So all those European countries with socialized public services and high tax rates to pay for them, you know, the ones that rate highest on the happiness index and life satisfaction studies, the ones with thriving standards of living, just don't exist? Norway? Sweden? The Netherlands? Finland? No guns, no violence, no pogroms, none of that at all.
Tyrants and despots CLAIM to be following certain philosophies all the time, and then warp the language of them to their own ends. Communism and socialism don't include anything about mass murder, repression, and starvation, any more than democracy and capitalism do (but we're doing our best). It's happening right now here in America. When people in other countries argue for capitalism and democracy, they make this same argument, BTW...that people shouldn't judge capitalism or democracy from how the US goes about it.
On top of this, both Smith and Marx were laboring under a false idea of what humans are like. People need to stop acting like these theories are religions, or anything more than a set of philosophical ideas these people developed...they are no more handed down by the Powers That Be than any other philosophical system. Economics is only a science the way playing chess is a science...because we are playing a game by a set of rules that we decided upon and certain possibilities are inherent to that game. But those games are seriously flawed. We don't make choices for rational, economic reasons, workers don't have the luxury of refusing to work when the "price" offered by the bosses is too low because life, and the lives of one's family, are more important to just about anyone than making the right min/max calculation.
So long as this is true, so long as workers are not able to refuse en masse to "sell" their labor at a given price, thus driving the price up, the promised equilibrium of capitalism will never, ever occur. Similarly, Marx's vision of a state that dissolves itself after the transition to his "communist utopia" is complete, doesn't account for the irrational desire to hoard wealth and power *despite* the fact that this hoarding ends up hamstringing the entire system one is "wealthy" within. Neither utopia will ever come, neither set of equilibriums will ever obtain, because the systems were designed for a different sort of animal than us.
What we need is a new theory of economics that takes into account the irrational creatures we are. It needs to take into account our tendencies for cognitive biases and fallacies, it needs to take into account short-sighted and irrational greed, it needs to make sure that at no point one side of the exchange of wealth, labor or capital, holds all the power and choice, thus destroying the possibility of equitable exchanges of wealth throughout the system.
It's just a game. We broke this one. We can make a new one. A better one.
Right...because if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. That's totally how it works.
There is no "whitelist". There is the "not yet on the blacklist". And since they don't have to tell you their interpretation of the laws, don't have to tell you why you're on whatever list, took away the privilege of facing your accuser and knowing the accusation (they aren't rights, no matter what people call them, if they can be taken away; that's what "alienable" means), and made it illegal to even tell anyone any of this ever happened, all that will happen is you will just disappear. No one will ever even hear your evidence that you weren't doing anything illegal.
But I hope your "But I'm innocent!" theory works out for you. Are you a billionaire? Maybe then it will work out.
It's just the new form of being a hipster. The hipsters that were always "too cool" for everything reached their natural extreme...too cool to be hipsters.
Wait...I'm pretty sure I got on the anti-corporation, anti-government bus. They're pretty much the same thing nowadays, anyhow. It seems difficult to hold the position you claim we hold...it's like being pro-steak and anti-beef.
Humans also have a biologically induced need to cooperate and be social creatures. Hence all the collective accomplishments of civilization...all of which required collective, cooperative effort. The modern picture of competition is not biologically induced, it is politically and socially induced.
We could just as easily focus on cooperative efforts and minimize competitive efforts, but that wouldn't be as convenient for the sociopaths among us.
That's primarily because everyone who is a part of the process feels they should still be making the same inflated amounts for each part of the process. Everyone has to get their cut, and they are used to getting a certain cut and feel entitled to it.
You know what doesn't cost much? Getting a domain, some hosting, and publishing it yourself online. Groups of researchers could easily form peer-reviewing groups, which is the only meaningful benefit the journals grant (I didn't say helpful to your career...I said meaningful, as in adding to the knowledge in the world). Sidestep their process enough and they will come up with a new process.
So if individuals are capable of declaring war, then the Geneva Convention and other laws of war should apply to them, correct? The argument used in the past was that such laws were not applicable to terrorists exactly because individuals doing whatever is not considered making war. You can't have it both ways.
Money, privilege, and history is what makes us different than, say, the Yememis. The ink wasn't dry on the Constitution before it was being ignored when it suited those in power.
Do you not see the difference between demanding transparency of the government and demanding it of an individual? We just take it for granted that there "have to be secrets". Why? Because governments have always kept secrets from their people? Really bad reason. Because we wish to safeguard our ability to make war, and keeping secrets aids that goal? The nature of the world has changed and there is nobody both willing and able to successfully make war among first world nations. It always just leads to mutually-assured destruction and we are back at the Cold War. There is no real need to keep secrets other than certain things governments do would not be acceptable, to either the other nations they share the world with and are supposed to have treaties and agreements with, or to their own people. No one should be breaking their treaties, but they all do, and then pretend the problem is security leaks rather than their own behaviors. If something would be unacceptable to the world community and/or the people of a given nation, their government should not do it.
The reason my bank data should be secret is because thieves could steal my money with it. I have no problem with the IRS keeping their passwords secret. What I have a problem with is my government keeping what they are doing with my money (and yours) a secret and then, after everything they have done and continue to do, saying I should just trust them to be doing the right things. They haven't, they don't, and we should absolutely have the inalienable right to know exactly what our leaders are doing with our money and the moral authority we grant them to act for us. Until we can actively see, talk about, and, if necessary, bring censure and criminal charges raining down upon our leaders should they act in bad faith, we do not have a democracy or any other form of "free" government "by the people".
It amazes me how people expect, accept, and even argue for their own subjugation.
Except it does create a financial interaction when you call someone...you can be billed for it. Both of them, in order to have the interaction in the first place, have the equivalent of your analogical billing arrangements for shit-removal. By putting the onus on the person shit upon, as opposed to the person shitting, it creates the possibility that everyone could go shit on his lawn, never have to pay for it, and never suffer any consequences at all. The possibility for abuse requires some sort of rules for the lawn-shitting system, in the same ways we must protect the economic systems from abuse by monopolies and cartels.
Even if we ignore the human suffering issues caused by, say, one company controlling everyone's access to water, without any rules, the water monopoly (or shit-removal monopoly) has no reason to reach an equilibrium...there is no margin. Everyone needs water to live, thus they will pay anything, thus the water monopoly has no reason to stop raising prices...until people literally can't pay anymore and drop dead, thus removing the need for water and putting the water monopoly out of business. This is really just remedial micro-economics...cartels and monopolies break equilibriums, thus the (admittedly mythical...we never seem to get there) promised equilibriums of QS == QD and D == S, resulting in P == V.
So in the same way, if the person who's lawn is getting shitted on has to pay for removal, regardless of whether they wanted that shit there, more and more people are going to shit there (this is assuming some goal or value in that...again, the analogy breaks down a bit at some points) until the person who owns the lawn is going to stop paying you, and take matters into his own hands...say, suing them, or shooting them, or whatever. In any case, the market for shit-removal will eventually fall apart if everyone is acting rationally and according to their own interests (again...not likely, but capitalism and communism both rely on everyone being good little min/maxing robots, so there we are).
The shitter-pays model makes the person who has an interest in shitting (the marketer, political campaign, whatever) have to pay to shit, rather than the person who has no interest in being shit upon. Since they are the ones who want to shit, and since both sides have to have a billing-agreement for shit-removal in order to do any shitting at all (admittedly the analogy breaks down here), and since there is the possibility of initiating un-asked for shits by those who would benefit from them, then it is only right that the initiator of the shitting should pay.
Gods, thank you, Hatta...that was the most fun I have had with rhetoric/logic since I proved the "How Many Hos Can Slobber My Knob Theorem" in sophomore year.
This. Employers that do the best they can to spend as little as they can have no reason to complain when they get what they pay for nothing...nothing to very little.
He knew they were angels...he called them Adonai in the Hebrew (Gen. 19:2). He wasn't offering hospitality and defending strangers...he was kissing the angel's asses. It's translated as "my lords", and "lord" is technically correct, but that word for lord is generally reserved for the big guy, not an average guy on the street. So this kinda changes the picture of "conflicting moralities" a bit. It's more of a conflict between morality and self-interest.
But Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac is still lionized. It's held up as the proper attitude, and the entire episode shows the Hebrew deity wants Abraham to prove he's willing to do it. It's his willingness to do so, and the desire on the Hebrew deity's part for worshipers willing to do that sort of thing, that presents the ethical problem.
Actually, philosophy of science and most of the scientific method is based on acknowledging and overcoming (to the best degree our limited perceptions and minds are capable of) the flawed abilities of humanity. The problem of the under-determination of the epistemological grounding and justification of science is taught in undergraduate classes, and the most basic of limitations, that any observation is "from" a given viewpoint in space/time, and that the final evaluations must be made by a human mind, which evolved to avoid tigers and reproduce, not to be "knowledge detectors and truth evaluators", is well-known, acknowledged, and taught in elementary classes and texts. Science does not claim these limitations don't exist...it simply acknowledges them and does the best it can to figure things out, anyway. The benefit of this technique is clear...planes fly, bridges stand, and we can chat using electrons. From EMPIRICAL evidence, it works.
From EMPIRICAL evidence, we can also conclude that you were either ignorant of the fact that science includes these notions and teaches them, or you were purposefully misrepresenting the truth to fit your agenda. If you are ignorant of science, why do you think you are qualified to judge it merits or flaws? If you were purposefully misrepresenting the truth, why? Do you think it's important to believe in true things? If so, why would you want to mislead other people into believing false things?
Note, IANAC (I am not a Christian, nor a theist, for most values of theist), but there is another way of seeing this that is just a tad bit more charitable to the sincere believers who wrote those accounts. These were a deeply religious people, who spawned from a group who originally lived outside the Sumerian city-state of Ur. They left civilization to follow a vision, Abraham's vision, and in those days that meant almost certain death from beasts, starvation, and thirst. The kind of people who do that sort of thing possess a deep and abiding faith that their god is firmly in charge of their situation, and the entire basis of Abraham's crew was a covenant with their god...a special, intimate relationship.
But, predictably, the world they existed in was horrible. Not only was their hunger, thirst, and wild animals, but there were other people. Being a political unit as well as a religious one, their trip also involved a promised land. Now, as a political group, that was no problem...they would just do what was normal back then. Go to war, kill the Canaanites or whoever, and take the land. But all of this suffering, all of this killing, all of this disease and starvation and thirst, needed to be accounted for. Other religions of the time were better equipped for this...they just said there were bad gods and good gods, and that all of the evil in life came from the bad gods. But the ancient Jews only had one god, so they had to reconcile the god they were to love, trust, and obey with a god that killed their children, demanded atrocities, and made the desert sun cruel.
So this attitude, as heinous as it is, didn't come about because these people were monsters...it's an attempt at a theodicy, and explanation for the existence of evil. It's also an attempt to reconcile the difficult tension of being both a political and religious belief-system. While other cultures at the same time were going through this, they were polytheistic or henotheistic, which allowed for more ambiguity and flexibility. They didn't need a concept of good that included the nastier parts of existence, while the monotheistic faiths did (and still do).
It's odd that with all this philosophizing on Abraham and Isaac no one has brought up Kierkegaard and "Fear and Trembling". There is an existentialist position for theism (albeit not theism as defined by most believers), although it might be more precise to say "a theistic position within existentialism".
While I am generally pretty critical of the Abrahamic faiths as practiced in the modern era, and mainstream, exoteric interpretations of religions in general, a nuanced interpretation is not only possible, but they abound within philosophical and theological literature. Abraham and Isaac is second only to the Sermon on the Mount as a favorite subject of philosophers.
Just a quick question...when, exactly, has people's ability to comment on the habits of soldiers been something that was at risk? In 34 years, I have seen our military going and attacking people who have nothing to do with us. They have never come near us and I have never felt in danger from any other nation. There have been many "threats" we have been told about, but none that I have seen. Since I know, from history and what has happened in other countries, that governments lie to their people about "threats" to justify their behavior all the time, why, exactly, should I have faith that our government is telling us the truth?
In addition to that, with every lie this country's government has been caught in, with every manipulation of the media, with every broken promise and bought politician and just plain bald-faced corruption across the board and both sides of the aisle, why should I have faith that our government is telling us the truth?
How do you know we are really the good guys? Everyone, from the sackers of Rome to the loyal comrades of the USSR were told they were the good guys by their leaders. The Nazis though they were the good guys. EVERYONE thinks their own side is the good guys.
Every soldier says they aren't murderers, because of course the murder of someone on the other side isn't murder, right? It's heroics so long as you murder for the right people. It's not torture...it's interrogation. It's not rape, it's psychological undermining.
But I'm sure that doesn't apply to YOUR friends. They're the heroes. They're the good ones. It's always the other guys, the bad apples, just acting on their own, with no orders or supervision at all. Because that's how the military is...it's just free time, and you run around just doing what you want with no commanding officers, or cameras, or anything to keep those bad apples in line. Of course. There's no reason for you to look at them twice in suspicion...or for us to look at you that way for the company you keep.
Of course.
Or you know...it might make more sense that people who like violence, control over others, and the prospect of killing people seek out positions in life which give them the opportunity to do those things with impunity. But I'm sure your way of viewing the world, the one that trusts governments to tell you the truth and soldiers to not be violent killers, is the right one. After all, it makes so much sense.
And if those were enough, then we wouldn't be talking about this. They aren't. Once upon a time, trees and plants did the job fine. Then we both cut them down and built factories everywhere that pump CO2 out, including little ones with wheels on them, so now we need a new solution.
While I am a supporter of eco-preservation and green tech, I have to agree that there is an entire industry sector out there who is eager as hell to turn saving the ecosystem into a goose laying golden eggs. While I know, of course, that planting trees, while technically a solution, isn't really a solution because people aren't going to give up urban environments any time soon (which is exactly where we need the most carbon fixing), the point is valid...there started being an eco-industrial complex the moment people with money started being willing to spend it on the issue.
There is also an edu-industrial complex who wants to own learning, an entertainment-industrial complex that already owns entertainment, etc, etc.
It's not just weapons dealers, bankers, the MPAA/RIAA, and Microsoft that want to own a sector of the economy. The minute it stopped just being fringe hippies that gave a shit about the environment, slime-buckets came oozing out of MBA programs all over the country to exploit it.
...we will see martial law declared preemptively, military and police forces will start flooding areas before anything can happen, and people who the computer says will be key figures in the revolution will be preemptively jailed and/or executed.
Don't get your hopes up, kids. This isn't the Foundation, and it won't be used to save civilization, it will be used to keep people already in power from even having a chance of losing that power. If you haven't noticed, the folks running the show think the only value of civilization is that it gives them a system within which to gain power and wealth.
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So all those European countries with socialized public services and high tax rates to pay for them, you know, the ones that rate highest on the happiness index and life satisfaction studies, the ones with thriving standards of living, just don't exist? Norway? Sweden? The Netherlands? Finland? No guns, no violence, no pogroms, none of that at all.
Tyrants and despots CLAIM to be following certain philosophies all the time, and then warp the language of them to their own ends. Communism and socialism don't include anything about mass murder, repression, and starvation, any more than democracy and capitalism do (but we're doing our best). It's happening right now here in America. When people in other countries argue for capitalism and democracy, they make this same argument, BTW...that people shouldn't judge capitalism or democracy from how the US goes about it.
On top of this, both Smith and Marx were laboring under a false idea of what humans are like. People need to stop acting like these theories are religions, or anything more than a set of philosophical ideas these people developed...they are no more handed down by the Powers That Be than any other philosophical system. Economics is only a science the way playing chess is a science...because we are playing a game by a set of rules that we decided upon and certain possibilities are inherent to that game. But those games are seriously flawed. We don't make choices for rational, economic reasons, workers don't have the luxury of refusing to work when the "price" offered by the bosses is too low because life, and the lives of one's family, are more important to just about anyone than making the right min/max calculation.
So long as this is true, so long as workers are not able to refuse en masse to "sell" their labor at a given price, thus driving the price up, the promised equilibrium of capitalism will never, ever occur. Similarly, Marx's vision of a state that dissolves itself after the transition to his "communist utopia" is complete, doesn't account for the irrational desire to hoard wealth and power *despite* the fact that this hoarding ends up hamstringing the entire system one is "wealthy" within. Neither utopia will ever come, neither set of equilibriums will ever obtain, because the systems were designed for a different sort of animal than us.
What we need is a new theory of economics that takes into account the irrational creatures we are. It needs to take into account our tendencies for cognitive biases and fallacies, it needs to take into account short-sighted and irrational greed, it needs to make sure that at no point one side of the exchange of wealth, labor or capital, holds all the power and choice, thus destroying the possibility of equitable exchanges of wealth throughout the system.
It's just a game. We broke this one. We can make a new one. A better one.
Right...because if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. That's totally how it works.
There is no "whitelist". There is the "not yet on the blacklist". And since they don't have to tell you their interpretation of the laws, don't have to tell you why you're on whatever list, took away the privilege of facing your accuser and knowing the accusation (they aren't rights, no matter what people call them, if they can be taken away; that's what "alienable" means), and made it illegal to even tell anyone any of this ever happened, all that will happen is you will just disappear. No one will ever even hear your evidence that you weren't doing anything illegal.
But I hope your "But I'm innocent!" theory works out for you. Are you a billionaire? Maybe then it will work out.
Dyson Sphere or Ring, maybe? I know, I know...materials problem, but I always loved the idea.
So heat death, huh? Kind of sad. I liked the symmetry of the Big Bang->Big Crunch->Big Bang thing.
It's just the new form of being a hipster. The hipsters that were always "too cool" for everything reached their natural extreme...too cool to be hipsters.
Wait...I'm pretty sure I got on the anti-corporation, anti-government bus. They're pretty much the same thing nowadays, anyhow. It seems difficult to hold the position you claim we hold...it's like being pro-steak and anti-beef.
Humans also have a biologically induced need to cooperate and be social creatures. Hence all the collective accomplishments of civilization...all of which required collective, cooperative effort. The modern picture of competition is not biologically induced, it is politically and socially induced.
We could just as easily focus on cooperative efforts and minimize competitive efforts, but that wouldn't be as convenient for the sociopaths among us.
It was an honest question. Being king of a pile of shit still means you have to live in a pile of shit.
That's primarily because everyone who is a part of the process feels they should still be making the same inflated amounts for each part of the process. Everyone has to get their cut, and they are used to getting a certain cut and feel entitled to it.
You know what doesn't cost much? Getting a domain, some hosting, and publishing it yourself online. Groups of researchers could easily form peer-reviewing groups, which is the only meaningful benefit the journals grant (I didn't say helpful to your career...I said meaningful, as in adding to the knowledge in the world). Sidestep their process enough and they will come up with a new process.
So if individuals are capable of declaring war, then the Geneva Convention and other laws of war should apply to them, correct? The argument used in the past was that such laws were not applicable to terrorists exactly because individuals doing whatever is not considered making war. You can't have it both ways.
Money, privilege, and history is what makes us different than, say, the Yememis. The ink wasn't dry on the Constitution before it was being ignored when it suited those in power.
Do you not see the difference between demanding transparency of the government and demanding it of an individual? We just take it for granted that there "have to be secrets". Why? Because governments have always kept secrets from their people? Really bad reason. Because we wish to safeguard our ability to make war, and keeping secrets aids that goal? The nature of the world has changed and there is nobody both willing and able to successfully make war among first world nations. It always just leads to mutually-assured destruction and we are back at the Cold War. There is no real need to keep secrets other than certain things governments do would not be acceptable, to either the other nations they share the world with and are supposed to have treaties and agreements with, or to their own people. No one should be breaking their treaties, but they all do, and then pretend the problem is security leaks rather than their own behaviors. If something would be unacceptable to the world community and/or the people of a given nation, their government should not do it.
The reason my bank data should be secret is because thieves could steal my money with it. I have no problem with the IRS keeping their passwords secret. What I have a problem with is my government keeping what they are doing with my money (and yours) a secret and then, after everything they have done and continue to do, saying I should just trust them to be doing the right things. They haven't, they don't, and we should absolutely have the inalienable right to know exactly what our leaders are doing with our money and the moral authority we grant them to act for us. Until we can actively see, talk about, and, if necessary, bring censure and criminal charges raining down upon our leaders should they act in bad faith, we do not have a democracy or any other form of "free" government "by the people".
It amazes me how people expect, accept, and even argue for their own subjugation.
Worse? Or...better?
Except it does create a financial interaction when you call someone...you can be billed for it. Both of them, in order to have the interaction in the first place, have the equivalent of your analogical billing arrangements for shit-removal. By putting the onus on the person shit upon, as opposed to the person shitting, it creates the possibility that everyone could go shit on his lawn, never have to pay for it, and never suffer any consequences at all. The possibility for abuse requires some sort of rules for the lawn-shitting system, in the same ways we must protect the economic systems from abuse by monopolies and cartels.
Even if we ignore the human suffering issues caused by, say, one company controlling everyone's access to water, without any rules, the water monopoly (or shit-removal monopoly) has no reason to reach an equilibrium...there is no margin. Everyone needs water to live, thus they will pay anything, thus the water monopoly has no reason to stop raising prices...until people literally can't pay anymore and drop dead, thus removing the need for water and putting the water monopoly out of business. This is really just remedial micro-economics...cartels and monopolies break equilibriums, thus the (admittedly mythical...we never seem to get there) promised equilibriums of QS == QD and D == S, resulting in P == V.
So in the same way, if the person who's lawn is getting shitted on has to pay for removal, regardless of whether they wanted that shit there, more and more people are going to shit there (this is assuming some goal or value in that...again, the analogy breaks down a bit at some points) until the person who owns the lawn is going to stop paying you, and take matters into his own hands...say, suing them, or shooting them, or whatever. In any case, the market for shit-removal will eventually fall apart if everyone is acting rationally and according to their own interests (again...not likely, but capitalism and communism both rely on everyone being good little min/maxing robots, so there we are).
The shitter-pays model makes the person who has an interest in shitting (the marketer, political campaign, whatever) have to pay to shit, rather than the person who has no interest in being shit upon. Since they are the ones who want to shit, and since both sides have to have a billing-agreement for shit-removal in order to do any shitting at all (admittedly the analogy breaks down here), and since there is the possibility of initiating un-asked for shits by those who would benefit from them, then it is only right that the initiator of the shitting should pay.
Gods, thank you, Hatta...that was the most fun I have had with rhetoric/logic since I proved the "How Many Hos Can Slobber My Knob Theorem" in sophomore year.
This. Employers that do the best they can to spend as little as they can have no reason to complain when they get what they pay for nothing...nothing to very little.
He knew they were angels...he called them Adonai in the Hebrew (Gen. 19:2). He wasn't offering hospitality and defending strangers...he was kissing the angel's asses. It's translated as "my lords", and "lord" is technically correct, but that word for lord is generally reserved for the big guy, not an average guy on the street. So this kinda changes the picture of "conflicting moralities" a bit. It's more of a conflict between morality and self-interest.
But Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac is still lionized. It's held up as the proper attitude, and the entire episode shows the Hebrew deity wants Abraham to prove he's willing to do it. It's his willingness to do so, and the desire on the Hebrew deity's part for worshipers willing to do that sort of thing, that presents the ethical problem.
Actually, philosophy of science and most of the scientific method is based on acknowledging and overcoming (to the best degree our limited perceptions and minds are capable of) the flawed abilities of humanity. The problem of the under-determination of the epistemological grounding and justification of science is taught in undergraduate classes, and the most basic of limitations, that any observation is "from" a given viewpoint in space/time, and that the final evaluations must be made by a human mind, which evolved to avoid tigers and reproduce, not to be "knowledge detectors and truth evaluators", is well-known, acknowledged, and taught in elementary classes and texts. Science does not claim these limitations don't exist...it simply acknowledges them and does the best it can to figure things out, anyway. The benefit of this technique is clear...planes fly, bridges stand, and we can chat using electrons. From EMPIRICAL evidence, it works.
From EMPIRICAL evidence, we can also conclude that you were either ignorant of the fact that science includes these notions and teaches them, or you were purposefully misrepresenting the truth to fit your agenda. If you are ignorant of science, why do you think you are qualified to judge it merits or flaws? If you were purposefully misrepresenting the truth, why? Do you think it's important to believe in true things? If so, why would you want to mislead other people into believing false things?
Note, IANAC (I am not a Christian, nor a theist, for most values of theist), but there is another way of seeing this that is just a tad bit more charitable to the sincere believers who wrote those accounts. These were a deeply religious people, who spawned from a group who originally lived outside the Sumerian city-state of Ur. They left civilization to follow a vision, Abraham's vision, and in those days that meant almost certain death from beasts, starvation, and thirst. The kind of people who do that sort of thing possess a deep and abiding faith that their god is firmly in charge of their situation, and the entire basis of Abraham's crew was a covenant with their god...a special, intimate relationship.
But, predictably, the world they existed in was horrible. Not only was their hunger, thirst, and wild animals, but there were other people. Being a political unit as well as a religious one, their trip also involved a promised land. Now, as a political group, that was no problem...they would just do what was normal back then. Go to war, kill the Canaanites or whoever, and take the land. But all of this suffering, all of this killing, all of this disease and starvation and thirst, needed to be accounted for. Other religions of the time were better equipped for this...they just said there were bad gods and good gods, and that all of the evil in life came from the bad gods. But the ancient Jews only had one god, so they had to reconcile the god they were to love, trust, and obey with a god that killed their children, demanded atrocities, and made the desert sun cruel.
So this attitude, as heinous as it is, didn't come about because these people were monsters...it's an attempt at a theodicy, and explanation for the existence of evil. It's also an attempt to reconcile the difficult tension of being both a political and religious belief-system. While other cultures at the same time were going through this, they were polytheistic or henotheistic, which allowed for more ambiguity and flexibility. They didn't need a concept of good that included the nastier parts of existence, while the monotheistic faiths did (and still do).
It's odd that with all this philosophizing on Abraham and Isaac no one has brought up Kierkegaard and "Fear and Trembling". There is an existentialist position for theism (albeit not theism as defined by most believers), although it might be more precise to say "a theistic position within existentialism".
While I am generally pretty critical of the Abrahamic faiths as practiced in the modern era, and mainstream, exoteric interpretations of religions in general, a nuanced interpretation is not only possible, but they abound within philosophical and theological literature. Abraham and Isaac is second only to the Sermon on the Mount as a favorite subject of philosophers.
Just a quick question...when, exactly, has people's ability to comment on the habits of soldiers been something that was at risk? In 34 years, I have seen our military going and attacking people who have nothing to do with us. They have never come near us and I have never felt in danger from any other nation. There have been many "threats" we have been told about, but none that I have seen. Since I know, from history and what has happened in other countries, that governments lie to their people about "threats" to justify their behavior all the time, why, exactly, should I have faith that our government is telling us the truth?
In addition to that, with every lie this country's government has been caught in, with every manipulation of the media, with every broken promise and bought politician and just plain bald-faced corruption across the board and both sides of the aisle, why should I have faith that our government is telling us the truth?
How do you know we are really the good guys? Everyone, from the sackers of Rome to the loyal comrades of the USSR were told they were the good guys by their leaders. The Nazis though they were the good guys. EVERYONE thinks their own side is the good guys.
Every soldier says they aren't murderers, because of course the murder of someone on the other side isn't murder, right? It's heroics so long as you murder for the right people. It's not torture...it's interrogation. It's not rape, it's psychological undermining.
But I'm sure that doesn't apply to YOUR friends. They're the heroes. They're the good ones. It's always the other guys, the bad apples, just acting on their own, with no orders or supervision at all. Because that's how the military is...it's just free time, and you run around just doing what you want with no commanding officers, or cameras, or anything to keep those bad apples in line. Of course. There's no reason for you to look at them twice in suspicion...or for us to look at you that way for the company you keep.
Of course.
Or you know...it might make more sense that people who like violence, control over others, and the prospect of killing people seek out positions in life which give them the opportunity to do those things with impunity. But I'm sure your way of viewing the world, the one that trusts governments to tell you the truth and soldiers to not be violent killers, is the right one. After all, it makes so much sense.
That's because except for the inconvenience it causes people, there's no story. Just a bunch of narcissistic idiots masturbating in public.
And then there are the protestors!
And if those were enough, then we wouldn't be talking about this. They aren't. Once upon a time, trees and plants did the job fine. Then we both cut them down and built factories everywhere that pump CO2 out, including little ones with wheels on them, so now we need a new solution.
While I am a supporter of eco-preservation and green tech, I have to agree that there is an entire industry sector out there who is eager as hell to turn saving the ecosystem into a goose laying golden eggs. While I know, of course, that planting trees, while technically a solution, isn't really a solution because people aren't going to give up urban environments any time soon (which is exactly where we need the most carbon fixing), the point is valid...there started being an eco-industrial complex the moment people with money started being willing to spend it on the issue.
There is also an edu-industrial complex who wants to own learning, an entertainment-industrial complex that already owns entertainment, etc, etc.
It's not just weapons dealers, bankers, the MPAA/RIAA, and Microsoft that want to own a sector of the economy. The minute it stopped just being fringe hippies that gave a shit about the environment, slime-buckets came oozing out of MBA programs all over the country to exploit it.
...we will see martial law declared preemptively, military and police forces will start flooding areas before anything can happen, and people who the computer says will be key figures in the revolution will be preemptively jailed and/or executed.
Don't get your hopes up, kids. This isn't the Foundation, and it won't be used to save civilization, it will be used to keep people already in power from even having a chance of losing that power. If you haven't noticed, the folks running the show think the only value of civilization is that it gives them a system within which to gain power and wealth.