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To contribute to this discussion more myself:
I believe I didn't clearly define altruism or at least attempt to even suggest what it might mean. When I brought this idea up with a friend of mine, his reply inspired me to think that perhaps an altruistic act requires a need to be filled before the act can even be performed. This means that in order to be truly altruistic, one most have understood a need to be filled from a third party.
This question however leads to a thought path I have seen before - Do we judge an act, an altruistic one on this case, by it's consequence or by it's action? The question could be expanded to say.... At which point do we start judging ANY action by it's consequence instead of it's intention? Or vice versa?
ENDER'S GAME SPOILERS BELOW. THIS IS YOUR SPOILER, THERE ARE NONE BELOW. | | | | | | v v
An interesting literary example I want to bring up is Ender Wiggin in Ender's Game. The idea behind Ender is that he goes to battle school because he understood a need to be fulfilled, and did so even though he didn't want to do it. In a final test of his abilities, Ender decides (like he does multiple times in the book) he's going to finally give up because the job is too damn difficult. He ends up deciding to perform a suicide mission in his game to win but take every living thing with him.
What you find out is that Ender was actually fighting a war using a graphical interface. Despite his attempts to convince the teachers he's unfit for the job, he ends up winning the entire war which he thought he was training to fight. This crushes his soul understanding that what he did was out of spite to tell everyone to go fuck themselves, but ends up accomplishing the goal instead.
What I take away from Ender however is not that he saved humanity when he thought he had given up - It's that after winning the war, he feels a responsibility to the race he wiped out to discover who they were and write their story. What made Ender altruistic was not winning the war, but feeling responsible for the consequence of winning the war no matter what. I think that speaks perfectly to what altruism really is which is not the act itself, but both committing the act and taking responsibility for the negative consequences it may produce whatever they may be.
I feel like that if altruism is defined by the responsibility of both the action and it's consequences, then it is inherently good.
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On July 14 2015 03:07 JimmyJRaynor wrote:ah , the old.. "i know that i know nothing" thing it is up to humans to discover their fundamental nature.. and it is not an easy thing to do. this is why things like the Declaration of Independence and the novel The Fountainhead are such incredible achievements. but we're going way off topic here. back on topic... if human fundamental nature is unknowable than the question of altruism is unanswerable. this morning an elderly lady was having a problem carrying a small package to the info/kiosk/security desk of my #1 customer... seeing her struggle.. i carried it for her.... am i an altruist? EDIT: just noticed we have a casualty on the forum battlefied.. bookwyrm is no longer with us.
You are a bad Randian. Did you learn nothing from The Fountainhead? Roark blew up his own building rather than let someone else use it.
@ omnic and DJ
I think it's funny you guys never even bothered to respond to bookwyrm's policy suggestions. The curtain was lifted on Oz.
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On July 15 2015 10:18 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2015 03:07 JimmyJRaynor wrote:ah , the old.. "i know that i know nothing" thing it is up to humans to discover their fundamental nature.. and it is not an easy thing to do. this is why things like the Declaration of Independence and the novel The Fountainhead are such incredible achievements. but we're going way off topic here. back on topic... if human fundamental nature is unknowable than the question of altruism is unanswerable. this morning an elderly lady was having a problem carrying a small package to the info/kiosk/security desk of my #1 customer... seeing her struggle.. i carried it for her.... am i an altruist? EDIT: just noticed we have a casualty on the forum battlefied.. bookwyrm is no longer with us. I think it's funny you guys never even bothered to respond to bookwyrm's policy suggestions. The curtain was lifted on Oz. I think you might want to re-read how the conversation went. The problem of world hunger was only brought up as a sub-point of the entire debate between pragmatism vs. ideology or whatever else, and he himself refused to give us insight in his views regarding the matter, outside of some surface bullshit. We were not willing to go into the super-specifics of a subpoint which was already an subpoint in the larger argument which is this threat. Why bother bringing up a policy example for someone who dragged the conversation by criticizing while never bringing up something original to the table when he was the one who made the spectacular claims about how we should (perhaps) cease sending food over because it's neoimperialism and that DESPITE the fact that it would most likely cause the deaths of millions.
So what do you find so funny? Not only were we far away from the initial point, we were arguing with an intentionally opaque character, Bookwyrm, who actively protected himself from criticism by never clearly exposing his own views. Furthermore, to bring up specific policy ideas was to miss the point, not only of the thread as a whole, but also of the subpoint. My opinion that pragmatism is necessary would not, in any case, be bolstered by me being able to off the top of my head bring up policy suggestions (which span hundreds of fucking pages!) to solve a specific problem. Yet there is plenty of evidence, despite the fact that people tend to be cripplingly pessimistic, that pragmatic measures even in the frame of capitalism (which Bookwyrm despises) have led to some spectacular advances in the human condition.
Hell, to push it further, his argument (hard to interpret because his argument does not actually exist, but was intended to be generated by his readers who were expected to deduce what he thinks based on what he disagreed on), was something to the effect that to solve world hunger, we would have to "commit violence" (in the form of letting people starve) and through some utopian magic, world hunger would be solved. I don't know which Marxist principles would allow this to happen in the current conjecture, but it seems like the idea of it, alone, despite the absence of concrete measures, would be a substitute for actually doing something.
So we find ourselves confronted to two views Mine: Fallible humans are forced to take imperfect actions with undesirable effects to get certain things done, and we consider those to be better than to do nothing. Bookwyrm suggests that my acceptance of the status quo makes me a conformist (his word), and that by accepting capitalism I'm part of the problem. Instead of doing something in the bad framing of capitalism, I should do (something unspecified that evidently does not work).
So why do you want me to come up with a policy idea? What makes you think that I even can come up with a reasonable proposition for solving a problem as complex as world hunger? I would first need to gather a very in-depth understanding of the problem which is not currently my area of expertise, I would then have to acquire a decent understanding of the political landscape to see what is possible in terms of resources of all kind, and then I would come up with a proposal which research would suggest would have results which are better than doing nothing, given certain morality standards such as those absent in Bookwyrm. I happen to think that letting people die is unacceptable. I also happen to think that turning poor countries into vassals of our powerful countries is fucked up, and so I would try to stir the practical measures taken by the State toward sustainable development: building wells with the communities, teaching how to do agriculture with heat resistant crops, all while continuing to send food during the transition. It's called capacity building or something which is not perfect but it's better than to just ask for a complete paradigm shift and a collapse of capitalism.
Those are my initial ideas on policy propositions that may be proven through research to be complete horseshit, but all of this is pointless because the initial point was about pragmatism. At the most basic level, people who would argue that pragmatism is shortsighted and stupid, and would then argue that pragmatism is the wrong way to solve world hunger, are failing to see that the notion of solving world hunger, the very formulation of the problem "solving world hunger", is pragmatic. We observe a reality, we want to act upon it to make it stop. The pragmatic, at least, knows that he can't, but perhaps wishes to try.
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You didn't even have to come up with a policy idea on your own. He presented policies for you to respond and critique and you have spent a long time writing up a response to my post in which you don't even address the suggestions he made.
You are also way off base in saying that he's been intentionally opaque. If anything he's the one who has been most transparent here.
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On July 15 2015 10:46 IgnE wrote: You didn't even have to come up with a policy idea on your own. He presented policies for you to respond and critique and you have spent a long time writing up a response to my post in which you don't even address the suggestions he made.
You are also way off base in saying that he's been intentionally opaque. If anything he's the one who has been most transparent here. The average number of lines in his posts is probably 3 or 4, generally with little content to speak of. If you call that transparent, I'll accuse you of being disingenuous. I saw no policies of his for me to respond to. "Repeal the farm bill" was the jist of it maybe? Is this 4 word post referring to an agriculture legislation in a country which I don't live in the post I'm expected to respond to IgnE?
At that point of the argument, I was getting fed up with his avoidance and his intentional opacity that you don't seem to detect despite the fact that his posts are short and critical with no substance. He made a 4 word post which refers to a national bill that I'm not familiar with, but the notion that repealing a single bill could have any relevance to this conversation is ludicrous, and so I didn't take it seriously. After all, it was a 4 words post, which was actually part of a double post. Bookwyrm was simply not playing by any rules.
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[QUOTE]On July 15 2015 10:18 IgnE wrote: [QUOTE]On July 14 2015 03:07 JimmyJRaynor wrote: @ omnic and DJ
I think it's funny you guys never even bothered to respond to bookwyrm's policy suggestions. The curtain was lifted on Oz. [/QUOTE]
You must have misunderstood the point of my posts. My posts here were not about the topic itself but rather good argument practices. I clearly stated that I don't know the answer to the questions and i'm not for or against any specific side of said argument. I just want people to argue in a way that can be productive.
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On July 14 2015 00:46 bookwyrm wrote: What you wont even respond to my policy suggestion???
also youre a hypocrite... at no point have you made a policy suggestion... youve just made vague appeals to pragmatism and gradual change...
weve been arguing purely at the level of methodology so its pure hypocrisy to accuse me of failing to make concrete proposals...
Glass houses man. Im going back through the thread and youve literally never said a single specific thing about what you think should be done. You just say 'concrete specific proposals shoild be made!!' Which is not in itself a concrete proposal
So here's my proposal. Eliminate all us govt subsidies to agriculture. That means water subsidy and everything. Implement a true free market in ag sector. Then peg minimum wage to food inflation. Balls in your court bro
please respond so you dont forfeit your own game as soon as I agree to play!
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Alright IgnE, that's brilliant and all but before there's two problems I see with it. First, it plays into my court (or however you say that in English). He was arguing that pragmatism is bad, and yet his policy propositions are all pragmatic. He's tinkering with existing mechanisms.
Second, any semi competent politician would look at that and immediately think it must be a bad joke. I mean to start, which one country's policies singlehandedly are causing world hunger? Obviously it's not national policies alone that are going to solve this problem. But more importantly, if we're talking about the United States, "Eliminate all us gvt subsidies to agriculture" will get you trampled by one of the US's most powerful lobbies... the agriculture lobby. Massively powerful bunch.
Yet like I said his proposition is fine, it's just impossible to put into action (not unlike mine, undoubtedly), and it wouldn't actually solve world hunger, nor do I know exactly through which mechanisms it would make the whole thing better, I would still have to be convince. It still missed the point about pragmatism. His policy suggestion showed that he was thinking like a pragmatic, and just happened to be shit at that because he failed to account for the constraints which would super obviously prevent him from actually making it happen.
And by the way I'm not saying that his ideas are necessarily bad, if they could be put into place they might be good and helpful, yet what good does that do? If I could be a wizard that'd be fun but I don't plan my life out on the assumption that tomorrow I'll be able to teleport myself to work. That is why we need good pragmatics, people who look at the problems like transit and design roads, decide to invest in public transportation, design sidewalks that are large enough for people, etc. Real life. It's not ALL we need, but we need them. What has the ridiculous notion of cutting agriculture subsidies done to show that to be wrong?
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Yes, why talk about stuff that we could do in theory when everyone knows the status quo never changes? We are all just ants. Let Bill Gates do his thing so people don't starve.
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On July 15 2015 11:43 IgnE wrote: Yes, why talk about stuff that we could do in theory when everyone knows the status quo never changes? We are all just ants. Let Bill Gates do his thing so people don't starve. If you've been reading you know that I'm in no way opposed to people talking about this stuff or even people who try to put it into practice, I'm all for that. Which part of my rhetoric do you manage to read as denial of those things?
Like, my argument can be summarized to say "I don't believe that we should ONLY talk and do nothing on the basis that what we're doing is not perfect". We need pragmatics making actions which are imperfect but are better than nothing. He's against that. He's saying that we should let people starve to death instead of send money because neoimperialism is even worse than starving people.
Your big response after all this is a complete strawman which somehow manages to paint me as someone who's against thought and dialogue? How do you even do this with my words?
I'll say this to you. As much as it would be bad to follow the dominant trends, it is just as dumb to pretend like they don't exist. We are not ants, we are men capable of great things, especially if we take the time to understand our context to see how we can work upon the world. And we should talk about it, of course. And we should talk abolishing subsidies in agriculture. But then we do things.
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You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Either you take bookwyrm seriously or you don't. Saying "yes all well and good but it's impossible!" *throws hands in air* and then turning around and accusing me of not understanding your rhetoric because you are in "no way opposed to people talking about this stuff" is a bit ridiculous. You are fluffy and opaque my friend.
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On July 15 2015 11:53 IgnE wrote: You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Either you take bookwyrm seriously or you don't. Saying "yes all well and good but it's impossible!" *throws hands in air* and then turning around and accusing me of not understanding your rhetoric because you are in "no way opposed to people talking about this stuff" is a bit ridiculous. You are fluffy and opaque my friend. I think I'm being reasonably clear.
It's because of the setting of the argument that you don't seem to understand. The argument about pragmatism creates a dichotomy which opposes a realist view of the world to something more ideological. This is why bookwyrm's argument can be taken seriously in that it attempts to come up with a practical solution, while simultaneously being ridiculous because he's also arguing against practical solutions which are currently applicable. My point is that applicability is important. There is nothing opaque about it and your impression that "I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth" quite simply comes from the fact that you've largely ignored the aforementioned dichotomy.
In fact his policy suggestion was probably intended as a red herring.
Edit: I just noticed that the quote below your post is very pertinent to this conversation, and it's very interesting indeed. Unfortunately my position is that if your ideals prevent you from interacting with reality, you're undermining yourself. You might not like capitalism but that shouldn't stop you from doing your best .
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He never set up such a dichotomy, that was you. You drew a ring around an argument without even seeming to understand where he was coming from, and now you are defending those boundaries as if he was the one who drew them. I know what your point is, and it's banal. You like to have your cake and eat it too. I get it.
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On July 15 2015 12:15 IgnE wrote: He never set up such a dichotomy, that was you. You drew a ring around an argument without even seeming to understand where he was coming from, and now you are defending those boundaries as if he was the one who drew them. I know what your point is, and it's banal. You like to have your cake and eat it too. I get it. I know I set up the boundaries and yet he still ran into the argument without challenging them, thus perhaps making a complicated mess. And the reason why I don't feel like the argument is banal is that I feel like many idealists are shooting themselves in the foot by choosing not to interact with reality. This should only be banal to you if you're also willing to admit that whatever dreams you have for this world are going to die because you couldn't be bothered to do anything but talk and talk and use words like banal when your futile exercises got challenged by the big mean conformists.
Yet it seems to me like you're biased in this whole ordeal because even though you might agree with him on an ideological level, you should've seen that he was derailing when he said for instance "You attempt to solve a problem by refusing to analyze it which is just intellectually lazy" which was an unreasonable assumption and/or a complete misunderstanding of the "banal" boundaries I had set before. To put it simply, I've argued with much more radical Marxists who were a lot more intellectually honest than poor old weak-willed and now forum banned Bookwyrm. And it made for much more rewarding conversations that never had to be this confrontational.
Edit: Been wanting to go to bed for a while now. Good night!
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I feel like I'm watching a debate with a Calvinist.
This does not seem to be a rational so much as a reaction. Djzapz seems to be saying "we should work to identify and implement sound policies, but in the meantime we should keep sending food." This "but we should keep sending food" seems to be offensive to some, like Djzapz classmates and bookwyrm. I suspect his classmates just aren't interested in aid that comes from outside their bubble and bookwyrm thinks it reinforces neocolonialism or something.
@nunez- If you're still here. One criticism I have of Marxists is their tendency to get wrapped up in narratives. bookwrym looks at a situation and his little template for the way things go is already laid out. Regardless of whether there is some truth to his analysis of the situation, there is more to the story than he can see. For instance, "neocolonialism" or not, it doesn't change the fact that people are being rendered aid.
As for bookwyrm's policy suggestions, I can't say I know too much, but there are two points I'd like to make. There are two groups of people that we are talking about here. There are people who simply have a low standard of living and there are people who are literally starving. In the second group, the major causes of this are war, displacement, natural disasters, political upheaval, etc. There are also places that simply lack sufficient natural resources, including ways to make clean water. While the general low standard of living may be a result of globalisation, I don't think that the dire straits peoples are a direct result of globalisation.
I feel like in these discussions, you see a group of people who previously felt very sure about the who the "good guys" and "bad guys" were suddenly split. The major split seems to be between global and national interests. bookwyrm's proposals might help the developing world but I think it would probably hurt the average American as well. You're seeing a similar tiff right now the U.S. Democratic Party, centered around Elizabeth Warren.
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On July 15 2015 12:32 Jerubaal wrote: I feel like I'm watching a debate with a Calvinist.
This does not seem to be a rational so much as a reaction. Djzapz seems to be saying "we should work to identify and implement sound policies, but in the meantime we should keep sending food." This "but we should keep sending food" seems to be offensive to some, like Djzapz classmates and bookwyrm. I suspect his classmates just aren't interested in aid that comes from outside their bubble and bookwyrm thinks it reinforces neocolonialism or something.
@nunez- If you're still here. One criticism I have of Marxists is their tendency to get wrapped up in narratives. bookwrym looks at a situation and his little template for the way things go is already laid out. Regardless of whether there is some truth to his analysis of the situation, there is more to the story than he can see. For instance, "neocolonialism" or not, it doesn't change the fact that people are being rendered aid.
As for bookwyrm's policy suggestions, I can't say I know too much, but there are two points I'd like to make. There are two groups of people that we are talking about here. There are people who simply have a low standard of living and there are people who are literally starving. In the second group, the major causes of this are war, displacement, natural disasters, political upheaval, etc. There are also places that simply lack sufficient natural resources, including ways to make clean water. While the general low standard of living may be a result of globalisation, I don't think that the dire straits peoples are a direct result of globalisation.
I feel like in these discussions, you see a group of people who previously felt very sure about the who the "good guys" and "bad guys" were suddenly split. The major split seems to be between global and national interests. bookwyrm's proposals might help the developing world but I think it would probably hurt the average American as well. You're seeing a similar tiff right now the U.S. Democratic Party, centered around Elizabeth Warren.
As for the first bolded part, you don't seem to fully comprehend the argument. The argument is that aid within a globalized neoliberal economy perpetuates the need for aid. You are saying "well at least they are getting aid until we figure something out," but the point is that the aid and the means with which it is rendered is creating the conditions for more need in the future, and, in fact, prevents you from "working to identify and implement sound policies" because it takes as an unchanging precondition the ideological framework that perpetuates it. So you have people like DJ saying forever that the problem is complex and we need to work incrementally within the system to solve hunger, blah blah blah, but let's keep giving them aid in this way. That's bookwyrm's whole point. The critique comes first, otherwise you end up perpetuating conditions of systemic violence.
As for the second bolded part, you are making an overly broad statement that looks safe to make, because who would blame everything on globalization. I mean the people in Africa didn't have internet 50 years ago, and now at least they have some hope of getting the internet. But it ignores the fact that the people's natural resource inheritance in Africa is being openly plundered, often in exchange for the very aid we are talking about! Here are some loans poor country, to build infrastructure. Oh, your warlord used the funds on frivolous shit and guns and now you can't pay them back? Just sell your mineral rights, remove barriers to entry for our multinationals, and let us exploit your labor pool and we can write that debt down a bit. Here's a few billion to buy mosquito nets and rice. Thank you for the rare earth minerals, gold, oil, and other resources you won't ever see again.
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On July 15 2015 13:12 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2015 12:32 Jerubaal wrote: I feel like I'm watching a debate with a Calvinist.
This does not seem to be a rational so much as a reaction. Djzapz seems to be saying "we should work to identify and implement sound policies, but in the meantime we should keep sending food." This "but we should keep sending food" seems to be offensive to some, like Djzapz classmates and bookwyrm. I suspect his classmates just aren't interested in aid that comes from outside their bubble and bookwyrm thinks it reinforces neocolonialism or something.
@nunez- If you're still here. One criticism I have of Marxists is their tendency to get wrapped up in narratives. bookwrym looks at a situation and his little template for the way things go is already laid out. Regardless of whether there is some truth to his analysis of the situation, there is more to the story than he can see. For instance, "neocolonialism" or not, it doesn't change the fact that people are being rendered aid.
As for bookwyrm's policy suggestions, I can't say I know too much, but there are two points I'd like to make. There are two groups of people that we are talking about here. There are people who simply have a low standard of living and there are people who are literally starving. In the second group, the major causes of this are war, displacement, natural disasters, political upheaval, etc. There are also places that simply lack sufficient natural resources, including ways to make clean water. While the general low standard of living may be a result of globalisation, I don't think that the dire straits peoples are a direct result of globalisation.
I feel like in these discussions, you see a group of people who previously felt very sure about the who the "good guys" and "bad guys" were suddenly split. The major split seems to be between global and national interests. bookwyrm's proposals might help the developing world but I think it would probably hurt the average American as well. You're seeing a similar tiff right now the U.S. Democratic Party, centered around Elizabeth Warren. As for the first bolded part, you don't seem to fully comprehend the argument. The argument is that aid within a globalized neoliberal economy perpetuates the need for aid. You are saying "well at least they are getting aid until we figure something out," but the point is that the aid and the means with which it is rendered is creating the conditions for more need in the future, and, in fact, prevents you from "working to identify and implement sound policies" because it takes as an unchanging precondition the ideological framework that perpetuates it. So you have people like DJ saying forever that the problem is complex and we need to work incrementally within the system to solve hunger, blah blah blah, but let's keep giving them aid in this way. That's bookwyrm's whole point. The critique comes first, otherwise you end up perpetuating conditions of systemic violence. As for the second bolded part, you are making an overly broad statement that looks safe to make, because who would blame everything on globalization. I mean the people in Africa didn't have internet 50 years ago, and now at least they have some hope of getting the internet. But it ignores the fact that the people's natural resource inheritance in Africa is being openly plundered, often in exchange for the very aid we are talking about! Here are some loans poor country, to build infrastructure. Oh, your warlord used the funds on frivolous shit and guns and now you can't pay them back? Just sell your mineral rights, remove barriers to entry for our multinationals, and let us exploit your labor pool and we can write that debt down a bit. Here's a few billion to buy mosquito nets and rice. Thank you for the rare earth minerals, gold, oil, and other resources you won't ever see again. To reduce the notion of "sending food" as purely ideological is your problem in this matter. It may well be, but as others have said, the notion that people without food die is another thing to take into consideration, and you and Bookwyrm completely ignore that. I don't know if you'd agree, but he's been completely honest about how we should suddenly stop sending food, knowing that those people would die, and it takes radical change. Yet as I've repeated ad nauseam, the act of having this latent idea has no value. Your quote illustrates that well, as far as I'm concerned, because the "forces which prevent their realization" are something to take into consideration.
At the end of the day, if you can't do what you want, you're whining. And to say I misunderstand the problem when I'm aware of the ills of what bookwyrm called neoimperialism, I did bring up suggestions about capacity building. These practical measures that we should aim to do are actually implementable.
You called my argument banal before, and now you're trying to paint incremental change as this dumb thing, and yet it's the only way we do things. To dismiss it is you admitting that you will actively denigrate those who do too little for your taste, while you yourself do nothing while advocating to change the world, thus ensuring that the world will never change. So I don't think it's banal for me to explain that your world view, while nice on paper, laughable, due to its complete lack of applicability and usefulness in the real world. And of course, of COURSE you think my point is banal when your point is fairies and unicorns. How is a realist supposed to argue with fairies and unicorns for everybody? I have no such cool shit in my arsenal.
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This constant complaining about how certain action is impossible is part of the problem. The only difference between my view and yours in that regard is the number of people who hold it. Yes of course you sound reasonable when you say "but you are impractical!" We are both sitting in a first world country with little but our vote and our opinion so stop pretending that you are the realist here.
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Fine, but I could just as well have the exact same ideals as you do and then I'd actually get to work in the morning instead of being deadlocked. I'm stuck in a first world country, I have ideals which I know full well cannot be realized, I discuss them like you do, and when I sit my ass on a chair at work, instead of crying about how my big plans cannot take place, I'm a slave to the system like everybody else and I try to make it better in whatever small way I can. And so I help with urban design and shit to make people of Montreal live better... And I think it's fine of me to value these small things I can do, just like I value the work of janitors cleaning stuff, engineers designing streets, and UN staffers filling out a shipping slip to send food in a refugee camp while crying themselves to sleep because their hands are tied, and the next day they push as hard as a handful of people can to actually change things but they can't, yet they make stuff a little better while YOU say they're wrong and what they're doing is fucked up and you'd apparently prefer inertia and perhaps even mass deaths to gradual change. Thank God for me.
And I know full well that you're advocating for radical change. Unicorns, like I said.
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What are you even talking about at this point? Your making Montreal better has nothing to do with what we are talking about. You can still be for radical change and continue to do whatever it is you are doing.
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