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[Philosophy] The independence paradox


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You've met no one who wishes to be independent of the collective? Well, I guess I'm the first you'll meet.

Does that independence include not having the perks of (relative) safety and comfort that arizes from cooperation within the collective?

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Opposition is relative. Ally and opposition are labeled as good and bad. Villains and allies are marked as such on a different basis from reality. The side believe is right is right. The only time that this doesn't apply is if such goals of the group entail murder of the innocent. Germany thought so during WWI. They believed to be purifying the world of inferior beings. The truth is, they were rarely asked this question: Why are they inferior? What makes them anything less than you? Those who asked were never given a response, but were outright killed. It was impossible to answer, because, ultimately, it's not true. Superiority runs perpendicular to the undefined slope.

"Bad" is dependent on your definition.

No, they were given all sorts of rubbish answers about how the "inferior" races were responsible for all of Germany's ills. Whole books were written giving their justifications for it, and all of the instigators, and many of the drones, believed they were doing the right thing. That's the thing about evil, almost nobody believes themselves to be evil. Everybody justifies their actions to themselves. Hitler thought he was protecting Germany from Jews and communists, Stalin thought he was protecting himself from a giant conspiracy that needed to be purged, Augusto Pinochet thought he was standing strong against communism, Kim Jong-Il... Well who knows what he was thinking.

In any case, there are degrees of freedom. It's not a binary choice between "free to do whatever you want", and "hopelessly enslaved because you can't take drugs at work and urinate on your boss". And the lines are murky. Is an American more free than a Swede because they have less government regulation on their lives, or is the Swede more free than the American because they work fewer hours, and don't have to spend their disposable income on health insurance and university education? They are both more free than a serf in medieval Europe, but the serf is more free than somebody imprisoned on Death Row.

It's all very well to say that one person's freedom ends where another's begins, but there are no clearly-defined lines there either. Of course you shouldn't be free to murder and rob, but should people be free to create monopolies and price-fix? To sell scam medicines? To swindle? To pay unfair wages because supply of labour outstrips demand? To sell drugs and alcohol to children?

The upshot of all this is that freedom is a good metric by which to measure societies, but it is a very subjective concept, and by no means the only metric we can or should use. People in much of Somalia have been "free" of a government for the past 20-odd years. I'd say most of them would trade some of their "freedom" for some prosperity and security, even if that comes with certain obligations to maintain a societal contract.

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The only time that this doesn't apply is if such goals of the group entail murder of the innocent.

Trail of Tears

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

kill all muslims

I hate this subjective lie. That we even use the term collateral damage should let you know just how subjective this really is; that we can't even define what the innocent are shows how subjective it is. Views on abortion have changed, whether you are for or against it, it was once a widely held belief that it was "murder of the innocent"... and we just changed that belief.

It is used far too often to try and say "them and us", some kind of ultimate proof that inherently proves nothing.

The truth is, they were rarely asked this question: Why are they inferior? What makes them anything less than you? Those who asked were never given a response, but were outright killed.

"Why are blacks inferior?" This was asked and answers were delivered; the same way that all groups like the ....'s worked, by repeating a motto such as "The government is evil because they lie to us" and using it over and over in every argument as if it proves anything. "copying isn't stealing", "windows gets viruses", "spying on the government is okay, but the government cannot spy on me"... every argument is identical because the person has no individuality; it's just repeating the same stuff over and over never questioning it.

It's hard to give my stance against examples of crime or inhuman actions. I'm trying to assume that everyone would know how to use their individuality properly, and at least have some sort of common sense. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Of course, Stanley Milgram has something to say about that; and the Stanford Prison Studies has something to say about that; Kitty Genovese would have something to say about that.

Humans are monsters.

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you're born here and been educated like that, he's born there and been educated like this

...

basically, is a cake full of experiences tracking cookies that lie within ; from the first first sound you here before your even really born.

On a side note:

I m always amused when i think to 30 years ago to -3000 and the ability that any human being connected to the internet network has to speak with almost everyone one from everywhere. Even if he do not learned the caracters or languages.

I suppose it's not always easy to get for "our 'leaders'" & to manage regarding their ancestor habits wich by design and from what they learn themselves they sometime hawkwardly try to reproduce.

Anyway regarding current medias & markets network scale, most process are totally outdated and persisitng in using some them is not even laughable, and won't last long anyway, but it remain understable for a while. *shrug*

It's a major change to take into account now and for the years to comes. (sometime i just try to imagine how some historicaly known conflicts since the last 5000 years could have been modified if this ability for earth citizen to speak between each other @ a planet scale happened earlier, would have they been worst, the same or simply not occured : )

Somehow in human history this is a fairly new ability related to scale. Not really the kind of thing recorded in any book yet.

(and when too much is too much and you can't handle anymore your own appetite behaviour all your matter start looking like a Gravitational_collapse)

Edited by WinkAllKerb''
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