i firmly believe that historically, religions have reduced bloodshed, rather than increase them, by asserting brotherhood of men over stupid tribal knuckleheads
now, why don't you join me in taking the next step and jettison religion altogher?
because surely you don't believe that people don't commit heinous acts in the name of religion. yes, less acts are conducted in the name of religion than in the name of the various tribal idiocies that came before religion, absolutely, just as you say
but this is no argument against progress. progress being: now that we've jettisoned tribalism and replaced it with the superiority of religion, let us now replace religion and with the next step in human progress
"Doing something wrong doesn't inherently make someone inferior, it just means they made a mistake. Is someone who got into a car accident less of a human being than someone who did not? "
no, not at all. the problem is equating someone doing something religous that is different than you as equivalent to a car crash, a mistake. surely you agree a car crash is a bad thing, right? well can you phrase someone who has a noncatholic religion as doing something that is in no way a bad thing, in no way a car crash, in no way a mistake? you can't compare their religion to a car crash without asserting your superiority, you realize that right? surely you can see the logical incoherence there. if i tell you that i think catholicism is a mistake, but a catholic is my equal, surely you can see the contradiction there, right? you can't think what someone else is doing is a mistake, no matter how innocently or accidentally chosen, without also saying at the same time that you think you are doing something superior. you are proposing a concept which is self-contradictory in nature. work out the contradictions in your own words
"Furthermore, your comments about original sin are off the mark. Catholics believe everyone, *EVERYONE*, is born with original sin. It is not a point of inferiority or superiority, but something that is common to all mankind. If I am Catholic and believe that my religion frees me from original sin, then I would be inclined to convert others to my religion, not kill, maim, or enslave them."
why should what a catholic believe apply to me? what if i believe i am not born with original sin? i am rejecting catholic dogma. now: how do you deal with such a person? do you accept that for other people they can reject these assertions and be your equal? or do you believe they must agree with the principles you have just outlined above before you may deal with them in fairness and full equality?
work out the inevitable logical conclusions of your own assertions, and find me waiting there, waiting for you to see that asserting any sort of "better way" versus "mistaken way" like the pope comment is the road to our doom
because surely you don't believe that if i think i believe i have a way that is closer to what god intends as ultimately true, that this is in no way dangerous to you or your family at some point. that i can believe in my superiority to you, however artfully or delicately phrased as you phrase above, and at no point in the future am i going to exclude you from equal justice and equal consideration. surely you see the problem there. what the pope said does not endorse genocide. it merely lays the groundwork for some other guy to endorse it. if i am fully true before the eyes of god, and some other group is less than before the eyes of god because they don't admit their "original sin" or whatever, than i am beginning the road to all of the evils in the world
surely you can see the path this sort of "i have a better path than you" thinking inevitably leads to. surely you don't believe that if one group considers itself on a better road than another that nothing bad will ever come out of that self-flattery
but surely you admit there is a very strong han nationalism, occasionally flamed by the press
witness the anti-japanese sentiment a few years back when the japanese pm visited a war shrine
and many years back, a us spy plane crashed off hainan, and chinese hacking of the west went crazy. i know, because i had a website then whose homepage was replaced with the chinese flag, the text "hacked by chinese, f*** poisonbox" (poisonbox was apprently a pro-western nationalist hacker of chinese sites)
so you may belittle nationalism, but you can't deny it is very real, and can be used for criminal purposes
of course violence will never end for bullshit reasons
do you believe we can minimize it, or not?
or are we doomed to hellish deaths by the millions for stupid reason forever?
if you don't believe in progress, you are part of the problem. you have complicitly accepted the evil that will happen in this world. this is not intelligence, this is mindless cynicism
i believe we can do better. do you believe that or not?
are you intellgient? or are you an empty pointless negative cynic?
"I may view them as on a wrong spiritual path, but certainly not inferior to myself."
if someone is on a wrong spiritual path, they are inferior to you. if you insist that noncatholics are NOT inferior to you, then you must give up the assertion they are on a wrong spiritual path. its either one or the other, as a simple consequence of logic. you cannot assert a wrongness in what someone else is doing, while at the same time saying what they are doing is not wrong. its either wrong, or its not. search your feelings, determine which opinion of yours is more true, and stop being logically contradicting yourself
"All comparisons aside, the pope's assertion doesn't compel me to go do violence to Protestants or any other religious group"
no, not at all. but the arbitrary reason for being superior to another group is the "original sin", the first step towards that violence. that if you don't believe you are superior for arbitrary reasons to another group, you won't ever commit violence against them. only when you beign to rationalize your superiority do you begin taking a journey down the road towards that violence. more likely, you are willing to listen to far off anecdotes and propagandistic assertions by demagogues, and accept some far off distant violence as acceptable according to your prejudice of superiority due to arbitrary reasons. a complcity of inaction to violence committed somewhere in your world in the name of your group
of course, you could say that no violence in the name of catholicism is acceptable to you, and you would protest for that fact. good for you. then you have already accepted you are not superior to other religions according to arbitrary reasons... but that is what the pope is asserting. to disavow violence in the name of catholicism, you must renounce the words the pope has spoken, because he has just given you the groundwork for the justification of that violence: he is saying catholics are superior for arbitrary reasons. this is the beginning of all the evil in the world
if you understand that one subsumes their identity to a group, you fail to see that someone can also subsume their identity to THE group (ie, all of humanity)
yes, as a facet of the evolution you are refer to, and are correct about
not because anyone wants to beleive in some cotton candy idealism of all of humanity, but simply as an evolutionarily superior attitude. groups do better than individuals and smaller groups when it comes to survival, which is indeed why we have these national and tribal and relgious identities in the first place. and we already see these metagroups evolving: religion. france and germany can murder each other for hundreds of years, yet they are both christian. you can be part of many different groups at the same time, and as you sort these allegiances and decide which is best, the dominant group that winds up surviving better than most, in our modern era, is the one who sees our allegiance to our global humanity as the superior approach, while the blind nationalists and religiously proud murder and impoverish each other
that what is motivating some people in china is exactly the kind of "us vs them" mentality you denounce in the west?
yes, such blind nationalist rabble rousing exists in the west
but what good does it do to pretend it doesn't exist in china?
at best, you are intellectually dishonest, at worst, you are exactly like those who are blindly nationalistic: criticism is something that you can only point at yourself. you are exactly like a blind nationalist because you think only in terms of western actions, as if there are no other actors in the world. in your world view, all we can do is criticize the west, that, for example, if china does some horrible crime, who are we to judge?
well, yes, we CAN judge. as a nonchinese, i am 100% free to criticize china. as long as i do it with intellectual honesty, that openly admits western crimes as well
in fact, to NOT criticize china at all, and only the west, is to serve only some sort of defeatist attitude. not nationally defeatist, but defeatist in terms of the idea that we need to move beyond nationalism, and think critically in terms of world problems free of nationalistic prejudice. you still have a nationalistic prejudice, you just apply it backwards than most. this is an intellectually inferior approach than the idea that you freely criticizing all parties in the world, free of nationalistic prejudice, basing your observations on principles, and principles alone
it is 100% possible to be proud of your catholicism, your scottishness, your whatever, and yet still know the limits of that
you present the false choice that you have to be proud of that at the sacrifice of knowing your shared sense of humanity, or visa versa. no, not at all
for example: i know murder is wrong. but i most definitely will kill someone who is pointing a gun at my family. there is no inconsistency in that view whatsoever. likewise, i can take pride in the catholic church, in its teachings, in its grand spectacle, and know at the same time, that the pope is 100% wrong when he says this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19692094/
no, pope, you are wrong: nothing about being a catholic means i am better than anyone else. and i have in no way reduced my catholic pride, nor have i inflated my pride into blind smug superiority over noncatholic humanity
its all about limits. it is a false dichotomy to say i have to choose between my belief in essential human equality and my religion/ nationality. no, it is not one or the other. would you tell me that if i don't bleieve in murder that i can't defend my family from being hurt or killed with deadly force of my own? of coruse you wouldn't. you understand why that's a flase dichotomy 100%. because its not so cut and dry. then don't present a false choice on the nature of pride either
and ps: please don't babble about "socialism". the word socialism has lost all meaning. before recent times it was already a very broad complex term, but recently its become nothing but a propagandistic term for anything outside certain partisan hackery. so you can label something "socialism" and then cease to think about the merits or detriments of a person's argument, and enter a retarded kneejerk automatic unthinking rejection of whatever someone says. if you wish to be an intellectually honest person, debate someone on the merits of what they say or lack thereof, don't apply mindless lightning rod labels and think you actually somehow defeat the other person's point of view, valid or not
his assertion is that only the catholic church is a true church
"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," the document said. The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession -- the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles.
here the pope is clearly asserting that catholic identity is superior to protestant identity
now not to gang up on the pope, as pretty much all other religions have this sort of exclusionary belief as a foundational concept: look to islam and its teachings on the superiority of the ummah, for example. but this is very much the source of all the problems in the world: "i am in group {xyz}, you are not in group {xyz}, therefore i am better than you"
it is very possible to be a proud catholic, or a proud sunni, or a proud sikh, or whatever, and yet know the limits of that pride, and subsume your pride in that identity to your identity as a human being. for example: knowing that just because you are a sunni, that does not mean you are automatically better than a shiite. unfortunately, someone just bombed and killed 60 shiites yesterday in iraq. most probably a sunni who views all shiites as dogs. not that there is not also some sunni who sees shiites as inferior but would never kill anyone, but the "original sin", if you will, that makes all crimes in this world possible of race upon race, ethnicity upon ethnicity, nation upon nation, religion upon relgion, etc., is this initial belief: "being in group x makes me superior to people not in group x"
until such a better time in our distant future when this sentiment is seen as the clear and vile evil that it is, right now we are very much mired in a barbarian era of foolish pride, as exemplified by the pope's own statements, a pope who openly embraces and encourages this vile evil of blind pride, of putting membership in some arbitrary group as a basis of superiority, openly breaking the bond of common hunaity we all share
in which the countries of today are like the states of the usa today
if i live in new york, and you live in ohio, we may harmlessly jeer each other at sporting matches, or fight over highway funds in the federal government, but there is no rationale or basis for me to pick up a gun and go murder you
we see this congealing of countries into larger constellations already with the EU, ASEAN, african union, etc...
unfortunately, we have hardcore ultranationalists right now, in china, in russia, in the usa, who are actively supportive of the notion of killing each other, or at least stomping out nearby smaller ethnic minorities and weaker nations nearby (tibet, cuba, georgia, etc.)
the truth of course is that we all belong to a group: humanity. but there are people who fimly 100% believe that their han ethnicity, that their islamic beliefs, that their americanness, etc., is something that is more important than their shared sense of humanity
this person is a source of our doom. it doesn't even have to be active. a wily demagogue can enunciate and manipulate their prejudices and sense of blind pride in such a way that death and suffering at the hands of islam, or the usa, or the red army is rationalized and perfectly acceptable
the entire history of humanity, which we are only beginning, is the journey to understand that our shared humanity is more important than our ethnicity, our nation, or our religion
unfortunately, we still live in a world where a majority of us have this backwards
i agree with you 100%: blind pride is part of human nature, and we're never ridding ourselves of it. i have blind pride. you have blind pride
i wrote the following line with your complaint in mind:
"one day we will have a world if not free of organized religon and ethnocentrism, at least outside the all-controlling clutches of such"
for example: you can't say with a straight face that organized religion is in complete control, nor that countries aren't coming out of the shadows of it even today. witness european history. witness laws that go against catholic edicts on human sexuality all over latin america today. witness the usa going from puritanical colonies to open separation between church and state. these are all positve developments. the muslim world though of course has a long way to go, but its not like the average intelligent muslim can't look at something like the taliban eating up pakistan and not believe and not understand that religious fundamentalism will only destory the muslim world. he or she will plant the seeds that will result in a progressive secular muslim world someday. we are a long way from it, but are you going to tell me its impossible or improbable?
which brings me to the tone of your comment: if i can put a finger on a force even more destructive than blind pride (something else, alas, intrinsicially human), it is: cynicism, negativity, stasis, lack of belief in progress
there actually is progress in this world, in spite of your naysaying. your cynicism is no replacement for real intelligence
if anyone looks to the far east and sees a land blissfully free of the stupidities of monotheism, think again: china does have a religion. that religion is called china. han imperialism is on par with all of the other vicious forces in this world we must contend with and defeat. not that china is alone. russian nationalism and imperialism, american nationalism and imperialism... it's all evil, it all must be defeated
one day we will have a world if not free of organized religon and ethnocentrism, at least outside the all-controlling clutches of such
until then, we must all contend with blind pride: the source of so much evil in this world
nationalism and organized religion are forces in this world which must be defeated if we are all to live in peace
of idiots hyperfocused on western domestic "crimes" while the taliban takes over nuclear pakistan
but of course, this is no reason to focus your criticisms outside the west, right? because what goes on in pakistan is after all totally the west's fault
if you can't appreciate the commonsense idea that the cinema is a group experience that reinforces your laughter/ fear/ excitement, then you lack the capacity to understand the subject matter at all. if you still persist in disingenuously asserting that you CAN appreciate the fucking obvious as some sort of vague sociological academic text that can guide you, then you can google it yourself, you have fingers, right?
i am not going to sit here and spoonfeed you the effort you need to make yourself if you actually have any intellectual honesty about your supposed desire to understand me
but don't worry about it: obviously, my lack of desire to sit here and spoonfeed you google links is inescapable proof of me being horribly compromised in my impartiality and having an extreme irrational bias
let us imagine for a moment you live in a world where the police are completely reponsible and accountable. how are they supposed to successfully keep YOUR community free of crime with a citizen so mindlessly hostile to their basic function?
your entire mentality ensures your community is a crime infested hellhole. enjoy it. you created it. no, not the police, the police serve you, they are your servants. you use them to keep your community crime free. if you instead you imagine them to be mindless jail-stuffing goons you must avoid at all cost, you get nothing but criminals walking away scott free from crime. i hope you don't live near me, because your mentality enables crime
now let's imagine that the police do fall short of good accountability and responsibility. how do you bring them up a notch? and the answer is, citizens begin to hold the police accountable for their actions, so a regular and normal human sense of respnsibility and accountability can be upheld again
in this manner, we begin to realize that your attitude only serves to perpetuate and extend the evil police habits you despise
you're a codependent. you create your own victimhood. stop using your retarded rationalizations as a crutch and start expecting some accountability and responsibility from your police, and you'll actually get it. start with the assumption they are corrupt, and you will get a community chock-a-block with criminals, since you have guaranteed they go unpunished since you won't cooperate with their removal. start with the assumption they aren't corrupt, and when the polcie do fall short, bring it to the attention fo the press, the judiciary, and you get justice if you live a just society
did your parents lock you in basement, and occasionally throw tablescraps down the stairs? what dystopian asocial reality do you think your low iq advice serves? assuming you live a western democracy, you can fix your police. really, moron
where do you get your bullshit attitude? hollywood movies? do you live in an egyptian or a brazilian favella?
most probably, you are some posturing upper middle class suburban poser
did your parents lock you in basement, and occasionally throw tablescraps down the stairs?
what dystopian asocial reality do you think this advice serves?
let's put it this way: say you are 100% correct in your assessment. then we agree that this reality is wrong, and needs to be corrected. then the question is, how do we correct it? and the answer is, citizens begin to hold the police accountable for their actions, so a regular and normal human sense of respnsibility and accountability can be upheld again
in this manner, we begin to realize that your attitude only serves to perpetuate and extend the evil police habits you despise
you're a victim, a codependent. stop using your retarded rationalizations as a crutch and start expecting some accountability and responsibility from your police, and you'll actually get it
which you mostly do get already, assuming you live a western democracy
where do you get this bullshit? hollywood movies? do you live in an egyptian or a brazilian favella?
most probably, you are some posturing upper middle class suburban poser
do you mean if you witness a crime you shouldn't report it?
please clarify your position, because "stop snitching" only guarantees your community is going to become a criminally infested hell, complete with brutal and corrupt police
now take your honesty further and admit that you are in a small minority on the issue. you are hyperaware (in a debilitating way, not an enabling way)
the vast majority can tolerate the occasional interruption. its just thicker skin. our mind's attention doesn't crumble at the slightest diversion. if i would have any suggestion for you, it would be to work on this problem of yours, because such hyperattentive focus, unless you are a monk, can only serve to hobble your life, careerwise and relationshipwise. occasional interruptions are the norm of life. rather than expect the moviehouse to adapt to you, you really need to learn to adapt to it. and this applies to all the other real life scenarios where i bet this inability to focus has been detrimental in your life
now NO ONE can tolerate an ongoing interruption, but i'm a pretty regular movie goer in a famously rude city, and this problem is exceedingly rare. and if my memory serves me right, in the scenario where the interruption was ongoing, the guy was asked to leave the theatre by a movie house employee, and he did
in other words, the problem you refer to just isn't a real problem for the vast majority of us, or you are overrepersenting the threat
where you have a seinfeld sitcom like scenario where a large group of friends are always cheerful and happy to see whatever movie you like whenever you want. no job, no family, no disagreements with you, no disagreements on the time, no disagreements on the movie choice, always cheerful. and even then, none of them has a cellphone they forget to turn off (smirk)
hey, if you have this magical group of friends who is always magically showing up for your movie nights, you win dude
but until this fantasy of yours is reality, i call bullshit, and assert your magical group of always available always agreeable friends is a complete fabrication on your part in the context of trying to win a retarded argument on slashdot you've already lost, by going to such laughable fabrications in order to bolster a clearly wrong and losing pov
but don't worry about me
you have your large magical stable of always available, supportive, lobotmized, ritalined and xanaxed friends at your ready disposal, so why should i bother you?;-P
iran, egypt, cuba, china: everything you do is spied upon. if you say something against the party or the religion, you are brutally punished
western democracies: right wing politicians put forth timid legislation weakly attempting to curtail something everyone agrees is truly evil, like child pornography. opponents vociferously shout the retarded legislation down
these are somehow equivalent scenarios in some people's minds. as if the mere existence of idiot social conservatives in western countries is equivalent to them being in absolute power, as they are in other parts of the world where real censorship exists
the irony of course is that the vociferous opposition that so many of the west enjoy, like right here on slashdot, is grounds for being imprisoned in real censorship countries. well, if we are the equivalent of such truly censorsing countires, why aren't you in jail? why do you feel so free to call whatever politician you dislike a complete asshole?
when and if you have real reason to fear calling obama a poopy head or gw bush a moron, then we have arrived at equivalent censorship status quos. until such time, stop being a hysterical twit and show the slightest bit of intellectual honesty and admit some places have it a hell of whole lot worse off than western countries in terms of freedom of expression
and when i say "hell of a lot worse" i know for some of you this is grounds to continuing criticizing the west on this issue. as if it is more important to somehow pursue impossible to achieve perfection in the west than it is important to fight truly egregious conditions elsewhere
a lot of the commentary here has to do with the idea the crews should be armed
the rationale being that this is the best policy in civic life as well
well, crews are not armed, because when you give arms to a handful of guys in the middle of the ocean, interesting scenarios develop involving needless death. not even the majority of such scenarios having anything to do with pirates. hey, don't argue with me. this is official policy on the high seas for a reason
which is exactly why no one should have guns in civic life as well: why multiply the number of scenarios in which the outcome is death for the victims, nevermind the perpetrators
i'd actually like to see the common sense we have on the high seas apply to common sense in civic life: stop the proliferation of guns in civic life, which only results in thousands of needless deaths due top pointless escalation from random domestic situations, posturing teenagers, curious children, miscommunications, accidents, etc.
not that you will see gun proponents ever admit this. in their eyes, a gun is always and forever more used only according to the most virtuous of reasons, and the outcome is always good. even though reality and history and statistical fact proves otherwise, by orders of magnitude
but don't argue with me. argue with the wisdom of those who maintain ships on the high seas
as for what to do about the new pirate situation off of somalia that seems to challenge this wisdom: ships in convoys, chaperoned by warships, just world war i&ii in the north atlantic when german uboats were on the prowl. just like we deal with crime on land: with police, not with the arming of random yahoos on the street with dirty harry complexes
you're bound to crush a few warriors in the process
i really don't think that the dismantling of the old school corporate distribution networks will be a painless process. a dying dinosaur still has a powerful kick
but if you can think up some way to appease the suffering, then please, chime in. a victim's legal defense fund perhaps?
Slashdot Mirror
i firmly believe that historically, religions have reduced bloodshed, rather than increase them, by asserting brotherhood of men over stupid tribal knuckleheads
now, why don't you join me in taking the next step and jettison religion altogher?
because surely you don't believe that people don't commit heinous acts in the name of religion. yes, less acts are conducted in the name of religion than in the name of the various tribal idiocies that came before religion, absolutely, just as you say
but this is no argument against progress. progress being: now that we've jettisoned tribalism and replaced it with the superiority of religion, let us now replace religion and with the next step in human progress
"Doing something wrong doesn't inherently make someone inferior, it just means they made a mistake. Is someone who got into a car accident less of a human being than someone who did not? "
no, not at all. the problem is equating someone doing something religous that is different than you as equivalent to a car crash, a mistake. surely you agree a car crash is a bad thing, right? well can you phrase someone who has a noncatholic religion as doing something that is in no way a bad thing, in no way a car crash, in no way a mistake? you can't compare their religion to a car crash without asserting your superiority, you realize that right? surely you can see the logical incoherence there. if i tell you that i think catholicism is a mistake, but a catholic is my equal, surely you can see the contradiction there, right? you can't think what someone else is doing is a mistake, no matter how innocently or accidentally chosen, without also saying at the same time that you think you are doing something superior. you are proposing a concept which is self-contradictory in nature. work out the contradictions in your own words
"Furthermore, your comments about original sin are off the mark. Catholics believe everyone, *EVERYONE*, is born with original sin. It is not a point of inferiority or superiority, but something that is common to all mankind. If I am Catholic and believe that my religion frees me from original sin, then I would be inclined to convert others to my religion, not kill, maim, or enslave them."
why should what a catholic believe apply to me? what if i believe i am not born with original sin? i am rejecting catholic dogma. now: how do you deal with such a person? do you accept that for other people they can reject these assertions and be your equal? or do you believe they must agree with the principles you have just outlined above before you may deal with them in fairness and full equality?
work out the inevitable logical conclusions of your own assertions, and find me waiting there, waiting for you to see that asserting any sort of "better way" versus "mistaken way" like the pope comment is the road to our doom
because surely you don't believe that if i think i believe i have a way that is closer to what god intends as ultimately true, that this is in no way dangerous to you or your family at some point. that i can believe in my superiority to you, however artfully or delicately phrased as you phrase above, and at no point in the future am i going to exclude you from equal justice and equal consideration. surely you see the problem there. what the pope said does not endorse genocide. it merely lays the groundwork for some other guy to endorse it. if i am fully true before the eyes of god, and some other group is less than before the eyes of god because they don't admit their "original sin" or whatever, than i am beginning the road to all of the evils in the world
surely you can see the path this sort of "i have a better path than you" thinking inevitably leads to. surely you don't believe that if one group considers itself on a better road than another that nothing bad will ever come out of that self-flattery
rarely are motivations so one-sided
but surely you admit there is a very strong han nationalism, occasionally flamed by the press
witness the anti-japanese sentiment a few years back when the japanese pm visited a war shrine
and many years back, a us spy plane crashed off hainan, and chinese hacking of the west went crazy. i know, because i had a website then whose homepage was replaced with the chinese flag, the text "hacked by chinese, f*** poisonbox" (poisonbox was apprently a pro-western nationalist hacker of chinese sites)
so you may belittle nationalism, but you can't deny it is very real, and can be used for criminal purposes
of course violence will never end for bullshit reasons
do you believe we can minimize it, or not?
or are we doomed to hellish deaths by the millions for stupid reason forever?
if you don't believe in progress, you are part of the problem. you have complicitly accepted the evil that will happen in this world. this is not intelligence, this is mindless cynicism
i believe we can do better. do you believe that or not?
are you intellgient? or are you an empty pointless negative cynic?
"I may view them as on a wrong spiritual path, but certainly not inferior to myself."
if someone is on a wrong spiritual path, they are inferior to you. if you insist that noncatholics are NOT inferior to you, then you must give up the assertion they are on a wrong spiritual path. its either one or the other, as a simple consequence of logic. you cannot assert a wrongness in what someone else is doing, while at the same time saying what they are doing is not wrong. its either wrong, or its not. search your feelings, determine which opinion of yours is more true, and stop being logically contradicting yourself
"All comparisons aside, the pope's assertion doesn't compel me to go do violence to Protestants or any other religious group"
no, not at all. but the arbitrary reason for being superior to another group is the "original sin", the first step towards that violence. that if you don't believe you are superior for arbitrary reasons to another group, you won't ever commit violence against them. only when you beign to rationalize your superiority do you begin taking a journey down the road towards that violence. more likely, you are willing to listen to far off anecdotes and propagandistic assertions by demagogues, and accept some far off distant violence as acceptable according to your prejudice of superiority due to arbitrary reasons. a complcity of inaction to violence committed somewhere in your world in the name of your group
of course, you could say that no violence in the name of catholicism is acceptable to you, and you would protest for that fact. good for you. then you have already accepted you are not superior to other religions according to arbitrary reasons... but that is what the pope is asserting. to disavow violence in the name of catholicism, you must renounce the words the pope has spoken, because he has just given you the groundwork for the justification of that violence: he is saying catholics are superior for arbitrary reasons. this is the beginning of all the evil in the world
if you understand that one subsumes their identity to a group, you fail to see that someone can also subsume their identity to THE group (ie, all of humanity)
yes, as a facet of the evolution you are refer to, and are correct about
not because anyone wants to beleive in some cotton candy idealism of all of humanity, but simply as an evolutionarily superior attitude. groups do better than individuals and smaller groups when it comes to survival, which is indeed why we have these national and tribal and relgious identities in the first place. and we already see these metagroups evolving: religion. france and germany can murder each other for hundreds of years, yet they are both christian. you can be part of many different groups at the same time, and as you sort these allegiances and decide which is best, the dominant group that winds up surviving better than most, in our modern era, is the one who sees our allegiance to our global humanity as the superior approach, while the blind nationalists and religiously proud murder and impoverish each other
that what is motivating some people in china is exactly the kind of "us vs them" mentality you denounce in the west?
yes, such blind nationalist rabble rousing exists in the west
but what good does it do to pretend it doesn't exist in china?
at best, you are intellectually dishonest, at worst, you are exactly like those who are blindly nationalistic: criticism is something that you can only point at yourself. you are exactly like a blind nationalist because you think only in terms of western actions, as if there are no other actors in the world. in your world view, all we can do is criticize the west, that, for example, if china does some horrible crime, who are we to judge?
well, yes, we CAN judge. as a nonchinese, i am 100% free to criticize china. as long as i do it with intellectual honesty, that openly admits western crimes as well
in fact, to NOT criticize china at all, and only the west, is to serve only some sort of defeatist attitude. not nationally defeatist, but defeatist in terms of the idea that we need to move beyond nationalism, and think critically in terms of world problems free of nationalistic prejudice. you still have a nationalistic prejudice, you just apply it backwards than most. this is an intellectually inferior approach than the idea that you freely criticizing all parties in the world, free of nationalistic prejudice, basing your observations on principles, and principles alone
it is 100% possible to be proud of your catholicism, your scottishness, your whatever, and yet still know the limits of that
you present the false choice that you have to be proud of that at the sacrifice of knowing your shared sense of humanity, or visa versa. no, not at all
for example: i know murder is wrong. but i most definitely will kill someone who is pointing a gun at my family. there is no inconsistency in that view whatsoever. likewise, i can take pride in the catholic church, in its teachings, in its grand spectacle, and know at the same time, that the pope is 100% wrong when he says this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19692094/
no, pope, you are wrong: nothing about being a catholic means i am better than anyone else. and i have in no way reduced my catholic pride, nor have i inflated my pride into blind smug superiority over noncatholic humanity
its all about limits. it is a false dichotomy to say i have to choose between my belief in essential human equality and my religion/ nationality. no, it is not one or the other. would you tell me that if i don't bleieve in murder that i can't defend my family from being hurt or killed with deadly force of my own? of coruse you wouldn't. you understand why that's a flase dichotomy 100%. because its not so cut and dry. then don't present a false choice on the nature of pride either
and ps: please don't babble about "socialism". the word socialism has lost all meaning. before recent times it was already a very broad complex term, but recently its become nothing but a propagandistic term for anything outside certain partisan hackery. so you can label something "socialism" and then cease to think about the merits or detriments of a person's argument, and enter a retarded kneejerk automatic unthinking rejection of whatever someone says. if you wish to be an intellectually honest person, debate someone on the merits of what they say or lack thereof, don't apply mindless lightning rod labels and think you actually somehow defeat the other person's point of view, valid or not
there is nothing wrong with being catholic
there is nothing wrong being scottish
there is nothing wrong with being american
etc.
the problem comes when one of these features of your identity is something you consider more important than your shared sense of humanity
for example, the pope breaks this rule:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19692094/
his assertion is that only the catholic church is a true church
here the pope is clearly asserting that catholic identity is superior to protestant identity
now not to gang up on the pope, as pretty much all other religions have this sort of exclusionary belief as a foundational concept: look to islam and its teachings on the superiority of the ummah, for example. but this is very much the source of all the problems in the world: "i am in group {xyz}, you are not in group {xyz}, therefore i am better than you"
it is very possible to be a proud catholic, or a proud sunni, or a proud sikh, or whatever, and yet know the limits of that pride, and subsume your pride in that identity to your identity as a human being. for example: knowing that just because you are a sunni, that does not mean you are automatically better than a shiite. unfortunately, someone just bombed and killed 60 shiites yesterday in iraq. most probably a sunni who views all shiites as dogs. not that there is not also some sunni who sees shiites as inferior but would never kill anyone, but the "original sin", if you will, that makes all crimes in this world possible of race upon race, ethnicity upon ethnicity, nation upon nation, religion upon relgion, etc., is this initial belief: "being in group x makes me superior to people not in group x"
until such a better time in our distant future when this sentiment is seen as the clear and vile evil that it is, right now we are very much mired in a barbarian era of foolish pride, as exemplified by the pope's own statements, a pope who openly embraces and encourages this vile evil of blind pride, of putting membership in some arbitrary group as a basis of superiority, openly breaking the bond of common hunaity we all share
in which the countries of today are like the states of the usa today
if i live in new york, and you live in ohio, we may harmlessly jeer each other at sporting matches, or fight over highway funds in the federal government, but there is no rationale or basis for me to pick up a gun and go murder you
we see this congealing of countries into larger constellations already with the EU, ASEAN, african union, etc...
unfortunately, we have hardcore ultranationalists right now, in china, in russia, in the usa, who are actively supportive of the notion of killing each other, or at least stomping out nearby smaller ethnic minorities and weaker nations nearby (tibet, cuba, georgia, etc.)
the truth of course is that we all belong to a group: humanity. but there are people who fimly 100% believe that their han ethnicity, that their islamic beliefs, that their americanness, etc., is something that is more important than their shared sense of humanity
this person is a source of our doom. it doesn't even have to be active. a wily demagogue can enunciate and manipulate their prejudices and sense of blind pride in such a way that death and suffering at the hands of islam, or the usa, or the red army is rationalized and perfectly acceptable
the entire history of humanity, which we are only beginning, is the journey to understand that our shared humanity is more important than our ethnicity, our nation, or our religion
unfortunately, we still live in a world where a majority of us have this backwards
i agree with you 100%: blind pride is part of human nature, and we're never ridding ourselves of it. i have blind pride. you have blind pride
i wrote the following line with your complaint in mind:
"one day we will have a world if not free of organized religon and ethnocentrism, at least outside the all-controlling clutches of such"
for example: you can't say with a straight face that organized religion is in complete control, nor that countries aren't coming out of the shadows of it even today. witness european history. witness laws that go against catholic edicts on human sexuality all over latin america today. witness the usa going from puritanical colonies to open separation between church and state. these are all positve developments. the muslim world though of course has a long way to go, but its not like the average intelligent muslim can't look at something like the taliban eating up pakistan and not believe and not understand that religious fundamentalism will only destory the muslim world. he or she will plant the seeds that will result in a progressive secular muslim world someday. we are a long way from it, but are you going to tell me its impossible or improbable?
which brings me to the tone of your comment: if i can put a finger on a force even more destructive than blind pride (something else, alas, intrinsicially human), it is: cynicism, negativity, stasis, lack of belief in progress
there actually is progress in this world, in spite of your naysaying. your cynicism is no replacement for real intelligence
by the idiocies of nationalism
if anyone looks to the far east and sees a land blissfully free of the stupidities of monotheism, think again: china does have a religion. that religion is called china. han imperialism is on par with all of the other vicious forces in this world we must contend with and defeat. not that china is alone. russian nationalism and imperialism, american nationalism and imperialism... it's all evil, it all must be defeated
one day we will have a world if not free of organized religon and ethnocentrism, at least outside the all-controlling clutches of such
until then, we must all contend with blind pride: the source of so much evil in this world
nationalism and organized religion are forces in this world which must be defeated if we are all to live in peace
of idiots hyperfocused on western domestic "crimes" while the taliban takes over nuclear pakistan
but of course, this is no reason to focus your criticisms outside the west, right? because what goes on in pakistan is after all totally the west's fault
(smacks forehead)
if you can't appreciate the commonsense idea that the cinema is a group experience that reinforces your laughter/ fear/ excitement, then you lack the capacity to understand the subject matter at all. if you still persist in disingenuously asserting that you CAN appreciate the fucking obvious as some sort of vague sociological academic text that can guide you, then you can google it yourself, you have fingers, right?
i am not going to sit here and spoonfeed you the effort you need to make yourself if you actually have any intellectual honesty about your supposed desire to understand me
but don't worry about it: obviously, my lack of desire to sit here and spoonfeed you google links is inescapable proof of me being horribly compromised in my impartiality and having an extreme irrational bias
zzz
let us imagine for a moment you live in a world where the police are completely reponsible and accountable. how are they supposed to successfully keep YOUR community free of crime with a citizen so mindlessly hostile to their basic function?
your entire mentality ensures your community is a crime infested hellhole. enjoy it. you created it. no, not the police, the police serve you, they are your servants. you use them to keep your community crime free. if you instead you imagine them to be mindless jail-stuffing goons you must avoid at all cost, you get nothing but criminals walking away scott free from crime. i hope you don't live near me, because your mentality enables crime
now let's imagine that the police do fall short of good accountability and responsibility. how do you bring them up a notch? and the answer is, citizens begin to hold the police accountable for their actions, so a regular and normal human sense of respnsibility and accountability can be upheld again
in this manner, we begin to realize that your attitude only serves to perpetuate and extend the evil police habits you despise
you're a codependent. you create your own victimhood. stop using your retarded rationalizations as a crutch and start expecting some accountability and responsibility from your police, and you'll actually get it. start with the assumption they are corrupt, and you will get a community chock-a-block with criminals, since you have guaranteed they go unpunished since you won't cooperate with their removal. start with the assumption they aren't corrupt, and when the polcie do fall short, bring it to the attention fo the press, the judiciary, and you get justice if you live a just society
did your parents lock you in basement, and occasionally throw tablescraps down the stairs? what dystopian asocial reality do you think your low iq advice serves? assuming you live a western democracy, you can fix your police. really, moron
where do you get your bullshit attitude? hollywood movies? do you live in an egyptian or a brazilian favella?
most probably, you are some posturing upper middle class suburban poser
did your parents lock you in basement, and occasionally throw tablescraps down the stairs?
what dystopian asocial reality do you think this advice serves?
let's put it this way: say you are 100% correct in your assessment. then we agree that this reality is wrong, and needs to be corrected. then the question is, how do we correct it? and the answer is, citizens begin to hold the police accountable for their actions, so a regular and normal human sense of respnsibility and accountability can be upheld again
in this manner, we begin to realize that your attitude only serves to perpetuate and extend the evil police habits you despise
you're a victim, a codependent. stop using your retarded rationalizations as a crutch and start expecting some accountability and responsibility from your police, and you'll actually get it
which you mostly do get already, assuming you live a western democracy
where do you get this bullshit? hollywood movies? do you live in an egyptian or a brazilian favella?
most probably, you are some posturing upper middle class suburban poser
do you mean if you witness a crime you shouldn't report it?
please clarify your position, because "stop snitching" only guarantees your community is going to become a criminally infested hell, complete with brutal and corrupt police
but its still way too long
cut out over a half, and then you have a commercially viable movie
now take your honesty further and admit that you are in a small minority on the issue. you are hyperaware (in a debilitating way, not an enabling way)
the vast majority can tolerate the occasional interruption. its just thicker skin. our mind's attention doesn't crumble at the slightest diversion. if i would have any suggestion for you, it would be to work on this problem of yours, because such hyperattentive focus, unless you are a monk, can only serve to hobble your life, careerwise and relationshipwise. occasional interruptions are the norm of life. rather than expect the moviehouse to adapt to you, you really need to learn to adapt to it. and this applies to all the other real life scenarios where i bet this inability to focus has been detrimental in your life
now NO ONE can tolerate an ongoing interruption, but i'm a pretty regular movie goer in a famously rude city, and this problem is exceedingly rare. and if my memory serves me right, in the scenario where the interruption was ongoing, the guy was asked to leave the theatre by a movie house employee, and he did
in other words, the problem you refer to just isn't a real problem for the vast majority of us, or you are overrepersenting the threat
in some sort of bizarre cult
where you have a seinfeld sitcom like scenario where a large group of friends are always cheerful and happy to see whatever movie you like whenever you want. no job, no family, no disagreements with you, no disagreements on the time, no disagreements on the movie choice, always cheerful. and even then, none of them has a cellphone they forget to turn off (smirk)
hey, if you have this magical group of friends who is always magically showing up for your movie nights, you win dude
but until this fantasy of yours is reality, i call bullshit, and assert your magical group of always available always agreeable friends is a complete fabrication on your part in the context of trying to win a retarded argument on slashdot you've already lost, by going to such laughable fabrications in order to bolster a clearly wrong and losing pov
but don't worry about me
you have your large magical stable of always available, supportive, lobotmized, ritalined and xanaxed friends at your ready disposal, so why should i bother you? ;-P
iran, egypt, cuba, china: everything you do is spied upon. if you say something against the party or the religion, you are brutally punished
western democracies: right wing politicians put forth timid legislation weakly attempting to curtail something everyone agrees is truly evil, like child pornography. opponents vociferously shout the retarded legislation down
these are somehow equivalent scenarios in some people's minds. as if the mere existence of idiot social conservatives in western countries is equivalent to them being in absolute power, as they are in other parts of the world where real censorship exists
the irony of course is that the vociferous opposition that so many of the west enjoy, like right here on slashdot, is grounds for being imprisoned in real censorship countries. well, if we are the equivalent of such truly censorsing countires, why aren't you in jail? why do you feel so free to call whatever politician you dislike a complete asshole?
when and if you have real reason to fear calling obama a poopy head or gw bush a moron, then we have arrived at equivalent censorship status quos. until such time, stop being a hysterical twit and show the slightest bit of intellectual honesty and admit some places have it a hell of whole lot worse off than western countries in terms of freedom of expression
and when i say "hell of a lot worse" i know for some of you this is grounds to continuing criticizing the west on this issue. as if it is more important to somehow pursue impossible to achieve perfection in the west than it is important to fight truly egregious conditions elsewhere
if a real life skynet evolved out of the computing power needed to make the next terminator movie realistic ;-)
a lot of the commentary here has to do with the idea the crews should be armed
the rationale being that this is the best policy in civic life as well
well, crews are not armed, because when you give arms to a handful of guys in the middle of the ocean, interesting scenarios develop involving needless death. not even the majority of such scenarios having anything to do with pirates. hey, don't argue with me. this is official policy on the high seas for a reason
which is exactly why no one should have guns in civic life as well: why multiply the number of scenarios in which the outcome is death for the victims, nevermind the perpetrators
i'd actually like to see the common sense we have on the high seas apply to common sense in civic life: stop the proliferation of guns in civic life, which only results in thousands of needless deaths due top pointless escalation from random domestic situations, posturing teenagers, curious children, miscommunications, accidents, etc.
not that you will see gun proponents ever admit this. in their eyes, a gun is always and forever more used only according to the most virtuous of reasons, and the outcome is always good. even though reality and history and statistical fact proves otherwise, by orders of magnitude
but don't argue with me. argue with the wisdom of those who maintain ships on the high seas
as for what to do about the new pirate situation off of somalia that seems to challenge this wisdom: ships in convoys, chaperoned by warships, just world war i&ii in the north atlantic when german uboats were on the prowl. just like we deal with crime on land: with police, not with the arming of random yahoos on the street with dirty harry complexes
you're bound to crush a few warriors in the process
i really don't think that the dismantling of the old school corporate distribution networks will be a painless process. a dying dinosaur still has a powerful kick
but if you can think up some way to appease the suffering, then please, chime in. a victim's legal defense fund perhaps?