04-06-2007, 07:16 PM | #201 | ||||
Elf Lord
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I don't think we really can claim that we "know" the truth. For all I know, I might be in the Matrix, so I can't "know" that I know anything. But I can believe things based upon the available evidence. And one person's evidence supporting his belief can be stronger than another person's evidence. People can have beliefs about the truth, and those beliefs might be right, but they can't necessarily know that they know the truth. One belief can be more supportable than another, though. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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04-06-2007, 08:09 PM | #202 | |||
Elf Lord
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If all ends in dust, people had best do whatever they think makes them happy. The cost to other people shouldn't matter. That's one logical conclusion about the journey. Everything comes down to what I think is best for me. That kind of selfishness leads to horrible places. Quote:
I don't think it's possible to use a dirty rag effectively at all, when trying to clean a dirty table. Humans are no different. Seeing as humans are the ones who are faulty, their efforts to fix themselves will be tainted by their inherent faultiness. Hence, I think people must reject Jesus, even if they want to accept him. People must accept Jesus' divinity and submit their lives to him, asking for forgiveness for their sins, for he died for our sins and was resurrected to bring us new life. He can enter our lives and recreate us as new, holy people, something only he can do for he is clean, but which we can't do for we are (without him) unclean. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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04-07-2007, 12:58 AM | #203 | ||
Advocatus Diaboli
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Maybe, at it's heart, I set the bar a lot lower, as opposed to measuring us via perfection. I see humans as intelligent animals, and all the positive things we have accomplished as an incredible progression from the extremely local and tribal mentality of our past to a world today where many humans really do care about other humans they have never even, and probably never will, meet. Sure, there is misery, but what impresses me is all the joy and goodwill that, from a purely self-centered point of view, has no real reason to exist. You didn't see that a few thousand years ago, or maybe even a few hundred. Human society, as a whole, is greater than the sum of it's parts.
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04-07-2007, 01:37 AM | #204 | ||||||
Elf Lord
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The UN report also said that international warfare over water was likely, if the current trends are not changed. There also is the fact that a few extremists who will gladly die for their cause can now get their hands more and more easily on WMDs, and would use them. The misery in our day and age, and the threat of greater misery, is still huge and is very likely to spike far above what it now is, with Global Warming and world thirst preparing to sink their teeth in, and WMD holocausts becoming more and more feasible for the future. We may see a lot of joy and goodwill up here in the West, but in world history, there have many times been periods where one civilization or a few civilizations and groups of people were on the top and thus saw great joy and goodwill. It's easy to feel that comfortable and pleased, on the top. Not that I'm saying it's wrong for people on the top to feel joy or goodwill, though I'll soon in this post get into questioning how real our joy and goodwill are, but I'm just saying our perspectives are limited. I know you're not trying to make the suffering of humanity look like it's less than it is, and by posting this, I don't mean to make it look that way. By bringing up some of these issues, though, I'm hoping to point out first of all the extent of humanity's trauma, and second that humanity doesn't have anything better to expect from its future, according to the currently available data. The "goodwill" in the West is not enough for us to feed Africa, even though we easily have the resources. We have aid organizations and many individuals give, and our countries give aid on a small level, but our goodwill doesn't extend far. Neither does it extend far enough for us to take much stand against easily treatable diseases that are killing millions. I believe that God will judge our Western countries for that selfish callousness one day, among other things. I don't think that the Western civilization's use of its wealth and power in modern times indicates that mankind is moving forward. We have not gotten beyond intrinsic selfishness, and hence 1/6 of the world's population go hungry. It's easy for people who are well fed, healthy, technologically sophisticated and well provided for to seem to have "goodwill." They're happy, and I'm happy, and so when us different happy people meet, we get along well. So we all are happy and nice, and goodwill and maybe even "joy" seem to be everywhere. Simultaneously, though, most people don't want to think about the world's problems and would rather live in their own happy, prosperous world without thinking about the millions dying of hunger and thirst. So those millions continue to die of hunger and thirst, and us westerners continue to be happy and nice. I don't see much joy in modern culture. "Goodwill," maybe, though when one looks at how our democratic nations are behaving in the world, the reality of the goodwill of those countries' populations becomes doubtful. "Joy," though, I do not think is commonplace at all. "Joy" is a very, very strong word, and I don't see it in many people. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 04-07-2007 at 03:57 AM. |
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04-07-2007, 03:38 AM | #205 | |||
Entmoot Attorney-General,
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I'd say it's a positive kind of selfishness rather than fear.
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I have attended lectures by Stefan Einhorn, the author of The Art Of Being Kind ("Konsten att vara snäll"). Here is a quote from an article: Quote:
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04-07-2007, 04:23 AM | #206 | |||
Elf Lord
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Ego leads to being out of touch with reality and to a sense of superiority over others that often leads one to trample on people in various ways. It may create good for others, but it also creates a lot of bad, including in the psychology of the giver who supposedly benefits. He may gain friends temporarily, but ego usually leads to behavior that is destructive in a variety of ways. I doubt he'll keep the friends he's bought, and as his ego removes him from being in touch with reality, he'll feel superior, thus hurting people around him and psychologically self-damaging himself. It's a very, very messy cycle. Far better is a person who is selfless, who just gives to others out of genuine compassion, without interest in a return. This person is not egotistical and is not doing this act in order to feel good, to gain friends, or for any selfish reason. This kind of act is not divorced from thought. Act and thought are fused together. The act might yield no return for the giver, and the giver might have had no thought of return or desire to feel good or anything else. He may have simply given out of love for the other person, and his return is simply the pleasure of knowing the other person's happiness, rather than the pleasure of feeling his own personal merit or return gifts or friendship. This kind of person does exist, and his or her act is not destructive to himself or to anyone else.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 04-07-2007 at 04:25 AM. |
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04-07-2007, 05:03 AM | #207 | ||||||
Entmoot Attorney-General,
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"I was thinking about buying you a present. But I didn't. Anyway, it's the thought that counts!" That isn't nearly as kind as it would have been if I had actually bought you a present. Quote:
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An unwritten post is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it’s halfway to being just like every other bloody entry that’s ever been written. ☻ |
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04-07-2007, 04:11 PM | #208 | ||||||||||
Elf Lord
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I'd like to respond to your argument regarding Christianity, but I will save that until you have responded to my point directly . Quote:
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I'm not convinced that that's what he's saying, though. His words indicate to me that he's saying it's all action, and the thought doesn't matter at all. I think he argues this because he's saying that the thought is self-centered and egotistical, and so not laudable at all. Quote:
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Bolds below are added. Quote:
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The study considered important enough to be discussed by CBS News shows that there are nasty results for egotistical and self-centered behavior. A few positive results, but a lot of nasty ones. Quote:
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It's as though he took the article from CBS that I quoted and selected out only the part about ego being able to cause people to more easily form new relationships with other people, and then concluded based on that selected information that ego is good. However, it's only one side of the story. In the same way, the "good" actions that can come from ego are only one part of the story, and ego harms the egotistical person psychologically (by definition of the word) and will make the person more likely to harm others too, as supported by the CBS article I quoted.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 04-07-2007 at 04:15 PM. |
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04-07-2007, 06:52 PM | #209 | |
Advocatus Diaboli
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On the rest, while there are plenty of poor and destitute throughout the world, I highly doubt it is anywhere near the percentage of the population that it was 1000 years ago. We certainly could do more, and I am confident that we will. Even those in third world nations receive a good deal of help they never did in the past, and the poor in second and first world nations would appear as nobles to the serfs of the middle ages. Once again, humans are a social animals, but they are also tribal animals. This means that they protect those they see as part of their "tribe" and tend to consider those outside of that tribe enemys or, at best, people to be wary of. Technology has expanded what people consider their tribe from the size of a small town some thousand years ago to entire nations today. Eventually, with some growing pains, we may realize that the entire globe is the tribe of humanity, and we will care for them as such. Much like we care for groups we associate ourselves with today, like "americans" or "christians" or "westerners".
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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04-07-2007, 07:53 PM | #210 | |
Elf Lord
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numbers, lol.
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If you're going to use "poor and destitute" you're going to have to define it in a way that makes sense. Certainly, my grandparents didn't anticipate that their grandchild would use a home computer comparable in power to the ones that planned the manned space flights. But am I therefore "more wealthy" than they were? Depends on what you're counting, doesn't it? |
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04-07-2007, 08:07 PM | #211 | |
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Do not follow where the path may lead, but goes instead where there is no path and leave a trail. -Emerson Edgar Alan Poe and Oscar Wilde rock. They are actually better than rocks. Beautiful Soup and A Tomato Ate My Sister are the most educational and intellectual songs ever created, challenging the scholarly power of the great philosophers. On TB's sig, Don't worry about the world ending today, tomorrow, or next week, just worry about it ending now. |
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04-08-2007, 12:42 PM | #212 | |
Advocatus Diaboli
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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04-08-2007, 03:35 PM | #213 | |
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I can read both BrownJenkins and Lief and find something I agree with in their posts. I think it's fair to say that more people are beginning see the pain and suffering around them and beginning to care about ending it. More and more organizations seem to be popping up dedicated to helping people in need, and thanks to people like Bono(though, I would say he's a good example of someone doing selfless deeds for the wrong reasons), more people are becoming interested in such organizations. But I think that the ratio of people who care to people who don't care, not to mention hateful people who wish pain on others...well, I think it's going to be a while before it's even 50/50. We're getting there. I do believe we're moving forward. Just don't expect it to change over night. I agree whole heartedly with Lief's last post. A good example of a person needing a healthily modest mind in order to truly help someone is if you were trying to help someone who was trapped inside of thier ego. Someone who had built themselves their own little Matrix in their head, which they couldn't escape from because of how much their self-centeredness limits them as a person. Someone suffering from a similer problem isn't going to know the first place to start in helping that person. I believe in order to truly help someone be happy, you first need to have some idea of what happiness is(what I would call being a balanced human being), and hopefully be happy yourself. And I think being egotistical has never made anyone happy. However well someone can delude themselves of their superiority in comparison to others, deep down they know it's not true. The brain knows when it's lying to itself. Last edited by D.Sullivan : 04-08-2007 at 03:37 PM. |
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04-08-2007, 06:45 PM | #214 |
Advocatus Diaboli
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My assumption is that most people are generally "good". They are not going to go out of their way to help someone else, but they aren't going to go on a rampage of wanton destruction either.
The old systems, which centered around authoritarianism due to our tribal past, are very strong. But slowly, reason is overcoming that animal instinct. Society evolves over time when people realize that it is in their own best interest to at least tolerate one another. And, as time goes by, to actually work with one another for mutual gain. As I said, this dynamic has always existed in the family and extended family, and time and technology has extended the bounds of family. During WW2 the Japanese were painted by Americans as evil savages, and their point of view of us was not much better. Why? Because we simply did not know them and it was easy to buy any stereotype a leadership figure with his own motivations wished to paint upon them. Today's world is much more connected. We know so much more about those far away places that use to just be names in history books. We post on forums with people from the other side of the world. And it is much harder to demonize those we are familiar with. I can only expect this trend to continue. It won't necessarily mean universal good will, but it will lead to a level of tolerance and understanding that pales in comparison to that of the past. It's far from perfection, but it's a hell of a lot better than it use to be.
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04-08-2007, 09:45 PM | #215 |
Elf Lord
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Howdy, D.
Welcome to the conversation.
BJ, I think you're being a-historical, here. You need to tell me exactly which "old authoritarian systems" you have in mind. Because there's plenty of evidence that actually "old" systems weren't authoritarian at all. Language development, for example, seems based on cooperative, rather than competitive, behavior. There may even be evidence that the evolutionary value of the whites of human eyes is due to cooperation. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/op...b94183&ei=5090 As far as long life being a good thing... I dunno. From a religious point of view like Lief's, for example, postponing your trip to Heaven is clearly not a good thing. Depending on your physical and mental condition, extended life might be more burden than benefit. Look at laws regulating "hemlock" behavior, for example, or "living wills" to safeguard your DNR wishes. If longer life was so clearly a benefit, those laws would be irrelevant, kwim? Everyone would know the right course of action. I would disagree that modern people know more about the rest of the world, either. They don't know much about the rest of their states, that I notice. Mass media, including the net, may give a false sense that one is informed, but it's subject to so much manipulation that it actually divorces people from real understanding, particularly when on-line relationships replace local ones. When I arrived here, everyone was free to form an opinion of me. They did this in a way that was more or less flattering or accurate, depending on their own bias, and the limitations of my presentation. Yet people are secure in that evaluation, in a way they would not be, seeing me irl. Multiply that "observers bias" times a million to see how our view of Iraq is even more skewed than the WWII view of Japan, which at least was based on an original fact, that the country had attacked American soil. Media gives us more access to bias than we like to imagine. I have a great source for some discussion of modern academic evaluations of altruism and cooperation, but, since it's a darn pdf, I have to link it. Enjoy. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/fa...d/Fyssen99.pdf |
04-08-2007, 11:34 PM | #216 | |
Advocatus Diaboli
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It's a glass half empty argument in my mind. If you are dying of thirst a few drops are like heaven, but when water is plentiful you can argue the merits of Perrier vs. Evian with surprising conviction. We incarcerated thousands of Japanese during WW2, and while we have been far from fair to Muslims these days, we have not, and will not take things that far in today's America. It's certainly two steps forward and one step back, but it is moving forward for those that can see the forest beyond the trees.
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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04-09-2007, 04:48 PM | #217 | ||||||||||
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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B) If we had been speaking of writing, we would have said "No-one was allowed to write except for monks", which would be complete myth. C) The Church had a vast involvement in science throughout the Middle Ages; it was hardly something the Church didn't want. D) The world not being the center of the universe was first written of by Copernicus, not Gallileo; Copernicus was a Catholic clergyman, and supported by cardinals and bishops. The problem with Gallileo was not what he said, but how he said it. Quote:
Salome is an amazing play. I want to see it produced at my college. Quote:
The thing is, it's nonsensical. Quote:
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle Last edited by Gwaimir Windgem : 04-09-2007 at 07:42 PM. |
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04-09-2007, 05:29 PM | #218 | ||||||
Elf Lord
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I like Jonathan's way of arranging quotes .
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But by the way, on a sidenote, your definition doesn't take into account the broad variety of forms love can take. Aside from loving people, people can also love money, God, fame, ideas, and many material things such as a captain his ship or a farmer his land. They can also love any (or just many, whatever, but I think any) of these things more than they love people. You won't find, looking at history, that most exceedingly violent and wicked people liked to live in total separation from society. Some did, though so did some exceedingly loving human beings who dwelt in monasteries, but many evil folk love and loved company. They are happy to enjoy life with certain human beings (Hitler had a mistress) while killing others. Would you say Hitler was loving? I just think it's far murkier and more complex than your definition allows. Quote:
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If fewer people are poor now than in the past, that is the result of technological advance and not the result of an increase in human goodwill. That is quite clear from the fact that civilized nations don't feed the Third World, though they easily could. Quote:
There has always been both exploitation and giving. Humans haven't really changed. It's just technology that has changed. Quote:
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WW2 was just sixty years ago. Other, potentially even more cataclysmic crises for the world are already developing, as I already pointed out in my post. And also, many cultures have historically given to their poor and been kindhearted where their influence could be felt, as well as at other times or simultaneously being corrupt and exploitive. That is not unique to our modern time. Humans have always been that way- only now globalization and technology enables both exploitation and goodwill to exist on a larger scale.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 04-09-2007 at 05:31 PM. |
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04-09-2007, 07:44 PM | #219 | |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
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04-09-2007, 09:44 PM | #220 |
of the House of Fëanor
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I thought all good Catholics were supposed to be Democrats! Seriously; take the great John F Kennedy, for example. Best President Ever, and devoutly Catholic, and decidedly not a Republican. Simplistically put, I've always seen Republicans being mostly Presbyterian- or Calvinist-type church based christians (when they're Christians, that is, obviously) and Democrats being mostly Catholic, some Episcopalians in both camps though. Maybe Episcopalians more Republican. And Baptists, Baptists are predominantly Democrats, no? and Fundamentalists, Republican?
And yeah, I do have to concur with you Gwai re: the tradition of the Catholic Church to give to the needy, they definitely got that going for them which is nice, and they bloody well should give a little, my god the Vatican is the single wealthiest institution on planet Earth, they can afford to give back a little. Actually they can afford to give a hell of a lot more than they do, way way more. For real. well anyway. *Lotsy looks around, slightly disoriented. 'hmm, wait - where am i?' she thinks to herself. 'Is - is this the theology thread? Oh, no, no, wrong door!! Wrong door! where's the emergency exit around here?!' *
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