On Tue, 20 Sep 2016 23:40:09 -0000 xorcist@sigaint.org wrote:
Dude, that has nothing to do with any 'group'. If you are an attacker, then your victims have every right to defend themselves. That's the basic logic of morality.
Ya know, after I hit send on that last message, I knew you'd start off with this. You're like autistic or something. You focus on the words, but seem to have difficulty actually relating to the underlying scenarios or seeing the dynamics of human relationships within those scenarios. It's all this bullshit about "the logic" of morality. Bugger off with that nonsense. If I'm walking down the street, and see some strapping brick-shit-house sized dude chase after you, pin you the ground, beat the ever living shit out of you for a few moments, then pull out a knife and raise it above his head to kill you.. Well, I am not a victim. I'm no danger at all. I'm 20 yards away, smoking a cigarette, with my .45 in my waist band. And I still have the right, and some would argue, the moral responsibility, to draw down on him and order him to stop, and if he won't to cork that fucker square between eyes. And the REASON why I am able to do that. To make a judgment call valuing your life over his, IS because of GROUPING. Namely, the grouping of victim and grouping of aggressor, and the social valuation of one over the other. I happen to agree with that valuation. But I'm not arrogant enough to say it isn't a grouping, and in that respect is not different than other groupings. It is simply a grouping that I firmly believe. Others firmly believe in groupings based on religion, or race. Those I firmly despise. But they are still a representation social in-group/out-group dynamics
A deeply pacifistic person might disagree,
Fine. If somebody doesn't mind being attacked, that's his choice which he CANNOT FORCE on other people, both because of logic and his own pacifist principles.
It isn't because a pacifist doesn't mind being attacked. It's because their morality dictates that using force is wrong. And they won't stoop to the level of someone who does, even to defend themselves. It is akin to someone putting a gun to your head and trying to force you to rape a child. Hopefully you don't. Hopefully your morality is such that you'd rather die than do that. Even though someone forcing you to do so absolves you of responsibility. You choose to TAKE responsibility, and die. Same for the pacifist. He says "I will take responsibility for my actions, and not do violence, because violence is wrong. Whatever it costs, I won't do wrong." Another example might be eating animals. Most generally accept that cruelty to animals is wrong. But how that "wrong" is interpreted varies greatly among, say, vegans, and others.
You are the one that brought up slavery,
Maybe you should quit while you are still ahead? (OK you never were)
I get it now. This is all about some mental dick-measuring contest for you, and not about actually sharing ideas at all? Oh. Ok. Yeah, yer dick is bigger than mine, mate. Ya couldn't just asked.
Yesterday YOU WROTE
"A white male living in 1740 quite literally was not AS FREE as you or I in terms of his beliefs about race, SLAVERY, God,..."
Yeah, I mentioned it as an example of the types of social institutions that many people are not really in a position to question very easily. I thought it would be obvious, and easily accepted. You were the one that zeroed in on it, and made a discussion of it. Perhaps I should have clarified more.
Indeed, even after they were FREED, many slaves stayed with their former masters, and worked as paid laborers. That's a fact. So they certainly wanted to be there, probably even AS SLAVES.
lol...Not only a moral relativist, also a slavery apologist.
Oh fuck that nonsense. I'm not an apologist for shit. But it is true that some freed slaves stayed on the compounds. It sounds to me as if you simply don't have a fucking clue about life, mate. Have you ever been in a truly hopeless situation for an extended period of time? Have you experienced what it does to the mind, to your thought process and psychology? If not, then yeah.. you have no fucking clue. If so, then you really need to think on what it would be like to be subjected to that since birth, and not even have a past to draw from, or a future to look forward to, for strength. Because your whole "they didn't want to get killed" thing is bullshit. Indentured servants rebelled. Some were killed. Fucking people rebel and fought over taxes or shit like that, nothing as egregious as getting beaten and held as slaves. You really think that whites valued their tax dollars and liberty more so than blacks valued not getting beaten or raped, and so on? Get off it. So really fucking think it over and ask yourself if it was a rational choice about getting killed, or whether it really did have a lot more to do about social engineering, human psychology, and the simplest thing of all: lack of hope. That's why indentured servants rebelled. They had HOPE, saying to themselves.. I'll will myself into virtual slavery for N years, then I'm free, and I get a plot of land and I'm my own man. When that deal breaks down, it's fucking on. They'll DIE for the fucking dream that they lived for. A true slave, born into it? There is no hope. No one ever gets free. It isn't even a concept to freely think about.
My take is that the slaves didn't fucking KNOW any other life. Slavery is all they knew. Period.
You are the worse kind of enemy freedom can have.
Sure, sure. You can't bait me, dude. I've had higher highs than winning an internet pissing match, and I've had lower lows that you can possibly fathom. I'm not enemy to freedom. I simply have a clue about what real life does to real people. How it affects theirs minds, their dreams, and their capacity for self determination. Try fucking reading up on how ex-cons can be 'institutionalized.' Or better yet, wait until you hear about a dirty cop, go find him and crack him in the skull with a crowbar. Get sent up, and do some time. You'll learn a few things.
I hate to break it to you, friend.
You are not my friend.
Yeah, I am actually. Whether you accept it or not is on you. But I don't have enemies, so you'll just have to live with it.
What about you? Maybe you are an ex US military murder, that kind of psycho?
Nope. Just your average bloke born in a dunnie that had to get sharp real quick in order to claw his way out.
Dude, you don't know what free will means, and are too arrogant to learn. Get a fucking dictionary, for starters.
Sure thing mate, I'll get right on that.
" Find a small, soluble problem that fills a need. Propose a solution. Implement it. Repeat." If everyone does a little, a lot will get done."
My retort :
"What kind of small, soluble problems do you have in mind? "
And your answer? None of course. Even you don't believe your own bullshit.
LOL. No. Because you don't get the fucking point, son. #1, The whole point is for YOU to be SELF-DETERMINED and find problems YOU are interested in and that YOU want to solve. Find things that give your life meaning. And those things, likely, have fuck-all with what others are doing. And good. No point in all of us working on the same shit. #2, I didn't respond, because I suspected from your general demeanor you didn't really give a shit. As you indicate with your choice of the word "retort" .. everything you've shown so far is confrontational, so I didn't take the request seriously. #2, But since you're asking a second time, even though you're bringing it up in a seemingly confrontational manner, rather than any sort of genuine interest.. I'll tell you what I do, primarily, with my time in that regard. I act as mentor for some cognitively disabled adults. Mostly in the way of helping them find coping strategies for their difficulties. Providing a measure of friendship and companionship, helping them to feel like they "fit in" and are accepted, try to find them work, help take them to provide travel arrangements for them, and so on. I work with a group. It's what we do, and we try like hell to do it without state aid. We're trying to build the infrastructure to care for individuals if/when the state funding dries up as it inevitably will sooner or later. I do this on top of my day job, which is in cloud infrastructure type shit. As a hobby, try to find time to program, keep my skills up somewhat. In the past, I've designed deniable encryption protocols, and implemented tools to do it. One of the methods even got picked up in IEEE transactions and used in a communication system in Lebanon designed to safe-guard privacy in the face of oppressive governments. But, as I mentioned elsewhere to Zen .. I also didn't respond to that because I'm not on this list for fucking hand-holding and encouragement about some shared social agenda. Find your own fucking answers. I know what I believe in, and I know how far I'm willing to go, and what I'm not willing to do, to help. Truthfully, this whole fucking thread is exactly what I DIDN'T want. A bunch of horseshit that has nothing to do with "cyphers" .. but whatever, I'll count it as a "getting ta know ya" free-for-all.