I watched an excellent documentary on the suffragettes this morning. Sometimes, peaceful protest just doesn't bloody work. Popper's expression of the toleration paradox is hugely clunky; I prefer it thus : "giving people the freedom to enslave you will ensure that they will enslave you". That's not toleration at all. That's
surrender.
Now, violence is never ever the
ideal solution. But while it may seem like the moral high ground to claim that if your solution requires violence you've already lost the argument, this is simply not so. Sometimes a violent solution is the only one that works. You do not automatically become as bad as a Nazi by punching a Nazi. Sure, prolonged rage and violence could have this effect, as Nietzsche rightly warned. But it's not a straightforward relation in the slightest. Punching a Nazi to prevent them from committing atrocities in no way makes you as bad as them.
I'll be updating my post on bullshit in the near future. I'm tired of being told we have to be nice to bigoted idiots who lock up children in cages.
Yes.
ReplyDeleteYes. It was Facebook.
I think you're in the wrong Universe, fella. Better hop into that transdimensional gateway and head home for a little R&R.
ReplyDeleteBlocked +Ari Asulin on grounds of idiocy.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I looked at his profile. Pretty far into conspiracy-theory, I'd say.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll reproduce his comment as an amusing display of how far stupidity can take you :
ReplyDelete"Allies were the BAD guys. NAZIs were the 100% GOOD GUYS. Liberators. Allies won using anti-gravity technology, building huge b52 bombers (staffed with teenagers) which could carry unlimited weight in bombs, and then we basically napalmed men, women, and children of something like 3 thousand human cities until we got caught with our pants down in Vietnam. The rest of the world knows the truth even if your little bubble is still unwilling or unable. Stop defending fake textbook neo-con history."
Not really any point in debating that. You can't come to those conclusions without fundamentally and utterly discarding the idea of objective reality, and/or being a colossal dick.
Yah. "anti-gravity technology"
ReplyDeleteGood grief.
Now, it's true that if the Allies had possessed anti-gravity technology, the war would have been over much, much sooner.
ReplyDeleteJust to show how things are definitely not straightforward, let me tell you about this guy:
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Wilm Hosenfeld - Wikipedia
He was an early Nazi party member. He was involved in the Polish occupation. In fact, he was even in charge of a prison there.
But you may have already guessed the twist. Even before the war, he had become disillusioned with the Nazi Party, seeing it for what it really was. But in a terror state, you simply don't leave the Party.
Instead, he used his position to save as many people as he could, regardless of creed, ethnicity or nationality, despite the ever-present political terror that loomed over his officer corps.
And save people he did. To the point that he was posthumously awarded some of the greatest honorifics by the states of Poland and Israel - posthumously because he survived one of the great monsters of his century only to be murdered by another.
Still, he both was literally a Nazi and someone you should definitely not punch.
Also, usual disclaimers about punching people, counter-productive methods, getting hooked to strong negative emotions etc...
And I was just going to discredit the article based on his pro capitalism bias.
ReplyDeleteNever mind that he ignored the reality that with a Basic Universal Income, people will not be forced to work a job they hate just to barely survive, instead they'll be able to focus on what they want to do, be it charity work, study, research, or what ever they need to feed their need for self worth !
When it comes to affording it, considering how fucked up the current wealth distribution is, fixing that will more than offset the small cost of a UBI.
As for his third "critique" trying to justify the maintaining of a serf class with People will lose their dignity is fucking bullshit! while the first generation might hit double digit number who feel adrift because they're not required to work, they'd mostly consist of near retirement age individuals, who, be forced out soon enough, regardless of their need to work!
Ray Bernache Wrong thread ?
ReplyDeleteWell, I suppose he could be taking a particularly interesting psychedelic, but yeah ... probably the wrong thread.
ReplyDeleteElie Thorne punching isn't permanent. You don't necessarily need to kill every nazi. But they should all be punched. If more nazis were punched, Wilm may have been in a position to act openly and so being punchable
ReplyDeleteElie Thorne Well there's the issue here of principle and practise. In principle, is it morally acceptable to punch someone so evil they want to exterminate another race of people because they don't like them ? The only sensible answer to this is hell yes, slight Nietzschean monster caveats (if that's not a band name then it ought to be) notwithstanding. It certainly didn't seem to turn the Allies into a bunch of monsters.
ReplyDeleteThe second issue is under what precise circumstances it's beneficial to punch a Nazi. That is indeed far more complicated, e.g., if you're trying to infiltrate the organisation, you aren't going to go around punching everyone in sight. But that is not really the topic at hand, since apparently the first issue isn't obvious to people.
Rhys Taylor
ReplyDeleteIn the immortal words of Homer Simpson
D'oh
sorry ;)