I dunno. His whole outlook seems pretty Randian to me.
Did you read what I said? Community Colleges are more or less free in CA for those who are poor. Thus, no money needs to “drip off trees”.
And, although *you * may despise a Manager job at MacDonalds, it’s a fair job, gotten by hard work- and if you have it, you’re not poor. Hard work for just OK wages, maybe. But not poor. It’s certainly an “opportunity”, whether you think so or no. Parlay that into a MacDonalds Franchise (and many have) and you’re not doing bad at all.
Now, with a few minor modifications, I can almost agree with buttonjockey308. Just change “still choose to live” to “have uncaring governments that choose to keep their people living like it’s the 7th goddamn century” (but I’d have to see a cite that the 7th goddamn century in sub-Saharan Africa was really as fucked up as the region is now). But if buttonjockey308 is blaming the kids for getting their own arms cut off or the refugees for starving to death (“They chose to allow it!”), then I pit him to the pittest pits in pitsville!
The backward-ass warlord dictator shitheads that are killing their own people in order to maintain their fucked-up regimes… Crap, where was I going with that? OH, RIGHT! “Fucktards”! That’s it.
OK…
It seems that the “Social Darwinist” label applied by some of my fellow dopers is meant as an insult…I’m not insulted.
Which is wrong how exactly? If Darwin was right about evolution, certianly the basis for the theory can be extrapolated in an abstract fashion to include human societies, no?
OK, I’m willing to learn, and this goes for any one else who can give me what Contrapuntal believes I lack. I am not without the ability to learn, but I’ve had my struggles, lived in an unheated room of an empty house with no plumbing, and hijacked electricity while I worked my ass off to put food on the plate for me and my dog, and money in the bank so I could get out of the mess I was in, all before the age of 19. I’ve bootstrapped it like nobody’s business. Have I had it as hard as the person in Contrapuntal’s example? Does fuck go with no?
I’m lucky.
I live in a country where opportunities abound, and I thank the invisible sky pixie for whatever of those were laid at my hand for the taking.
I’m not saying evolving an entire society is fucking SIMPLE, I’m saying it’s up to the people to put a government in place to faciltiate their needs and demands. No matter what it takes to do it.
And I DO have the right to spew forth whatever I bloody well want. It’s one of those things that the people who came before me by the hundreds of thousands, fought and died to insure.
Is the government not the people?
Number one, I’m not faulting the average person as an individual, at least not directly. What I am saying is that if members of a society as a whole don’t fight with all your being for the freedom you yearn for, both personal and economic, then your yearning is in vein, and it is that much time wasted.
If your neighbor takes up an army against you, you do the same, to defend youself from him, and by so doing fight for your own rights, endowed as they were
by the aforementioned sky pixie.
EVERY HUMAN has the right to be free from the kind of control that you’re talking about sarahfeena but there is a price to be paid to gain that right. Most often, that price is blood, and in my opinion, better it be spilt in the furtherance of freedom, than standing by watching while the most vile amongst you ruins your life for you.
And no, ** bobtheoptimist ** I’m not trying or intending to blame kids for having their arms cut off by vicious warlords, or, to a lesser extent, the starving refugees, my only point is that as a society, if you want progress, it takes a motherfuckload of hard work, blood, sweat, muscle, hope, and time.
Cite it. Please. Minus of course the “yadda yadda yadda” part. I will put the better part of a dollar on the fact that you remember incorrectly or mistook the intent of my post.
While we’re at it, I am not a bastard, my father is very much alive thank you. I have sympathy, but i suppose little empathy. I prefer action over simply ''feeling someone else’s pain" I would rather fix it than ‘feel’ about it.
It also takes money, peace, safety, and food, not all of which are available in abundance in Africa, thanks to many of the war-lords that are in power mostly as a result of European colonial abandonment and dictator sponsored resource subjugation for the last few hundred years. You can rail on about blood, sweat, and tears all you like, but you need more ingredients in your stew than just those to have a starting point to being able to successfully help ones self.
Three words. “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” You may like it, buttonjockey. Is it an excuse for the inequities of the world? Noooooo, but it may explain some things. You said you are willing to learn, this is an easy first step.
Not often. In a substantial part of the world, including major sections of the place you are denigrating, the government is whatever warlord or dictator was able to promise outside interests that he would be able to deliver raw materials they sought if they would only provide him with weapons and a trained army to secure the countryside. After a number of those sorts of events, other people on the outside began supplying different groups with weapons to overthrow the first guy. The people, living on subsistence farming, could hardly afford to buy their own weapons and (when they acquired weapons) they were often compelled by circumstances to either join one of the feuding parties already in existence or else start their own splinter group. Even if they started out with the noble intention of securing their rights under their government, they would wind up being one more armed faction.
Africa is a continent that has seen a huge amount of outside interference with its development. Platitudes about shedding blood to secure something or another ring pretty hollow in a place where so much existing bloodshed has resulted from attempts to do just that.
Then you have no idea why Social Darwinism is bunk.
Yep, no idea at all. Society is not a biological organism.
And a thief, to boot. Being born into poverty is not a choice. Being a thief is.
The US abounds with opportunity, and more people in the US have access to that opportunity. You can say all you want that you bootstrapped yourself but that also is bunk. The reason you could bootstrap is because the affluent society of which you are a part has the structure for that. Those born into the desparate poverty of so many other places are not lucky enough to have a society with the cash, the resources to provide so many people the opportunity you got.
Putting aside the simple fact that societies don’t evolve in the biological sense, there are people in many societies who thrive off of keeping other people in their society in poverty and ignorance.
I’ve said it before on these boards and I’ll keep saying it: yes, you have a right ot any opinion you wish to express. What you don’t have a right to is to have an inane and ill-founded opinion treated with respect and deference.
In the US, the government is the people. That does not hold true everywhere. Had you any sense, you would have noticed that by now.
You did so in the OP and you are doing so now.
Read The Aquariums of Pyongyang or The Gulapeg Archipelago and then get back to us.
Cute trick if your neighbor has been endowed with modern military weapons and all you have is a stick rake you fashioned from the last tree within walking distance.
Again, you’re talking nonsense. Do you really think those in the abject poverty in Africa, North Korea, and other places really choose to live there, do you really think they are “standing by watching” their societies suffer?
You left out luck. You know, like the luck you had in being born into a society where that stuff works.
Nice job, Monty. More eloquent than I could have put it (though your post contained far too few “fucks”, IMO). I was just getting ready to reply to his idiotic reading of Social Darwinism when I saw your post. I do hope you respond, buttassjockey.
You should be. Credibility-wise, the theory of social Darwinism is somewhere between creationism and the flat Earth.
No. Not even remotely. You clearly have no idea what evolution is, or how it works. Evolution does not favor the strong, or the fast, or the brave. Even if it were somehow applicable to human society, “Social Darwinism” would dictate that, in a brutal dictatorship that murderously stifles dissent, the smartest survival tactic would be to keep your mouth shut and your head down. That’s what keeps you alive, and that’s all evolution does; it favors those who stay alive by whatever means necessary.
That would be a heart and a brain, but unfortunetly, I don’t think the Wizard of Oz posts here.
Yeah yeah yeah. Congratulations, Horatio Alger.
No, it’s not simple. In fact, it’s very, very difficult. And you know what one trait describes all difficult tasks? More often than not, they fail. In the other thread, you sneered as ten million dead Chinese because they didn’t have the gumption to make a better country for themselves. Hey fuckstick: why do you think they were killed? Do you know who Mao Zedong was? How he came to power? The brutal civil war that precipated his rise? The occupation by vastly stronger foreign powers that led to the civil war? Does the Rape of Nanking ring any bells for you? The good guys don’t always win, asshole, and about fifty years ago, the bad guys in China won in a big way, and they’ve had that entire nation in their grip ever since.
He didn’t say you didn’t have the right, numbnuts, he said you don’t have the tanding. You can shoot your fool mouth off all you want, but all you’re doing is revealing your vast ignorance of history, politics, and human nature. If you had brain one in that echoing cavern you call a skull, you’d keep your moron opinions to yourself until you’ve fucking learned something about the way the world works.
No. In most nations, the government is whoever has the most guns.
Most of them are fighting with all their being just to survive from one day to the next. And most of those who fight for something more, lose.
And you’ll win, of course, because your magic sky pixie rights are stronger than tanks and bombs.
And when you’ve spilt all your blood, broken your back trying to change the system that’s keeping you down, and sent all your children away to die at the hands of those vicious warlords, and things still aren’t any better, then what?
You’ve got pricesly one thing going for you, buttonjockey: optimism. That and 300 billion dollars will buy you a regime change, but it takes a lot more than that to make a country.
Thanks, woody. Sorry about the lack of colorful language; however, I no longer curse.
Me three. Monty has said it better than I. You really need to educate yourself about Conditions Over There before you offer Solutions for Over There. And arguing from your experience is only valid as long as your subject mirrors your experience. If then.
Do you really think it is just a lackof backbone that has kept peoples oppressed?
Since I’m the first one who threw it out there(I think), let me add my thanks for a point by point refutation of Mr. Buttonjockey. I lost my taste for debate after the line where he didn’t consider to be called a Socal Darwinist an insult. I suppose being called a blithering dumbass is neccesarily an insult, but its not something I’d want on a business card.
And Miller as well. Good job.
Although I don’t agree with buttonjockey308, changing dudes names around by adding “butt” or “ass” is something that most of us gave up in the 5th grade. :rolleyes: This is something Beavis and Butthead would find hilarious. :rolleyes:
Miller, your post is comprehensive and brilliant.
All I can add is this: lacking empathy is not something to be proud of, buttonjockey. Empathy is what allows you to see things from another person’s point of view and have feelings of sadness and mercy towards them, rather than judging them by your irrelevant standards. Let’s try this for a moment:
Imagine growing up without the ability to read nor anything TO read, without proper nutrition or clean water, without a government that even pretends to give a shit about you (if you can call it a government, and if it doesn’t actively want to kill you). You have no skills except for maybe eking out a living in the place where your family landed in the chaos of the failed state where you live (unless you’re in a refuge camp, of course). Disease is common, medical care is not. Your life expectancy is below 50, infant mortality is around 15 out of 100 live births.
Imagine you have no idea what the rest of the world is like, because there is no electricity for you to hijack, so you don’t KNOW you should expect a better life. Some American asshole tells you you’re not trying hard enough to drag your continent out of the dark ages. What would you “feel”?
You know what else most of us gave up in the third grade? Using lame-ass smileys to convey the emotion behind our words. But thanks for the advice - I’m sure if I apply myself and work hard, I can achieve the same level of maturity as you, O Swami.
p.s. Eat my poo.
Actually, you should read The Gulag Archipelago. I misremembered the name of the work.
You’re surprised? This from the dumbass that thinks it is somehow clever to have a ciggarette shoved up his nose.