We have discovered in the Disunited Kingdom that the the right of self-determination of "the people" is extremely problematic, for at least 2 reasons. The first is the problem of the border. The border identifies "the people" who then establish the border by declaring their independence. Scotland, or The Donbas, or Crimea, or wherever has to already exist as a defined place in order for "the people" to have a defined limit such that they can decide their fate. It is not sufficient for this border to be clear, it has to be recognised as significant for self-determination by those on each side of it. Thus unenlightened cannot declare the independence of his house and garden, because the fences are not recognised as significant in that particular way, though they are in other ways. The second problem is the right of the other side of the border not to recognise it. It is not altogether clear, for example, that Scotland has the right to self-determination and thence independence, against the wishes of England to remain united.

Personally, I do not see it as my duty to argue for or against a particular renegotiation of the borders with respect to this thread's subject, but I want to at least point to some of the reasons why borders are always disputable, especially in relation to the right to self-determination, which governments claim for themselves by virtue of their existence , but do not necessarily respect the claims of other governments. And if the rights in such matters cannot be determined but are always debatable, then the morality of the disputants in terms of attack and defence is also indeterminate. An agreement is reached or there is a civil or uncivil war, or a separatist movement or a unification movement.

As I live in a dacha outside Londongrad, you can perhaps understand from that article some of my cynicism concerning the morality of supposed democracies.

Institutions mold people. — Moses

The real problem isn't with the Russian people, but with Russian institutions, namely the military culture.
— Moses

We can't say that the Russian people aren't the problem either. — neomac

______________________________________________________

The common good is more like it. One must tolerate a lot of unpleasantness to live in society, but if we spread this unpleasantness around equitably, then it becomes a fair, and hence tolerable, social contract. — Olivier5

You will hear no argument from me to contradict that an equitable society that promotes the common good is both a pleasant place to live and at least in these respects a moral society, though that is sounding a bit socialist. Do you broadly agree with the observations of others quoted above, that there is an intimate entanglement of people and institutions such that they mould the people that create them and are remoulded by the people they create?

Yet in the end, the principle upheld at the Nuremberg trials was that moral responsibility is always on individuals, those who made immoral laws, gave immoral orders, and each of those who obeyed them. there is no collective responsibility, no institutional responsibility, no national responsibility, and thus no morality of nation or government other than the morality of those individuals.

you seem to be talking about the fact that some countries are more pleasant to live in than others, rather than their moral standing.

I have lived and worked in many places, in Africa and Asia, including countries where the state jails or kills folks for their ideas, with total impunity. It takes some getting used to. — Olivier5

Excellent! Perhaps you can share your experience a little. what countries are top of the moral pops? My feeling is that I would prefer a wealthy country to a poor one, a stable one to an unstable one, a well organised one to a badly organised one, a peaceful one to a violent, and so on. and I feel I know in a general way how to start estimating these things. Do you think of the morality of a country in these terms or in some other way?

To what extent is this judgement based on your own personal experience with different modes or types of governments? Because this strikes me as something a person would say from the safe confine of a First World armchair. — Olivier5

My personal experience of living under governments is entirely First world, and only 2 European countries at that. What is your personal experience that gives you the advantage?

Ate you denying that Russia is presently a ruthless dictatorship, and/or that Ukraine is a democracy? If not, what are you saying? — Olivier5

I am denying that there is a vast moral difference between them on the grounds that I do not see a vast moral difference between governments in general. Power has no morality, but only competence, expediency, and habit. Thus I expect and see evidence of the same corruption, manipulation by oligarchs, and so on whether I am looking at the US, UK, Ukraine, or Russia. Which countries indulge in military adventures abroad at any particular moment is nothing to do with the moral fibre of the country, and everything to do with economic advantage and the possibility of profit, financial or power-wise.

Of course geography and history have a role as well, but I do not see nations foregoing any horror on purely moral grounds, but only on the grounds that they won't be able to get away with it. I am open to persuasion that say, Ukraine preferred to cede some territory rather than enter a long struggle with separatists, or that any supporters of Ukraine have done something noble and disadvantageous. Do you have an example at all?

I am saying though, that there is no moral equivalence between 1) a ruthless militaristic dictatorship and 2) the democracy attacked by 1. — Olivier5

You are saying it, but do not seem to be prepared to back it up or consider comparisons made by others. And it is odd considering that the ruthless militaristic dictatorship and the attacked democracy in this case were, within my lifetime at least, one and the same nation. How is it that all the saints of the USSR lived in the West and all the sinners in the East?

The firing squad will shoot you when the officer says "Fire!", and not until. Arguments about magical thinking will not affect them, but the order will. Humans that suffer the abuse of army training can be 'triggered' by a shouted word to react like a machine. Such manipulative abuse is a commonplace feature of human relations.

Pointing a gun cannot cause someone to hand over the money, but it can make them afraid and decide to obey. Likewise, a charging lion cannot cause a man to run, but... Magical thinking in such cases is not magical at all, but a shorthand for a causal chain that includes a sensitive, responsive, motivated organism. There is no reason to expect complex causal chains to be fully deterministic; even the properties of an inanimate object such as an iron beam cannot be made consistent, as microscopic variations in the material will change the bending and breaking points for example.

this moral cloaca where you cannot even distinguish between an aggressive dictatorship and a defending democracy — Olivier5

It is more history than philosophy which leads some of us there. Tell me more about this moral distinction, that is so clear to you and so imaginary to others. One compares levels of dishonest propaganda, deaths of civilians, abandonment of principles of justice such as torture imprisonment without trial, assassination attempts, etc, etc, and it appears to some of us that the moral high ground is unoccupied by any government. But if you berate folk for even making the comparison and insist that the difference is obvious at the same time, then you cannot expect to convince any sceptic of the righteousness of one cause over another.

Someone might add that it's especially Ukraine that is baring the brunt of the war as the war is fought in Ukraine, not in Russia, and naturally Western financial institutions are anticipating to gain profits from rebuilding Ukraine, not Russia. — ssu

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to make some money.
And all at Alice's expense,
They thought it very funny.

So Alice found her dress all torn
Her body bruised and broken
While Tweedledum cried "Liberty"
From Dee, "Freedom" was spoken.

Examiners just want to test your understanding and methodology, but God wants to test your calculating skill as well.

We can disagree about things without casting moral aspersions at each other or exchanging insults.
— unenlightened

Ah, I see. Such as...

Double down on your stupidity why not?
— unenlightened

your insulting stupidity
— unenlightened — Isaac

Yes. I am not immune from the general atmosphere, and not proud of it, and that is why I withdraw from discussion sometimes. And yet again you are making a conflict where there is no reason to. I'm going to go quiet now, because our conversation is not productive.

Unfortunate then that you're on a public forum whose membership is not limited to those who already agree with you. — Isaac

Not at all. We can disagree about things without casting moral aspersions at each other or exchanging insults. It is irritating that you use my comments to do that, and unnecessary and unproductive. But I will struggle on. You castigate @RogueAI for agreeing with my post, that you claim also to agree with, and have generally wasted a page of comments creating a disagreement out of nothing at all.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant by :

you want to try and make a partisan point of it. — unenlightened

It's really unproductive, serves to diminish the force of the argument I was making, and looks like the finger-pointing attitude it is pointing its finger at. I would like to make a discussion of war that does not mimic its topic, and this does not help me.

Following the money is, more often than not, applied only post hoc after deciding who the target of blame should be. — Isaac

And who is the target of your blame for this reprehensible post hoc deciding?

So you agree that it applies impartially to West and East, North and South, Capitalist and Communist, saint and sinner. :smile:

But then you want to try and make a partisan point of it. :sad:

Really? do you have a recent war to which it doesn't apply?

Here's a nice little podcast for you.

https://shwep.net/podcast/platos-parmenides-and-metaphysics/

a reason why Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas region, — Apollodorus

Ports and oil, I'd imagine, using Deep Throat's principle, 'follow the money'.

Talk of ethnicity, democracy, denazification, de-islamification, or removal of oppression, always seem to become important near oilfields.

Besides, this reasoning is quite universal. — ssu

Yes. Exactly my point. War is always an agreement.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle. — Lewis Carroll

And for Putin, starting a war has been the way to get that popularity up. — ssu

I think he would have been even more popular if Ukraine had submitted.

So. Add up all the avoidable death in the world - the invasions, the starvation, the civil wars, the poor health, pollution, suicides - just how many are on Russia's hands and how many on America's? — Isaac

Too many.

To think this is a question with any significance is to espouse a dogmatic ideology that necessarily creates its negation as the eternal enemy. This is an exercise in futility that the world can well do without, that has taken over from religion as the banner under which wars and other power games are commonly prosecuted. "Your body pile is higher than mine, therefore we are the good guys." Another bad argument.

I would hazard a guess that no one here would suggest that flattening cities, killing civilians, fighting in trenches on a potato a day, or letting mountains of grain rot while people starve is a "good thing". A good many folks here, though, suggest that if you think X you must be in favour of [insert horror here].

Such arguments are not a "good thing", either. Wars happen because folks think that war is better than submission to [insert arsehole here] This applies even to aggressors, who also think that war is better than submission to [insert limitation of their power]. Thus war entails agreement to fight, and agreement that war is better than submission. Start your discussion with this agreement in mind, that the war is necessary, and the lessor evil. both sides would prefer to have their own way peacefully, but...

If I can say "I understand X" and can at the same time say "X is incoherent," how does that play out? — ZzzoneiroCosm

A hard hat is recommended when standing under anything that does not firmly cohere.

Are you sure?

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/05/15/operation-leaked-emails-intelligence-coup-boris-johnson/?fbclid=IwAR0AxHvhLxxd1ctbnuG3UMXCKv8mcSQPpp7KqT-jmYPMO0vBolXbcek4fy0

Religious people swear using religious terms, God's teeth, by the holy mother of god. One uses terms of significance to add emphasis, and if you don't got religion, scatology is the next best thing. That which is potent must be covered, and not spoken of, and thereby the word itself becomes potent and transgressive. And sometimes talk must exceed the bounds of convention, by dust-mite. The word of power to speak to Alexa and Google on this topic is "taboo".

I'm in the same boat. But It is a test with an 'attenuated' live virus that is of the monkey pox family at least, and recent enough to have a connection with this outbreak. I think.

@Frank might be able to put us straight?

Government is nothing but words, with the implicit threat of violence.

Here is a more recent test experiment that just might be connected.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(22)00027-1/fulltext

Hopefully, some urgent contact tracing is being done.

The masses are essentially innocent in the hands of expert psychologists and mass-manipulators. — ZzzoneiroCosm

This is not a very jolly thread is it? I'll try and inject a sliver of optimism.

The treachery of psychology is abhorrent and inexcusable, and has multiplied the level of deception in society. However, the internet is undermining the universality of the lie. We become aware of the lie and we become angry. But becoming aware is the first step. We do not know who on this site is a propagandist, and it is a common accusation, and potentially a divisive tool of the propagandists themselves. But this state of global paranoia is an improvement on - for example - the situation during WW1, when the masses were willing turkeys lining up for Christmas for King and Cuntry or Kaiser, or Freedum and Demoncracy, or whatever the flavour was in your grandparents innocent ears. Yes folks, this is the age of gold.

A philosophy is not an argument, but a way of thinking about things. This is the way I think about philosophy anyway. An argument can sometimes be made that one way of thinking about things is better than another, but such arguments are not usually compelling. This may explain the appearance of futility discerned by the op. But there is much potential for a slower and more diffuse influence, such that questions that seemed to have a clear and definite right answer come to be seen as not even being clear and definite questions.
Thinking about philosophy in terms of questions with many possible answers, and those answers as ways of thinking and ways of living, may prove more fruitful than focusing on arguments and definitions.

It's not the new covid, its the new AIDS, aka 'gay plague'. We old fogeys who have had the smallpox vaccine have nothing to worry about even if we enjoy our orgies still, and of course milkmaids will have had cowpox so they'll be fine too. A plague of boils to the rest of you though.

We're desperately short of proper communist propaganda on the thread, so here is my humble contribution to restoring the balance somewhat.

https://labourheartlands.com/jacques-baud-the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine-update/

if one can just "will" their way to unalienation, — schopenhauer1

How did you build that straw man from anything you read in my post, when "will" with or without scare quotes is not in my post? Self-realisation is not achieved by will-power, and no one but you has made any such suggestion here. I understand that you disagree with me and probably I don't understand Marx properly, but c'mon, don't just make stuff up.

The problem is that a good deal of work required for social reproduction “offers limited scope for the kind of self-realization Marx had in mind.”
Such work is inescapably repetitive and boring, physically exhausting, or simply unpleasant on account of the conditions under which it must be performed (think, for example, of the work involved maintaining a sewer). It is, in other words, inherently alienating. Marx believed that alienated labor will be eliminated under communism. But the truth is that it will be a feature of all modes of production.

https://www.academia.edu/43293587/The_Importance_of_Others_Marx_on_Unalienated_Production

Speaking as one who has from time to time worked to maintain a sewer or two, it does not seem to me to have much to do with it being hard work or unpleasant or repetitive; what alienates is being divorced from the social necessity of the work.



The above is surely a description of alienating work overcome by the fellowship of patriotic common cause? Changing my baby's diaper is not alienating to the same extent as changing my granddad's. Self-realisation, in this sense is a personal development in a social world that makes drudgery non-alienating. Thus in the Zen monastery, only the Zen master has the self-realisation to be qualified to clean the toilets, the acolytes would be alienated by such work. Nothing alienates the enlightened.

Death is a symptom of many diseases.

"Is the patient breathing and conscious?"
This is the first question they ask on the emergency medical line.

To be alive is to be interacting with the environment - sucking it in and squeezing it out, and to be conscious is to actively respond to pain, to noise, to voice, to touch, to light in the eyes, etc.

Computation is not necessary.

Philosophers tend to conflate intelligence and consciousness.

As though a chess grandmaster is more conscious than a waiter. The usual class bias!

Yes you have to resist your more base thoughts — universeness

Is that not a base thought?