This can be seen from the way in the US a veteran having a Purple Heart is quite respected. Nobody (perhaps with the exception of the draft-dodger Donald Trump) will think a Purple Heart receiver is a loser. Or a helpless victim. — ssu

Trump was talking about John McCain, who was tortured for five years as a POW. It left him with a limp and unable to lift his arms above his head.

McCain was part of a force waging a proxy war in Vietnam. He's a good example of how we each have the potential for evil and good. He was an American soldier on the wrong side of history, so evil, he was white, so a beneficiary of evil, he was a POW, so powerless, he was a senator who helped outlaw torture by the US government, so a hero.

:clap:

This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them. — Paulo Freire

What an amazing idea. We can shut up and listen.

What do you purpose? Leave the victim alone in his/her suffering and trauma? — javi2541997

No. Beware labeling her as a victim though. That label is helpful for defending her and prosecuting her abuser, but if she keeps that label long term, it's crippling to her. Let her tell you what she is. Allow her to heal. Allow her to leave behind helplessness.

It's a subtle ethical point, but as long as you look at her as helpless, with you being the strong hero, you're helping yourself to honor you don't deserve and blocking her path to freedom.

Is that how Kant would have looked at it? That was my question. — Paine

Kant would have to travel to the early 20th Century to understand Jung's interest in alchemy. Spiritualism was really popular throughout the US and Europe. People were fascinated with contacting the dead and using magic.

Jung treated astrology as if it was a blueprint for the psyche. I was reading something by Jung one time and it occurred to me that he was a product of his times. And then he actually said that! It blew my mind that he knew that about himself. How aware are we that the world we see is shaped by our times?

To repeat my point for anyone interested: a being in pre- and non-analytic philosophy is anything that is—anything that can be said to be.

This is not an attack on any worldview or ontological claim; it is information. — Jamal

:up:

The interest Jung took in Alchemy would be close to dark magic from that perspective. — Paine

I don't think so. He was just drawing out the psychology inherent in esotericism. Check out "The Stone Speaks.". It's all about the astrological symbol of Mercury and the image of the Hermit. Fascinating stuff.

I like donuts

Granted it's unlikely the South would have ever won but if they did I don't think that Lincoln would have remained in power. — praxis

? My point was that the opinion that the US government was responsible for freeing slaves was a rare one. A tiny minority believed that.

said that the EP and the civil war is an instance of responsibility being imposed by force. — praxis

I still don't know what that means

The majority of the people and government won, fortunately. — praxis

The EP was issued per the constitutional war power of the president. It was Lincoln's call. The rest of the government wasn't involved.

The only people who believed, like you, that the government was responsible for securing the freedom of slaves were abolitionists, about 3-5% of the white population.

Just prior to issuing the EP, Lincoln had taken a carriage ride with a prominent abolitionist named Charles Sumner. It's believed that the conversation they had convinced Lincoln to go ahead and issue the EP. It had been drawn up, waiting in his desk for two years.

I think when you said the EP imposed responsibility, you meant the government was taking responsibility for securing liberty.

In a way, that's true. :up:

I don’t think you can claim to value liberty if you deny it to others. — praxis

I agree. I was asking how the EP imposed responsibility by force.

Is Richard Dawkins an example of New Atheism?

The Emancipation Proclamation and the civil war is an instance of responsibility being imposed by force isn’t it? — praxis

How so?

IMO, there is something missing in this schema. It takes abstractions that exist as part of mental life to be more fundamental than the rest of mental life. However, these abstractions are just parts of mental life, formed from subjective observation and reasoning. A full explanation needs to also explain how the reasoning subject constructs the model and the bridge between the model of the objective that is an element of subjective life and the external world simpliciter. In general,I think this requires subsuming the subjective and objective into a larger whole, not one subsuming the other, as in physicalism and many forms of idealism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The bolded part would be an exit from philosophy into mysticism a la Wittgenstein. Right?

Being" presupposes non-being, it's an incoherent concept otherwise, but consciousness as simply sensation precedes any such distinctions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Heidegger hammers this home in "What is Metaphysics.". The advantage of his account is that it doesn't position us in some unobtainable position beyond our own subjectivity.

The headline "scientists discover beings from outside the solar system," implies alien life not meteors passing through our neighborhood. The common usage of the distinction is simply based on "does it have first person subjective experiences." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's true, but when Hegel or Heidegger talk about "Being" they're just talking about existence, they aren't talking about consciousness.

We just need to clarify.

can see the argument for consciousness being primary. If you think of it psychologically, consciousness, as sensation, is prior to the abstraction of being and of the recognition of the external world as external.

"Being" presupposes non-being, it's an incoherent concept anyhow, but consciousness as simply sensation precedes any such distinctions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

That doesn't change anything about the pursuit of equality being anti-liberal in nature. — Tzeentch

It's not anti-liberal.

But the pursuit of equality is anti-liberal by definition, so it makes no sense that those who campaign for ever more equality should call themselves liberal. — Tzeentch

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

These are the words of a 19th Century liberal. A 20th Century liberal sounds like this:

"This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

I don't know of any definition of "liberal" that isn't essentially about equality of some kind.

Another way to explain it is that you can't hurt others without hurting yourself. It's an all purpose curse.

The old lady let the bastards win. She let them mold her into a bastard just like themselves. That's the trap.

You have to figure out that you're not helpless. You can take responsibility for who you are. At the very least you own that.

Still not following. Adults are responsible. Children are dependent on responsible adults. The slave mentality lurks there. It's insidious and dangerous.

But that's not what's really disappointing to me about the degree to which many blacks hate whites. It's that they're doing the very thing they condemn. They're caught in a trap. The only way to freedom is to forgive.

So what’s more important, freedom or responsibility? — praxis

I think they go hand in hand. I may have missed your point.

You could accuse Adams of covert racism. What he said wasn't racist on its face. Just saying.

Naturally. Wherever man is free, there exists inequality. The only way to make people more equal is to make them less free. The more equal people are made, the less free they are.

Moreover, the way governments make people equal is through the use of force. The more equal people are to be made, the more far-reaching governmental powers will have to be, and the more extreme their measures.

The question that never seems to be asked is what happens to all that power accumulation at the top. — Tzeentch

Civil Rights means the government is divided against itself. One part tries to protect equal opportunity, equality under the law, etc. from the other part.

It seems to me modern progressivism is best described as pursuing ideals of (what I consider) extreme equality, and anti-capitalism, probably with (some form of) marxism as the alternative. — Tzeentch

And that's anti-liberal?

Wokism is just a more racially-oriented, extreme version of the same ideals progressives hold today, and those ideals are a reaction to actual liberalism. — Tzeentch

Sort of. Democrats became fairly passive, so it was a call for vigilance.

To call oneself an anti-liberal however doesn't look very good, so the modern progressives kept the tag "liberal" while pursuing ideals which are profoundly anti-liberal. — Tzeentch

What ideals are you talking about?

Yes, I don't understand how anyone could argue otherwise. — RogueAI

It doesn't appear racist to me. The responses of right extremists did, though. What in particular seemed racist to you?

Did you think his comments (at face value) were racist?

From my point of view, you're a voice from the outside. It's both outside and with no context in this case.

The story here is what extremists said in response to Adams. Now that is racism.

Real Estate Developer in Chief

didn't answer that because I don't see the relevance. — Baden

I take it you hadn't then.

If that helps you in some way, great. — Baden

It actually does, thanks. You didn't answer if you'd heard of Adams before this incident. Had you?

Your definition doesn't mean anything to me. If it helps you in some way, great.

And the characterization of blacks as a "hate group", whites should "get the hell away from" is clearly antagonistic at least. — Baden

I guess. It's not racism, though. Being that I am black, it's fairly important to me to keep the word meaningful.

One last question: how do you think this particular drama will end?

frank

No, at face value describing black people as a "hate group" that whites should "get the hell away from" is racist. — Baden

It's actually not. Saying that black people are not fit company for whites is racist. Saying that black people hate whites, so whites should stay away from them is not racist. Sorry, it's just not.

naivety of some posters here re this is surprising. The way Adams chose and spun that poll (even on the basis of which three quarters of respondents showed no animus to the troll slogan) as proof that black people hated whites and therefore whites should "get away" from them is transparent in its racist intent — Baden

It's actually not transparent. I think you recognize that at face value, his rant wasn't racist. You're saying your dog whistling receptors are picking up covert ill intent.

Just curious, had you ever heard of this guy before this thread?

So you think it's basically a land grab?

I don't think either of these explanations hold much water, and basically exemplify the inability that is prevalent in this thread to see the Russians as anything other than cartoon villains. — Tzeentch

Funny thing: you got the "cartoon villain" thing from StreetlightX. He stole it from me. What goes around comes around. :lol: