Typist wrote:I understand, but before I quit completely, I want to round out my thinking for you, because I'm fairly sure that you don't understand it.
I do understand it. That's the problem, and why you are so intent on explaining your position to me. You're hoping to erase my understanding so you don't have to look at it.
You are using an ideology for the very purposes that concern you. You are using ideology to create an "other" group that you then pretend to be superior to. This fantasy superiority position becomes part of your personal identity, and then it must be defended whatever the cost to reason, credibility etc.
Not only amateur psychology, but bad amateur psychology separated at the distance of the internet. I don't know my partner of decades nearly as well as you seem to think you know me.
You can see this in the endless passion you have for this topic (a clue that it's emotionally driven) and the utter sloppiness with which you create your "other" group. If you were against pedophile priests, or the Taliban, or something specific you'd have more of a case. But you're on a holy jihad against religion at large.
You see, one of the ways that you do not know me is that I
have written on pedophile priests, the Taliban, medical ethics (taken on the great Canadian ethicist Margaret Somerville), and about a thousand other topics. Just not here, because there has neither been the time nor the occasion. But since you personally have not found those writings, you assume (wrongly) that they don't exist.
On my own board (tiny, barely breathing), the people I interact with most regularly are in fact theists or deists, and our interactions are quite friendly, because we've already resolved the issues that you hold against me -- we are, in fact, in pursuit of common ground on which to converse, though that is difficult to find. Very, very different conversations than I'm having here.
What's sad and ironic is that you're in a minority that has been persecuted by this very process. Let's lump millions of people we've never met in to an "other" group and then use them as the whipping boy for all our personal frustrations. Sound familiar?
Yes, familiar, because it is so human. But in many places around the world, real humans are learning -- slowly it's true -- to overcome that urge to separate ourselves into "us" and "them." In some places, actually, we're getting pretty good at it. In others, not so much. It's a process that I sincerely hope continues, but I am cognizant of human nature, and aware that fear can break down such initiatives in slightly less than a heartbeat.
I told you earlier that religion scares me, and it does.
That's the difference between us. You are still stuck in the this ideology vs. that ideology contest, and think that if only we pick the right ideology all will be well.
I maintain that even if we all gave allegiance to aphilosophy concepts, it would be only a matter of time before that group began to break up in to factions that started demonizing each other.
Thought is inherently divisive. It doesn't matter what pile of thoughts it is.
Ideology is the
surface level of these issues. I would urge you to take your analysis below that surface level to the underlying drivers if you are serious about understanding what's going on here.
Sorry, but that's wishful nonsense. The Hindu murdered by a Muslim, in your scenario, created his own murderer by thinking of him as "other." You're wrong. I don't create the other, they are "other" already when they attack me.
Thought may well be divisive, but as long as there is more than one person involved, and fewer than the total give up thought altogether, the division exists and nothing can change that. And it will be much, much worse for the one who's given up thought and is therefore unprepared for whatever's coming next. No philosophy that utterly ignores reality and human nature is ever going to do real human society a lick of good.
Once you fuck off back to your squirrels your points won't raise their head again, as this is a philosophy forum not a forum for the bereft ex-theist.
