LOki
Refusenik   SSHOLE |
Posts: 484 Registered: 3/8/2002 Offline
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2/19/2006 at 15:21 |
Thought provoking articles regarding the nature of evil.
PART ONE:
"...evil is the irrational, willful denial and evasion of the facts of reality. It is the deliberate defiance of the facts and laws of nature, a spitting in the face of existence. Human survival requires rationality, a commitment to discover and act on the full truth. Evil men stand opposed to this – to reality, to the rational, to every value on which human life depends. "
PART TWO:
"The ethics of sacrifice has one purpose and one result: it enables parasites to survive as leeches on the efforts of productive men. It enables irrational men who evade reality to drain the blood of rational men who embrace it. "
PART THREE:
"If the morality of sacrifice is the ethics of evil, then the primacy of consciousness is the metaphysics of evil. In theory, it is the claim that the will of some consciousness controls reality; in practice, it is the means by which criminals, clergy or dictators control rational, productive men. If some consciousness rules metaphysically, then its agents or devotees must rule socially. The result is that those who deal in unreality give orders – and those who deal with reality take them."
PART FOUR:
"The essence of religion is that God is the creator and governor of reality. Man must serve God. Human thinking is subordinated to God’s will, reason is rejected in favor of faith, unquestioning obedience to authority is demanded and independent thinkers run the risk of being burned at the stake. Religion does attack the mind; it does turn man’s life on earth into a hell."
PART FIVE:
"The collectivists deny the efficacy of the mind, thereby attacking the good at its source. Destruction is their goal and their result; the body counts in China, Russia, Germany, and Cambodia bear grim testimony to this."
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jwalker
Token Discordian  SSHOLEPosts: 949 Registered: 8/6/2005 Offline
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2/19/2006 at 18:38 |
Philosophy - you can talk about it all day long, but what it really boils down to is how things are vs. how things could be.
Although I agree in principle to most of the quotes above, I believe the reality is far more complex and should always be taken in context. Otherwise, it's just finger-pointing.
For example, I don't think religion in itself is "evil" by nature. If people behaved responsibly and discussed their ideas of God with one another instead of trying to beat other people into submission then it wouldn't be so bad, right? The same could be said of politics and science.
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dinozoa
SENATOR BABYHEAD  Posts: 319 Registered: 7/18/2004 Offline
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2/19/2006 at 21:55 |
I disagree with pretty much every single one of those arguments (surprise).
1. A lot of times there will be a right answer and a wrong answer. Is failure to recognize the right answer evil? I think it's just being wrong. Being wrong can lead to catastrophic consequences, but I don't consider ignorance evil. As for the second part of that statement, I disagree that human survival requires ;a commitment to discover and act on the full truth.' We clearly don't know everything right now, and yet we are surviving (as much as anyone destined to die can survive), unless the author wants to make some ridiculous argument about the nature of survival or truth. This second part of the statement is stupid.
2. I think the ethics of sacrifice as outlined here is the idea of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need (language of communism)." I don't think the author is saying we shouldn't support our elderly parents, at our expense, or die in a war so others may live without fear (language of terrorism.)
The author is really taking this one way to far out. I'm thinking about it this way. To provide everyone in America with adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, and a high school education, would cost several billion dollars. If we increased the part of the IRS that goes after income tax evasion, not increasing income tax itself, we could probably find many billions of dollars lying around like small change in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island off shores.
It is not ridiculous to propose a plan, in the name of ethical sacrifice, that would provide for the immediate needs of millions, at the minor expense and inconvenience of a few.
3.I'm not sure where to start on this one because the statement is a little out of context, but I think it's generally not backed up historically. The guy is confusing a 'might makes right' argument with an argument that religion enables evil people to rule over good people. In my eyes, religion is just the middleman. You still have to have guns to back it up.
4. Ok, I tend to think that chrisitianity is a pretty bad religion, for a lot of the same reasons he lists here, but I don't like the statement in the beginning which equates all religion with christianity. It does make his argument stronger, and it is a bold statement, but his definition of what religion is, other than christianity, isn't apparent.
So I agree with this statement, I just disagree with how he says it. I don't think what follows his initial statement is true for all relgions.
5. First of all, what about Cuba? What about Nicaragua? What about Vietnam?
What about Venezuela, right now? They are communists, but they are not racking up high body counts.
Why don't we look at capitalist countries that went wrong? America - see body counts before and during the civil war of black slaves and those who defended black slaves, see the Vietnam war, see WWI and WWII, see Iraq 1 and 2.
England - see India
France - see Algeria
Dutch - see pretty much everywhere.
and so on.
So I don't think an ideology should be judged by the failures of some of its representatives.
Secondly, these ideologies don't attack the mind. I wanted to make a big old argument about how he's' totally wrong about communism, but on further review of his article, it's not clear that he properly equates collectivism with communism, other than to imply he cannot find the difference between them.
Basically, my counterargument would be, collectivism is a straw-hat argument developed by Ayn Rand and others, to attack communism. It's not a philosophy anybody actually follows, not even Marx, who the objectivists and capitalists love to bring up as the ultimate collectivist.
Even capitalism has some form of collectivism, except we don't pay as much to the people who are sacrificing their potential to slave away at a dead end job, and generally despise them, calling them niggers, or illegal aliens, or white trash, or whatever.
In communism, it's not such a bad thing to have a crappy job, as somebody's got to do it. Way to take one for the team, others might say.
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I didn't proofread this, I will edit it if it needs it.
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jwalker
Token Discordian SSHOLEPosts: 949 Registered: 8/6/2005 Offline
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2/19/2006 at 23:20 |
Dinozoa: Is failure to recognize the right answer evil? I think it's just being wrong.
Think again.
I'll tell you evil. Evil is those fucking spamware fuckers in the advertising empire, loading their sneaky viruses on your machine. You think they care one iota about right or wrong? Think again.
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dinozoa
SENATOR BABYHEAD Posts: 319 Registered: 7/18/2004 Offline
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2/19/2006 at 23:39 |
Way to be off topic. I didn't say there wasn't such a thing as good and evil, I just said I don't think ignorance is necessarily evil. I think it can be, just not always.
So explain yourself: what do hackers have to do with the idea of evil being willful ignorance?
In the Platonic dialogues, there's lots of discussion about knowledge being virtue, and ignorance being evil. It's funny that the author is so down on christianity, as it's pretty much "platonics for the masses."
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jwalker
Token Discordian SSHOLEPosts: 949 Registered: 8/6/2005 Offline
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2/20/2006 at 02:16 |
dinozoa: So explain yourself: what do hackers have to do with the idea of evil being willful ignorance?
Seems pretty obvious to me. It's an example of how people will intentionally try to do others harm to further their own nefarious ends.
They aren't ignorant - they know exactly what they're doing.
Bastards.
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dinozoa
SENATOR BABYHEAD Posts: 319 Registered: 7/18/2004 Offline
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2/20/2006 at 03:00 |
So that was basically my argument, that they know what they are doing is disgustingly harmful and self-centered, a good definition of evil, but not the definition set out by Loki's friend Andrew Bernstein. Also, I like how you say nefarious ends, way to be black and white (even it it's true in this case.)
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jwalker
Token Discordian SSHOLEPosts: 949 Registered: 8/6/2005 Offline
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2/20/2006 at 03:54 |
dinozoa: So that was basically my argument, that they know what they are doing is disgustingly harmful and self-centered, a good definition of evil, but not the definition set out by Loki's friend Andrew Bernstein. Also, I like how you say nefarious ends, way to be black and white (even it it's true in this case.)
Au contraire, my good dinozoa. It is a very apt example of what the author is saying. Spyware producers are the leeches of the internet. They generate nothing of any value, but manage to propagate their wares by tricking their weak minded hosts to subvert the free, open, and rational nature of the internet.
Ok - it's a stretch. I'm mostly just pissed because my 3-day weekend is being burned up resintalling the OS because of a particularly sneaky spyware/virus. I'll try not to derail the thread any more.
Carry on.
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LOki
Refusenik SSHOLEPosts: 484 Registered: 3/8/2002 Offline
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2/20/2006 at 18:26 |
jwalker:
Philosophy - you can talk about it all day long, but what it really boils down to is how things are vs. how things could be. I disagree. The long history of philosophy is the effort to unite perception with reality--IOW: how things seem vs. how things actually are.
BTW: This Fomenter of Discord finds it nice to have the Token Discordian in the fray.
jwalker:
For example, I don't think religion in itself is "evil" by nature. If people behaved responsibly and discussed their ideas of God with one another instead of trying to beat other people into submission then it wouldn't be so bad, right? The same could be said of politics and science. Politics and science are not by definition in denial of reality--no appeals to the supernatural there; religion is. It is that "...irrational, willful denial and evasion of the facts of reality..." that makes religion evil. Religion deliberately and enthusiasticly denies and evades the facts of reality.
The fact that that exact same irrationality ALWAYS leads to violence, only underscores the point being made.
dinoza:
A lot of times there will be a right answer and a wrong answer. Is failure to recognize the right answer evil? I think it's just being wrong. Being wrong can lead to catastrophic consequences, but I don't consider ignorance evil. jwalker:
Think again.
I'll tell you evil. Evil is those fucking spamware fuckers in the advertising empire, loading their sneaky viruses on your machine. You think they care one iota about right or wrong? Think again. dinoza:
Way to be off topic. I didn't say there wasn't such a thing as good and evil, I just said I don't think ignorance is necessarily evil. I think it can be, just not always.
So explain yourself: what do hackers have to do with the idea of evil being willful ignorance? jwalker:
Seems pretty obvious to me. It's an example of how people will intentionally try to do others harm to further their own nefarious ends.
They aren't ignorant - they know exactly what they're doing. dinoza:
So that was basically my argument, that they know what they are doing is disgustingly harmful and self-centered, a good definition of evil, but not the definition set out by Loki's friend Andrew Bernstein. jwalker:
Au contraire, my good dinozoa. It is a very apt example of what the author is saying. Spyware producers are the leeches of the internet. They generate nothing of any value, but manage to propagate their wares by tricking their weak minded hosts to subvert the free, open, and rational nature of the internet.
Andrew Bernstien (jwalker and myself) did not say being wrong is evil.
Andrew Bernstein said:
"...evil is the irrational, willful denial and evasion of the facts of reality. It is the deliberate defiance of the facts and laws of nature, a spitting in the face of existence.
What your actual argument was--dinoza:"Is failure to recognize the right answer evil? I think it's just being wrong."
Willful, deliberate denial of the facts of reality is completely different from being mistaken.
dinoza:
As for the second part of that statement, I disagree that human survival requires ;a commitment to discover and act on the full truth.' We clearly don't know everything right now, and yet we are surviving (as much as anyone destined to die can survive), unless the author wants to make some ridiculous argument about the nature of survival or truth. This second part of the statement is stupid. Stupid is the notion that our rational faculty is NOT the reason for our species' survival and success--that somehow it's our physical strength, speed, agility and irrational excercise of such that has lead us to being the dominant species on this planet.
dinoza:
I think the ethics of sacrifice as outlined here is the idea of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need (language of communism)." I don't think the author is saying we shouldn't support our elderly parents, at our expense, or die in a war so others may live without fear (language of terrorism.) Indeed. Athough I've gone 'round this dance floor with you before, I'll do it once more for the sake of discussion; the author, nor myself, nor those who hold my moral value set say that we should not help our elders or the unfortunate--we just say that to be morally consistent, such action must be voluntary, and it is immoral to use force to coerce people to this action.
dinoza:
To provide everyone in America with adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, and a high school education, would cost several billion dollars. If we increased the part of the IRS that goes after income tax evasion, not increasing income tax itself, we could probably find many billions of dollars lying around like small change in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island off shores. I'm looking for one rational and internally consistent argument out of you (or any other who adheres to the "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" camp) that the needs or misfortunes of some individuals validates the forced confiscation of the life product of others.
I question the moral validity of FORCING one segment of society "to provide everyone in America with adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, and a high school education." I see that policy to be no different in any manner what-so-ever than slavery.
Mind you, if you claim in your argument that the government is doing the "providing," I'll point out that more accurately, the government is applying the force upon those who are actually doing the providing--that the government actuall provides nothing but the chains and whip that the "needy and unfortunae" use to enforce their slavemaster relationship over those who must provide for them.
dinoza:
The guy is confusing a 'might makes right' argument with an argument that religion enables evil people to rule over good people. In my eyes, religion is just the middleman. You still have to have guns to back it up. There's a reason I supplied links to articles.
"Guns" really have very little to do with the discussion or the point being made. The point is religion's denial of reality (the assertion that reality, rather than perception, is derived from faith, and that subjective perception derives from a subjective reality), and how religion energizes and asserts moral justification for the forceful domination of human beings.
dinoza:
Ok, I tend to think that chrisitianity is a pretty bad religion, for a lot of the same reasons he lists here, but I don't like the statement in the beginning which equates all religion with christianity. I think that all Bernstien does is assert that all religions possess a common vice--the assertion of of supernaturalism, self-sacrifice, and the denial of reality.
I think his only point about about christianity is that it is a less repugnant evil (for it's recognition of ego), much the way AIDS might be considered less repugnant than ebola--though not for the same reasons.
dinoza:
First of all, what about Cuba? What about Nicaragua? What about Vietnam?
What about Venezuela, right now? They are communists, but they are not racking up high body counts. Are fuking out of your mind? NO BODY COUNT?!?!?!? Take a good hard look at fuking Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam and Venezuela.
Cuba--No less than 20,000 for their revolution, plus those who die attempting to escape Cuba, plus those who die in Cuba's HIV colonies so that nobody can have or die of AIDS in Cuba, plus the thousands of Castro's political adversaries and their families executed since the revolution.
Vietnam--Well, let's start with the 10,000 massacred by the NLF during the occupation of Hue and add the 166 Cubans that were executed and drained of blood to be sold,in 1966,to none other than, the Communist Vietcong for the dual purpose of obtaining hard currency for Castro's Cuba, and advancing North Vietnamese Communist aggression.
Nicaragua--60,000 for the Marxist rebellion. Not to mention those that died trying to get fom under the Marxist boot, only to suffer from being one of the Western Hemispheres poorest (and socialist) nations.
Venezuela--2000 poor who objected to Perez, plus those killed defending themselves from Chavez nationalizing the petroleum industry, plus those now enslaved by Chavez's new redistibutionist paradigm. And sure, Venezuela has not yet racked up a giant body count, but it is just recently that Chavez renounced free markets in favor of armed robbery and slave markets. Give the folks in Venezuela some time to object to the hob-nailed boot that is being stuffed in their asses, and you'll see Chavez builing public works projects that look suspiciously like mass graves for political dissenters.
dinoza:
Why don't we look at capitalist countries that went wrong? America - see body counts before and during the civil war of black slaves and those who defended black slaves, see the Vietnam war, see WWI and WWII, see Iraq 1 and 2.
England - see India
France - see Algeria
Dutch - see pretty much everywhere.
and so on. Ok. Looking.
Not seeing your point. Only seeing mine. None of the nations you cite are capitalist countries. Maybe if you use a capitalist country as an example of how capitalism actually fails to work, or used capitalist policies in your exmples rather than failed socialist, fascist, and imperialst policies as examples of capitalist failure, your argument might be more interesting--and valid.
dinoza:
So I don't think an ideology should be judged by the failures of some of its representatives. Yes, but since all of collectivism's representatives have failed--whether its a country or a policy we're talking about--and all the representations of capitalism have been wildly sucessful--despite being practiced by socialist, communists, fascists and imperialists--I think it is appropriate to judge collectivism, in the light of capitalism, as apractical as well as moral failure.
dinoza:
Secondly, these ideologies don't attack the mind. I wanted to make a big old argument about how he's' totally wrong about communism, but on further review of his article, it's not clear that he properly equates collectivism with communism, other than to imply he cannot find the difference between them. PLUS: Counter argument WERDZ. If you could illustrate the salient differences beween collectiveism and communism that no one else can not find, your counter argument might be valid.
dinoza:
Even capitalism has some form of collectivism, except we don't pay as much to the people who are sacrificing their potential to slave away at a dead end job, and generally despise them, calling them niggers, or illegal aliens, or white trash, or whatever. Nope. There is no collectivism in capitlaism--there is voluntary cooperation; uncoerced and freely engaged in, but no collectivism. Thus, in no manner do capitalists ..[sacrifice] their potential to slave away at a dead end job,..." Instead, they leverage their value to the greatest extent that their potential and ambition will allow--without resorting to force (or fraud), exerted directly, or indirectly (throiugh government) to meet the difference between their ambition and their ability to meet it.
On 2006-02-20 at 12:27:35, LOki enjoyed furrysex
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dinozoa
SENATOR BABYHEAD Posts: 319 Registered: 7/18/2004 Offline
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2/20/2006 at 20:24 |
Re Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cuba, and so on.
Ok, Nicaragua has a high body count because the US artificially prolonged the revolutionary war by supplying money to the Sandinistas. My bad.
Vietnam: 10,000 is not terribly much. How many slaves died? Really, I think when you have a revolution you're going to expect a heatlhy chunk of casualties. I was trying to make the point that mass deaths are not endemic to all communist regimes, just some of them.
Venezuela: I'm not sure anybody in Venezuela is strongly objecting to Chavez. It's really hard to get unbiased news out of there, as all the Americans hate him and the local press either loves him, or is one of his propaganda machines. Still, you assume that even if they hate him, they will revolt?
More than half of Americans hate Bush. Where's the revolt?
Cuba: sometimes it seems like Castro is a great guy, like when he stayed in Harlem when he visitied in the 60s, sand sometimes it seems like he's scum. I shouldn't have brought Cuba up, to be honest, because there's too much propaganda from both sides to really get the hang of things.
As to your last point. Go ahead, Loki, say America and Britain are not capitalist. Can I say the USSR was not communist?
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LOki
Refusenik SSHOLEPosts: 484 Registered: 3/8/2002 Offline
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2/20/2006 at 20:58 |
dinozoa:
As to your last point. Go ahead, Loki, say America and Britain are not capitalist. Can I say the USSR was not communist? Why, thank you for letting me recognize and point out (again) the patently obvious truth. Perhaps now, you can dispense with the disingenuous propaganda tactic of assigning the excesses and injustices resulting from socialist, fascist, imperialist and communist political/economic principles embraced by the U.S. and Britain, to the capitalist principles embraced by the U.S. and Britain.
And please, feel free to say that the USSR was not Communist (I wouldn't expect otherwise), but just don't attempt to say that it wasn't Socialist; nor attempt to say that it wasn't Socialist for the purposes of becoming Communist--for that was the stated plan.
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