a timely denial and three affirmations

My “view of God”. I no longer have one. I have a bunch of propositions in search of coherence.

The opening post entertains the idea that God is calling us to all inclusive love. The critical variable there seems to be the need to widen our concern for the well-being of living beings.

Whether or not that concern is conceptualized as God may not be important. Indeed there are cases in which the concept of God is a positive hindrance to inclusive love as for example those Christians who view people who believe differently than them as of the devil.

It’s true as you say we are selective about who actually gets our love and compassion. The demographics of suffering are not enough. We need a face and a compelling story to evoke our compassion.

But let’s not let our primate limitations cause us to despair. Inclusive love is the ideal. Moving toward the ideal by acts of kindness and compassion is progress. We all have to start somewhere. And we all fall along the way. But there are so many lives that need our love. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

Yes that’s right man. Pray to the Zionists and they will save you from all the monsters they created. Lol.

American values: Wall street. Zionism. Split mind psychosis. Fried hamburgers, BHT, partially hydrogenated oils and Yellow #5. Prostate cancer. Obesity. Broke college students. Sex-hating feminists. Buses full of smelly ghetto people. Whiny millennials who listen to Justin Bieber songs. Rich gated communities you’re not usually welcome in. Bought out politicians. Shitty movies. It’s so great.

So far as I’m aware, no one, neither minority nor majority, have the right to murder… I doubt I would need to make any change to the legal system or any existing policy in order to justify wanting to bring the culprits to justice and make every attempt to minimize such crimes in the future. But humans being humans living in a society that allows them some basic form of freedom I would expect such crimes to continue to some (preferably lesser) extent. So using such tragedies to underline the “need” for some dangerously naive or destructively stupid change in policy, while commonplace, is nevertheless idiotic…

In other words, this shit is to be expected, it is not indicative of some major malfunction in the system… it’s indicative of a malfunction in some human beings, which is why we have a police force.

So what would I recommend?
Identify the problem before proposing solutions…

That… and start teaching kids critical thinking skills from an early age. They might be less likely to fall prey to such murderous ideas and other ideological death traps.

We have a police force to enforce obedience to the Global Gulag and feminist Zionist Christian Nation Sate of Puritan Ideals (of the global prison planet and plantation.) Of course, the end goal to funnel as much money as humanly possible to the 1%…

But lo and behold if someone wants to murder some asshole, or rob a bank, they must have some kind of “mental malfunction” or are “defective” in some way…

Do I detect a note of irony there?

When it’s legal for people to carry semi-automatic weapons it’s difficult for the police to prevent mass shootings. Even if the “major malfunction in some human beings” that leads to mass violence could be identified, what then? Constant surveillance to make sure individuals haven’t crossed over into murderous malfunctions would radically limit the right to privacy.

A greater emphasis on teaching critical thinking might be helpful in all kinds of ways . Racism in identity politics are riddled with your rational thinking.

Imagine a course entitled “what to do when you are overcome with murderous rage”. People need to learn self-soothing skills as well. But at the moment we have a president who is a demagogue and is using fear and rage to consolidate power. So support for rational problem solving is controversial.

Look, when we live in a nation where prostitution is banned, yet 25% of the population are high school dropouts, and over half of the country makes less than 35K a year, and has more felons and prisoners than any other country, and teaches Puritan values that sex is evil, there is bound to be resentment and violence in such a place. In fact the only reason there aren’t more mass shootings in the country, is because everyone is so afraid of prison because it has the worlds highest prison population and some of the worst treatment of prisoners, with standards of empathy only slightly above even third world countries.

I think Jesus said we are already all the love we could wish for.

What I don’t hope is that such god wants us to love in different ways than we love to love. Than what comes most natural to us. I don’t like gods or women who do that.

…more thought goes by…

Most religions teach inclusive love but it always says that their love is love, and the other persons love is actually evil hatred, or some such negative spell. How will you solve this? How will you solve that the books say to burn the sinners, and how will you solve people reading these books? Is god not powerful, meaning practical?

All in Bangladesh I hear it is much worse. In Kurdistan there isn’t even a high school program because guess what… Kurdistan doesn’t exist. Its not allowed. And still people go about their lives there like decent human beings.

Its something else in the US of A that triggers violence.
I think, and Im honest, that it is Tom & Jerry.

Some air plane company had decided to put that on before takeoff once.

Yes obviously schools in America are better than Africa or shithole countries like third world countries. And in many (and I daresay most) third world countries people don’t act like decent human beings.

And how many of these countries have you visited and met “most” of their people?

It doesn’t take many people to not act like decent human beings to bring the whole thing into disrepute - if only they’re able to seize their chance.
That’s not to defend their customs one bit.
In my opinion their customs are the flaw, in that they enable more havoc to be caused more easily than in first world countries.
But the vast majority of the people are not indecent any more than they are anywhere else in the world.

I don’t know if its the Nigerian scam artists, the african gangs who rape and murder children, or the genocides in Indonesia and Africa, or the scam artists in India, or the people who stone kids and their wives. But I don’t know what about them that makes you think they are all such great people.

And in America not everyone is a mass shooter. So I don’t see what your argument is. I didn’t say literally everyone in third worlds contries is an amoral savage. But I don’t get why you think they are so much better, morally speaking, than Americans.

I guess we’re both confused then:
you by me thinking third world scammers, rapists, murders are such great people and so much better, morally speaking, than Americans,
and me by where I said anything remotely like this.

At best, I’m calling people the same wherever they come from when I say “the vast majority of the people are not indecent any more than they are anywhere else in the world.”

I can only think that you felt like you needed to put me in a box because I wasn’t complying with exactly what you were saying… it’s SO important to read what people say carefully. Please don’t do that. That’s what causes this whole mess we have between “radical leftists” and “alt rightists” - it’s people doing that Cathy Newman thing: “so what you’re saying is ” taking the topic of what the other person is talking about and changing it to fit a narrative that vindicates the other person but really only creates a straw man. The mere mention of such things is enough to make the attacking side go “I knew they were bad” and the defending side go “that’s what the other side always does!” Both sides are just as bad, and they, like you, need to not do that.

Ok, so back to what I said, people are just as crappy wherever they come from, only in third world countries there seems to be less systems in place to stop them being as crappy as they can be. And it’s only a small proportion of the people. AND most importantly, we’re judging them from the point of view of our social mores and they’re doing the exact same thing back at us. Naturally I think ours are better, but I will guarantee that just as many of them think theirs are better than ours as we think ours are better than theirs.
So what I’m saying is actually more along the lines of me feeling like we’re better than people from the third world - the exact opposite of what you were trying to make out.

But that wasn’t even my main point, which was that most people - third world or first world - aren’t shitty. Most aren’t doing all these horrible things you listed and would never dream of it. You have to go there or at least meet these people to see this truth for yourself. You have to not believe what media tries to portray all these places like. They only report the worst stuff that goes on over there, and somehow when they cover anything similar happening over here it’s forgettable. And it’s only because you have this context of how things are over here and you don’t have the same experience of how things are over there to put them in context. I don’t even have to ask to know your boundaries don’t stretch sufficiently further than North America, it was a rhetorical question. Travel. Or at least meet more people from unfamiliar backgrounds. And DO NOT misrepresent me, ok?

Look. Im saying third world countries have lots of bad people. Not sure if in the majority.

Im saying Americans are oppressed and angry and want to do bad stuff and the only reason they dont is because fear of punishment. Not that Americans are necessarily bad people. Just angry and frustrated.

This whole conversation was about how people can be educated not to be violent. And Im saying thats missing the point altogether.

Sure, that’s fine.

So why is an American doing a bad thing excusable because they’re understandable angry and frustrated, and someone from the third world doing a bad thing just a reflection of how they are over there?
I’m just saying if you physically gained the experience and understood their context you’d realise they were no differently angry and frustrated, and the real bad ones are just as physically sick as the real bad ones from America. There’s probably at least a very similar proportion of them too.

I think you’re right that people can’t simply be educated to not be violent.
I think they can be enriched physiologically through at least nutrition across at least one generation such that they have the ability to become educated. This at least partly negates the need to be violent.
What would you say was the point of this conversation?

Its like when joker said better class of criminals. they are a lower class of criminals. less evolved. like common they stone rape victims. they are scam artists who sell kids into slavery. All americans do is rob banks and murder people.

I can’t currently remember, but I think it had a point at some point.

I think it was me who said that or was seeming to be saying it, not Silhouette.

I will try to explain.

First lets look at this example from real life. For inspiration. This dude starts out having a verbal point, about a rape victims right to abort. But then something else happens.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLtkwByIwPY[/youtube]

Now what do we think went wrong.
How can this well meaning dude be doing this out of compassion, out of co-existence?

It may have to do with him not being a third worldling.

There’s no reason to assume that he was well meaning. He may have approached the protesters with the intent of disrupting what they were doing. It’s not like we’re going to be able to figure out his motivation one way or another from the limited amount of information we have in that video. So I’m not really sure what you meant to prove by showing the video. There are probably people who are willing to resort to violence on both sides of just about any issue especially to get their faces on YouTube and maybe go viral. It is a symptom of our times, I’ll give you that. As such it is antithetical to the OP propositions.

Dear lord Felix, one misunderstanding at a time please.

I agree it’s very hard to prevent mass shootings when people have easy access to deadly weaponry…
Even if we agreed that “people” were the problem, is mass punishment in the form of revoked privileges the answer? I suppose that’s a question of finding the right balance between freedom and safety.
When we revoke freedoms for safety there’s a point at which we hit diminishing returns… so at what point is the price too high?
Very interesting questions, best discussed soberly and critically, no?

Racism in identity politics being “riddled with my rational thinking” is a statement you’re going to need to explain to me.
Frankly I don’t recognize much I’d call “thinking” going on with either side’s rhetoric regarding identity politics, much less the critical kind.

Emotionally unstable people do exist, but someone else’s RAGE is not very convincing, the picture they paint to justify that rage might be… and it could incite the same rage in you.
My contention is that if you’re armed with the faculty of reason and critical thought, you can see past the picture and maybe get a glimpse of the real world.

Not saying the real world can’t be rage inducing… but at least then you’ll be addressing real problems.

That was a typo. It should have said ," Racism and identity politics are riddled with irrational thinking."

In an article entitled " We Don’t Know How to Stop Mass Shootings" nationalreview.com/corner/w … shootings/ the author points out that California, where most recent mass murder took place, has more stringent gun control laws than most states. The implication is that stricter gun laws won’t stop what is now looking like an epidemic.

The CA shooter paused during the shooting spree to post online which suggests that fame was part of his motivation, a recurring factor in many mass murders cnbc.com/2018/11/10/gunman- … nline.html

The possibility that the contagion of mass shootings spread through broadcast media is considered here: theatlantic.com/health/arch … us/545078/