This is the 2nd thing that stuck with me from Fahrenheit 9/11 (1st being Piece of Heaven thread in Philosophy)
2.Michael Moore: It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the grueling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.
This is the vicious cycle of society that traces its roots back to the day when humans existed.
It makes me wonder of how the next war will be, how catastrophic its effects will be, and it makes me wonder will ALL humans ever learn?
Well you cannot have a pyramid of people without most people on the bottom. People with power and influence will usually act in ways that either preserve or increase their power and influence.
What of children who refuse to clean their room, or brush their teeth?
What about when they refuse to stop hitting Johnny?
What do you do when they refuse to go to school?
It’s not a bit deceptive, and if it’s so simple, why ain’t we doing it already?
It is wrong to force a person to do things that are good for them, too.
Are you ready to eat the Gov’t approved diet? They just changed it to the opposite of what it was for many years. Were they wrong then or now?
As for violence, it should be met with enough force to stop it.
You can raise your children as you see fit, I’d never presume to know how to raise a child that is not mine to influence.
I think I can float your iceberg, but to save time look here.
How you raise your child is between you and your child.
I’m refering more to interpersonal relationships.
Wouldn’t smashing my kid’s head to steal my neighbor’s whatever be forcing two people to do things they wouldn’t do of their own free will?
I’m just looking for one thing that forcing me against my will to do, is a proper action.
With that I have to adjust my philosophy, because it says even if what you force me to do is good for me, it is still wrong to force me to do it.
For instance, seat belts, good idea, wrong to force me to wear it. Firecrackers, good not to bother your neighbors, bad to not be able to make your own without running afoul of some ATF thugs.
Harming another is wrong, but as long as what I do harms nobody, I should be free to be free in the Land of the Free.
I agree with some of what you said above. People should mind their own business when it comes to seat belts and things. If you don’t want to wear your seat belt, and die in an accident as a result, then that is your problem, not a problem of society. Problems of society should be those which address current social issues specifically. For instance, right now we are over-populated. Some really annoying people claim that we are not over-populated because we haven’t populated so many square miles, but regaurdless of whether you believe that or not, it is evident that the human race is growing exponentially at astonishing rates that will soon over-populate the planet. So it is fair at least to say that we are over-populating the planet. Since that is the case, why worry about some inane statistic that effects only the survival of lone individuals? If people don’t want to wear seat belts, and die as a result, that was a calculated risk they took, which didn’t pay off, but their loss will not effect us in a negative way since society is over-populated. We need to account for that over-population somehow, so why inhibit someone’s freedoms over something that is only a personal decision, the inhibition of which would result in more of a negative outcome then a positive one due to over-population crisis?
Now if it were the opposite, and we were an under-populating society, and assuming that driving or riding in a car without a safety harness still resulted in significantly greater mortality rate, then we should indeed prohibit driving or riding in automobiles with no safety harness. But since that is not the case, the logical thing to do is not prohibit such a personal decision, which is not a social risk in any form or fashion. In fact, it helps society.
Firecrackers: Why do you need to make your own fire crackers? You can still buy them if you want to. I don’t believe that is a bad thing if that is what you want to do, and it hurts no one else. But in a society with a high violence rate, there should be more precautions against violence from happening. In order to prevent violent catastrophes from happening it becomes necessary to control firearms, explosives, etc. to try and moderate levels of violence. If your society has a very low violence rate, then it becomes no longer necessary to regulate the possession of firearms, explosives, etc. because there is much less likelyhood for them to be used in violent crimes. If there is little violence in a society, controlling it becomes much less of a need. When controlling it becomes a definate issue, then and only then should a society take strong actions to control it.
Laws established in a society should be established based upon necessity. As few laws should be made as necessity can dictate. Non explosive chemicals which are environmentally safe should not be regulated at all in a society which is over-populating. Instead, chemicals which are clearly devolving the ecosystem should be highly regulated, since large populations tend to result in environmental devolution. In such a society, we should figure out what the most major social problems are, and establish laws with those in mind.
Also, rather then strictly punitive in nature, laws should be rewarding. There should be rewards for following the laws, and penalties for not following them. The people who don’t follow the laws should pay in fines what rewards the citizens who do follow the laws get, as tax breaks should be given to people who do follow the laws, as opposed to people who don’t follow the laws. Right now, our justice system being strictly penal in nature gives no reasons to want to follow our laws. It only gives reasons not to follow our laws. There are obvious downfalls to such a system.
I believe that if we did a proper cleaning house on our legal system, we should end up with a few less laws, with a large portion of the remaining laws being positive laws that give rewards for following the law. Less things illegal, less stiff penalties, and a reward system would be a much more fair system that would be coercive rather then controlling. It is proven that psychologically, people respond better to being encouraged rather then threatened. Though there must be some threats for people who will still refuse to obey the law, I believe that most people will never have to be punished in the first place. The United states has one of the largest prison population and and spent $23.4 billion on it’s department of justice (2004), $29.5 billion on state prison expenditures (2001), and that does not even include federal prison expenditures. The United States spends $22,650 per inmate in state penal systems every year. If just a good portion of all those monies could be spent on positive rewards rather then punishments, I believe it would be enough to deter most people from crime using a rewards system.
Anarchist Angel: Do you really believe in total anarchy? Surely you can see the need for laws. I question the validity of modern laws in the United States quite a bit, but that in no way means that I support anarchy. I just support a more fair, effective, and less invasive means of social order.
Anarchy is really a misnomer. I went to the anarchist websites, and they said I had to smash the evil capitalist or I couldn’t play with them, so I asked them how they expected to survive above caves and selftanned hides without capitalism, and they banned me from their site.
So, though I recognize no authority except god/creator/karma, my Free Born Anarchism is really misnamed. If I knew latin or greek, I’d make up a word for absolute freedom and call it that.
As for making firecrackers, it’s because I can, and I like mine better. Not to mention, pop bottle rockets have been outlawed in OK. and I like making things go swoooosh bang!
As for your laws, prohibition has never worked, and do you expect me to give mandatory donations to pay for your system?
Hmmmmmmmm… Interesting. So what social rights SHOULD a society have? Do you think there is ever an instance where individual rights should step aside for the rights of the collective group? For instance, let’s say that there is a society. In this society people are free to do what ever they wish, and can accumulate as much wealth as they wish. Let’s say one person accumulates most of the wealth himself. That person then refuses to share the wealth with anyone else. He pays a few people very meager salaries to work for him, just enough to feed his families. He monopolizes all industries and only keeps the ones available that he wishes to, and closes down the rest. He sells food for outrageously high prices to people who have very little money because he owns everything, and has accumulated most of the wealth himself. In such a society, should that man be made to share his wealth, and give that money back to the people? According to your system he shouldn’t. But if you were any of those people besides the man himself, I am sure you would disagree with that decision. The man’s actions are causing countless people to suffer, so his individual rights should be placed aside for the rights of the group.
Let’s take another hypothetical: Let’s say you had a choice in which either a a hundered million people would die, or one person would die. Which would you choose? According to your system, the one person should die, since his rights are more important then the group, so therefore his right to live is greater then the group’s right to live.
As far as you not paying taxes in my system, do you pay taxes now? I am willing to bet you do, because you would be severely punished if you didn’t. In my system though, you would be rewarded in one way or another for paying taxes, so there would be more personal incentive for you. You still would be doing something that you wouldn’t particularly want to be doing, but you would be getting more out of it then you are now, so it is really a better deal.
If one person accumulated all the power/money/whatever, and then proceded to treat folks evilly, his power/money/whatever would last only until the last person freed himself from that situation. Somebody else’s wealth has nothing to do with your ability to become wealthy. You must make the choice to flee his evil grasp.
For instance, I open a store and drive out the mom and pops by cutting their prices. Once they are gone, I raise prices and gouge the community. Are you gonna pay my price, or drive 30 miles to the next store? And should I be punished, beyond not having you for a customer, because you don’t like my business’ policies?
I would think that Bill Gates serves as an example, not only does he give 40% to Uncle George, but he donates large portions of the rest. Look at Carnegie, he’s still giving. So I hold hope that extremely productive people would be the benefactors of the rest of us.
In choosing the one or the million, I would have to determine who is initiating the violence and stop him. Even if it meant exterminating the entire population. A man/woman should be free to live without coercion of any kind.
Let’s talk quietly about taxes. I pay no income taxes because I keep my income low enough that they really don’t have time to chase me, although, I figure to hear from the some time, and have not decided whether I should follow Tim’s example.
It is wrong for them to interfere with my tranquillity, and I’ve learned from the best. I pray that I’m not put to the choice.
Hmmm, Society is welcome to do anything it wants, except interfere in me doing what I want. Society, as it is currently configured, can jump in a lake.
I do think that individuals should help out the masses as much as possible, but they should NEVER be forced to do so.
Any system you install, that requires compliance, will last only until those forced to comply get tired of being told what to do. Even morons demand the right to think for themselves, even if it’s just to agree with the other idiots.
Then there are those like me…
Your idea of capitalism is over simplistic. You forget that one person might own all the stores. In your ideal world, there would be no rules preventing an individual from forming such a monopoly. Have you never heard of financial take overs? Your view of the world does not seem to unclude such risks, even though they are quite real. Do you really think Bill Gates is such a great person? I can’t believe the number of people ready to defend that man at my mention of them. fuckmicrosoft.com/ <------- please read, as Bill Gates is violating your liberties more then IRS is for sure.
Let me ask you something, what rules do you believe are necessary? If you decided that murdering was okay, would anyone have a right to intervene with your personal decision?
Also, you said that you wold attack the people who offered you the choice, but that specifically was not an option. Let’s assume for a second that you are in full body restraints, and you are asked the question of which will die, you or one hundered million people. If you say you, then you will be instantly killed. If you say 100 million people, they will be instantly killed. If you refuse to answer you will be brutally tortured to death. What would you choose in this hypothetical situation?
Ok, If you don’t like microsoft buy an Apple. If you don’t like them, build your own. Don’t want to pay that much? Buy microsoft and quit complaining. It is your choice to give bill your money. Choose not to, or leave him alone. If you don’t buy microsoft, feel free to say what you want, personally I hate walmart for running out mom and pop, but that is where I shop when I don’t have time to find mom and pop.
The only big rule is not to force anybody to do whatever against their will. Their are countless individual rules that will have to be established. and enforced, by the individual. You(or any other authoritarian who want to run my life for me.) think thieves should be given a second chance?, fine, but it’s not your place to stop me, with your laws, from killing those who steal from me. And yes, I will determine the level of proof, mistakes will happen, but perfection is not an option. You think drunk drivers should get another chance, I’m shooting any that run into me and mine. You think murderers should be locked in prison for life, don’t ask me to donate to feed somebody I would have spent $.30 to execute.
Harsh?, yes, but effective at ridding society of those who want to take control of your life and tell you how to live it. I WILL think for myself, and act accordingly.
I did 5 calandars because I think smoking pot makes me closer to MY god, and the court did not recognize my religion. In the land of ‘choose your own religion’, only the official choices are available. Were I in a position, I would have gone to the supreme court, but my public excuse for a lawyer wanted to be the DA(he is now) and not world famous for ending oppression in Amerika. Assuming the supreme court would have chosen freedom over slavery, really unlikely they would have voted themselves out of a career.
The choice here is slavery or freedom. By choosing laws, and submitting to authority, you choose slavery, I choose my freedom. I don’t wear seatbelts, and I buy pop bottle rockets in Missouri all year long(they have the freedom to buy BIG pop bottle rockets any day of the year.).
Are there laws you don’t agree with? Do you follow them anyway? When you speed on the expressway, do you feel like a rebel, worthy of imprisonment with the killers, rapists, and thieves? That is the LAW! Bow down before your master, I have black robes !
Once you force somebody to do something against their will they will punish you in their own manner, if they can. Eventually the bad actors will step in it, and then they will die. Much like walmart, one day folks will choose mom and pop over cheap prices. Mom and pop spend their money locally, walmart collects it in Arkansas. If a person continuosly harms others, his karma will catch him.
Now, I would like to think I would chose to die, but my strongest instinct is survival. Put me down as undecided, and not looking forward to having the choice put to me. I would much rather avoid letting people get me in that position, what kind of world is it when folks could make that a reality?
It violates so many people, and I’m guessing the folks putting this choice to me are not in the dying group? This question illustrates perfectly what happens when you give one person control over another, especially when they use that power to get more. Without power over another, this scenario couldn’t happen. Hence, Free Born Anarchism.
Buy Microsoft? Who buys Microsoft products? When was the last time you actually bought a microsoft product, excluding maybe an x box? Microsoft forces it’s products down people’s throats. Microsoft is the most aggressive corporation there is. Their whole selling strategy depends on cornering other corporations and forcing them to not only use microsoft products but pay excorbitant amounts of money to them. Consumers don’t feed microsoft. Microsoft feeds on much larger things. Bigger fish eat big fish, not minows. Couple that with their anti-privacy policies, inneficient software, and secret spying methods of which they obtain and sell consumer information as well as other information, and there is a billion reasons to not USE microsoft. However, if you want to run a wide array of software, you are stuck with them. I don’t understand the build your own comment. Were you aware that microsoft is a software company? How would building my own computer have anything to do with avoiding a company who has completely cornered the software market?
As for not forcing anybody to do anything against their will, what about rape and murder? Should we not force people to not do acts that are harmful to others? I agree with you that people do need to make their own decisions, for the strongest form of control is self control, but in order for people to control themselves, they need the proper coercion. You are talking about anarchy. If you want anarachy go to Somalia or Ethiopia or somewhere, and observe just how splendid that it is first hand. You can do whatever the hell you feel like in those countries. You can make your own firecrackers, shoot off bottle rockets, kill people, whatever. I think that if you really wanted to live like you say you do, then you would probably move somewhere away from society, where there really aren’t any rules. Since you choose to stay in society, that tells me that you must have some fundamental need for society, which includes social regulations. Without social regulations, any society will break down and become anti-productive, primative, and useless. Forget about microsoft, if you want a computer at all, we NEED social regulations. They are a part of life, so your choices are narrowed down to live in the woods, or deal with them.
I understand why you have feelings of rebellion towards the laws of society. The U.S. system is undoubtably lame. But I think you are targeting systems in general rather then just the system you dislike itself. As far as paying taxes and things, in order to live in a society, you must actively participate in that society.
Anarchy, is not freedom. No matter what you do, or what system you live by, people will always be forcing you to do things that you don’t want to do. Even in anarchy. In anarchy there is nothing preventing some person more powerful then you from finding you and making you do whatever he or she tells you to do. In a system of anarchy, slavery would be legal, so you might end up being a slave and having less freedom then you do now. There are specific reasons why no one is allowed to do whatever the hell they feel like doing. In such a place everyone is miserable. Actions need to be regulated, but only in such a way that those regulations still treat people humanely. You are not going to die or suffer because you can’t make your own fireworks. Now on the other hand, you might die or suffer if someone who, under the guise of making his or her own fireworks, bought gun powder and decided to blow up your house. As it is, you can make fireworks anyway. It just isn’t legal. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make them though. If you are determined enough to make your own fireworks, then you will. I have no problem with that. I also have no problem with the law. The law inhibits the ability to obtain the materials to make fireworks enough to prevent such materials from commonly being used by terrorists and such. We live in a society that has one of the highest violence rates in the world. We need to take precautions in such a society.
As far as your having the right to kill a drunk driver or whatever, do you really think there should be some law like that? Such laws could lead to deadly feuds and genocides. What if then, someone decided to invoke the right to kill you for killing the drunk driver because you were a murderer. Then someone decides to kill them for killing you, and someone decides to kill them for killing your killer, ad infinum. So your action has increased the violence and atrocities rather then solving it. The point in laws against drunk drivers and such are to prevent tragedies from happening, not increase them. If you decide to kill a drunk driver because he hit someone while intoxicated, in my book, that makes you worse then he or she. You then have commited premeditated murder. You have some personal excuse for it, but does that really make it right? Who decides what is right, and what is wrong, you? So do you really think that your idea of “justice” is truly fair, or even more important, effective in preventing future disasters? The truth is such a system of justice escalates atrocities, not decreases them. Such a system would aim to make murderers out of everyone, and everyone would constantly being killing one another. The more murder there was, the more murder would increase at exponential rates, because every time someone wsa murdered, another person would have to avenge that murder. SO the murder cycle would go on and on forever. That would be a definate degression of civilization. Civilized people don’t brutally murder people for having accidents. If you don’t like civilization, once again, the option always still exists to go live in the wilderness. I have thought about it before. There are some things that I really hate about society. But you know what, I live with it. Because it’s easier to stay in society and try to make a difference in a positive way then it is to run away from the problem. It also gets a lot more accopmlished. You should sit down and consider the feasibility of your ideas. No one likes doing things that they don’t want to do, but the cold hard truth is we all have to do things we don’t like to do. Like it or not, that’s the way things are. Even anarchy cannot change that. Even living in the wilderness, there will be some things that you would like to do, but are no longer able to do.
Do you care about the human race? Would it bother you at all if the human race went extinct? I think that extinction depends completely on the battle between degression and progression. What you are suggesting (i.e. anarchy, or less social order) is a degression of civilization, and will ultimately lead to the extinction of our race. You answered that you might decide to have your life taken in place of the lives of hundereds of millions of others. That is your conscience, your true intuition telling you what the right thing to do is. It is your ego that screams for survival and self consideration. Your ego is a natural survival mechanism, as is your conscience. The ego is self survival. The conscience is social or species survival. The ego is the more primative of the two, and how primative a person is depends largely on if they can over run that influence for a greater cause. In order to continue surviving, everyone else must survive as well. So the survival of the ego depends directly on the survival of society, i.e. our species. The survival of the species is ultimately a much more important goal. It takes will power, and spirit to overcome the power of the ego, but I have found in my experience that once a person does this, he or she tends to like his or her self better then before. Thus survival becomes a more pleasant experience. But hey, this is all just my opinion.
I admittedly know very little about MS and it’s business practices, I do know that if they continue to act negatively towards it’s customer, it will eventually catch up to them.
I do know that linux is improving, and MS will eventually lose it’s monopoly.
Rape and murder are forcing people to be raped and murdered, did that slip by you?
I want to live in a peaceful land where folks are responsible for themselves, and live without political masters. They are no smarter than you and me, yet they run our lives, don’t believe me, jump out of line.
As for social regulations, the only one we need is ‘It’s wrong to force a person to do anything they don’t want to do.’ I don’t need somebody to tell me that riding my bike without a helmut is dumb, and I sure don’t need somebody to throw me in jail for doing it, nor do I need 30% of my income taken at the point of a gun to pay for the jail they keep me in. Again, don’t believe me, don’t pay your tax, and see how fast the guns come out.
As for anarchy, in order to live without an all powerful gov’t, our neighbors will rely on us for security, and us them. Without police to clean up messes, we’d have to do it ourselves. Making for a much more self-sufficient society. Folks would handle their own problems and stop sending men with guns to rob me to pay for cleaning up their mess.
So, when the truck carrying the toilet paper gets hijacked, we’d find him and deal with him quickly.
Amerika lived without police up until the 1900’s. In fact, anarchy ruled Amerika well into the '30’s in most rural areas. This is why the old folks won’t give up their guns, without them all the police do is find the mess and file a report, with them they put a halt to the mess long before the police could even get called.
In the absence of coercion, terrorism ceases to exist. There is nothing to rebel against when you are the master of your own destiny, it’s only when folks try to take power by force that rebillion can exist. They terrorize because they don’t want to do what Amerika is trying to force them to do. If we left them alone, and minded our own business, and they still attacked us, then, and only then , would we be justified in putting a halt to the violence through total war. As long as we go into their country, give enough money to those who agree with us to take over, and force them to live by our rules, THEY ARE JUSTIFIED IN WHATEVER ACTIONS THEY TAKE TO STOP US. We’d do no less if China gave the Amerikan Communist Party a billiion dollars to buy some elections. How long do you think that lead ballon would fly? It’s no different when the US does the same in Egypt, or wherever.
My reference to killing drunk people who crash is about the victim of the crime setting the punishment and not some ‘all knowing, all powerful’ judge.
You dedcide right and wrong for you. Only god knows the whole story, and you haveto do the best you can. Your karma will tell you if you are doing things wrong.
If I decide right and wrong for you then I am saying that I am god, and know the whole story.
Your cycle of murder would only be broke by some people admitting that their son was guilty and deserved what he got for misbehaving. Yes, the first few years will be exciting.
Anarchy is not social disorder. Chaotics have hijacked the term. Anarchy is simply the absence of gov’t. If it is to be, the only way to maintain it is for everyone to chose to do good over evil. Until 99% of the population doesn’t want to get ahead at the expense of others, anarchy is not possible. Gov’ts are institued to stop those folks from ruling by force, the problem with that plan is that the corruptions of power turn the do gooders into those who rule by force just like those they replaced. Look at the Whiskey Rebellion of 1790, GW sent in the troops to extablish that freedom would not rule in Amerika, the new boss was the same as the old boss. It doesn’t matter who steals my money through taxes, it only matters that my money is being taken through the threat, and actual use, of force.
Society can jump in a lake as long as they force me to do things against my will. I’ll still reproduce and everybody else will too. Humanity is the mammalian cockroach, I don’t fear for their extinction.
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