Philosophy Now Forum

seeds wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:03 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:14 am Which "brave young girl" are you talking about, I assume the black one?...There are neither heroes nor villains in that picture from what I see...

WOW! The members of this "bizzarro-world" forum never cease to amaze me.

Yep. There's a strange spirit of denial to it all. "Racism? No! Pointing out racism is racist of you." "Skin colour? You're the only one who cares about that, you racist." And, of course, in this scenario, "Bravery? But the white people in that photo are in themselves brave to express their racism!" Very bizarre.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 2:40 amPerhaps you're just not understanding the terms of philosophical engagement that I'm offering to you -- on a philosophy forum. Principles (as generalisations) can have exceptions. You need not, then, in the interests of opposing my position, simply reject the principles I've affirmed. You can, instead, accept them as generalisations -- which, of course, you ought to, because they are perfectly reasonable -- but then go on to affirm principled exceptions to them and explain why those exceptional principles apply -- as in the case of land theft.

You call this a "set-up", but it is really an opportunity to you to present and defend your own principles. If you instead want to rabbit on about derivations from Christian ethics, religious enthusiasm, and other issues irrelevant to the principles in question, then your choice is to be irrelevant.

First, let's deal with the idiom 'to rabbit on' (I never encountered it till now). Christianity, metaphysics, inebriated late-night meltdowns, morning apologies, politics, historical revisionism, psychedelic phantasy, breakdown of idiomatic expressions: here we do it all!

rabbit on
To talk continually for an excessive or irritating length of time. Originally derived from the Cockney rhyming slang term "rabbit and pork," meaning "talk." Primarily heard in UK.

"Sorry for rabbiting on about my problems. I haven't even asked how you are doing!"
"He just rabbited on about his work while I pretended to listen."

Oh that hurts, that really hurts! Still:

I can't go on / I'll go on (Samuel Beckett)

No, it is not that I do not understand the principle that you deal with, it is that I see that you operate the principle in a mathematical way. Yes, it is abstractly true and on the mental and abstract plane you certainly win your argument. In this sense your ethics, and the principles upon which they are constructed, are similar to Christian idealisms: impositions onto and into the 'real world'. But that 'real world' (the world of Nature) does not give a fig about your abstract principle. In nature an invading species simply acts, without plan, without thought, without concerns, without inhibiting moral regret. I am not advocating, I am explaining.

So in my way of *seeing things* -- seeing things through a lens of realism -- I am less inclined to make the sorts of moral judgments that you are so inclined to make. As you know I am subsumed by a problem that I do not know how to solve: it is the Thrasymachus problem about power.

From The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

In ethics, Thrasymachus’ ideas have often been seen as the first fundamental critique of moral values. Thrasymachus’ insistence that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger seems to support the view that moral values are socially constructed and are nothing but the reflection of the interests of particular political communities. Thrasymachus can thus be read as a foreshadowing of Nietzsche, who argues as well that moral values need to be understood as socially constructed entities. In political theory, Thrasymachus has often been seen as a spokesperson for a cynical realism that contends that might makes right.

From Wondrium Daily:

Thrasymachus debates Socrates just to get a submission from him, and not to get cognitive agreement. In fact, Thrasymachus’s name in Greek actually means ‘fierce or terrible fighter’. Machus is a warrior, and he’s presented in this first book as roaring, sweating, shaking, loud, and blustery. He blushes at times, he’s not fully in control of his body or his emotions, which, in fact, the emotions are really just an aspect of his body; his body is in control of him, but his body isn’t coherent, it’s a series of passions and desires.

What Thrasymachus wants most of all is just to get his own way, to intimidate other people. And, when he is unable to do so in a conversation, especially with Socrates, he withdraws into a kind of surly silence of his own for most of the rest of the dialogue.

So, if you follow my reasoning, Thrasymachus is a symbol of 'the way things really are'.

The ethics that you are attracted to as an Idealist can be thought of as 'priestly values'. The moral man who seeks to impose a contrary will on the face of nature. But there is always *the warrior* who does not live in and does not operate out of that abstract world of value-impositions.

Those who *build worlds*, those who build nations & civilizations, conduct their construction in the real world, not the world of abstractions. I regret to inform you that this is the way things are.

So yes, I will "go on to affirm principled exceptions to them and explain why those exceptional principles apply" and I do so by referencing what was built in South Africa by Europeans and European culture. Now, what you do can now be examined through a different lens. What you do is to condemn and invalidate. Effectively of course these are *your people*. You cannot bear what they did. So you condemn them and, I say, simultaneously turn against yourself. It's profoundly *psychological* as I have pointed out. You are 'youth' in a crisis of guilt and self-blame turning against you immoral fathers. Not only did they *built a world* which involved and required warrior conquest, they also gave you your very body. So, logically, turning against *them* and what they did, you have no choice but to turn against your very existence. You do not have a right to live Harry. You have negated yourself by your own mathematical logics.

So seen in one way and from a certain angle there are multitudes like you who *swarm* within the national and cultural creations in our present. Riddled with guilt, disempowered on the existential plane, they channel their will into self-hatred and self-negation. Here I reference the *anti-white movement*. To right the wrongs they have to lay themselves down and, like you, send out a flyer with survey-questions: "Will you allow me to live or will you condemn me morally to death?" You have no ways or means to defend yourself, your country, your accomplishment, the structure of your culture, nor in this specific sense your *race*. And *race* really means culture, cultural trajectory, cultural accomplishment, wealth and also power. You have no right to any of this Harry. None. Take your absurd, self-defeating *principled philosophy* to its furthest logical point then.

But you don't. And you can't.

So then what you do do is to channel your determination to undermine yourself into the political sphere. People like you, who cannot appreciate and cannot defend their accomplishments and traditions, work insidiously to undermine them. You devalue your own traditions and have a very difficult time defending, say, the Founders of your country, those who acted as *warriors* on the ground in real time. You cannot defend *your people* at an ethnic level, of course -- remember you really have no right to exist and your people are vile racists (among a plethora of evils) -- so you advocate for the opening of the immigration flood-gates. Here, Seed's psychedelic ethical phantasies kick-in. Humanity is one giant blob of protoplasm. Meld it all together, erase borders, intermarry, produce humanity's Brazil-like tomorrow.

[I could go on in this stream-of-consciousness where I bring out all the complaints & critiques of the Dissident Right but I'll avoid rabbiting on for the sake of our hyper-sensitive readership . . .]

My own view is that you embody a strange aspect of nihilism where you have lost your capacity to define tangible values, since they involve you in existential conflicts that you cannot surmount because of the force of the ethical imperatives you hold to, and so your *values* result in allowing fracturation to break-apart your culture, your civilization, your accomplishments, your wealth and of course your power. It starts on an inner plane though.

And it is on the inner plane that everything about it must be turned against. So in my way of seeing things *we* must turn against that childish 'social justice warrior' who has allowed himself to become the *acid* I refer to. It is like the empowered citizen, who should have a manly attitude of defense of what is his and what has made him him, becomes a termite within his own culture and civilization.

So then, I can quote from Wilmot Robertson's The Dispossessed Majority and, I submit, make some sense. That is, I can explain how it is that some people have decided, for coherent reasons, to resist the *idea-structure* that I refer to critically. I do not have to agree with it but at least I can understand where he, and they, are coming from:

Is it not incredible that the largest American population group, the group with the deepest roots, the most orderly and most technically proficient group, the nuclear population group of American culture and of the American gene pool, should have lost its preeminence to weaker, less established, less numerous, culturally heterogeneous, and often mutually hostile minorities?

With all due allowance for minority dynamism ... this miraculous shift of power could never have taken place without a Majority "split in the ranks" - without the active assistance and participation of Majority members themselves. It has already been pointed out that race consciousness is one of mankind's greatest binding forces. From this it follows that when the racial gravitational pull slackens people tend to spin off from the group nucleus. Some drift aimlessly through life as human isolates. Others look for a substitute nucleus in an intensified religious or political life, or in an expanded class consciousness. Still others, out of idealism, romanticism, inertia, or perversity, attach themselves to another race in an attempt to find the solidarity they miss in their own.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:35 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:29 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 6:57 pm

I think China's emergence as a global superpower raises some serious questions about development in less-developed parts of the world. I've heard it said that they now have the world's single largest military and they are developing their own desires and wishes that diverge from those of the more developed nations. In essence, they are demonstrating the reasons why developed nations are reluctant to share technology (as you call it "education and training") with smaller nations in the first place. Are we building them up only for them to potentially start telling us what to do and how to do it? That's one of the elephants in the room here.

We citizens of the world need to risk that as the alternative is worse. I don't consider "us" to be the US super power or NATO.

So who is "us"? Do you live in one of the developed countries or do you live in an underdeveloped country? As far as risk, it seems to me that we are flirting with greater potential for nuclear annihilation through the proliferation of technology. What is the "alternative" you are speaking of which is "worse"?

I'm an expatriate Scottish woman who lives in England . It's a developed country but like the whole world it faces extinction fairly soon give or take some few decades.
Either developed/rich nations isolate themselves from poor nations who already are starving, or richer nations extend education and technology to poor and undeveloped nations so there is a commonwealth of the world.

By technology I don't mean weapons. I mean wells, factories, transport and energy infrastructures. Education, same as in economically developed countries,is the key to self sustainability in the future. As I said, it's stupid to leave education facilities as the province of Xian and Muslim missionaries, and uncertain donations from the middle classes of the developed world.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:43 am

seeds wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:03 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:14 am Which "brave young girl" are you talking about, I assume the black one?...There are neither heroes nor villains in that picture from what I see...

WOW! The members of this "bizzarro-world" forum never cease to amaze me.

Yep. There's a strange spirit of denial to it all. "Racism? No! Pointing out racism is racist of you." "Skin colour? You're the only one who cares about that, you racist." And, of course, in this scenario, "Bravery? But the white people in that photo are in themselves brave to express their racism!" Very bizarre.

Yes. Find the monster to destroy. The two of you and that short white girl in the picture with her mouth open probably have a lot in common whether you realize it or not.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:52 am One other thing:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 3:38 pm Finally, I find that conversing with you is similar in some ways to conversing with Immanuel Can. You are totally fixed in your idea structures. They are reduced, binary and absolute.

You might not be surprised that I see it as quite the opposite. As with Immanuel Can, I have questioned you straightforwardly and directly on a straightforward and direct proposition. Like him, you duck, dodge, weave around, and avoid answering the question.

In his case, the question was whether or not it is loving and just to commit a person to unimaginable, eternal torment for finite crimes.

In your case, the question is whether stealing is (tautologically, and by definition) wrong, and whether, when it does occur, the stolen property should be returned to its rightful owner(s).

In this scenario, much like Immanuel Can, you seem to be unable to respond straightforwardly and directly to a straightforward and direct question.

Where was your assessment at the time that my question to Immanuel Can was "reduced, binary and absolute"? Nowhere to be found. But, somehow, in a very, very similar situation, you assess my question to you in that way. To me, that seems very self-serving.

When I speak about Immanuel Can as someone fixed into idea-structures, I am not just talking about the issue of a god that would condemn a person to hell for all eternity. I am speaking of a 'lens' which is placed in front of the perceiving mechanism and that this 'lens' determines, really through a choice or set of choices, how 'life' will be perceived. Remember that one of chief concerns is metaphysics.

You say that I "duck, dodge, weave around, and avoid answering the question" but this is not really true. The thing is that I do not have a solidified and absolute position especially when it has to do with the really contentious issues. Unfortunately, seeing things from many angles, I find it hard to take a position -- and here I mean in respect to those things you hope that I will *answer*. For example that of race. Or that pertaining to what you've termed 'white nationalism'. Or cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Or the question about 'replacement' and if I am against it or for it.

In your case, the question is whether stealing is (tautologically, and by definition) wrong, and whether, when it does occur, the stolen property should be returned to its rightful owner(s).

Wrong according to what standard, Harry? You are going to have to define an *authority* that has established the rule. You yourself do not believe in nor can you resort to that *authority* since, as it happens, your real philosophy is Manichean.

I have no choice, in fact, but to examine and consider other models. I'll mention one that has influenced me. In Vedic philosophy there is awareness of 'the rule of the fishes'. That means more or less that they recognize a 'dog-eat-dog' world. The rule of the fishes is the *natural order* of things. And they are aware, and it is written about in political shastras (scripture) that this is the world in which man lives. It is an unfortunate *world* and it is also seen as a *material entanglement*. In this way of seeing and explaining things they are aware that the kingly class, and the warrior class, have the unfortunate task of both creating and expanding (defining, defending) the 'borders' and 'frontiers' of the Kingdom, and that this is a brutal task. It involves, literally, expanding when needed; taking over territory; fighting; and also killing. According to this way of seeing they are aware that this entails accruing 'karma' and 'karmic debt'.

[There is no society that has ever existed or will ever exist which does not arise in these exact circumstances. Mention any one of them if you can that is not *implicated*. You will not be able to. Except, perhaps, by referring to an isolated stone-age people (Australian Aboriginals) who, luckily, lived for tens of thousands of years without suffering an invasion of some other people. These are your only 'blameless' people I gather and truly they are god's innocents. And their land was entirely taken over. And there you are! Your *karma* is heavy indeed. Your ancestors left Scotland and took part in the invasion of South Africa. Then, your family absconded with their wealth, wealth that by your definitions was ill-got, and you fled to a safer ground -- with the gelt of course, mustn't forget the gelt, so useful it is.]

Back to my anecdote: The purpose of conquering the 'outer circle' is to establish an 'inner circle'. The order of civil culture. The argicultural areas and those who work them. The roads and the systems that enable commerce. The physical structures. And then, going further in, the community structures; the education centers, the religious centers and the temples. And of course the core social structure: the family.

So within the circle that is created by recognized violence, and the violence that is simply part-and-parcel of any type of building (clearing nature to plant, clearing ground to build a house or a city) that karma is accrued. But there is a *higher purpose* served. The inside is not completely free of 'complicity' however. They exist, they thrive, because the outer circle was conquered and defended. So they also require absolution.

So the kingly class, and the warrior class, accrue tremendous karmic burden and -- take this however you want to -- the priest-class employs prayer and also mantra to cleanse those who accrue that karma of those burdens. Similar as I say to the Christian idea of absolution. A recognition of an evil act, but also the recognition and understanding that it had to be done, and someone had to do it. Someone must build, someone must destroy other life (natural life) in order to plant. Life and what life requires does not come without a cost.

So as it happens this is more or less the model I work with.

On the inner plane, yes, theft is castigated and defined as *immoral*. I grant you that. It has to be that way. But as you see from the picture I have drawn the 'outer circle' operates according to a different ethics. Not by my invention however. It simply seems to be the way things are.

Where was your assessment at the time that my question to Immanuel Can was "reduced, binary and absolute"? Nowhere to be found. But, somehow, in a very, very similar situation, you assess my question to you in that way. To me, that seems very self-serving.

You develop strong arguments because you understand the rules of mathematical logic. You employed that mathematical logic to, at least, challenge strongly Immanuel's and Christianity's assertions.

You did not really deal, however, with the issue of 'accrued karma' and the fundamental issue of 'complicity'. But that does involve all manner of otherworldly speculation. And since Dubious will not allow it, it never was worked through.

Finally, I am nothing if not self-serving.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:45 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:24 pm Okay, but IC is himself another moral objectivist. His "transcending font" being the Christian God. So basically in exchanges between the two of you, you both share in the belief that objective morality can be defended...just given different "comforting and consoling" frames of mind anchored to different foundations? For some God. For others ideology, deontology, or nature.

Whereas, in a No God world, I argue that individual moral convictions are rooted existentially -- subjectively -- in dasein. Out in a particular world historically, culturally, socially, political and economically. Understood individually given how each of us accumulates a uniquely personal set of experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge. In a world that is ever evolving in a swirl of contingency, chance and change.

I don't consider the existence of God to be relevant in this area except to the extent that God conceivably has designed reality in such a way that certain behaviours lead to well-being more than others, which is a moral issue.

The existence of God, in my view, is the key to it all in regard to human morality. If an omniscient/omnipotent Christian God does exist than we have Kant's "transcending font". If He does not...why our moral convictions and not theirs? Either "certain behaviors" are judged by God and then linked to immortality and salvation or they are judged by mere mortals from, say, one of these many, many, many One True Paths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies

Who gets to determine the existential parameters of "well-being" in a No God world? The moral objectivists among us? The "well-being" of the unborn fetus or the "well-being" the pregnant woman desperate not to be?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:24 pm

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:41 amOh. Well, then, I still don't particularly understand what you mean by "dasein". If you could provide a succinct definitional statement such as mine which you've quoted above, that might help me to better get it.

Once again:

I encompassed what I mean by dasein in the OPs of these two threads in particular:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

You will either be willing to read them, to ponder them...and then come back here and given a particular set of circumstances explore our respective moral philosophies or you won't.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:45 amYeah, I was willing, and I'd already done that. That's how I came up with my proposed succinct definitional statement of "dasein-according-to-iambiguous": by reading the OPs of the threads to which you'd directed me, contemplating them, and then trying to summarise them.

It seems that you think that my summary fails. OK. Redirecting me to content that I've already considered isn't of much use though.

Come on, my point is that in regard to a particular set of circumstances pertaining to an issue widely viewed as revolving around conflicting moral convictions [like abortion], we compare and contrast our respective moral philosophies. Bring your own "succinct definitional statement" to bear on what William Barrett encompassed as "rival goods" here:

"For the choice in...human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the the ultimate outcome and even---or most of all---our own motives are unclear to us."

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:45 amSurely, where I have failed, you can succeed. That's why I asked you to provide me with your own succinct definitional statement of dasein given that you're best placed to do so.

Note to others:

Over and again, I come upon what I construe to be those "serious philosophers" ever and always obsessed with definitions. I must define dasein for them.

It's like their own frame of mind revolves around this: "sure, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"

In the OPs above, I go into considerable detail regarding what the word "dasein" has come to mean to me. Existentially. Given both my own personal experiences and in regard to those philosophers I have read who focused in on human morality.



Note to Magnus Anderson:

He's one of yours, isn't he? So, sure, go up into the technical clouds of definitional logic and discuss human morality in your intellectual contraptions.

Then if any consensus is reached bring that to bear on the abortion wars...or the gun control conflict or the pros and cons of capital punishment, or capitalism vs. socialism, or idealism vs. pragmatism.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 7:32 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:51 pm And this pushes me back into the ideas I have entertained about more strict hierarchies as being necessary. And I do mean exactly what you think I am merely alluding to.

What I think you're alluding to is that, in your view, Africans are a primitive people, and that they are thus on a lower rung of the "strict hierarchy", and, thus, that Africans need or at least ought to be governed (to use the sort of euphemistic term I imagine you preferring) by Europeans.

How close am I to understanding your allusion?

You rather obviously imagine that I am referring to the *old anthropology* that was common to Europeans in the Age of Exploration and beyond, right? That European man, enlightened by the light of Christ, interpreted the world they discovered, so strange, so earthy, as being demoniac and needing to be converted to the *way of salvation*. Seen through that lens, obviously Africans and African cultures could only be interpreted in that way.

I would point out to you that, one way or the other, the essential idea is still moving forward. That is, to 'integrate' those of more *primitive* background into the machinations of civilized society. Education, economic enfranchisement, acceptance of 'civilized attitudes'.

But one must also note that, to all appearances, some people do not want to accept that yoke. So they rebel against it.

How do you interpret Easy-E?

Or Jay-Z?

I would point out, with a reference to CG Jung, that he saw Africans as 'primitives'. But at the same time he was aware that, in comparison to Jews who had been *civilized* for a number of thousands of years, that he, a Germanic man, and a member of a racial group that had relatively recently been tamed and subject to civilized influences, that he was susceptible to a raw primitivity. He wrote extensively and quite intelligently and insightfully about this in his essays on Wotan and the German tragedy.

So is there a fair and reasonable way to talk about these things and all things related to them? Who can have that conversation? Who is capable or allowed to *think freely* in these areas?

You?

What I notice in your quoted paragraph is that you are tempting me, trying to provoke me to make the sort of statement you in fact want to hear. You know that it is, in the present dispensation, streng verboten to think or talk in any but those known *politically correct* ways about the qualities of different races or to make any critical comment that will be interpreted as 'racist'.

But what is really important here is to state that you, Harry, you know the real truth. You are situated firmly in *correct view* and this view of yours is also (obviously) the moral view to have. So you can accurately and justly sniff out even the slightest inflection of wrongthink and, when you do locate it, come down on it like a load of moralizing bricks.

This of course fits into the pattern of the sort of individual I have been outlining.

Where will you take the conversation?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:35 pm Yes, it is abstractly true and on the mental and abstract plane you certainly win your argument.

And there your post could and should have ended. But no. Because we have ourselves here a wascally wabbit, there is more. Much more!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:35 pm In this sense your ethics, and the principles upon which they are constructed, are similar to Christian idealisms: impositions onto and into the 'real world'.

I think I understand what you mean by "imposition" here, but it seems to me to be a misleading notion in this context. Why? Because any choice that we make - whether ethical or unethical - in a sense "imposes" upon the (rest of the) world. By our will - the exercising of which we cannot avoid - we unavoidably change the world in one way or another, and thus "impose" upon it. Choices guided by ethics are no more "imposing" than unethical ones; in fact, they are less imposing, because they seek to minimise harm - the worst type of imposition.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:35 pm But that 'real world' (the world of Nature) does not give a fig about your abstract principle. In nature an invading species simply acts, without plan, without thought, without concerns, without inhibiting moral regret. I am not advocating, I am explaining.

You seem to be alluding to a very strange sort of logic here: that other species sometimes behave in nature in certain ways, therefore we as human groups should behave (or at least are justified in behaving) in the same way as those species towards other human groups.

I can go as far as endorsing two contentions here, to which I understand you also to be alluding:

The first is that if we were to design a world which was to be as naturally good as possible - in a moral sense - it would probably look quite different to this one.

The second is that given that this world appears to be designed, we can infer from it something about how the designer(s) want it to "work" (whatever their motivations otherwise are).

I don't otherwise follow your logic.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:35 pm So in my way of *seeing things* -- seeing things through a lens of realism -- I am less inclined to make the sorts of moral judgments that you are so inclined to make. As you know I am subsumed by a problem that I do not know how to solve: it is the Thrasymachus problem about power.

From The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

In ethics, Thrasymachus’ ideas have often been seen as the first fundamental critique of moral values. Thrasymachus’ insistence that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger seems to support the view that moral values are socially constructed and are nothing but the reflection of the interests of particular political communities. Thrasymachus can thus be read as a foreshadowing of Nietzsche, who argues as well that moral values need to be understood as socially constructed entities. In political theory, Thrasymachus has often been seen as a spokesperson for a cynical realism that contends that might makes right.

From Wondrium Daily:

Thrasymachus debates Socrates just to get a submission from him, and not to get cognitive agreement. In fact, Thrasymachus’s name in Greek actually means ‘fierce or terrible fighter’. Machus is a warrior, and he’s presented in this first book as roaring, sweating, shaking, loud, and blustery. He blushes at times, he’s not fully in control of his body or his emotions, which, in fact, the emotions are really just an aspect of his body; his body is in control of him, but his body isn’t coherent, it’s a series of passions and desires.

What Thrasymachus wants most of all is just to get his own way, to intimidate other people. And, when he is unable to do so in a conversation, especially with Socrates, he withdraws into a kind of surly silence of his own for most of the rest of the dialogue.

So, if you follow my reasoning, Thrasymachus is a symbol of 'the way things really are'.

Here's how I see it: to a meaningful extent, within the realm under discussion (human society and civilisation), we get to decide "the way things really are". We are under no compulsion nor obligation to simply mimic the natural world, nor simply to do what power allows. In fact, if we are civilised, we will decidedly not follow the power principle of "might makes right", because that's one of the least civilised principles; it's the principle of the brutish dictator.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:35 pm So yes, I will "go on to affirm principled exceptions to them and explain why those exceptional principles apply" and I do so by referencing what was built in South Africa by Europeans and European culture.

I'm not trying to be snarky here, but a vague reference to a situation is not a principle. I could kind of guess at the excepting principle(s) to which you're alluding here, but I don't want to put words into your mouth.

The rest of your post, in which you make such odd claims as that I "turn against [my]self" to the point that I "do not have a right to live" misrepresents my position too much to be worth a response other than this:

Recognising that my ancestors have committed wrongs as well as done good no more commits me to suicide nor entails any self-denial than recognising the same of myself, as we all do or at least should.

Moving on to your next post:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:38 pm

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:52 am In your case, the question is whether stealing is (tautologically, and by definition) wrong, and whether, when it does occur, the stolen property should be returned to its rightful owner(s).

Wrong according to what standard, Harry?

Apparently, according to yours, given that in your prior post as quoted above you write that "it is abstractly true and on the mental and abstract plane you certainly win your argument."

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:38 pm You are going to have to define an *authority* that has established the rule.

The principle needs no authority other than its being implicit in the nature of human experience and reality. If you do need an authority though, then I can point you to the legal and judicial systems of our Western civilisation of which you are such an admirer: it is a core principle of that civilisation, to the point that we lock up in prison people who breach it.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:38 pm So the kingly class, and the warrior class, accrue tremendous karmic burden and -- take this however you want to -- the priest-class employs prayer and also mantra to cleanse those who accrue that karma of those burdens. Similar as I say to the Christian idea of absolution. A recognition of an evil act, but also the recognition and understanding that it had to be done, and someone had to do it. Someone must build, someone must destroy other life (natural life) in order to plant. Life and what life requires does not come without a cost.

So as it happens this is more or less the model I work with.

Fine as far as it goes, but it needn't go so far as human communities aggressing against other human communities.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:38 pm On the inner plane, yes, theft is castigated and defined as *immoral*. I grant you that. It has to be that way. But as you see from the picture I have drawn the 'outer circle' operates according to a different ethics. Not by my invention however. It simply seems to be the way things are.

Again: where is the need for this (human groups aggressing against other human groups in the 'outer circle')? If it is necessary, then it can be justified ethically. I just don't see that it is necessary. You haven't made any case for it.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:38 pm Finally, I am nothing if not self-serving.

That probably says it all...

Not that I believe it's true. You have been kind and generous to me personally, so I know that you're a basically decent person, even though you entertain ideas that are much less decent.

Now, we reach your third post:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 7:32 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:51 pm And this pushes me back into the ideas I have entertained about more strict hierarchies as being necessary. And I do mean exactly what you think I am merely alluding to.

What I think you're alluding to is that, in your view, Africans are a primitive people, and that they are thus on a lower rung of the "strict hierarchy", and, thus, that Africans need or at least ought to be governed (to use the sort of euphemistic term I imagine you preferring) by Europeans.

How close am I to understanding your allusion?

You rather obviously imagine that I am referring to the *old anthropology* that was common to Europeans in the Age of Exploration and beyond, right?

I have no idea which, if any, anthropological views inform you (other than those of Jung, which I was already aware informed you), except that you look down on Africans and see them in diminished terms.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am That is, to 'integrate' those of more *primitive* background into the machinations of civilized society. Education, economic enfranchisement, acceptance of 'civilized attitudes'.

In describing peoples with a different culture to your own as "primitive" and, implicitly, "uncivilised", you reveal your own personal rot.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am How do you interpret Easy-E?

Based on that song alone: as a man who was born into an oppressive system, who created music that I find ugly and disturbing.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am Or Jay-Z?

Based on that song and one I subsequently watched and listened to: as a man who was born into an oppressive system, who created music that I find authentic, insightful, and thoughtful.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am I would point out, with a reference to CG Jung, that he saw Africans as 'primitives'.

Yep. We went over this privately some years back. Jung has plausibly been outed as a racist himself, so appealing to him in your defence is not exactly helpful. See the following two resources:

Jung: A Racist by Farhad Dalal in the British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1988.

The thirty-years later response, Open Letter from a Group of Jungians on the Question of Jung’s Writings On and Theories About “Africans”, which begins:

Dear Editor,

Thirty years ago, the British Journal of Psychotherapy published a paper by Dr. Farhad Dalal entitled ‘Jung: A racist’ (Dalal 1988). Regrettably, no adequate acknowledgement or apology for what Jung wrote, and Dalal critiqued, has been forthcoming from the field of analytical psychology and Jungian analysis. (To contextualize what follows, the Abstract to Dalal’s paper has been placed in an Appendix to this letter.)

We write now as a group of individuals—Jungian analysts, clinicians, and academics utilizing concepts from analytical psychology—to end the silence. We felt further encouraged to write to the BJP in particular because of the Journal’s strapline making clear its interest in ‘Jungian practice today’.

Via detailed scholarship, Dalal sets out what Jung wrote about persons of African and South Asian Indian heritage, as well as other populations of colour, and Indigenous peoples. Before and since the paper, Jung’s views have caused considerable disquiet and often anger within the communities concerned. There has also been disquiet and anger about Jung’s views in clinical, academic and cultural circles generally. Analytical psychologists and other Jungians have known about the implications of Jung’s ideas for decades; there are signatories to this Letter who have campaigned for recognition of the problems. But there has been a failure to address them responsibly, seriously and in public.

We share the concern that Jung’s colonial and racist ideas—sometimes explicit and sometimes implied—have led to inner harm (for example, internalized inferiority and self-abnegation) and outer harm (such as interpersonal and social consequences) for the groups, communities and individuals mentioned in the previous paragraph. Moreover, in the opinion of the signatories to this letter, these ideas have also led to aspects of de facto institutional and structural racism being present in Jungian organizations.

Nevermind the supposed (fantastical) self-abnegation that you impute to me given my own views: what do you think of the self-abnegation experienced by some of those subjected to Jung's views?

Moving on:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am What I notice in your quoted paragraph is that you are tempting me, trying to provoke me to make the sort of statement you in fact want to hear.

I'm just looking for the brave honesty of which I know you're capable, my friend. You're anonymous on this forum. There's no reason to hide your true thoughts, diabolical and wabbity as they might be. Nibble on your carrot and then make your statement.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am But what is really important here is to state that you, Harry, you know the real truth.

Ah, such hypocrisy - the pretence that it is all one-sided; that only I have strong convictions for which I am advocating. You, too, my friend, are advocating for your own convictions at least as strongly as I am. You might be slightly less certain of what they actually are than I am of mine, but let's not pretend that you're not offering your own version of truth.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am Where will you take the conversation?

Exactly where I have taken it. How about you?

-

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 3:46 pm Find the monster to destroy.

I don't see how denial of monstrosity makes better sense.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:10 pm The existence of God, in my view, is the key to it all in regard to human morality.

Though I disagree, I have no interest in arguing on this forum over moral grounding any more than I already have.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:10 pm If an omniscient/omnipotent Christian God does exist than we have Kant's "transcending font".

I'm not sure what you're referring to by 'Kant's "transcending font"'. Can you help to inform me here? I haven't read Kant in the original, although I understand him to be seminal in Western philosophy.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:10 pm Come on, my point is that in regard to a particular set of circumstances pertaining to an issue widely viewed as revolving around conflicting moral convictions [like abortion], we compare and contrast our respective moral philosophies.

Oh. I guess I could try to translate that into a definition of "dasein", but you failed my last - good-faith - attempt based on posts to which you'd linked me, and it probably wouldn't be fruitful to try again. I'm still not quite sure what you mean by the word, and you seem unwilling to explain yourself. OK. In that case, I'll simply let the matter drop.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:43 am

seeds wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:03 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:14 am Which "brave young girl" are you talking about, I assume the black one?...There are neither heroes nor villains in that picture from what I see...

WOW! The members of this "bizzarro-world" forum never cease to amaze me.

Yep. There's a strange spirit of denial to it all. "Racism? No! Pointing out racism is racist of you." "Skin colour? You're the only one who cares about that, you racist." And, of course, in this scenario, "Bravery? But the white people in that photo are in themselves brave to express their racism!" Very bizarre.

See Gary?

Look at what happens when a racist has a mental breakdown (when they real eyes it is they that are the racists - ya know...the KUNTS continuously pointing out people's skin colour!!! )

attofishpi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:39 am Look at what happens when a racist has a mental breakdown (when they real eyes it is they that are the racists - ya know...the KUNTS continuously pointing out people's skin colour!!!

That's a great example of exactly the dynamic that I pointed out:

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:43 am "Racism? No! Pointing out racism is racist of you." "Skin colour? You're the only one who cares about that, you racist."

You didn't even try to refute my point - you simply affirmed it in that which amounts to an own goal.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:44 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:39 am Look at what happens when a racist has a mental breakdown (when they real eyes it is they that are the racists - ya know...the KUNTS continuously pointing out people's skin colour!!!

That's a great example of exactly the dynamic that I pointed out:

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:43 am "Racism? No! Pointing out racism is racist of you." "Skin colour? You're the only one who cares about that, you racist."

You didn't even try to refute my point - you simply affirmed it in that which amounts to an own goal.

What is your "goal" Harry?

Is it that 'brown' people are bad and 'white' people are good, or is it that 'white' people are good and 'brown' people are bad, or is it that 'white' people are bad and 'brown' people are good, or is it that 'brown' people are good and 'white' people are bad??

What is your racism regarding the colour of people's skin attempting to address precisely?

attofishpi wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:51 am What is your "goal" Harry?

For restorative justice to be applied to the injustices committed by groups of human beings against other groups of human beings.