Liberalism causes terrorism

[BillHopkins]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Artificial. Does that suggest anything to you?
That's the whole nature of the beast we face.
Leftism is artificial and all its adherents, too.
I am not artificial.
I become annoyed at artificials holding forth about their supposed superiority.
There is nothing superior about anything artificial.
Because it is artificial.
And that, in a nutshell, is beyond the capability of anything artificial, to understand.

This whole site, as I see it, is about witless beings seeking to become uber-men.
Is that the case?
Or is it really about becoming artificial copies of uber-men?

I'm not sure if you're responding to me, or the article I posted, or what. The article provides the tools for anyone wanting to know whether indeed logic is necessary for 'understanding' or something more is.

Just some food for thought, though Crow. You generally sound like the most self-righteous person on these forums. Like you know something other people don't (your 'tao'), and like you are 'above' rationally examining various aspects of reality with objective, orthodox tools (reason, logic).

[Phoenix]

I agree completely, except the part about living or dying. "Whosoever shall seek to save their soul shall lose it." Once one is it, then that's a different matter.. what to do with immortality? The kicker is that the soul cannot be found through fear of losing it, only through abandon.. not reckless abandon, but in the sense that if one is to truly commit to striving for something with the utmost of their being then they must be willing to risk losing it, they must allow for the possibility of failure or the possibility of unpleasant discovery. If you refuse to discover anything other than that which you seek, then you'll get exactly what you want, until you realize you really don't want it at all. But again, at a certain point, once the great abyss has been traversed, risk only applies to conventional things as fundamentally you have your essence.

[crow]

Just some food for thought, though Crow. You generally sound like the most self-righteous person on these forums. Like you know something other people don't (your 'tao'), and like you are 'above' rationally examining various aspects of reality with objective, orthodox tools (reason, logic).

Do not insult me again.
Whatever I may 'sound like' to you, or anyone, is exactly that.
The one thing that never occurs to people who say such things, is that I may actually know what I am talking about.
As I mentioned, recently: artificials have no apparatus by which to identify what is real.

[lost_wanderer]

I suppose this speaks exactly to my point. Can the media and the public not grasp simultaneously that a person can be a victim as well as at fault? When anyone hints at having sympathy for the bombers they're blasted. Love thy enemy.

Even if they are in some ways victims, why would should be having any sympathy for them?
They didn't belong in this society. They came from an other country with and other culture and mentallity. Why would they didn't go back in their country instead of blowing up another one that they didn't like? They wanted everything. The opportunities of Usa and the cultural background of Chechnya. You can't have both, a least not everytimes. It's why multiculturalism don't work so well. Trudeau almost imply that it's the fault of the host country and not the immigrants. In the case here, what would we had to do to prevent them becoming terrorists? Turning ourselves into a islamic country? Give them free jobs and diplomas?

I can understand about how they felt to some degree and not hate them.
I can give you a parallel; if I am attacked by a ferocious animal, I will not hate it  for that, but I will defend myself, even if it get to the point that I must kill it.

[crow]

Ah. The Comet returns, shedding particles of sense, as it goes

[scourge]

The liberal support structure, its money, spokesmen and what passes for brains, is really just a bunch of old white men pining for decades (the 1960s) that have long since passed them by:



They're struggling with the prejudices/injustices of fifty years ago but trying to cram it into today's context. This is why half of America sees them as lunatics and the other half are too atomized, sheltered, virtualized and modernized away from reality to ignore them.

Their time has passed. Flower power and Jim Crow are buried. These people are the walking dead just like in the zombie apocalypse movies.

[Eleison]

Are you suggesting that if people fail to gain something from their actions, then they are victims???
Do you suffer from an inability to focus?
Two guys deliberately murder and maim people they have no connection to. That is the subject. The subject is not what is wrong with everybody else.
But I realize you do not, can not, and will not be able to see this. Which is why I decline to debate with most people.
People generally seem to suck. These two sucked way more than most.
End of story.

Trying to analyse the indirect causes of people's actions is not the same thing as condoning them.  Most people are simply a product of their environment, they have very little free will.  Our society undoubtedly produces a disproportionate number of dysfunctional individuals, and an event like this should be a good time to think about why.  I think you have obscured the important issues by making this out to be an 'us vs them' scenario, when in reality terrorism reveals defects in our society that we may not care to admit.  Once again this does not excuse the actions of certain individuals, but their guilt or innocence is a very minor issue in comparison.

[crow]

All this anal abstract analysis takes away from the actual event.
The actual event is very, very, very, very, very, very, seriously baaaaad.
Anything that distracts from full appreciation of that is simply further collateral damage.
There is, quite simply, zero justification, ever, for murdering unsuspecting bystanders.

The fact that the whole Western world is completely screwed-up is a whole other issue.

[trystero]

The fact that the whole Western world is completely screwed-up is a whole other issue.

I am surprised to be reading that, how can it be a different issue? It seems likely to me that the impetus for these bombings, while definitely related to the Islam the attackers professed, is more related to the phenomenon of anomie and atomization. The elder brother, despite a decade in the US, could by his own admission not relate to Americans. Now is this a reflection of essential incompatibility with an alien culture? Absolutely, yes, but this is secondary to the slow breakdown of mores and values which the modern world is afflicted of (and many US cities are perhaps the leading examples). The elder brother at least probably has more in common with a mass shooter than he does with a member of Al-Qaeda.

The analysis does not take away from the event. Those able to analyze in this fashion are already disconnected from the event (it would be different if my kin died because of the attack). Beyond that, the faculty of reason has this very function, analysis. It is bad to make these analyses the be-all end-all, which you state frequently and is an agreeable position, but it is worse to not do them at all! It is one thing to realize reason is a tool in an arsenal meant to cope with reality and assign it its proper position, and another entirely to denigrate and ignore it.

As far as murdering innocent bystanders is concerned, it matters not to the analysis. Living things die.

[BillHopkins]

The elder brother, despite a decade in the US, could by his own admission not relate to Americans. Now is this a reflection of essential incompatibility with an alien culture? Absolutely, yes, but this is secondary to the slow breakdown of mores and values which the modern world is afflicted of (and many US cities are perhaps the leading examples). The elder brother at least probably has more in common with a mass shooter than he does with a member of Al-Qaeda.

Every 'modern' i know (i.e. someone who is not, essentially, a common variety religious-conservative) has plenty of values. Maybe they're not the values you like, but they are values, i.e. a differentiation of the 'good' and the 'bad'.

This constant glee and masturbation over the odd mass shootings or other sign of obvious discontent with modern culture that some people around here fall upon with glee is so one-eyed it's rediculous. It's like pointing out the loser at a party and claiming that the party will come crashing down because it doesn't meet the needs of a mere .01 per cent of it's participants. This is not to say there are not discordant aspects of modern liberalism, it's to say that overall, it is meeting people's needs to a degree unprecedented by any other cultural-economic system in human history. Please read my last post for a better argument for this.

[trystero]

Every 'modern' i know (i.e. someone who is not, essentially, a common variety religious-conservative) has plenty of values. Maybe they're not the values you like, but they are values, i.e. a differentiation of the 'good' and the 'bad'.

Absolutely, and this is a partial statement of the problem. What you are referring to is what I called atomization. Every individual has their values, but they are not shared, so the societal consensus position must be close to no-values for different people to exist together. Any negative effects will affect outliers first, people who already have trouble relating to people, but that does not mean the effect isnt there or isnt harmful.

No doubt modern liberalism is extremely efficient at providing material wealth in the relative short term.

[BillHopkins]

Every 'modern' i know (i.e. someone who is not, essentially, a common variety religious-conservative) has plenty of values. Maybe they're not the values you like, but they are values, i.e. a differentiation of the 'good' and the 'bad'.

Absolutely, and this is a partial statement of the problem. What you are referring to is what I called atomization. Every individual has their values, but they are not shared, so the societal consensus position must be close to no-values for different people to exist together.

No doubt modern liberalism is extremely efficient at providing material wealth in the relative short term.

Again, no way. There is great social consensus. Poverty is bad, homophodia is bad, liberalism is good, (overt) state interference in matters of politics and religion are bad, state interference in economic matters is good, a quasi mix of free market and state market regulation is good, traditional religion is outdated etc etc.  And one area of consensus is that religious values should not be promoted at a collective level. Or do you think liberalism is being imposed on us from above by a 'hidden-hand'? There are arguments for this, but on the whole I think they are wrong.

[Wild]

it is meeting people's needs to a degree unprecedented by any other cultural-economic system in human history.

If by "needs" you mean only food, water, and shelter, then yes those are easier to get than ever, but beyond that...?

Liberalism has no culture, it simply mashes pre-existing cultures together into a grey paste. Ever since liberalism has become the establishment, society has been on a spiral of implosion. There is far, far less social consensus now than there ever has been. That list of values you posted is heartily disagreed with by a large number of people in this country. Where do they go to avoid them?

[BillHopkins]

it is meeting people's needs to a degree unprecedented by any other cultural-economic system in human history.

If by "needs" you mean only food, water, and shelter, then yes those are easier to get than ever, but beyond that...?

Liberalism has no culture, it simply mashes pre-existing cultures together into a grey paste. Ever since liberalism has become the establishment, society has been on a spiral of implosion. There is far, far less social consensus now than there ever has been. That list of values you posted is heartily disagreed with by a large number of people in this country. Where do they go to avoid them?

What, so you think that, before liberalism, when people had an 'organic' or 'homogeneous' society... everything was hunky dory? Do you think that because everyone merely shared a religion and history, that there would have been no political differences: that groups were not persecuted, that class structures didn't exist, and that people would not have wanted to separate politically if they had the freedom, wealth and education? Have you ever read a history book?

I just don't see this "implosion" when I walk down the street or visit the city. I think it's masking your own values in 'The True' and 'The Good'. The direction of history is towards liberalism, and NON-LIBERAL cultures are collapsing, not the other way around! I'm not celebrating this, but you have to see the historical process for what it simply is!

The last century has seen dozens and dozens of communist countries fall. It has seen the rise and fall of fascism and national socialism. And it has seen the collapse of military dictatorships. All of these have been replaced with.... you guessed it: liberal democracy. This is just cursory fact. Liberal democracy brings with it certain discordant elements, and causes the odd shooting or bombing, but countries are flocking to it.

[crow]

Threads like this sure uncover the closet leftists.