Idiocracy (2006)

[ColdJ]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I am not saying they "aren't problematic" because they are somehow a sort of "soft" or "not that bad" event, but rather because the general attitude of cultures and individuals in the present day dictates that violence and death itself isn't that bad.

Remember when you said, don't extrapolate a percent into the whole? Same goes here. Those that create the most noise get the most attention. If all cultures were as you say then the whole, entire human world would be at war, all the time. You and I would certainly not be free to have free and open discussions about these deep topics. I know there are names we cannot use due to forum rules but the fact that we can recognise the unhinged is due to them standing out from the background.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

This is an arbitrary reason.

No, if I thought it was okay to kill them on a whim or due to some slight, that would be arbitrary. I am talking about those that no matter what you have tried in the past to get them to stop hurting and killing, they insist on still doing it. It is the last resort, and only done to protect many more people, who don't go around killing. There is no joy in it and you ruin yourself in the process.

It is one of the biggest problems I have with the general story of Batman. Catch, beat up, throw in Arkham, they escape, kill innocent people, catch, beat up, throw in Arkham, repeat.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Anglosphere

Due to the root of this word, I find this term very insulting. One should never assume a persons heritage or assume they that they must believe a certain way because a majority do.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

is heavily dominated by concepts like salvation and damnation, as well as judgement

Totally not how I perceive the world. For me this is it, once I go, my unique set of memories is lost forever.

I don't treat others well because I expect a reward. I treat them how I would like to be treated.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

• Only individuals who behave in a certain way are worthy of life
• Someone has a right to judge whether others ought to live
• Otherwise negative actions can be excused if they serve a greater good
• A minority can be expensed for the benefit of a majority

Not for me. You may try to argue the Right to judge bit, but remember that is only if the person refuses to stop harming others. It is not possible to force the world into black and white rules.

You keep citing other authors and cultures. That is just a way to get confused. You must come to your own conclusions through your own experiences. All those other ways of approaching the subjects came about due to their personal experiences in the past and may have worked for them then, but the world is a big and everchanging place.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

It is thus that I tend to find the impassioned cries of people to "stop the violence" untruthful and deceptive. It is about redirecting the violence away from an (arbitrarily) innocent group and on to the group that (arbitrarily) really deserves it.

No again. A country or culture is not homogenous. Just because the most public example may be violent and make excuses to get away with killing, does not mean that everybody thinks the same way. The people who call for a stop to violence usually don't want it any form. The world is full of individuals. I am sure that you can find someone who grew up in very similar circumstances to yourself, who none the less has very different views.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

But it is an action. And actions have consequences. No human action is in total antithesis to another.

Agreed.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I disagree with the notion that people "have" to kill. Or that any killing can be justified.

For me there is no black and white and you already know my exception.

Now I fully agree on the horror of what happened when they dropped a nuclear bomb on civilians.

Sadly I also know the history and what Imperial Japan was like. They considered all others inferior and would not stop without a devestating defeat. I wish it hadn't come to what it did. But it was just a bigger version of those that will not stop hurting others.

All loss of life of those simply trying to live is terrible. We are seeing it play out in the world still right now. If we could extract the selfish out of the general populace and have them fight only themselves, that would be great. If you can invent a way, you have my backing.

 

I am starting to feel that no matter what I say, you are stuck in a particular thought groove. I hope when you read what I write that you will see that people and attitudes are multi layered and don't just conform to simple examples.

Edited March 18 by ColdJ

[Fizzlebop Smith]

A lack of personal accountability is quit prevelant in the world. 

Blame is a very useless  and it has replaced accountability as the new moral paradigm.

6 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Of course there are good people.

Preposterous

You claim that you have never brought harm or pain onto another individual? Unlikely.

5 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

. I say its not a dichotomy. As with EVERYTHING it is a spectrum. A person is neither good OR bad. We are inherently BOTH.

Exactly. Some people try to be good.

Good and evil are subjective things lensed by experience. There is a great deal of overlap on certain things such as it is nearly universally consider wrong to commit inflict death on another.

There are times through history where this was not the case. We are forced to view this as absurd because of our own person view of modern civility.

It is not about doing what is right... but what is right to you. Not merely what you claim or spouse, but firmly hold dear. How well you adhere to conviction AND revaluate perspective based on new experience.

Moral justification is not the same as moral equivalence, though there will be a sematic argument for such things. As blame has replaced accountability.

Evil is committing action you feel or personally  know as bad or wrong. There is no justification for this. Profit, family legacy,  I do not belief the people doing heinous things do not full understand the impact of their actions.

Edited March 18 by Fizzlebop Smith

[ColdJ]

3 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

You claim that you have never brought harm or pain onto another individual? Unlikely.

I have never set out to cause pain or harm to another person.

A good person may accidentally cause harm, but they don't try to on purpose.

A bad person sets out to do harm on purpose.

It is a simple way to denote.

If you try to make it that good person can never have caused any harm to anyone, then of course no one can meet that standard.

[Lisias]

10 hours ago, ColdJ said:

A good person may accidentally cause harm, but they don't try to on purpose.

I understand where you intend to go, but I disagree with the path you are using.

A good person will purposely bring harm, sometimes huge amounts of harm, to anyone causing harm to people they care.

Police men, soldiers, sometimes a random armed dude in the streets preventing a criminal from killing someone, you name it.

I had read something like this once, but I don't remember where and who: "My job is to protect, not to kill. It's not up to me to decide if I will kill someone, this decision was taken bythe dude I'm going to kill by bringing harm to whom I'm protecting".

 

[ColdJ]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

A good person will purposely bring harm, sometimes huge amounts of harm, to anyone causing harm to people they care

This is why I feel I am some sort of minority, because even though the topic has layers I can see clear choices as to what makes you good vs what makes you bad. It seems the majority have trouble with this.

A "Good" person will bring harm if they are backed into a situation where they have no choice, because if they don't those they care for will be harmed.

A "Bad" person will bring harm as a first resort and use the excuse that they were protecting others.

It is not the act of bringing harm that makes you bad or good. It is the choices that led to you causing harm.

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

"My job is to protect, not to kill. It's not up to me to decide if I will kill someone, this decision was taken bythe dude I'm going to kill by bringing harm to whom I'm protecting".

This statement is made by a bad person. They are already getting ready to kill someone they haven't even come up against, rather than hoping that it doesn't come to that.

A good person can be backed in to a situation that results in them causing harm. A bad person rushes to doing harm.

Real world Examples:

Many police are attempting to subdue a very difficult suspect. They finally have them on the ground and are trying to get them to calm down. A particular officer decides to kneel on the suspects neck. All around can see that the officer is cutting off the suspects air and tell the officer that if they don't take their knee off the suspect will die. The officer refuses to listen. The suspect dies. The officer had a choice, they chose to do the bad thing.

A 95 year old woman in a care home has gone slightly off, she needs a walker to slowly get around, she is quite slow but has picked up a kitchen knife somewhere. Officer are called. The woman could easily have been disarmed with the extendable batton or even a nearby chair. Even though their fellow officer tells them not to do it, they pull out a taser and shoot the old woman, she falls over and cracks her head open on a table and dies. The now former and jailed officer, chose to do the bad thing, when they had plenty of choices not to.

Your choices are what make you bad or good, not whether you end up causing harm or not.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, ColdJ said:

This statement is made by a bad person.

It was made by a body guard.

[ColdJ]

4 minutes ago, Lisias said:

It was made by a body guard.

Not the Job that defines you. But the choices you make.

As I don't think either of us will budge on this, I will not comment anymore on this subject.

I like having you as my friend and this kind of debate can cause friction over time.

[SunlitZelkova]

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I am starting to feel that no matter what I say, you are stuck in a particular thought groove.

To be honest I felt the same way back during our conversation over in the philosophy thread, which is why I eventually stopped replying. I'm not expecting to change your opinions, I just find the back and forth enjoyable  Feel free to drop out any time, I plan to do that myself if I get bored. I'm not trying to win an argument.

As I pointed out in my last post, I was not saying that your positions are bad or wrong, but merely making observations about your positions. My tone in the last reply was rather accusatory, and I apologize for that. I'd like to address the points that you replied to and quoted, so as to specifically further flesh out and explain my own views.

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Remember when you said, don't extrapolate a percent into the whole? Same goes here. Those that create the most noise get the most attention. If all cultures were as you say then the whole, entire human world would be at war, all the time. You and I would certainly not be free to have free and open discussions about these deep topics. I know there are names we cannot use due to forum rules but the fact that we can recognise the unhinged is due to them standing out from the background.

So I was not very clear. I don't think that the "general attitude of cultures and individuals" is a direct indicator of them holding a belief that "violence and death isn't that bad." By "direct indicator" I mean people do not literally believe that. They don't go around reading news stories about criminals being put to death or wars and then smile and do a little dance.

What I believe is that this sentiment, while not consciously acknowledged, is made implicit by physical actions of these groups and individuals.

Take the issue of the death penalty. There are a number of individuals and groups that advocate for its abolition here in the United States. These people abhore the notion that anyone ought to lose their life for something they did, the taking of a life for something someone did being a crime itself. And yet, they continue to pay taxes and a tiny fraction of that helps pay for killing people for such a reason.

There is a very tricky, fine line to interpreting this behavior. A person might detect it but then jump to the conclusion this means that anyone who pays taxes to a government that kills is a bloodthirsty warmonger, or assume that this behavior is a conscious indifference and that society can never change.

Neither is the case, although isolated examples of both certainly could be found.

People have priorities. Having food on the table for themself or their family is just more important than other things for the average person. That's okay, but the fact that inaction is an action in itself and has an effect on the world should be recognized. Whether one then attributes that to positive or negative effect is a matter of opinion.

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

No, if I thought it was okay to kill them on a whim or due to some slight, that would be arbitrary. I am talking about those that no matter what you have tried in the past to get them to stop hurting and killing, they insist on still doing it. It is the last resort, and only done to protect many more people, who don't go around killing. There is no joy in it and you ruin yourself in the process.

I think our definitions of arbitrary differ.

I think we can agree arbitrary: on a whim or without reason.

I am not limiting "on a whim" to an individual's own decision. My interpretation of "on a whim" expands to include anyone who creates rational or reasoning on a whim as well.

Take harming a person because of the color of their skin, for example. People who believe that sort of thing is okay put enormous amounts of thought into why they need to do it, over a long period of time. Books have been written on the subject. But at the end of the day, that is still an arbitrary justification for violence. No objective reason can be found for such a decision, only the reason one's self creates. If the reasoning is entirely invented by the individual themself, I would consider that to be "on a whim" and "arbitrary."

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Due to the root of this word, I find this term very insulting.

I apologize. I was unaware that specific root could be insulting.

19 hours ago, ColdJ said:

You keep citing other authors and cultures. That is just a way to get confused. You must come to your own conclusions through your own experiences. All those other ways of approaching the subjects came about due to their personal experiences in the past and may have worked for them then, but the world is a big and everchanging place.

I agree that overreliance on other's experiences is unwise, and while I value personal experience, I think it is important not to overestimate the extent to which an independent view is possible.

I'd also like to clarify that while we are talking about individuals, who may have their own varying views about things and their own way of thinking about the world, we are also talking about actions. Regardless of the justifications individuals might make for their actions, those actions are often times identical.

Take myself for example. I might try to view things from an impartial perspective and come to my own conclusions, but at the end of the day I am influenced by factors beyond my control. These are factors that can be identified and quantified. The influence of these factors upon the behavior of individuals might be called "culture."

Sidebar: It's a shame how the concept of culture is simplified and misinterpreted. I think what many people regard as "culture" is basically just a more respectful and sophisticated version of stereotyping. Culture is an immensely vast and complex concept, not just someone wearing a certain traditional dress, having a certain way of greeting, and eating a certain food.

Returning to the discussion...

20 hours ago, ColdJ said:

assume they that they must believe a certain way because a majority do.

I do not assume anyone's exact, personal beliefs. Nor do I try to guess or assume what the exact, specific origin of their decision to come to whatever belief they may hold. I also strive not to make assumptions about their mindset based on the physical behavior.

But as I mentioned earlier, there is an unconscious aspect to people's beliefs as well as a conscious one. It is this unconscious aspect that I am mostly referring to in this discussion.

I don't doubt your clarifications about your beliefs about violence elsewhere in the reply. I do not mean to "put words in your mouth" and say that by holding a certain idea, you automatically belong to a certain culture or heritage, or that a certain culture or heritage was the direct cause for you coming to hold such beliefs.

What I am doing is trying to point out that these concepts don't exist in isolation, no matter what a person may think.

Although the Middle Eastern/European concepts I referred to are not my own literal justification for why I myself oppose violence (I don't oppose violence "because they said so"), I don't deny the influence they have had upon me, nor the influence that people influenced by them have had upon me. Same goes for the East Asian concepts I mentioned.

Humans are social animals, and consequently their behavior is heavily shaped by those around them. It is not a decisive factor, and individuals do still go against the grain even against all odds, but it is still a factor nonetheless.

My perception of violence would be very different if I had grown up among the Kwakiutl tribe in the Pacific Northwest of North America in the 1300s, which kept slaves captured during raids on other tribes and occassionally sacrificed them, compared to if I had grown up in an atheist household in the Kuban region of the Soviet Union in the 1900s, amongst workers of a collective farm.

Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that my own beliefs and behavior are literally dependent on what others do ("I'm only doing whatever others do"), but even if not being literally (consciously) decisive in my decisions, it will always be an unconscious factor.

When I listed those Middle Eastern/European concepts, it was not my intention to insinuate you are actually a Middle Eastern/European person or come from such a culture. Rather, I desired to point out that your beliefs are not isolated, and while the events in your life that influenced you and your own decision to hold those beliefs is unique, the ideas themselves are not.

20 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I don't treat others well because I expect a reward. I treat them how I would like to be treated.

20 hours ago, ColdJ said:

You may try to argue the Right to judge bit, but remember that is only if the person refuses to stop harming others. It is not possible to force the world into black and white rules.

And even

20 hours ago, ColdJ said:

For me this is it, once I go, my unique set of memories is lost forever.

is an idea held by many others, with the former two being especially comparable to concepts found in the Middle East/Europe. They may be influenced by different factors, and have their own experiences and reasoning that led them to believe in those ideas, but they are nonetheless the same idea. And these ideas can be made common or rare amongst people by the actions of others. Very few individuals in the Americas would hold Middle Eastern/European beliefs had Europeans not begun sailing to the Americas in large numbers in the 1600s.

I pointed this out to help develop a sense of causality. It is vast, complex, and indirect, and it isn't causality in a sense that is relevant to human beings. But it is a causality that I believe is important. This portion of my reply has been entirely focused on (in my opinion) positive influences and beliefs, especially the belief that violence is bad. But this causality works across all human ideas and beliefs, not just positive ones.

And it is this causality that I refer to when I say that "People with malign intent do not come out of nowhere." It is what I am pointing to when I try to explain that while a justification for violence is arbitrary, it is not arbitrary in the immediate sense that only encompasses the individual's conscious actions. It is arbitrary in that it comes from a process without reason and influences individuals without reason, that is, it influences them unconsciously. These justifications seem "not arbitrary" given the enormous time scale across which this influence traverses, making the "un-arbitrariness" imperceptible to the individual human being, but they are indeed arbitrary.

As I said in an earlier reply, such "universal" arbitrariness is not a negative attribute. I think recognition of it is important however and if widespread, would empower individuals to make better informed decisions. Those who commit violence only hold the belief violence is okay to such an enormous extent due to the same mechanism that allows others to oppose violence and hold belief it is wrong to an enormous extent. Understanding of this commonality amongst ideas, and rejection of simplistic labeling of certain ideas or behaviors, would be beneficial for people in my opinion.

21 hours ago, ColdJ said:

No again. A country or culture is not homogenous. Just because the most public example may be violent and make excuses to get away with killing, does not mean that everybody thinks the same way. The people who call for a stop to violence usually don't want it any form. The world is full of individuals. I am sure that you can find someone who grew up in very similar circumstances to yourself, who none the less has very different views.

I don't take offense, and don't think you are holding any especially wrong perception, but I would disagree that individuals (including myself) can be said to have been raised or live in similar circumstances.

As I mentioned above, my intention was not to argue that individuals can be grouped together or perceived as having consanguinity, but rather that ideas can, and at an indirect level at that.

Whereas I argue that there is nuance in the concept of "idea" and such a concept can exist outside of immediate human perception as a mass transcending individuals, my belief is vehement that no individual is truly alike. Just as I argue that there is an inner arbitrariness to justifications for violence, I believe there is an inner arbitrariness to the concept of any sort of social grouping or group identification.

I am Japanese-American and have divorced parents, but I would not say I grew up in similar circumstances to another Japanese-American person or person with divorced parents, nor even someone else who is Japanese-American and has divorced parents. I have a mental disorder, but I would not say I undergo a similar experience to anyone else with the same mental disorder (in fact amongst the community of those with it, it is pretty well understood that each experience is individual and only small things can be related amongst each other, whereas amongst those with more common mental disorders like ADHD there tends to be a stronger sense of shared experience).

This is ironically an example of that unconscious arbitrariness. I may have genes that indicate I have ancestors from the regions known as Japan and North America, but there is nothing actually making me "Japanese-American" beyond my decision and the decision of others to call myself that. This classification is artificial in reality.

21 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Now I fully agree on the horror of what happened when they dropped a nuclear bomb on civilians.

Sadly I also know the history and what Imperial Japan was like. They considered all others inferior and would not stop without a devestating defeat. I wish it hadn't come to what it did. But it was just a bigger version of those that will not stop hurting others.

I respect your opinion, but I disagree with the assertion that we are in agreement on the horror. I am not going to elaborate on my own views because discussing this specific instance of violence in history will probably start drifting into politics, which goes against forum rules.

[ColdJ]

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