3 - I plan on taking skydiving lessons this summer. Now I've been planning to do this for about 20 years now, but I really do believe this is the year. Maybe I can get some tips as the time draws nearer.
1) Pack your 'chute as if your life depends on it.
2) Have fun.
I only learned to jump because it seemed a necessary survival skill while sharing the same thermal with a half dozen other sailplanes. Then, jumping became something to do on those days the maddening crowd beat me to the rental planes. There were a few very close near misses, but I've never seen a collision. Jumping with Recon seemed a step backwards. Then I took up BASE because I still had a death wish.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you.
SV-wolf, your last post has been removed. Here was my response to it. Sorry for the time lag. Kali
Note that Kali's comments are in straight lettering to imply straight talk.
SV's comments are in italics to demonstrate his prejudicial slant.
KALI
All applaud the worthy goals you seek and defend in your postings. Many would say the worthiest. Let me reiterate that I have had only a cursory introduction to basic undergraduate level economics and my views of such are exploratory and evolving. I would like to believe what you are saying but have many problems with it.
I would also point out that you consistently denigrate others understanding as mere parroting, implying greater weight to your learned experience, is normal but mere rhetorical technique. Although your personal experiences of the plight of those in public housing or society in general is valuable, unless you’ve discovered or formulated any new or unique economic theories or arguments, than you to are parroting the words of others, as am I.
Also, you attribute nefarious motivations to any who dare repeat the evil mantras of Satan’s capitalist minions. I think they make some valid points.
In the end I do not expect to change your mind about anything, but maybe you can change mine. I am not married to a set of Ideas now. As a matter of fact, I attribute a majority of my current general unruliness and bad attitude in any place other than the professional setting is a consequence of realizing that just about everyone is full of "poo poo" right now. That said, let me at least clarify were my problems, at my admittedly obtuse understanding, with your positions lie.
SV-Wolf
is violence a constant in human relations or is there a circumstantial element to violent behavior which it is within our power to change.
From my perspective, the one circumstantial element which seems to be present in almost all significant human conflict is private property. I’m using the term ‘property’ here in a technical sense to refer to social resources and the means of production in a society - not personal possessions.
I like what you said about tribal slave societies still being private property and that is very supportive of your argument. I think it’s clear that any society so poorly evolved or economically/resource limited or deprived is forced to compete and displace (drive out or kill) the competition.
I think it’s interesting that a society such as Tibet’s was just as you said. This bodes ill for state directed Utopia. If they couldn’t do it, who can.
Societies which do show a pattern of common ownership in their economic relations, like certain Micronesian and Native American cultures on the other hand do tend to show a harmonious pattern of social existence.
I would disagree on the American Indian. Now Micronesia, are they the exception to the rule. And was it because they lived in a land of such plenty. And, as you are about to state, an isolated and homogeneous culture. Eden it was.
But even more telling is that fact that conflict and warfare in these societies, where they exist at all, occur in relationship to neighboring cultures. In other words, it takes place over property boundaries. Take industrial conflicts between employees and employers for example. And you can trace the influence of property relations through the ideological system in all sorts of ways. As an Indian chieftan (I forget which) once said when he was being pressed to accept property boundaries across tribal territory, "drawing lines on the ground draws lines in men's minds.
It seems a prerequisite of conflict that boundaries be present. As the shore to the sea and land. But is the shore land or sea, or both, or a third thing in itself? Where are its boundaries? And amidst all the turmoil and destruction is also Hegel‘s synthesis.
No Kali, I don’t think the human race is ‘good’ but yes I do think that Capitalism is responsible for many modern social ills. Capitalism was not dreamed up, as its many apologists like to tell us because it was a good way of organizing human society. These kind of highly abstract justifications and explanations of the system are a hallmark of the doctrinal system. Capitalism came about during the 18th century when a certain class of people with access to capital began to exploit others by employing them for the purpose of generating profit. (Employment of this kind was far from the norm before that time.) To further their own interests, they wrested political power away from the landowning aristocracy and shaped society in their own image and likeness. Capitalism was born. They now run modern capitalist society in their own interests.
Was it dreamed up as you say, or rational and logically debated and developed as an evolution of an ever increasingly industrialized and complex society outgrew the limited understandings and constraints of state controlled mercantilism. Did it not carry the day because it provided for a generally wealthier society to expand its might and influence over others that were slower to accept it. And as to war, you know well were I stand on that, the only thing that has changed is the technology. It’s more massive only because there are more of us. The legions have been marching since prehistory. The Greeks cut the right hands off the children of the defeated. Hannibal takes elephants across the Alps, Attila was merciless. We probably systematically wiped out the Neanderthals.
In a depression the labour is available (just as it was before the depression except that it is hanging around uselessly because it has now all been thrown out of work). Nature given raw materials are still there in the ground waiting to be used. Production falters and declines not because one or other of these essential productive elements is unavailable but because it has ceased to be profitable to the capitalist class to put them together to produce what society requires.
Your making me work here. Your argument is with capitalist and private property. Capitalist are those with wealth in excess of that needed to meet the fundamental requirements of daily existence who choose to invest this excess in a way that returns some amount extra as reward for their postponing the enjoyment of the fruit of their labor and risking the possible loss of their investment. This system allows for a pooling of money in private business ventures or public debt by purchasing government bonds. I do not defend the obscene wealth and power that has accumulated in the largest private corporations, but, this is a result of corporate laws favoring them with influence bought through campaign contributions. Is the remedy for this the elimination of private property. Of personal wealth. An Orwellian government to tract and enforce it. Or the creation of a school system that indoctrinates everyone to the state sponsored curriculum that eliminates personal, cultural, ethnic, and religious boundaries. Creating a gray man in a gray society?
Is the problem capitalist? Or is it corporist? Chinese communist are the new capitalist. But isn’t government control of the means of production really fascist.
Libertarians argue that depressions aren’t a result of greedy capitalist withholding money for production, although that is the argument governments have used for centuries to justify central banking, they argue that it is an excess of credit that produces a falsely hyper stimulated economy that misallocates capital to nonproductive enterprises. Ever increasing amounts of stimulation are needed to keep the economy running and being dragged down by compounded accumulating interest on ever increasing debt. Credit is extended to ever more questionable borrowers and schemes that will not repay. Prices that naturally grow slowly, such as housing, are driven up by buyers, many of whom can’t pay. In the end inflation is so rampant no one wants to hold cash as prices increase faster than income. Depression is like the crash of a speed freak when the drug runs out.
Now an argument like this makes sense to me not because I’m indoctrinated or prejudiced. But because it speaks to my sensibility that you can’t get something for nothing. Much as you proposed in an earlier post about being able to increase a persons income tax without decreasing, later modified to only temporarily decreasing his purchasing power. Subsequent increases in nominal pay do not make up for losses in real purchasing of the money. This fact is well understood by the formulators of fiat economics but lost to its exponents and public.
Private ownership and public need is the first conflict built into the system.
The war between employer and employee is the next: every penny more in wages is a penny less in profit. Conflict then spreads out from there. The result is continual warfare, bloodshed and horrors of all sorts.
No, the problem is not internal to man.
I would say the first conflict is between self and other and inherent in our being individual entities at a physical level. This is a normal biological consequence with eventual evolutional psychological tendencies of identifying self with like selves against different others and that this process is a natural, normal, and necessary function of creation itself. That at some point this becomes counter productive we have most certainly reached.
But blaming private property for the vast majority of mankind’s troubles? That sounds materialistic and narrow minded. If man is just a physical being, if the mechanism of the will is subject to only external controls, if all that matters is that everyone be equal in every way, then yes man and his society are a machine that you can control. But then this man and society are nothing but a giant ant farm.
And where are the men who will administer this machine? If selfishness and conflict are not internal, then all shall become instantly enlightened as soon as their property is taken away. I doubt it! Administrators will begin to see themselves as a little better, smarter, more deserving than ‘others’. Maybe my brother gets the new administrative job. My mistress the cottage on the lake (government property of course, and all to the letter of the law). All you do is trade one group of privileged for another. Some will always be smarter, cunning, connected, unfair. New conflicts will evolve among the new classes of haves and have nots.
The US for example, one of the richest countries in the world.
We both know the US is broke. Why you would even use this platitude I can only attribute to laziness. Current US debt stands at $440,000 per household. 50 trillion dollars. 50 stacks of thousand dollar bills 67 miles high. Libertarians hold that fiat debt money and central banking do not create wealth as modern economic theory teaches. Inventive people create wealth by producing and providing value adding goods and services to the overall economy. Fiat debt money, public and private, simply creates a way to bring future earnings into the present to finance purchases. That this money must be repaid with interest, and that the money to repay that interest is itself not created as part of the process, is why artificial economic expansion eventually colapses on itself as depression.
I take the view that capitalism is such an unprecedentedly destructive form of society that the risk is well worth taking. I can't imagine anything worse.
And barterism, mercantilism, communism, fascism, fiat debt financed liberal social democratic reform socialism….
You are right about one thing, that it is all traceable to the original sin of private property takes quite an imagination.
You’ve made a couple of statements that I have difficulty with and that makes me think your self assurance of the correctness of the your conclusions may be misplaced.
1- Business can be taxed with near impunity (not a quote).
2- That income taxes don’t decrease a persons purchasing power.
3- I haven’t even touched on your labor theory of value and what this implies.
Now I’m not educated in this, just some reading, and without jumping onto the internet to refresh my memory, they propose a subjective, buyer oriented, marginal theory of value. That prices are set at the margins of demand. And that buyers constantly and naturally make value decisions based price, need, time value…
I would enjoy posting some of their arguments and correcting any of my errors here in my next posting but will finish with a quick comment on #3 above.
The labor theory of value that you mentioned, combined with your belief in external materialism, is fertile ground for the creation of a very scary type of government official. Implicit is the government setting wages and prices based on their theory of labors value for all goods and services in the economy. That is complete command and controll. An official that would use the power of the state, which is the power of the organized gun of the police and army, to take by righteous force whatever it felt it needed to fulfill its version of the ideal society. That its schools would be used to indoctrinate its children, in public schools in ever decreasing ages, to fit the needs of the state. That conflict would still exist between states, so these states, like the people of your state, would through force or coercion be forced to conform. That eventually only one globally encompassing state would exist. That this may be appealing to environmentalist, including me, at some level is true and the protection of the commons, air, water, fisheries… I am in agreement with, as contracts between existing nations. Not the creation of a world government which leaves the individual to far removed, alienated, and powerless from the decision making process.
Seems more likely that eliminating private property decreases conflict by ensuring that everyone is equally impoverished and beholding to the government and its most assuredly unenlightened minions for our manna.
Identifying with Power and keeping score in vollyball might be more sexy, Kali, but that's only 'cos we can't extend our imaginations to what a common ownership society might be like. (And I can't help wondering what native american warriors would have thought if you had called them effeminate? How big are you?
I’m imagining a no score, no conflict soccer game. I think it goes without saying that the nets have been removed. So what is the object of the game (please don’t say fun. I can stay in and play for fun. No competition there). Maybe the object is ball control? So it is quickly apparent that one team has the ball for longer period of times the other team. Do we outlaw watches at the game? Do we make it illegal to discuss past games and memories of superior ball control? Do we constantly mix teams so fans don’t identify with any group of them? Still competition and conflict would arise as you and I converge on the ball. And if you are faster must you wear lead weights? Do we make it illegal to discuss who plays with the most weight? I’m being serious here. I do not believe your system will save us.
I’m with Krishnamurti here. Communist, capitalist, socialist, conflict is our state of mind and I believe the internal, while influenced by the external, is first cause and that matter is a creation of the non-material. Your governments very nature would need to be an overwhelmingly crushing force for change and conformity.
I must stop here. You are right about one thing, you’ve got the lungs of a marathoner for this stuff.
As to my manhood, I am afraid I am afflicted with a pencil that is as limited as my imagination.
Last edited by kali on Fri Jan 05, 2007 3:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
I will put my hand up here to not being an economist, I was trained as an environmentalist intially.
Boom/Bust econmoics seem to be natural. In order for new growth in an economy to occur there must be a period of decline.
I would go further to say that the boom/bust cycle seems to be implicit in everything but thats another thread.
One of the most interesting things about buying our house is that people talk about how much their house is worth all the time. For example my parents house increased in value from £125,000 to £250,000 in five years.
However what very few people seem to realise is that it is relative to the prices that other property is realising. Our House is valued at £110,000. although it may have increased in value in the next five years it will still be worth roughly the same percentage of my parents house relatively speaking. Unless of course a bust period takes place when everything gets reset to more realisitc levels.
We have reached a point in this coutnry where mortgage companies are offering 50 year mortgages and mortgages to groups of friends purely because people are only able to buy into the market with great difficulty.
There seems to be some sort of great find the lady con game of mass hallucination taking place that enables people to believe that houses are worth the money we are paying for them.
It is my firm belief that there will have to be a winter period in the near future as the current market cannot sustain itself without constnt fresh blood able to meet the increasing house prices. Further it is my belief that the longer this is put off and the more extreme measures being used to prop up the system are put into place then the more severe the collapse will be when it comes.
I agree with you that most of the societies we see around the world are collective outgrowths of our internal aggression and self preservation. Original societies evolved because it is easier for a group to survive co-operating than it is for an individual to go it alone in most cases.
The more succesful these socieities were the more offspring they produced which leads to more people with a genetic and cultural disposition towards co-operation but also stong aggression and self-preservation instincts.
Socieities issues are the problems of men writ large. In pretty much all societies the nuturing and co-operation instincts are set against aggression (competitiveness) and self interest (self preservation)
My arguement is, although we are programmed with these competing drives we CHOOSE which ones we will follow. Otherwise it would be acceptable in our socieities for individuals to commit murder and other crimes against individuals at will.
To follow that on we CHOOSE what drives our socities will follow. Admitedly I have less input into what is going on then a billionaire businessman with several politicians in his pocket, but I still choose and so does everyone else.
If everyone chose to follow our co-operative drives and suppress the self interest then we could afford to feed everyne on the planet, no exceptions. No one would need to be homeless, no exceptions. There would be no war because it would not be in enlightened self interest.
The problem is educating everyone to see that in the long run we would all be better off, sadly most of our systems are geared towards short term goals.
I believe it is possible, I believe that should gaia decide not to scratch we will arrive at aopint where enlightened self interest rules not just interaction between people but between nation states as well. Mind you I also believe that we are a long way away from that.
"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, 'Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride ...' And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, 'Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead, spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace." Bill Hicks - Revelations...
"Identifying with Power and keeping score in vollyball might be more sexy, Kali, but that's only 'cos we can't extend our imaginations to what a common ownership society might be like."
Well, a common ownership society might be like the former Soviet Union, or Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot, or North Korea, or communist China.
Would you like to experience a common ownership society? That's easy, give me the key to your motorcycle and a credit card. Now, you go on to work while I express my undisciplined, anti-social side.
I work with children who live in poverty. I can say with confidence that their parents choose poverty. Those choices are expressed in excesses of violence, drugs, alcohol, psychological dependence and co-dependence, and a host of other addictions, rationalizations, and justifications. Attempting to justify not holding a job because one has trouble walking because one has allowed the mass of one's body to exceed 150kg because one can't keep the government's spoon out of one's mouth just doesn't cut it in my book.
Then, the biggest farces of all, such as the Catholic church teaching birth control is as sinful as the sexually discriminate lyrics of rap and country music while refusing to adequately provide for the result, namely thousands of children living in poverty, tens of thousands of grandchildren living in poverty, hundreds of thousands of great-grandchildren living in poverty, .... Such propaganda is socially irresponsible.
What it all boils down to is if you have rats, and you feed the rats, you get more rats. Now, no matter the resources available, when the rat population reaches a certain density, killing begins. Mice and rabbits do the same thing.
Same goes with poverty and the associated programs designed to end poverty. Same goes with humans in general. Humans need cognitive challenges such as those associated with a capitalist economy to survive. When humans are kept like rats (social systems that relieve them of worry about meeting their basic needs), they compete in other manners. People may be directly involved in the conflict, like gang warfare, or involved vicariously, like the Romans and their gladiators, but involved they will be.
The "civilized" nations have been sending tremondous amounts of food to feed the starving in Africa, but those gifts have done little more than allow more people to survive to the point of taking up arms against each other, just as they have throughout the history of man and his ancestors. Bleeding hearts will not end man's inhumanity to man. The strong survive and the weak die. It is the way of nature, and nature really doesn't care if starvation or homicide is the cause of death--there will be death.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you.
sv-wolf wrote:
"Identifying with Power and keeping score in vollyball might be more sexy, Kali, but that's only 'cos we can't extend our imaginations to what a common ownership society might be like."
Well, a common ownership society might be like the former Soviet Union, or Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot, or North Korea, or communist China.
This is a common mistake. There is a considerable difference between common ownership societies which do not have private property and societies which do have property but vest the ownership of it in the state.
The Soviet Union, for example, worked hard to develop a 'state-capitalist economy' (Lenin's words in 'what is to be done' not mine). And that is largely what was achieved. The Soviet Union accumulated capital and paid wages like any other capitalist society. The main difference between the Soviet Union and the West lay in the form of ownership not in the relations of ownership.
qwerty wrote:Would you like to experience a common ownership society? That's easy, give me the key to your motorcycle and a credit card. Now, you go on to work while I express my undisciplined, anti-social side.
This is another common misunderstanding. Common ownership societies are those in which the productive powers of society are owned in common not personal possessions. The productive powers are things like tools, manufacturing machinery, transport systems etc. All traditional common ownership societies respected a concept of personal possessions but it has to be said that members of those societies were much more free with their possessions, simply because ownership was not so important to them.
qwerty wrote:I work with children who live in poverty. I can say with confidence that their parents choose poverty. Those choices are expressed in excesses of violence, drugs, alcohol, psychological dependence and co-dependence, and a host of other addictions, rationalizations, and justifications. Attempting to justify not holding a job because one has trouble walking because one has allowed the mass of one's body to exceed 150kg because one can't keep the government's spoon out of one's mouth just doesn't cut it in my book.
I too work with underpriviledged children and adults, and the conclusion that I have drawn is entirely opposite to yours. The power of early experience to shape our adult minds is very profound and hangs like a dead weight upon even those who want to change their lives. Just to make one observation on this, many people just simply lack the skill or knowledge or ability to make the changes necessary.
qwerty wrote:Then, the biggest farces of all, such as the Catholic church teaching birth control is as sinful as the sexually discriminate lyrics of rap and country music while refusing to adequately provide for the result, namely thousands of children living in poverty, tens of thousands of grandchildren living in poverty, hundreds of thousands of great-grandchildren living in poverty, .... Such propaganda is socially irresponsible.
The Catholic Church is just one more power centre promoting a particular divisive ideology in our society. I don't have any more to say about them. I have no time for them as an organisation either.
qwerty wrote: What it all boils down to is if you have rats, and you feed the rats, you get more rats. Now, no matter the resources available, when the rat population reaches a certain density, killing begins. Mice and rabbits do the same thing.
You cannot draw this kind of cross species conclusion, especially when applying it to the human race, where, as I said in my other post, complex human social organisation has now modified many behavioural imperatives.
qwerty wrote:Same goes with poverty and the associated programs designed to end poverty. Same goes with humans in general. Humans need cognitive challenges such as those associated with a capitalist economy to survive. When humans are kept like rats (social systems that relieve them of worry about meeting their basic needs), they compete in other manners. People may be directly involved in the conflict, like gang warfare, or involved vicariously, like the Romans and their gladiators, but involved they will be.
The "civilized" nations have been sending tremondous amounts of food to feed the starving in Africa, but those gifts have done little more than allow more people to survive to the point of taking up arms against each other, just as they have throughout the history of man and his ancestors. Bleeding hearts will not end man's inhumanity to man. The strong survive and the weak die. It is the way of nature, and nature really doesn't care if starvation or homicide is the cause of death--there will be death.
Human beings do not live in a state of nature. They live in varying forms of society. Some societies are more successful than others at supporting their members to lead active, fulfilling, productive lives. Neo-Darwinian theories are merely propaganda that feed the interests of those our own society has made powerful. The only other observation I would make is that those who hold views like this, for some strange reason, invariably identify themselves with 'the strong' or 'the powerful'.
[Sorry don't know where the jumbo print has come from]
Hud
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
sv-wolf wrote:
"Identifying with Power and keeping score in vollyball might be more sexy, Kali, but that's only 'cos we can't extend our imaginations to what a common ownership society might be like."
Well, a common ownership society might be like the former Soviet Union, or Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot, or North Korea, or communist China.
This is a common mistake. There is a considerable difference between common ownership societies which do not have private property and societies which do have property but vest the ownership of it in the state.
The Soviet Union, for example, worked hard to develop a 'state-capitalist economy' (Lenin's words in 'what is to be done' not mine). And that is largely what was achieved. The Soviet Union accumulated capital and paid wages like any other capitalist society. The main difference between the Soviet Union and the West lay in the form of ownership not in the relations of ownership.
qwerty wrote:Would you like to experience a common ownership society? That's easy, give me the key to your motorcycle and a credit card. Now, you go on to work while I express my undisciplined, anti-social side.
This is another common misunderstanding. Common ownership societies are those in which the productive powers of society are owned in common not personal possessions. The productive powers are things like tools, manufacturing machinery, transport systems etc. All traditional common ownership societies respected a concept of personal possessions but it has to be said that members of those societies were much more free with their possessions, simply because ownership was not so important to them.
qwerty wrote:I work with children who live in poverty. I can say with confidence that their parents choose poverty. Those choices are expressed in excesses of violence, drugs, alcohol, psychological dependence and co-dependence, and a host of other addictions, rationalizations, and justifications. Attempting to justify not holding a job because one has trouble walking because one has allowed the mass of one's body to exceed 150kg because one can't keep the government's spoon out of one's mouth just doesn't cut it in my book.
I too work with underpriviledged children and adults, and the conclusion that I have drawn is entirely opposite to yours. The power of early experience to shape our adult minds is very profound and hangs like a dead weight upon even those who want to change their lives. Just to make one observation on this, many people just simply lack the skill or knowledge or ability to make the changes necessary.
qwerty wrote:Then, the biggest farces of all, such as the Catholic church teaching birth control is as sinful as the sexually discriminate lyrics of rap and country music while refusing to adequately provide for the result, namely thousands of children living in poverty, tens of thousands of grandchildren living in poverty, hundreds of thousands of great-grandchildren living in poverty, .... Such propaganda is socially irresponsible.
The Catholic Church is just one more power centre promoting a particular divisive ideology in our society. I don't have any more to say about them. I have no time for them as an organisation either.
qwerty wrote: What it all boils down to is if you have rats, and you feed the rats, you get more rats. Now, no matter the resources available, when the rat population reaches a certain density, killing begins. Mice and rabbits do the same thing.
You cannot draw this kind of cross species conclusion, especially when applying it to the human race, where, as I said in my other post, complex human social organisation has now modified many behavioural imperatives.
qwerty wrote:Same goes with poverty and the associated programs designed to end poverty. Same goes with humans in general. Humans need cognitive challenges such as those associated with a capitalist economy to survive. When humans are kept like rats (social systems that relieve them of worry about meeting their basic needs), they compete in other manners. People may be directly involved in the conflict, like gang warfare, or involved vicariously, like the Romans and their gladiators, but involved they will be.
The "civilized" nations have been sending tremondous amounts of food to feed the starving in Africa, but those gifts have done little more than allow more people to survive to the point of taking up arms against each other, just as they have throughout the history of man and his ancestors. Bleeding hearts will not end man's inhumanity to man. The strong survive and the weak die. It is the way of nature, and nature really doesn't care if starvation or homicide is the cause of death--there will be death.
Human beings do not live in a state of nature. They live in varying forms of society. Some societies are more successful than others at supporting their members to lead active, fulfilling, productive lives. Neo-Darwinian theories are merely propaganda that feed the interests of those our own society has made powerful. The only other observation I would make is that those who hold views like this, for some strange reason, invariably identify themselves with 'the strong' or 'the powerful'.
[Sorry don't know where the jumbo print has come from]
sv-wolf, you are a fundamental thinker. Everything you agree with is truth, and everything you don't agree with is propaganda. Reason is lost on you.
Peace and joy.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you.
Kal wrote:In most meeting of minds there are 3 truths.
My truth, your truth and somewhere in the middle there is The Truth.
Have a top day.
I'd go along with that 100%. Which is why I think it is important to expose your thoughts and beliefs as fully as possible to general debate. Political ideas, especially, are communal property.
Hud
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
