No, if you want to see what he means then you need to understand him.

No need to see what he means. Don't ask for evidence either.

When was the last year that you would agree that systemic racism existed in the US?

You assume much, I'm a nihilist/moral relativist and I think morality just comes down to human sensibilities and culture. Morality only exists because it exists in our nature, if evolution went down a different path, morality could simply not exist at all.

What I do believe in is pragmatism and that when people work together and do what is best for themselves and others that this is best for all. Compared to when people only do what is best for themselves and no one is well served.

I also believe that we need to work within our sensibilities and not in a dream world. If seeing a cat being set on fire terrifies children and makes people cry but then they also salivate greedily at the sight of a juicy steak then that's going to be part of even an entirely pragmatic approach to things. To characterise this reality as "an appeal to emotion" is simply disingenuous.

Not really, being human and morality is part of this, puts me in a place of experiencing and seeing things in a particular way, that while subjective, is not within my control and cannot be characterised as belief.

Honestly, the way you two are describing subjective truth as preference and belief is painting a different picture for me. I may be more inclined to think the same way about truth if I felt that subjectivity is belief and preference.

"My truth" is just a recognition that the way I perceive things which is true for me internally is not necessarily true externally. I see beauty, I see evil, I think "delicious" and so on. Is it true that chocolate is delicious? Well, for me it is. This includes but is not limited to opinion, I see beauty and think delicious can be explained as having evolutionary utility. I don't even have a choice in the matter.

If I said "you deserve a reward!" and you said "that's true" there is simply no way that I would think that you are talking objectively. It wouldn't happen and I would be shocked if you said "no, actually, what I mean is, if you think I don't then you're just wrong, it's a FACT that I deserve a reward".

I can simply not accept that it is a total redundancy when the language being used in literally thousands of contexts does not make it clear whether we're speaking objectively or not. If you say, it's better that it wasn't this way, maybe but it is that way. We can agree to disagree but I am going to continue in my ways and I think it would make things harder for me if I stopped.

I understand your points and in a different world where people did not use truth in other contexts such as "things true to me" in any shape then I could wholeheartedly agree. We do not live in that world, there are many circumstances where one can talk about "their truth" as "their perspective" and "their reality". If you want to dislike all of these instances, I don't have an opinion on that but I won't be assuming that people who use the word "truth" in any context are trying to make a claim of objective moral truth.

It's not just "my truth" either, I think I could find many examples where upon further investigation, the word truth is used but is not meant to be taken as a declaration of fact.

I consider this to be a linguistic dispute about the redundancy of "objective" in the usage of the term "objective truth". You say it's a redundancy but I say it clarifies what exactly is being said and helps me to understand. We may just have to agree to disagree on this.

I don't see where this is clarified. One straightforward way to pose the same question would be to ask whether there are moral truths. I've yet to see anyone lay out what exactly we'd be losing by removing all talk of "objective" here and just asking whether there are moral truths (if there are moral truths, then moral relativism is false). — Enai De A Lukal

You can say you don't agree but it's been laid out plainly.

Example.
Person A thinks incest is immoral, Person B thinks it isn't.

Person A thinks you can breathe underwater, Person B thinks you can't.

How do you prove that incest is immoral and how do you prove that you can't breathe underwater.

Is it true that Person A thinks incest is immoral? Yes, can he claim that it is moral truth? Yes. The question remains on whether he thinks that Person A believes his moral truth is a fact or a viewpoint.
An example of objective morality is that within Christianity/Islam it is said that God CANNOT be wrong. He is always right. So if God lays out what is sinful and what isn't then this is a matter of fact, if you disagree then you are simply wrong.

Equally, if there is any kind of objective moral truth then there are correct answers and the other answers are false. If you remove "objective moral truth" and say "moral truth" then I don't think this is clear, you would need to explain your stance. Even now, because you refuse to describe your views as believing in objective moral truth, I still see ambiguity in your position.

No, it's a matter of what kind of society we want to live in, you're focusing on the actual killing itself but I'm not. People see killing a cat or breaking a duck's leg as a cruel, sadistic, near-psychotic thing to do whereas killing a cow is seen in a totally different light. It's the same as dogs, the West sees killing dogs as horrible whereas other cultures don't see it that way.

Your focus on the end result (death of the animal) is unhelpful to actually understanding the motivations at play.

What about the interests of the animals? As well as applying logic to the moral standards we set for ourselves? Could you really say society is functioning better if it's not functioning logically? Is that not a faulty assumption? — Gitonga

Are you 100% sure it's in the best interests of livestock to not be eaten? That would mean not being born in the first place right? Depends on their living conditions I'd say.

Also, what logic are you talking about, yours? I laid out my logic and it's consistent with raising and killing livestock ethically.

I can see how doing what's best for me and you helps me but doing what's best for a cow is just me being a nice guy. The logic of kindness and the logic of being self-serving is different. Your confusion about this may stem from a misunderstanding that morality is simply about being kind, caring, charitable or whatever?

That's cool, I got it from other threads, I'm glad you let individuals have the opportunity to hang themselves.

Do you think systemic racism is mainly caused by a large percentage of the population believing in white supremacy? What prevalent social or economic issue do you think the US is doing a good job of solving right now that isn't related to systemic racism?

It's probably more correct to say that you won't be helped by my help rather than saying you don't need it.


That video does describe how to resolve the race problem. Also, it doesn't say that there is no racism now.

That solution just doesn't mean like some in this thread demand it be taken to mean that the social issues surrounding systemic racism can just be ignored. Or that the economic and social issues caused by systemic racism just magically disappear because you stopped highlighting race.

Of course, it's obvious that you wouldn't agree with it but to be fair, you're a full-blown racist? You treat people entirely different based on their skin colour and you admit it freely.

Words can hurt you know? I did try to give you the opportunity to say something intelligent.

Before I would ask myself when an act of violence was justified I'd ask if it achieved its aim. After all, how can violence be justified if it's pointless or even counterproductive? Aimless violence is hard to justify.

Why is there no legal recourse and what would a legal recourse look like?

Why don't you try figuring out why the only recourse has become violence and work backwards.

Personally, a lot of the motivation to be moral is the recognition of how society functions best when I'm looking out for both my best interests and the best interests of others.

I kind of view animal cruelty as a subset of this as being basically that rather than talking about how well society functions, talking about the kind of society we want to live in. I don't really want to see my neighbour setting his cat on fire but I'm happy for him to eat as much steak as he pleases.

Finally, animals entirely outside of our society like dolphins, tigers and whatnot fall under a similar category where due to a variety of factors such as kawainess, sentience and interpretative value. By interpretative value, I mean, for instance, you can call a tiger majestic, beautiful, strong and that kind of image makes us look bad when we're killing them and it makes more people love the animal who get angry about those animals being killed.

I think the Western cultures view animals and nature in this way more than others probably because we've been past the point of actually needing to kill most animals in our culture for a longer time. As opposed to China for example which faced starvation multiple times in the 20th century or Africa where poaching has been a way out of extreme poverty.

I don't think these are double standards, it's simply not true that our culture values all life and is opposed to any type of harm.

I'm fine with that just haven't heard it put exactly as you have.

It's not about saying you "objectively" deserve it, it's about saying this claim about deserving it goes into the "I prefer vanilla" subjective category or the "hydrogen is inflammable" objective category because they have different implications. That's what is being said when one talks about "objective morality", that it's not an opinion or subject to context but an immutable fact that applies to all.

What else would be the alternatives besides moral relativism if not claiming morality has elements of objective truth?

I'm not talking about consensus, you can read below for clarification.


I don't see a need to "rid ourselves" of relativism and I'm not trying to do that. I don't really see what you've done besides replacing terms. If you see the distinction between "objective and subjective justifications" then you see my distinction between "objective and subjective truth". I think my nomenclature is standard and I've never heard of yours.

I don't really know what you mean by saying that "set out moral relativism as holding that moral truths are relative to some given opinion".

Moral relativism says that the "truth" about the consequence being deserved is subjective and objective morality says that the "truth" is an absolute and unquestionable fact. It is the same distinction that you made between a preference for vanilla as opposed to hydrogen being flammable. With the minor point that subjective morality isn't simply a preference.

I am pretty sure OP is talking about moral relativism and objective morality.

If everything is relative, than everything is crooked and there is no truth about what a person is, what he has done, and what he deserves. The world would therefore be entirely abstract and meaningless if there was no objective truth. Is this enough to prove relativism wrong? — Gregory

"There is no truth about what a person is, what he has done, and what he deserves"

He then goes onto clarify.

"The world would be therefore entirely abstract and meaningless if there was no objective truth".

It seems fair to read this as "there is an objective truth about what a person deserves" which is a very different statement from "there is a truth about what a person deserves". Do you disagree?

@Enai De A Lukal

I could be wrong about what OP is saying but if I'm not then his entire argument is about objective truth in morality and the meaning of objective here is that it is not dependant upon the opinions of people. How can that be the same as just saying "truth" when it can be used in contexts where it is dependant upon people? Isn't this clarified by the word "objective"? Hence ambiguity is added without "objective" where it wasn't before.

What is objective justification?

What do you think OP is arguing for and against?

@Enai De A Lukal

You can answer too, what do you think OP is arguing for and against?

OP distinguished objective truth from subjective truth? Which is significant since creating your own truth is the heart of relativism.

All you did was make OP's post more ambiguous.

The person who misunderstood your post was Baden who is clearly leftwing, I called you a leftist because of past experiences.

Objective truth is just an epistemological position, it's a statement about your requirements for certainty or our collective requirements for certainty. This applies to "objective meaning" as well... if you believe in such a thing.

The US has rather fucked views on democracy, the American dream is about the opportunity to succeed even if the majority don't. The US is barely a democracy to begin with, US policy barely takes public opinion into account and the US government actively manipulates and lies to its population.

The US just doesn't address its own issues with the urgency and effectiveness that justice demands. Either the US population just doesn't care about their own problems or the US government thinks those problems aren't actually important. It's just hard to see so many social, economic, environmental, governmental issues being ignored and still think "yeah this is a democracy and what the people want". The resources are there but why does nothing happen?

I don't care what some people say, they aren't spokespeople for their race, races can't even have spokespeople and even if they could I'd still say there's no black culture. Also, I don't acknowledge "cultural appropriation" stupid term.

I disagree with the idea that there is a "black culture" to begin with and I'd say the term is racist. The thing is that you don't know whether or not people subscribe to "black culture" in the first place. If you're just going to assume someone's characteristics by their culture and their culture by their race then you're assuming characteristics by race which you agreed was racist.

You say that you're indifferent to race but that you have concerns about "rap music" or "gangster" culture that is disproportionately black and this overlap could make you seem racist. Theoretically, that could be true and you could be misjudged for it, to avoid that, it's not necessary to pretend like it's not disproportionately black. However, the where and why you are mentioning it is very important.

I’m interested in the role of fashion in regards to racism. For example, several years ago I noticed that when I encountered black people I would sometimes react with what may be considered racist behaviors. Whether it’s making sure my car doors are locked when I find myself in a predominantly black neighborhood, or refraining from making eye contact with a black person I pass on the street. — Pinprick

I get what you're saying but as I said, you need to be careful with your language to invoke race as little as possible. Saying that you "refrain from making eye contact with a black person" is very different from saying "someone with tattoos, big muscles and a bandana". Or "I make sure to lock my car doors when I'm in high crime areas".

Like others, I don't think you're a racist but I think that many of things you've said could be easily taken as racist and that you would have to explain further to convince people you're not. You could save yourself the trouble and be more careful with your language.

I'm well aware of your separate thread and fdrake is literally talking about a discussion we had in that thread. But yeah, you got me big time, totally rekt.

I don't think I've talked that much about the rioters but I think I've been pretty consistent.

I don't think that public opinion in the US is the problem, if we had many posters here defending police violence then I would be likely to ignore our differences and argue against that with you.

StreetlightX actually posted an interesting MLK quote about the "white moderate" who is almost more of a problem than the overt racist even though they agree in principle.

My view of this thread is that the overwhelming majority of posters here already recognise there is systemic racism, recognise the need to do something about it. For me to spend my time talking about how there is systemic racism and there is a need to do something about it any more than I already have would be pointless.

For me, the leftist is like the "white moderate", you agree in principle with the same things that I do but your approach is a problem. So I have talked about this problem.

Quote to me the poster who is defending systemic racism or who is denying it exists and I will happily argue with that person with you.

As for starting a discussion on an issue of substance, you see posts here and there of people who are trying to do that but it's lost in the "offtopic" debates which are over 90% of the posts here.


Unenlightened is already a known crazy leftist, no need to invite him.


Fair enough, I don't think there is any hope for Benkei either but good luck.

Prejudicial? Please, spare me.

You can't be honest with yourself and what this thread is. That's fine, I didn't expect to make an impact.

From page one, people have been condoning violence and you still have people condoning violence so has this thread ever not been talking about that?

What's absolutely obvious is that the US has a long list of unaddressed, systemic problems and social issues. There's either no progress on solving many of these issues or they're getting worse.

What's also obvious is that US policy disregards public opinion and there's a long history of that.

So yes it's pretty sad that groups like BLM are leading the charge on any issue but if the group was ideal it probably wouldn't make any difference. If the people dedicating their lives to making a difference aren't then us who discuss things on the forum definitely aren't.

Nonetheless, can't really ignore the leftist echo chamber who get stuck debating only the very worst of their ideologies because that's all they ever get challenged on. You can make any thread and make some good points and say some smart things but then you'll let slip some "white males" and the thread is done.

We'll see how well you stay on any topic that isn't about leftists condoning violence or leftists talking irresponsibly about groups. You'll get challenged on your bullshit then you'll debate it and you will never discuss anything of substance. Anyway, I'm out.

Has it occurred to you yet that you're the most racist, classist, sexist, hateful poster on the forum? Nobody brings up race more, nobody brings up gender more, nobody brings up class more than you. Nobody prejudices against groups like you, nobody characterises people by their groups like you.

There's no reason to be charitable towards you just because you claim about the real issues. Same as there's no reason to be charitable towards people who burn and loot shit or beat or kill because they claim to care about the real issues. You can deludedly praise yourself while participating in the same group-based prejudicial bullshit that constitutes the problem, however, people shouldn't be wasting their time taking you seriously.


Each of them are different. StreetlightX is absolutely not worth talking to and you have 0% chance of making any progress with him.

The others, I don't know well enough to say, however, I think it's less about the forum and more about the people participating in this thread.

I hope you realise how extreme the people you're debating in this thread are.

Baden and StreetlightX are batshit crazy leftists who say all kinds of stupid nonsense, Benkei is possibly even worse and Isaac seems no better. I mean you probably already noticed this by how they're giving you grief about saying random, unrelated people shouldn't have their lives ruined because people are angry about systemic racism.

These people don't think about things in terms of individuals and talking about things in these terms will get you nowhere here.

I think that at the heart of modern-day racism isn't views on genetics but essentially associating personality characteristics with races. I don't think it requires any emotional attachment to those associations either. If you think that "x race" are "lazy people" and that's just an opinion and not an effort on your part to be hateful, I'd still call that racism. Any biases based on race can be called racism but what about biases on culture?

I think that's the trickiest part about the race issue because culture exists and you don't have to like it.

The solution to my mind is that you need to be very specific with your language and have terms that make your position clear. If you meet a particular kind of person that is somehow offputting and you describe that kind of person racially then, of course, you're going to get called a racist. You need to use language that doesn't associate the race with the behaviour.

I would say your OP is rather unambiguously racist.

You can say someone looks like a gangster or a hooligan and treat them with suspicion and it's not racist. Once you associate those characteristics to a race and then prejudice against that race because of that association then that's racist.

I think the idea behind the forum moderation is that we have basically some of the worst posters on the forum given moderator status. I feel quite confident that if something doesn't meet their standards that it must be quite awful and fully support that thread getting closed.

Maybe it's not circular but what I meant to say is that power is not only created by public opinion but the ability to sway public opinion must be defined as power.

1. OP says "Power determines morality"
2. The ability to influence the hearts & minds of or mobilise the population is definitely a form of power.
3. If you can influence or mobilise public opinion to change whats moral then you must have power

The kind of power that influences morality can't be separated from how compelling the arguments are. If you take away those who follow and agree with the individual/groups who have gained power then they have lose all of their power. If their power is just "people agree with me" then it seems like that's the important thing. OP is just labelling a range of complex motivations as power and then saying "power determines morality".

Sure morality is subjective but your argument is circular, the ability to influence public opinion is power and you say public opinion is influenced by power.

Well, capitalism certainly didn't fuck the native Americans, colonialism did.

I think you're all over the place and so is @jamalrob and it's common to see when talking about capitalism.

Wealth inequality is older than history, resources were never distributed fairly in any society. The "theft" is a part of life, it's older than capitalism. Communism recognises the imbalance but does not give a satisfactory answer, capitalism ignores the imbalance and operates on it. However, you cannot blame capitalism for not solving the problem of power and how power works.

The more resources someone has, the more easily they acquire even more. The less someone has, the more difficult it is to acquire more.

Individuals ultimately act out their human nature across time. Through the preexisting conventions of power, technology, economy and so on. It was inevitable that people with power would use their power against the weak, it seems so pointless to have opinions about it.

Should inequity be redressed in modernity? Yeah, I believe the natural conclusion of capitalism is wealth redistribution through things like a UBI. If this doesn't happen, the alternatives could indeed be grim.

Land inequality is not an issue of capitalism, it's difficult to address, many countries in South America and Africa are totally ruined by land inequality due to colonialism. Meanwhile, in Singapore, the land is mostly owned by the government. The solution Singapore used was rather capitalist in nature, forced sales of land to the government.