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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
Wait a minute.
The currently constituted national borders are fucking Africa?
Not, you know, the fact that it is chock full of corruption and a lack of infrastructure for pretty much everything, and most societies there outside the big cities are still tribal-based ones that operate on logic that doesn't mesh well with Western social customs? Things like the uniform rule of law and state monopoly on violence and etc.
And the cities themselves suffer from the same problems Western cities did in the 19th century.
I'm unclear on where the West runs its foreign policy based on humiliating and dehumanizing non-Westerners. Even the most casual perusal of Western diplomacy shows Western governments 1) bending over backwards not to 'offend' Muslims in particular while 2) freely handing out hundreds of billions a year in various forms of regular and disaster aid and 3) trying to pressure non-Western governments to treat their own people according to humanist Western ideals.
Now this may come as a huge surprise but non-Westerners have their own ideals and motivations and ambitions and much of the "consequences" for the West come because these non-Westerners are pissed off that the West is strong enough to prevent them from fulfilling their own goals - which are usually abhorrent.
The West 100% understands the pathological desire to push the Jews into the sea that is widespread across Muslim-majority countries. This desire is unacceptable to the West and tough shit if people resent the West for it.
The West 100% understands that countries like Iran and Venezuela and Pakistan and China want to run their corners of the world the way they see fit and for their own benefit and tough shit for the people and countries Iran and Venezuela and Pakistan and China don't like in those corners. The West once again finds this unacceptable and tough shit if people resent the West for it.
Over huge swathes of the earth the West interrupted power games and internecine conflicts that had been going on for decades if not centuries if not millenia, and of course people resent that. Never mind the huge beneficial humanitarian effects of the overwhelming power of the West suppressing such activities. The West got in their way.
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On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way  I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility.
There's no better move to create more resentment.
So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ?
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On August 13 2016 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility. There's no better move to create more resentment. So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ?
No, we reduce our level of consumption of the world's resources. Stop buying all these products that are being marketed so pervasively (I had to look up that word in an online dictionary, lol), don't throw away food, etc.
I'm just going to keep editing this post for a bit because I don't want to spam the thread (and because I'm sure my beliefs will be easily debunked if anyone read them): for me, as a poor uneducated minimum wage white person, it's not so much about money. It's about lifestyle, and if you adjust your lifestyle even a little bit compared to what most people seem to do, you really don't need a lot of money. I'm kind of appalled at the amount of money that goes into entertainment (movies, sports, marketing, political lobbying/campaigns, everything really). So when you say people have to give up their wages, it just seems a little crazy to me. And I don't apply for government benefits either because I don't need it (I could probably get rental subsidies and whatnot if I wanted). Of course I don't have kids and I probably won't have much of a retirement fund, so I'm sure you can easily use that as reasoning for why I don't need money and why I will be screwed and/or change my mind when I'm older/get kids. Although I do wonder what my niece is going to do with all those plastic toys people bought her for her first birthday.
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On August 13 2016 03:16 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility. There's no better move to create more resentment. So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ? No, we reduce our level of consumption of the world's resources.
Ho yeah, but we don't do that out of some kind of moral obligation towards what our ancestors did. We do that to preserve nature and life on earth.
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On August 13 2016 03:18 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:16 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility. There's no better move to create more resentment. So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ? No, we reduce our level of consumption of the world's resources. Ho yeah, but we don't do that out of some kind of moral obligation towards what our ancestors did. We do that to preserve nature and life on earth.
On some level I have to agree. The best the collective west can do is make efforts to messing politically with those regions and let them figure things out on their own. But one of the parts of that process that have been unable to address is the process of reform and modernization is not clean or passive. And we have yet to address our collective role is dealing with the fall out of those conflicts. People forget that our own rise of democratic rule were blood affairs. And many did not take root the first time around.
And of course, the other problem is the west is not unified in how we address these conflicts.
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On August 13 2016 03:16 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility. There's no better move to create more resentment. So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ? No, we reduce our level of consumption of the world's resources. Stop buying all these products that are being marketed so pervasively (I had to look up that word in an online dictionary, lol), don't throw away food, etc.
That's really only going to help our own egos.
Extreme poverty in East Asia has fallen from 80% to under 10% over the last 30 years. That's because we keep buying their cheap stuff. It's probably been the single biggest increase in human welfare that has ever happened.
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On August 13 2016 03:50 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:16 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility. There's no better move to create more resentment. So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ? No, we reduce our level of consumption of the world's resources. Stop buying all these products that are being marketed so pervasively (I had to look up that word in an online dictionary, lol), don't throw away food, etc. That's really only going to help our own egos. Extreme poverty in East Asia has fallen from 80% to under 10% over the last 30 years. That's because we keep buying their cheap stuff. It's probably been the single biggest increase in human welfare that has ever happened.
It is very easy for far away sociologists to make these statistical judgements and assign some sort of moral significance to certain policies. I remember being born into "extreme poverty" and would have been astonished at the sense of obligation felt by an American college student, periscoping from far away, debating the trade policies which would best alleviate my condition.
Most people who are born and raised into parochial communities judge their interests and form their aspirations in local contexts. As unimaginable as it is for a Western college student to imagine a life, any kind of happy life, where you never went to the movies, dined in restaurants, took vacations abroad, or enjoyed internet access, I must adamantly insist on this single point alone: that there are lives happening under these very conditions; all around the world, lived by relatively contented and socially rooted people, and there are people who would prefer life under circumstances unimaginable to the average Westerner, to the kinds of lives that we would wish upon them by projecting unto them the sources of our own pleasures.
When I first went to Canada as a child, a country with a GDP per capita of nearly 100 times the country from which I emerged, the first remarkable thing I saw in the new country was not its material abundance or technological progress, but the inedible food and how fat people were. When arguing about the alleviation of poverty, we must always remember that absolute poverty is not itself, a problem seen in human terms. You can take socio-economic theory only so far, before it loses all ethical relevance or connection to human experience.
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Sure you can only take numbers so far and they don't encompass every facet of human life, but when we go from having hundreds of millions of people living on less than two bucks a day and a few decades later those hundreds of million people now have still shitty, but also significantly better lives, we've actually accomplished something and you can't just shut that out for aesthetic or moral reasons.
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On August 13 2016 04:20 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Most people who are born and raised into parochial communities judge their interests and form their aspirations in local contexts. As unimaginable as it is for a Western college student to imagine a life, any kind of happy life, where you never went to the movies, dined in restaurants, took vacations abroad, or enjoyed internet access, I must adamantly insist on this single point alone: that there are lives happening under these very conditions; all around the world, lived by relatively contented and socially rooted people, and there are people who would prefer life under circumstances unimaginable to the average Westerner, to the kinds of lives that we would wish upon them by projecting unto them the sources of our own pleasures.
This is a really interesting point.
It's neat that you bring up the contentedness. One of my ex-GF's whom was born in China grew up REALLY poor (they're doing very well now in Canada) and she almost talked as if she had a longing for it because she feels she's lacking a closeness or tight-knittedness of her past. She kept saying, "but we were really happy back then." She'd talk about it often, I should have pressed her more on the issue. I'm not saying she'd ever wish to go back to being poor but the picture she portrayed was of a very poor, but very happy family that may have been in a way closer to one another than they are now. Despite having to travel for water and share water iirc, she reflected on it as if it was a really great time in her life.
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The point is that what's a shitty life for you isn't a shitty life for those people living them. That's a basic act of psychological projection that is also one of the intellectual weaknesses of human sympathy without understanding.
"How would I feel in this person's shoes?" is not always a useful question to ask, especially when you are analysing subject-object interactions (individual experiencing environment) as the same object, i.e. society.
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On August 13 2016 04:30 SK.Testie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 04:20 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Most people who are born and raised into parochial communities judge their interests and form their aspirations in local contexts. As unimaginable as it is for a Western college student to imagine a life, any kind of happy life, where you never went to the movies, dined in restaurants, took vacations abroad, or enjoyed internet access, I must adamantly insist on this single point alone: that there are lives happening under these very conditions; all around the world, lived by relatively contented and socially rooted people, and there are people who would prefer life under circumstances unimaginable to the average Westerner, to the kinds of lives that we would wish upon them by projecting unto them the sources of our own pleasures. This is a really interesting point. It's neat that you bring up the contentedness. One of my ex-GF's whom was born in China grew up REALLY poor (they're doing very well now in Canada) and she almost talked as if she had a longing for it because she feels she's lacking a closeness or tight-knittedness of her past. She kept saying, "but we were really happy back then." She'd talk about it often, I should have pressed her more on the issue. I'm not saying she'd ever wish to go back to being poor but the picture she portrayed was of a very poor, but very happy family that may have been in a way closer to one another than they are now. Despite having to travel for water and share water iirc, she reflected on it as if it was a really great time in her life.
Still she's not going to run back. It's just romanticism. I can assure you that if many people "were really happy back then", we'd see the great exodus to the countryside away from the evil Western sweatshops. It's not happening.
It's like sentiments about how we're all much more connected before the cold technological era of the internet or whatever. I mean, what's stop these people from turning their computer off and forming a commune? What people like is fantasising about it, not actually doing it.
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On August 13 2016 04:45 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 04:30 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 04:20 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Most people who are born and raised into parochial communities judge their interests and form their aspirations in local contexts. As unimaginable as it is for a Western college student to imagine a life, any kind of happy life, where you never went to the movies, dined in restaurants, took vacations abroad, or enjoyed internet access, I must adamantly insist on this single point alone: that there are lives happening under these very conditions; all around the world, lived by relatively contented and socially rooted people, and there are people who would prefer life under circumstances unimaginable to the average Westerner, to the kinds of lives that we would wish upon them by projecting unto them the sources of our own pleasures. This is a really interesting point. It's neat that you bring up the contentedness. One of my ex-GF's whom was born in China grew up REALLY poor (they're doing very well now in Canada) and she almost talked as if she had a longing for it because she feels she's lacking a closeness or tight-knittedness of her past. She kept saying, "but we were really happy back then." She'd talk about it often, I should have pressed her more on the issue. I'm not saying she'd ever wish to go back to being poor but the picture she portrayed was of a very poor, but very happy family that may have been in a way closer to one another than they are now. Despite having to travel for water and share water iirc, she reflected on it as if it was a really great time in her life. Still she's not going to run back. It's just romanticism. I can assure you that if many people "were really happy back then", we'd see the great exodus to the countryside away from the evil Western sweatshops. It's not happening. It's like sentiments about how we're all much more connected before the cold technological era of the internet or whatever. I mean, what's stop these people from turning their computer off and forming a commune? What people like is fantasising about it, not actually doing it.
We're bound to the society we live in, we built our individuality through it and not against it. Splitting up with the society we live in also means splitting up with all the bonds that makes us who we are, it's as simple as that.
On August 13 2016 03:24 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 03:18 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:16 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:11 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 03:09 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 03:01 WhiteDog wrote:On August 13 2016 02:55 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 02:23 OtherWorld wrote:
I'm not saying the West should accept revenge, although I am saying that the West "deserved" it (not in a moral way ; in a purely "logical consequence" way) ; I'm saying the West should have learned by now that international issues are not to be dealt through humiliating or dehumanizing others, but through understanding - which is different from justifying - them. And I didn't mean to talk about muslims at all - I consider myself way too incompetent on the subject of religion - ; look instead at the whole of Africa. Those absurd borders are killing these countries - it's not the only thing, but it's one. Do you think the West holds no guilt towards this, and thus shouldn't strive when possible to make Africa a better place, instead of using that à la Françafrique ? And I'm saying the west deserved nothing. If they didn't come to power first and do it first another would have. And then you'd just have a different class of the exploited. The west has no blame, the west has no guilt, the west does not have to share in the spoils simply because it was better at it than everyone else who attempted it. If anything, I'm glad they were better at it because as we speak I'm sitting in the sky talking to you through a magic box that can have a healthy exchange of ideas between men. Africa is still a very, very rich continent with a lot of untapped resources. It's just not being used effectively. That's not our fault. There's over a billion people in Africa now. We literally have no obligation to help a single one of them today. And we should only do it if it's going to be excessively profitable. The West was not better at anything, was just lucky. I suggest reading J. Diamond's work on the inequality amongst human societies. On August 13 2016 03:01 a_flayer wrote:On August 13 2016 02:13 WhiteDog wrote:The occident has no debt towards the muslim. What we owe to ourselves is to live together, not to repair something a very thin minority profited from ages ago. This discussion is not hegelian, it's nietzschean by the way I don't know what occident, hegelian, or nietzschean means, but I think that the west has continued to bring war to the middle east after world war 2 by putting certain people in power and constantly supplying weapons to keep those people in power. I think terrorism is a direct result of this constant interference. I think this interference has much to do with the oil that we get from there, and I think that the people there are suffering because of it (or at least not seeing the benefits they should from all the money that is involved). Then a few select people are using the people's religion/belief to fuel the hatred for the west that already exists because of that constant interference and extraction of resources. I may be wrong about this (again, barely any high school and no fancy college degrees, I don't read a lot either), but this has been my conclusion, and because of this I feel the west has brought this on themselves, just as they did the higher percentage of "criminal blacks" and whatnot as a result of the years of slavery/inequality. That is not to say I condone terrorism or the killing of people in any way shape or form, just that there may be some form of "debt" towards the middle east as well. Yeah sure the West made tons of crimes, but not only they're not the only ones, but more than that it's irrelevant. What's your goal ? Revenge ? Or actual progress ? If it's progress, forget resentment, that is what I was saying. Resentment is the kind of thing that makes you legitimize attacking the Iraq after 9/11 like it's actually a good response. Also I'm against collective punition ; it's not "the west" that pillaged Africa, enslaved and colonized, it's their state under the authority of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. 1.4 % of Americans had slaves, most colonies were first made by private firms for profits, and the worker class didn't profit from colonization. I'm going to make this statement simply to poll your beliefs (without judgement, believe me): lets burn the multinationals to the ground? If everything was that simple. Which is why I think we should all take responsibility. There's no better move to create more resentment. So what do we do ? We ask the min wage white worker to give half of his salary to the first black he see ? No, we reduce our level of consumption of the world's resources. Ho yeah, but we don't do that out of some kind of moral obligation towards what our ancestors did. We do that to preserve nature and life on earth. On some level I have to agree. The best the collective west can do is make efforts to messing politically with those regions and let them figure things out on their own. But one of the parts of that process that have been unable to address is the process of reform and modernization is not clean or passive. And we have yet to address our collective role is dealing with the fall out of those conflicts. People forget that our own rise of democratic rule were blood affairs. And many did not take root the first time around. And of course, the other problem is the west is not unified in how we address these conflicts.
Yeah there's no law for that kind of thing and I'd gladly say I don't know. I just wanted to stress the importance of facing the present, facing reality - which sometimes requires to look back, but that's it.
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Norway28695 Posts
Spoilering this cuz not thaat related, but a little bit, and it's a topic I enjoy.
+ Show Spoiler +
In terms of happiness I've been a strong fan of the idea that happiness is basically an equation that goes 'reality minus expectation'. So if your reality is a number between 1 and 10 where 10 equals great life and 1 equals shitty life and your expectation is a number between 1 and 10 where 10 equals great expectations and 1 equals no expectations then having a shitty life but no expectations means you're actually kinda content, having a great life and great expectations means you're kinda content, but what you really must avoid is having great expectations but not that great of a life. I think the latter is much more common in western societies where we are generally raised to believe that we are special, that we are agents of our own well being, but where our actual lives end up falling short of the expectations that were installed in us from a young age. Now 'shittiness of life' doesn't only hinge on material wealth but friendship and family connections and stuff like that (maybe even 'natural disposition to happiness is a thing, I dunno), I would argue that some degrees of suffering equal unhappiness regardless of the expectation (if you've been tortured every day for the past half year and suddenly you're only tortured every other day, I'm not sure that improvement of situation equates to happiness for example).
But anyway, by this logic going back is obviously not an option, because life in the west has installed certain expectations that must be met. But likewise, migrating to the west is not necessarily likely to lead to happiness either because life might fall very short of the expectations, especially for second generation immigrants who are lead to believe that they will have all the opportunities of the native (first generation specifically thinks about the next generation when migrating - 'I'm moving to give my children opportunities I never had myself') but then the promised land isn't quite that.
A bit rambly but I think there's quite a bit to this, especially if you combine it with an understanding of what Koselleck defines as 'horizon of expectation', something which has changed drastically over the past centuries. Going 100 or more years back, your average European would expect his life to be like the life of his parent, for the past 2 generations there's been an expectation of our lives being radically better than that of the previous generation. For the previous generation, that was true, for our generation, not so much, for the next generation, perhaps not at all. This also explains why for example in the US, white males aged 44-64 is like, the most suicide-prone group (white males are 3 times more likely to kill themselves than black or latino men, despite 'objectively' living better lives), life didn't turn out like they wanted to and the opportunities to turn things around have passed them by..
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On August 13 2016 05:10 Liquid`Drone wrote:Spoilering this cuz not thaat related, but a little bit, and it's a topic I enjoy. + Show Spoiler +
In terms of happiness I've been a strong fan of the idea that happiness is basically an equation that goes 'reality minus expectation'. So if your reality is a number between 1 and 10 where 10 equals great life and 1 equals shitty life and your expectation is a number between 1 and 10 where 10 equals great expectations and 1 equals no expectations then having a shitty life but no expectations means you're actually kinda content, having a great life and great expectations means you're kinda content, but what you really must avoid is having great expectations but not that great of a life. I think the latter is much more common in western societies where we are generally raised to believe that we are special, that we are agents of our own well being, but where our actual lives end up falling short of the expectations that were installed in us from a young age. Now 'shittiness of life' doesn't only hinge on material wealth but friendship and family connections and stuff like that (maybe even 'natural disposition to happiness is a thing, I dunno), I would argue that some degrees of suffering equal unhappiness regardless of the expectation (if you've been tortured every day for the past half year and suddenly you're only tortured every other day, I'm not sure that improvement of situation equates to happiness for example).
But anyway, by this logic going back is obviously not an option, because life in the west has installed certain expectations that must be met. But likewise, migrating to the west is not necessarily likely to lead to happiness either because life might fall very short of the expectations, especially for second generation immigrants who are lead to believe that they will have all the opportunities of the native (first generation specifically thinks about the next generation when migrating - 'I'm moving to give my children opportunities I never had myself') but then the promised land isn't quite that.
A bit rambly but I think there's quite a bit to this, especially if you combine it with an understanding of what Koselleck defines as 'horizon of expectation', something which has changed drastically over the past centuries. Going 100 or more years back, your average European would expect his life to be like the life of his parent, for the past 2 generations there's been an expectation of our lives being radically better than that of the previous generation. For the previous generation, that was true, for our generation, not so much, for the next generation, perhaps not at all. This also explains why for example in the US, white males aged 44-64 is like, the most suicide-prone group (white males are 3 times more likely to kill themselves than black or latino men, despite 'objectively' living better lives), life didn't turn out like they wanted to and the opportunities to turn things around have passed them by..
What you wrote made me think about this :
![[image loading]](http://america.pink/images/3/7/1/1/2/9/4/en/2-relative-deprivation.jpg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_deprivation
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On August 13 2016 04:45 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 04:30 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 04:20 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Most people who are born and raised into parochial communities judge their interests and form their aspirations in local contexts. As unimaginable as it is for a Western college student to imagine a life, any kind of happy life, where you never went to the movies, dined in restaurants, took vacations abroad, or enjoyed internet access, I must adamantly insist on this single point alone: that there are lives happening under these very conditions; all around the world, lived by relatively contented and socially rooted people, and there are people who would prefer life under circumstances unimaginable to the average Westerner, to the kinds of lives that we would wish upon them by projecting unto them the sources of our own pleasures. This is a really interesting point. It's neat that you bring up the contentedness. One of my ex-GF's whom was born in China grew up REALLY poor (they're doing very well now in Canada) and she almost talked as if she had a longing for it because she feels she's lacking a closeness or tight-knittedness of her past. She kept saying, "but we were really happy back then." She'd talk about it often, I should have pressed her more on the issue. I'm not saying she'd ever wish to go back to being poor but the picture she portrayed was of a very poor, but very happy family that may have been in a way closer to one another than they are now. Despite having to travel for water and share water iirc, she reflected on it as if it was a really great time in her life. Still she's not going to run back. It's just romanticism. I can assure you that if many people "were really happy back then", we'd see the great exodus to the countryside away from the evil Western sweatshops. It's not happening. It's like sentiments about how we're all much more connected before the cold technological era of the internet or whatever. I mean, what's stop these people from turning their computer off and forming a commune? What people like is fantasising about it, not actually doing it.
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
But where's the lost young man?
Or, to put it into more prosaic terms, we go back to the subject-object interaction. The subject is unable to revert to old relationships with the object because the history of interaction has changed the subject; so that he is unable to restore the old relationship. Case in point: It will never again be possible to restore a world without nuclear weapons, just like a woman can never restore her virginity, or a man can never restore his innocence after he has committed murder. How wonderful to live in a universe whose ethical design is so set up, that actions are ultimately meaningful, because there are a class of actions which once they occur, can never be undone.
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On August 13 2016 05:21 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2016 04:45 Nyxisto wrote:On August 13 2016 04:30 SK.Testie wrote:On August 13 2016 04:20 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Most people who are born and raised into parochial communities judge their interests and form their aspirations in local contexts. As unimaginable as it is for a Western college student to imagine a life, any kind of happy life, where you never went to the movies, dined in restaurants, took vacations abroad, or enjoyed internet access, I must adamantly insist on this single point alone: that there are lives happening under these very conditions; all around the world, lived by relatively contented and socially rooted people, and there are people who would prefer life under circumstances unimaginable to the average Westerner, to the kinds of lives that we would wish upon them by projecting unto them the sources of our own pleasures. This is a really interesting point. It's neat that you bring up the contentedness. One of my ex-GF's whom was born in China grew up REALLY poor (they're doing very well now in Canada) and she almost talked as if she had a longing for it because she feels she's lacking a closeness or tight-knittedness of her past. She kept saying, "but we were really happy back then." She'd talk about it often, I should have pressed her more on the issue. I'm not saying she'd ever wish to go back to being poor but the picture she portrayed was of a very poor, but very happy family that may have been in a way closer to one another than they are now. Despite having to travel for water and share water iirc, she reflected on it as if it was a really great time in her life. Still she's not going to run back. It's just romanticism. I can assure you that if many people "were really happy back then", we'd see the great exodus to the countryside away from the evil Western sweatshops. It's not happening. It's like sentiments about how we're all much more connected before the cold technological era of the internet or whatever. I mean, what's stop these people from turning their computer off and forming a commune? What people like is fantasising about it, not actually doing it. When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
But where's the lost young man?Or, to put it into more prosaic terms, we go back to the subject-object interaction. The subject is unable to revert to old relationships with the object because the history of interaction has changed the subject; so that he is unable to restore the old relationship. Case in point: It will never again be possible to restore a world without nuclear weapons, just like a woman can never restore her virginity, or a man can never restore his innocence after he has committed murder. How wonderful to live in a universe whose ethical design is so set up, that actions are ultimately meaningful, because there are a class of actions which once they occur, can never be undone.
The perceived attributes or qualities of a particular event, say losing one's virginity, do not have plenary control over the manner in which they are regarded. Sure, someone can vex poetic over the loss of something that, in proprietary terms, will never come back again, but that sort of logic doesn't hold any sort of rule over the way in which people can think or feel about that thing. Meaningfulness (or a lack thereof) can come from anything, anywhere, at any time.
To the person who says that we cannot ever return to a world without nuclear weapons, I'd simply say that they need to work on using their imagination a bit more.
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Pretty dangerous to define happiness in terms of expectations or some kind of subjective metric because you can justify pretty much anything you want that way. I mean it makes some sense if we're talking about developed nations where material considerations are less and less important but if we're talking about the developing world we should better stick to some materialist account of happiness because it's not even possible to have any sensible discussion in any other way that's actually based on observable facts.
Especially the left often turns to occult concepts here because international liberalisation and trade actually has led to giant creation of wealth and that's pretty hard to reconcile with the anti-globalist position that's popular atm.
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The perceived attributes or qualities of a particular event, say losing one's virginity, do not have plenary control over the manner in which they are regarded. Sure, someone can vex poetic over the loss of something that, in proprietary terms, will never come back again, but that sort of logic doesn't hold any sort of rule over the way in which people can think or feel about that thing. Meaningfulness (or a lack thereof) can come from anything, anywhere, at any time.
To the person who says that we cannot ever return to a world without nuclear weapons, I'd simply say that they need to work on using their imagination a bit more.
As for whether it is possible to control the sentiments of memory, the passage cited had nothing to do with this subject; it was rather about whether former experiences can be repeated once certain event horizons have been surpassed, and it is my assertion that this is not possible.
I am myself in no way nostalgic about that rude and dirty past that I reflect upon here. I take these points from my memories of men and women, and the way that they experience the world, and even though I may harshly judge them for that, I stress the importance of attempting understanding their values and preferences on their terms. What Nyxisto offers in no way connects with their values because the principles from which he derives his beliefs are completely divorced from the experiences of these people.
Pretty dangerous to define happiness in terms of expectations or some kind of subjective metric because you can justify pretty much anything you want that way. I mean it makes some sense if we're talking about developed nations where material considerations are less and less important but if we're talking about the developing world we should better stick to some materialist account of happiness because it's not even possible to have any sensible discussion in any other way that's actually based on observable facts.
There is a way to judge and understand based on observable facts; it's called talking to people and listening to them.
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On August 13 2016 06:22 Nyxisto wrote:
Pretty dangerous to define happiness in terms of expectations or some kind of subjective metric because you can justify pretty much anything you want that way. I mean it makes some sense if we're talking about developed nations where material considerations are less and less important but if we're talking about the developing world we should better stick to some materialist account of happiness because it's not even possible to have any sensible discussion in any other way that's actually based on observable facts.
Especially the left often turns to occult concepts here because international liberalisation and trade actually has led to giant creation of wealth and that's pretty hard to reconcile with the anti-globalist position that's popular atm.
Yet happiness is by essence subjective and thus not measurable ; it will also be based on different things. What you can measure, though, is a society's capacity to give to its citizens the means of achieving their own personal happiness - provided you can define what these means are.
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Sorry, but no matter how purple the prose you write is motklewarding, emotions are not an observable fact. Quoting A. E. Housman does not an argument make.
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EPT
