No. He can't. He never does. He won't start now. — Pro Hominem

He must really feel terrible about all those poor, innocent, infinitely valuable malaria-spreading mosquitoes that have been killed lately. I wonder if he'd consider creating a sanctuary for them.

The instant an hierarchy is developed, we'll have a place in it and I wouldn't count on us being in the upper echelons; somewhere around the lower rungs, maybe. — TheMadFool

Can you just answer the question of what should be done if two "infinitely valuable" life forms are placed into a situation where one must die for the other to live - say, tics on a dog or mosquitos feasting on a human and spreading malaria. We can also go with a tapeworm nesting itself into a human.

It seems to be that the upshot of this is that there are no correct answers because everything is infinitely valuable - so in effect we get moral nihilism here. It doesn't matter if the value is infinity or zero - it's all the same.

be treated by a "superior" being in just the way you treat an "inferior being" and drawing from how humans have treated supposedly "inferior" life, it's defintely not going to be a pleasant experience for us. — TheMadFool

Nobody is saying to treat "inferior" animals like dogs or horses or cats badly. Everybody should be against animal cruelty, but we don't let animals vote or treat them the exact same as humans. We should obviously protect animals and treat them well. Mosquitos are a different story.

Unfortunately, you have to make decisions. Tics attach themselves to your dog. Do you kill the tics or leave the dog to die? Same with leaches on a dog or person. What do you do. These decisions reflect our value system.

Worrying about who's dearer and who's not is distinctly undivine, and by extrapolation, immoral. — TheMadFool

I get it - I was trying to work within your metaphysic. I was saying that the implication is that you can't defend the child from fire ants because they would involve valuing one being over another.

I'm not trying to disprove you here. I'm just running with your system here.

It's not personally something that I would really entertain.... in fact I don't think the vast majority of the planet would entertain it because it leads to actions/consequences which most of the population would consider not only completely absurd but also extremely contrary to human nature and our day to day lived experience.... but if you want to plant your flag on this worldview then more power to you. I just don't care enough to argue with you about it. If you want to consider the life of your child or mother the same as that of an ant or a mosquito then you be you. I take it swatting away or killing mosquitos is again immoral to you because they are infinitely valuable. Enjoy your life with this worldview, it'll be an interesting one.

Racism (again for the slow fuckers way in the back) denotes color/ethnic prejudice plus POWER of a dominant community (color/ethnic in-group) OVER non-dominant communities (color/ethnic out-groups). Whether Hutus over Tutsis, Israeli Jews over Israeli Arabs, Hans over Uyghurs, Turks over Kurds, Kosovo Serbs over Kosovo Albanians, Russians over Chechens, Israeli Ashkenazim over Israeli Sephardim, American Whites over American Blacks Browns Yellows & Reds, etc, this description of racism obtains. — 180 Proof

You can add black south africans over white south africans to this list. I also wonder what's to be said about cities or even states where one group may be more in power than another but that's not reflective of the picture on a national level. How do we define the community?

Devaluing another group of people based upon the color of their skin is not in short supply. — creativesoul

But that's the old, boring definition of racism. The new, exciting definition is power + prejudice, so even the most anti-black white south african or american black supremacist can not possibly be racist. it's not about what you believe it's about where you live and whether you' got the good guy (oppressed) or the bad guy (oppressor) skin color.

I myself have always thought that you can judge individuals, but never larger groups of people especially by their nationality, ethnicity, or race (whatever that means), but perhaps that's not the politically correct way to think about things now as denying the importance of race is racism itself. — ssu

You really can't win either way. If you just try to view individuals as individuals and try to make as few preconceptions as possible, you're racially ignorant or even a racist today. On the other hand, if you view race as central to identity while you could be considered "woke" or "politically correct" your actual day to day interactions with people of other races are going to be really awkward but at least you're woke.

So I've stopped engaging in these types of conversations.

I don't see how. — praxis

I was just commenting on your tendency to try to reduce organizations (the state in this case) to the level of the individual. This is a common theme for libertarians, although they tend to do with society and not so much the state, though I suppose the state is possible. Many libertarians, in principle, are against monopolies, pollution and unfair treatment of labor it's just a matter of how best to resolve these things. I don't really feel like getting into a debate on libertarianism here I was more just commenting on something I find a little interesting.

My question is simple: do you want to be included among the sacred or the non-sacred? — TheMadFool

Ok, I will follow along. I want to be included among the sacred! But guess what? Under your metaphysic, everything is infinitely sacred because God is omni-benevolent - and remember that God is also omniscient too he's right about it.

Everything is infinitely sacred. This has some very ridiculous consequences in practical action. If a group of fire ants are attacking a child, are we allowed to swipe them away and hurt the infinitely sacred fire ants? Are you allowed to kill infinitely valuable bugs in your home? Your metaphysic implies that you ought to value your child or parent or brother the exact same as an ant because after all, God does, and God is also right about everything by the way. You couldn't even follow this psychologically speaking is you wanted to so its setting everyone up for cognitive dissonance.

I guess that insight is ultimately an intersectional one, no? You've got enough white signifiers to count as white in most contexts, you'll live absent systemic discrimination in some ways; you're not gonna get racial profiled like a black man will in the US. But you're gonna be lumped in with a global conspiracy that motivates white supremacist terrorists. Being racialised as white doesn't exempt you from being racialised as Jewish and vice versa. — fdrake

Maybe it's an intersectional one? I'm not sure.

Yes, I'll be lumped in with a global conspiracy that motivates some on the far right. According to some on the right/far right Jews aren't even white. They're imposter white people and they fall on the bottom of the racial hierarchy. They attack us by undermining our whiteness and seek to alienate us from other white people.

On the left/far left the Jews get victimized often due to our apparent whiteness and its association with oppression/colonization. In Israel we're often described in left-wing circles as white colonizers brutally suppressing an indigenous population despite the fact that Jews consider themselves the indigenous population and many Jews are not white. Even apart from Israel anti-Semitism is often just seen as "punching up" and "stickin' it to the man" or "speaking truth about power" and this can come from both sides of the political spectrum. See the recent examples with Nick Cannon and DeSean Jackson.

If it falls into the hands of the wrong individuals. This is why democracy is the best form of government for the people because it tends to be resistant to the concentration of power. — praxis

I agree with you on the democracy part.

You're kind of arguing more in line with a perspective associated with the right/libertarian side of the coin here when you describe events more as individuals acting as opposed to groups/organizations. I'm not saying that you're wrong; anyone can describe events in various different ways.

If I were to get audited by the IRS I could describe it that way or I could say "John B. Smith audited me today." Neither is wrong per se.

It is worth noting that Stalin, and likely Mao and also Hitler, didn't personally murder anyone. With Stalin at least it was often done through lists which were then passed down through the ranks, and yes, while the actual executioner was often some low level security forces member it seems a little superficial to me - but not technically wrong - to describe, say, the execution of a Stalinist purge victim as, say, "Yuri Bogdanov, KGB sergeant, shot X, Y, and Z in the basement of a KGB office." Yes it's true but there's no description of the system behind it - the list concocted by Stalin, the show trials by the legal system, etc. etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love attributing things to individuals and I'm a firm believer in individual responsibility. Maybe this is the beginning of my slow progression to leftism.

Well, if one is to maintain that some form of inequality must exist for value to have meaning then be ready to be discriminated against — TheMadFool

Just because I believe inequality must exist for value to maintain its meaning doesn't mean I think inequality needs to be ubiquitous in every facet of society.

There's such a thing as good arguments and bad arguments, do you agree? Good art and bad art. Good reasons and bad reasons. There's inequality there.

Much of religion can be understood as drawing a distinction between the holy and unholy, the sacred and non-sacred. If everything is equal then there is no sacred. There's no relationship to slavery here.

See this post. Racialisation doesn't have to hold together as a logically coherent story. That misses the nature and history of the phenomenon. When people study race with a historical eye, it's shown to be nonsense, when people study race with with a scientific one, it's shown to be nonsense on stilts. Still, racialisation happens. People are put into racial bins and treated differently depending on what bin they're in. Absent historical and scientific validation, but it still happens. That leaves the messy world of social norms.

Effectively, you're putting me in a position where I have to give you a check list of who counts as what and for what reasons - but the process by which people are put into racial bins just doesn't work like a logical definition of anything. From my position, the question you ask is loaded.

Racialisation works through norms; it's a societal process, a social fact; and it works associatively rather than logically. — fdrake

I understand that and I understand where you're coming from. I agree. However, just because something works a given way doesn't mean we ought to throw our hands up in the air and just accept it. As individuals, we can teach society our own racial/ethnic backgrounds and the cultural nuances associated with it. I understand society might largely see me as white, but this really isn't an adequate descriptor of my racial/ethnic identity (I'm an Ashkenazi Jew). As individuals we need to educate society. Society labels; we fight back.

Also keep in mind that these labels: white, black, etc. are political. They're not simple descriptors. Whether we like it or not whiteness has certain associations.

If you're white or black, you're white or black whether you accept it or not. Those are the breaks. That is the social fact of racialisation. — fdrake

It's really not that simple. If someone is 1/8 black are they black or white? Who is society to deny their blackness? Who is society to tell, say, Ashkenazi Jews, that they are "really" white?

I'll just note that Jews and Muslims don't believe in omni-benevolence in God. I'd be interested to know how widespread the belief is among Christians. I'm not a Christian so I don't know the details. There are parts in the old testament where God sends earthquakes to swallow up people and he destroys entire cities.

In any case, omnibenevolence is the possession of unlimited goodness. It doesn't logically follow from that that every being from a blade of grass to a speck of dust or dirt or a maggot to a human being is valued infinitely, i.e. equally. You're basically destroying the notion of value when try to push that position because everything is apparently valued "infinitely." Value itself is predicated on the notions of "higher" and "lower." You're really just doing away with value here. To say that equality is the basis of morality is also certainly non-biblical.

EDIT: Taken a little further, your interpretation destroys holiness altogether, and places God himself as equal to a dirt.

Firstly, it is to be taken as true that an omnibenevolent god will not play favorites with his creation: maggots, bacteria, fish, beggars, the rich, birds, etc. are all equal in god's eyes. The widely held belief that equality is one of the pillars of the moral edifice should make that easily relatable. — TheMadFool

None of this is biblically supported, and it's not a view that any Jew or Christian would take. I've never heard any Muslim take it as well. I just stopped reading here because you're very, very far out in left field. I don't personally care if you hold this view or if this is your view of God but it's not a normal, accepted view.

Good governance don't cancel out evil, it's like if you had a dad who's a good guy like 95% of the time but the other 5% he's a genocidal maniac and kills millions. It would be stupid to say "oh well he's mostly good therefore we can excuse the rest." Again, I'm not saying that all states are evil but if we do an actual body count of the numbers killed by states and the numbers killed by non-states it's not even close. I'm not saying every state is bad, just that the state - with its centralization of power - is a major, major vulnerability if it falls into the wrong hands.

Could you elaborate? If we're going by the combined death toll of the Maoist government, Stalinist government, and Nazi regime you're gonna need quite a few Ted Bundies to reach those levels. Criminals/murderers don't come anywhere close.

That's a good question and I can't give a detailed answer because I'm not a historian but there are plenty of good books on it. I think the short answer is that with Stalin at least he'd murder anyone even remotely suspected of disloyalty. He was the state and he completely consolidated power. I wish I knew more about the specifics.

We need to expand our discussion outside of the US. We're lucky to be living in the US, at least compared to other nations. Other states are not so kind.

Stalin killed around 1 million of his own citizens in the span of a year or two during the purges of the late 30s. There were other purges too. We're talking in the tens of millions killed by both Stalin and Mao and that's only over the course of their regimes - around 25-30 years each. The craziest individual murderers aren't remotely capable of setting up a vast secret police force that can abduct anyone in the middle of the night because they're an acquaintance of a suspected traitor or cut off the food supply to an entire region that they suspect could become disloyal.

I'm just talking about states here. I'm not including drug cartels, organized crime, or corporations in this count.

I think what you're saying is often true, but it doesn't account for evil in its entirety. If you look at Ted Bundy and some other serial killers, for instance, you'll notice that there's a strong sexual component and in the tapes they'll describe their acts as something akin to an addiction. If you were to read the writings of Carl Panzram, another very active and sadistic serial killer of the early 20th century, you'd likely identity the driving force as nihilism and a deep seated rage rather than a drive for status. It's possible that a drive for status played some role, but if you look at their actual writings it'd be a stretch to describe it as the main one.

Do we really need to bring in the numbers killed by Stalin and Mao? Hitler?

If you look at the 20th century the numbers killed by government are beyond enormous - more than even the worst murderers could dream of. I think that's what Tzeentch means.

@Tzeentch I've always found the phrase "necessary evil" a little puzzling. Evil is really a religious word, and if you examine it religiously it really can never be necessary. Like if a doctor needs to cut off a man's arm because otherwise he'd die due to frostbite we might reflexively call this a "necessary evil" but there's really nothing evil about it - it's entirely necessary. If on the other hand the doctor just randomly cut off the man's arm for no apparent reason, yes, we'd call that evil. The evil lies in the complete lack of sense or necessity. Just something to think about.

When learning a new language I try not to judge how "correct" that language is (i.e. how it matches up to my understanding of the world) and instead I just try to immerse myself in the mindset of that language. In any case, I think part of the purpose of language is just to make functioning easier - it's not always to describe every phenomenon 100% in its entirety. English speakers should all be aware that being blonde or a child being tall are impermanent states this usually doesn't need to be outright stated. I speak Russian too and it's the same thing in Russian. It's cool that Spanish has its own take on that, but again, I try not to denigrate another language for being "wrong."

Maybe just remember that you don't have to respond to every post in a thread, you learn which posters you like to read and which aren't worth responding to. — Judaka

This x1000. It's funny, I've been here maybe a year and I've been relatively active and there are plenty of other relatively active posters but it'll be like two ships constantly passing in the night silently with some people... just no engagement. With others I've tried to engage and it turns into a total mess and then we learn to avoid each others, but with others, again, two ships passing in the night with never any contact.

Plenty of posters are fine to engage though. @ssu is a pleasure to talk to. I think we've been fine so far despite not agreeing on everything. It's a mixed bag with some of the leftists.

Ok, this might just be a cultural difference (you're Australian, right?) In the States, as far as I can tell, socialism is pretty much always used as an alternative to capitalism. It means dismantling capitalism. If you want to go more to the left you'd just say "we need more social programs" or "we need stronger social programs."

I don't consider UBI or welfare "socialism." I think true socialism is ownership by the proletariat.

Justice, fairness, human rights, freedom - that's how I think of socialism. — Judaka

Interesting, I have a few questions about what socialism constitutes for you.

Under socialism, would someone be able to start their own independent business, say, without the approval of a council of workers? How does investment work under socialism? Can someone just day trade for a living? What does socialism say about speculators? What if someone doesn't want to get a "real" job under socialism, what happens then? Certainly this didn't fly in the USSR.

Personally, I'm just fundamentally opposed to any system which forces you into a normal job in the name of social cohesion. I've never been entirely sure what socialism says about entrepreneurship or side hustles.

The biggest of which is capitalism itself, which certainly coerces you into working, decides your worth and whether you're even valuable enough to be
getting paid in the first place. — Judaka

If we look at a dictionary, coercion is the use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance. Something needs a mind to be able to coerce - people can coerce, government can coerce. An animal could coerce.

If we were to plane crash onto an island with fruits and natural resources we'd likely want to survive, but the island isn't coercing us into gathering those resources in order to survive. You can choose to lay down and die or beg from others.

Capitalism doesn't coerce you by forcing you to do something, it coerces you by restricting you to such few options that to say you aren't be coerced into choosing one of them seems like semantics. — Judaka

While I don't agree with your use of the word coercion here, I get what you're saying here. I agree with the gist of your argument, but I feel like your real target is poverty and not capitalism. Poor people under Marxism are just as limited, if not more. Plenty of capitalists support a universal basic income or some sort of welfare requirement, myself included. Capitalism doesn't demand no government compensation for anyone at any time. Milton Friedman, one of the major capitalist thinkers in recent history, supported a universal basic income.

Thanks for sharing your story.

I will say that for those who work within the system - that is, have a normal 9-5 job, pay rent, average salary, not much savings - my prognosis is poor. I've never trusted the system to magically help these people and boost them into the upper classes. I think of the system as more than just capitalism though, so we might differ there. In any case, the system doesn't reward you for saving. I wouldn't even count on the system to reward you for hard work at your 9-5, but who knows maybe it might for some people.

I've been in kind of an interesting place because while I was raised and grew up UMC, for the past 5-6 years I've been working with people from either poor, lower middle class, or maybe just normal middle class backgrounds. It's sometimes hard for me to tell the difference between normal middle class and lower middle class. I've always hidden my own background from my co-workers. No need to bring that up. It's been a super interesting experience though and I will say I've become more class conscious.

I know we've talked about your own personal situation before, and you know my advice if you want to live more comfortably. I'm not going to rehash it. Someone could honestly be pulling 6 figures and still be struggling in certain areas of the country, especially with debt. I do hope all is well with your situation though.

For our purposes here it might be worth first seeing ideology not as something one possess, as you suggest, but rather as a way of seeing; a looking-glass through which one interprets and understands social practices. — Banno

This is fine by me. What I was implying with the phrase "ideologically possessed" is the idea that ideas possess people. It's interesting to think about. I understand that we all have lenses through which we view the world through, but some of these lenses just don't allow any flexibility and are strongly dogmatic. Some of these lenses are all encompassing and completely grip the subject. That's what I mean by ideological possession. I just don't think it's fair to say a fanatical Nazi and your average, pragmatic non-political American are equally "ideologically possessed."

You think the fact you recognize other have rights, money and property renders your insistence on having your own rights, money and property unselfish? I don't think that works. — Ciceronianus the White

No, by saying that I "bite the bullet" on that one it means I accept your premise; I just don't view it as a negative. I'm fine accepting that there's a selfish component to my worldview: I value my property, money, and rights. In fact, I'd even go further and say that this quality is actually a positive. If you don't value your own, how are you going to value others stuff or rights?

I was just responding to what seemed be your negative implication towards selfishness or self-centeredness.

You have a legitimate claim here. I am not dismissing your claim. If the government or the white man or whoever takes your property and violates your rights that is a massive injustice and compensation makes sense. I'll say nothing more about the issue because I don't know the specifics, but I apply my principles universally. Everyone gets held to the same standards.

I find it disingenuous, if not dishonorable, to disguise the simple desire to keep one's possessions from others by platitudes about limiting the power of government. Why not be honest about one's selfishness? My money, my property, my rights--what could be a more self-centered view of our place in the world? — Ciceronianus the White

I'll bite the bullet on this one. It is my property. It is my rights, and it is my money. These things are hugely important. It's not just about me though - I apply that standard to everyone. And if you don't you're kind of a monster, no offense. If you don't view other people's money, property, or rights seriously then you are at best immature and ignorant and at worst a monster.

Every person possess some kind of ideology, the question has to do with the concrete nature of ideology. — JerseyFlight

Maybe in some vague, general sense everyone possesses some ideology or way of viewing the world, but not everyone is equally ideologically possessed.

every quality you possess came from society. — JerseyFlight

Oh really, well thanks for letting me know. I never knew spina bifida or cystic fibrosis came from society. Never knew the amount of fast twitch muscles I had actually came from society. I never knew tongue tie came from society.

I don't really want to argue with you here, I just kind of feel bad because you're clearly ideologically possessed. I mean how am I suppose to argue with someone who doesn't believe in individuals. Who would I even be arguing with? In any case, just know that I'm trying my best empathize with you...and the reason I can do that is because you are an individual with your own mind which has unfortunately been completely taken over by Marxist dogma. Anyway, I do wish the best for you.

Thats not what it seems to me, reading eg the FB posts from my friends in the academic left. Its more like just that "collective empaty". — Ansiktsburk

So what are the limits to collective empathy? Does the academic left just feel empathy with all poor people around the world? How about all poor people who have ever existed? Apparently they feel empathy for every single one of them... they apparently feel "empathy" for people who they have no idea exist.

I'm sorry but it's just bullcr*p. You can't empathize with 4 billion individuals. It's just virtue signaling. If they want to empathize with all 4 billion I'll tell them that I empathize with every human being who has existed and has ever faced any sort of problem therefore making a better, more virtuous person than them.

You can't empathize with an idea or an abstraction. That's not how empathy works. You empathize with individuals.

Easy. He or she has a heart. He or she is an empathetic being, who feels the pain of others, and wants to stop it for them. — god must be atheist

Not to triple post, but I find this subject interesting.

There's about 38 million Americans under the poverty line. Obviously it's impossible to know all of them, and in turn care about them as individuals. To claim to care about them is really to to care about an abstraction, an idea. And the mark of a good person, according to the leftist, is that he or she genuinely cares about this group of people - not as individuals, because that would be impossible, but as a collective or in other words an idea/abstraction.

So it's not about empathy, at the root of it. Honestly speaking, it's about commitment to an idea or a principle. It's about solving an idea. Solving a problem. Lets leave empathy out of it.

I think the access to academics is a big part. If your worldview expands beyond yourself and you start to think in terms of benefiting the system that all are a part of instead of only benefiting yourself or your family, you start to move in a socialist direction. — Pro Hominem

Like this for example. This person is only concerned with their own welfare, and not that of the people around them. — Pro Hominem

I really like this response because it really captures the essence of it. Capitalists are not just wrong, they're bad people according to the thinking left-winger. They are egotistical and care less, if at all, about those around them. They're basically egotistical sociopaths.

If you were to ask me about my assessment of this issue maybe 10-15 years ago I would have said the exact same thing you're saying now. I get where you're coming from 100% and I'm glad you laid out the issue as you did here.

What makes people from wealthy, academical background lean left? — Ansiktsburk

I was raised in a upper middle class home and I used be a socialist and for much of my life I was on the left. Financially speaking everything was always taken care of for me and in seeing the wealth around me I didn't understand at a young age why poverty or homeless people had to exist. On top of that, I worked some crappy, low wage jobs with bad bosses which further solidified my allegiance to the left. My thinking was in a country as advanced and wealthy as the US, why do we still have poverty and homelessness? I was thinking about the big picture and principles first, and myself last. I also had no experience with poor people. They were just problems to be solved by giving them, as a collective, a certain amount of money or resources.

Somewhere along the line my thinking become more bottom-up. Instead of thinking about vast systemic changes to eliminate poverty, I started studying personal finance and decisions which could be made on an individual level. I actually met and talked to poor people (or atleast people from poor backgrounds.) I'm still down for some systemic changes, but I'm just a lot more careful about them. Every problem doesn't need to be immediately addressed with a scalpel. And I hate to say it but maybe some people are actually directly responsible for their own poverty and routinely choose materialism and status over long term financially health, and they know it.

Also young people don't pay taxes.