couldn't help but obey my nature that it all came out skewed. So for a solid three months, as an eighteen year old male teenager, I willingly supressed every sexual thought I had, until I decided I had the will to maintain I healthy balance. Now I'm fine, for the most part.
Do the cases like me in the world merit a block on porn? God no. But you argue beyond the blocking of porn.
I actually pointed out that porn specifically had built-in constraints. The one I pointed out had to do with relationship sex being much more pleasurable than masturbation and thus a systematic limit. The human body has others it has developed over eons. For example, males have a refractory period after ejaculation and females have ovulatory heat and highly selective sexual drives due to their biased investment in children.
As far as drugs, those are exploiting evolutionary heuristics and as such are more dangerous, but we have developed systems that help control this too, although they aren't completely accurate (as in Marijuana's case). Limiting drugs to prescription use has actually worked out fairly well (but note that treatment programs for those that fall through the cracks are much better than criminalization).
Porn is definitely not something, due to its systematic limits, that we should be controlling as badly as people want to control it. In your case, it's likely that your Christian upbringing is actually responsible for your thoughts, and that porn is the victim of religion again.
As for the cherishing guilt thing about Christians, you clearly, like many others, missed the point. Take a look at a few of the writings of Paul... Such as First Corinthians 10:23, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not." Care telling me where that fits in to cherishing guilt?
I think you simply don't understand Paul. In First Corinthians 7, he makes quite clear my point that anything not for the benefit of Christianity is bad. Sexual pleasure in particular is shunned by him completely there. He makes an exception that fits with my theory perfectly: That if you have to fornicate, do it in marriage (unstated is that a child of constant Christian parentage is easier to brainwash).
Back to First Corinthians 10, let me unambiguize Paul in a less cryptic translation: "All things are of [men's] laws, but not all things are expedient, nor are they edifying." He's simply saying that regardless of the legal situation of things, some are good and some are bad. That your translation uses the term expedient for his negative is telling, too. Expediency just means that it's more efficient, with a connotation that it's without regard to good or bad. That implies to me that efficiency is likely to lead to badness, which is exactly the assumption that I'm arguing against. In any case, even if you read it without that context, it's still damning to your point: he's making the point that despite legality, there's a set of restrictions of what you _should_ do, and in actual context, the "should" includes sexual restrictions of pornography: it's still a sin if you think of it in your heart. I would only hope you know what I'm referring to in that last sentence.
Interpreting that quote as you do merely illustrates another point I made in this thread that
If it makes you feel better, like many humans, I'm capable of quoting something somebody said before me that was a succinct example of a point I'm making without agreeing with everything else they said.
Quite aside from Nietzsche, although he agreed with me, Christianity started as a Greek Mystery Cult (although I called it a Hellenistic Mystery Religion, the technical, non-loaded term), and has since evolved, but it hasn't strayed too far from its roots since the Bible, while not a complete encapsulation of Christian thought, is fairly well accepted as the definer of Christianity. Yes, there have been lots of changes in Christianity, and modern Christianity looks nothing like it used to (at many points in its history -- although when I say "its", I know it's actually a large tree of denominations).
But ultimately, my point is valid in that its theological foundation still rests (unless you're a fringe Christian) quite squarely with the salvation theology developed by the Hellenistic Mystery Religions.
I don't think Christianity is capable of providing any tool for explaining rationally to or raising mentally sane children. Yes, some Christian denominations allow other things into their belief system that are not Christian in origin, but that is a non-Christian and secular aspect of their particular denomination. Liberal Christians, for example, follow many non-Christian ideological systems (Marxism/Liberation Theology isn't Christian) and American Evangelicals of the Right follow many non-Christian ideological systems, too (economic liberalism is definitely not Christian). They think it is, but they are deluding themselves. They're picking and choosing passages that are merely one part of myriad contradictions and conducting exegeses that aren't part of the theological core of their own religion. This is in fact, the major danger of catechisms that claim universal application (fundamentalism) like Christianity and Islam.
And yes, too, somebody is probably going to ask how I am morally/ethically/correctly able to arrogantly proclaim what is Christian since I'm not a Christian? I study Christianity and other religions very deeply, from an historical perspective. No, I don't believe them, but that doesn't diminish my ability to understand history -- in fact, my lack of faith gives me a more unbiased perspective into their evolutions and synchretisms than they will ever have. Most Christians are really simpletons who know very little about their religion, or, if they have a sophisticated understanding of their own religion, they have just been able to compartmentalize the passages that barely agree with their own world view, however created.
That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?
I'll respond to your post since there is more to say and I can reply to yours and the other one at the same time for one of my answers. First, nothing nor no one (such as myself) says a person can't be happy. I only was talking about not getting pleasure from porn. Are you implying that you have no other source of pleasure? I feel bad for you.
In Christianity, pleasure is only good if it aligns with somebody else's pleasure for its their gain -- the religion's mythical (and surrogate) headmasters.
Any incidental pleasure is always denied because it takes joy away from life, and if joy can only be found within the fold, all the better for the psychological meme of religion.
As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.
There are so many other people who have the exact opposite feeling towards religion and Christianity in particular that I'll leave it up to you to realize that Nietzsche doesn't know what he is talking about and more likely has a biased opinion of something he knows nothing about.
Others have already pointed out that you must not know who Nietzsche was.
I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.
Hmm, seems you need to fix your reading comprehension problems. I never said that pleasure in and of itself is bad. I said pleasure from porn is bad.
Because it's pleasure not found in alignment with your religion. The pleasures are so small and so restricted to brainwashing, that ultimately the pleasures are very few. About the only acceptable pleasure is making future brainwashed offspring, and even then, religion has historically debated the merit of such pleasure.
I'll pause for a few seconds while you re-read my post now with that context in place......................back? Ok, good. Now, God gave us sex to not only enjoy but also procreate however those 2 goals are supposed to be done at the same time, not separate. We shouldn't take advantage of the procreation capability to just enjoy meaningless sex. That's where the issue of pleasure comes from. There are millions of things to take pleasure in but taking ONLY pleasure in something like sex is not it's intended purpose. Of course, we humans will mutate anything for our own pleasure (quite relevant in this case). How often we have watched horrific violence time and again because we find it entertaining? This particular topic of porn was in the context of children watching it on the Internet and not adults watching it to enhance their sex lives so with that said why would someone want to watch something alone and get pleasure out of it when they could enjoy it more if they could share it with someone? Again, humans are lazy so we take the easy way out. We'll pleasure ourselves because it is just too time consuming to find someone to enjoy it with. I can't imagine what will happen in 2029.
When children get sexual urges, you would have them restrict them for years. That's repression.
I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.
I do too but I also am not that interested in the materliastic aspects of this world to which you think exposure helps someone become unrepressed. They really aren't that great in the whole scheme of things. Sure, if you are a mindless drone you will take part in those things solely for their immediate rewards but more intelligent people will look past the immediate pleasure and see the greater good.
Again, materialism is by definition, anything not aligned with your religion, so you are implicitly being anti-worldly, and anti-pleasure of anything not "spiritual".
It's the hedonistic pleasure part of porn that is the problem. Teach children to not engage in materialistic pleasures and they won't be so interested in porn.
That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?
As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.
I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.
I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.
Just look at what you Christians cherish -- pity, guilt, sin -- not to mention guilt through inheritance, which no rational society anymore recognizes.
May Christianity be the last, dying Hellenistic Mystery Religion.
Flamebait is not how you label serious replies.
No, it's not worth 3000 lives to live in a surveillance state.
... how many soldier's lives were lost and innocent Iraqi civilians murdered by shock and awe? I'm sure neither of them count, but it's a lot more than 3000.
Is it worth 10000 lives to live in a Fascist dictatorship?
When does it end? How much is 300 million people's freedom worth? Scratch that -- you've said, somewhere between 0 and 3000 lives, but not more than that, otherwise we'd need to wait for a second 9/11.
But
Another thing you do is lead the question -- "wouldn't affect you, probably". It always affects people. There isn't a surveilled citizen that hasn't had their life altered by monitoring. The people with the data _always_ find a way to put it to use you never intended or authorized, eventually. Don't forget the fact that the data is often wrong or misinterpreted, and we'll reap those consequences, too.
Personally, I'd rather live in a free state where I feared terrorists bombing symbols of their own exploitation (that I could easily avoid) than under a surveillance state, where I lived in constant fear of government reprisal, intimidation, mis-monitoring, and misinterpretation, no matter where I was.
I guess that's the difference between Bush supporters (trolls) and Bush haters (insightfuls).
Aren't you glad you posted that one anonymously.