bMilo**, you’re such a fucking bleeding heart.
It’s one thing to disagree with someone for reasons, it’s another to disagree because one is supposed to disagree (dogma). We can’t really pretend dogma doesn’t exist for the sake of argument, can we? As per your main question: Does everyone make themselves available to an ancient set of afterlife ideals? Of course not.
Who is less prone to employ critical thinking to make a decision, the dogmatist or the free thinker?
Note: Alot of people think critical thinking is actually some form of prepared or learned dogma, by why would an individualist or free thinker need to write down their ideals or consult them? (Hint: They can actually operate on informed instinct, because they haven’t suppressed it).
So you assume that people disagree with you simply because their minds have been coerced?
Here’s more tinfoil, buddy.
But we DEFINITELY can’t pretend that it DOES exist for the sake of argument. Do SOME people have a dogmatic approach on issues? Yes. Do ALL? No. THAT is the flaw in your thinking.
It can be.
I’ve always considered Leonardo da Vinci and Roger Waters to be “free thinkers”. Of course, by your “logic”, since they wrote stuff down, they can’t be “free-thinkers”.
::sigh::
This thread isn’t a debate… this is one big brain-fart and a whole bunch of other people suffering from the stink.
Forgiven; in fact, I regard it as the writer’s task to express himself clearly. And I clearly failed, to wit:
You are correct, and I was ambiguous. I was referring to the trials, not the Nazi convention. I fell victim to a shorthand that has grown up among friends of mine; when we mention Nuremberg, we mean the trials and their result, not the convention of the Nazi party and that association. My apologies, since that confusion threw my entire post into doubt.
But Brian Bunnyhurt has blown off the main point by ignoring the reversal (which, upon rereading, I am convinced I did not imagine, as he says I did; I leave it to others to see if this was in my head or not). He asks:
I submit that this is the same error as before; a reversal of the direction of the implication. A conservative (or a liberal, or a moderate — anyone who is reasoning from a moral base) who disagrees with a political position because of a reasoned position from his moral or religious foundations is disagreeing for reasons, even if those reasons are based in morals (which is what I assume you mean by dogma — it meets the dictionary definition). Being a religious or moral person does not make someone a robot.
Accepting what I think your definitions are — it is difficult to tell — my answer would be neither. They simply start from different axioms. And everyone starts from axioms in their thinking. There is no critical thinking free of axioms. What you call a dogmatist starts from an orthodox religious set of axioms, and what you call a free thinker starts from an atheistic and humanistic set of axioms. Both can think critically and logically. The fact that they arrive at different conclusions from you does not make them illogical or non-critical. It simply means that they start from a different base.
What I think you are objecting to (again, it is very difficult to tell) is conditioned responses in politics (as well as other aspects of life). But these exist in liberal as well as conservative thinking, in right and left wing parties, in virtually every aspect of society. Conditioning extends to every part of our society. Conditioned responses are not confined to a single “side” of the political spectrum — they cross all sides of politics. If you really think that only right wing conservatives react out of conditioning, then I submit that you yourself are reacting to the question out of your own conditioning, and are showing much more about yourself than you are about right wing reactionary fundamentalists.
Conditioning crosses political, social, and economic lines. To assert that it is confined to a single side of the political spectrum is, frankly, a conditioned response (those guys are the bad guys).
I have brief news for you. Infantile anger is a bad sign in any debate. It means you are admitting defeat and trying to poison the discussion. Best to avoid those debates where you can’t see a clear way to attack it in a dignified way. Likewise, it’s best to avoid holding anything that someone can easily attack in a dignified way.
To sum up the original post, Mr. Bunnyhurt believes that REAL integrity lies in saying and doing exactly what you want to do, whenever you want to do it, without regard for the consequences. Conservatives who CLAIM to have integrity are just idiots following someone else’s rules, and deluding themselves that blind obedience to the rules makes them virtuous.
Well, Bunny, by your definition, 2 year olds are the very embodiment of integrity. They say exactly what they think at all times, and do exactly what they want to do, with no regard for anybody else, or for the consequences. THAT’s integrity, all right. But there’s a REASON that age is called “the terrible twos!” A planet of people with that kind of integrity is too horrible to imagine.
ALL rules and ALL laws exist for one of two purposes: to make people do things they’d rather not do (like pay taxes) or to prevent them from doing things they’d like to do (fill in the blank!). There’s be no point at all in making rules that prohibit behavior nobody ever wants to do in the first place!
When a conservative endorses rules against adultery, it’s NOT because he can’t appreciate how attractive the idea of adultery might be. Indeed, it’s precisely BECAUSE the sin of adultery is so attractive that rules against it became necessary! When a conservative endorses laws against murder, it’s NOT because he can’t imagine how anyone would ever want to kill- it’s because he CAN easily imagine it!
As James Madison put it, if men were angels, no law or government would be necessary. Conservatives in Madison’s mold understand that men AREN’T angels- ourselves included! We believe in rules and laws precisely because we want to restrain the potential for evil that we know exists in all of us.
To Bunny, “intregrity” is aout being true to yourself, and doing whatever YOU want to do. In short, Bunny defines “self” as the sum of a man’s urges, desires and appetites. To a conservative, integrity isn’t about being true to your urges- it’s about being true to your ideals, even when there are times you’d rather not.
You say that your ideals are not your ideals, but someone else’s that you were force-fed as a two year-old, because you had a lack of character, because two year-olds aren’t angels, because two year-olds commit adultery.
Brian, why are you writing your ideals here?
Why do you consult them, and moreover, wish that others do the same?
Is your dogmatic perpetuation of this anti-conservative bias somehow more ‘valid’ than the very same paradigm of those you target in your generalizations?
By the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Brian, I just have to say that while there is considerable competition for the honor, this may be your all-time best post.
It is breathtaking. I stand in awe.
As a token of appreciation, I have provided a list of possible sigs for your use (the ones attributed to a “well-known Republican”). Several of them would be masterfully appropriate. My personal favorite for you is “Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.”
Aha! …I’m beginning to understand how your mind works, Mr. B. To verify my understanding, let me see if you agree with the following synopsis:
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Ishmael is a sailor who is saved through unwilling abetment of the megalomania of Ahab, who hates the white whale because he lost his leg to the beast, because Starbuck is transigent, because the gold coin was the covenant, because the whale represents the archetype, because coffins float real good.
Also, please select the options you feel most accurately complete the following sentences:
All things come to he who ___________[list=a][li]subsumes idealism[]negates dogma[]controls the means of production[]pajamas[/list=a][/li]
A stitch in time saves __________[list=a][li]enthrallment to an outmoded ethical system[]another dime for the establishment[]a mackerel[]—nothing, because character is based on self awareness rather than any real individual actions[/list=a][/li]
I post to this message board in order to ___________[list=a][li]discuss meaningful issues in as nonlinear a fashion as possible[]verify my prejudices through the process of ignoring others[]have a larffoccupy my other hand[/list=a][/li]Thanks for your cooperation in this experiment.
Faithful Jeb lay in the cool damp under the porch for a spell, content that his mange-mites weren’t too bad today, and listened to Ol’ Lucretius leaning to and fro, to and fro in the well-worn rocker above.
After seventeen more to-and-fros, Ol’ Lucretius could be heard to clear his throat.
Faithful Jeb cocked a careful ear, the one he had left, and waited.
Four minutes later Ol’ Lucretius nodded, staring sightless through milky cataracts toward the horizon.
”Yep,” he croaked. ”Pit’s a-comin’.”
Faithful Jeb sighed into the dirt, sending a wayward earwig scuttling for cover.
After a time, Faithful Jeb fell asleep to the rhythmic creaking of the rocker, and he dreamt the dreams that dogs do–the ones that make their paws twitch in that quaint and endearing little way.
No. He said that the equivalence between free thought and integrity is neither intuitively obvious nor universally accepted. It is a good point.
The dogmatic assertion is that freedom is the best means to achieve those goals. Regardless, neither harmony nor acheiving one’s potential have a direct equivalence to integrity.
For this analogy to be valid, the “treasure” should be the same in both cases, since it is only th emethod that you have opened for dispute. In one case, we have a map which purports to show the location of buried treasure. In the other, we survey the landscape and decide for ourselves where the treasure has likely been buried.
Our relative expectations of success, of course, depend greatly upon the authority of the map and the accuracy of our innate “treasure sense”.
Holy shit! Bunnyhurt’s really John John.
No. He said that the equivalence between free thought and integrity is neither intuitively obvious nor universally accepted. It is a good point.
The dogmatic assertion is that freedom is the best means to achieve those goals. Regardless, neither harmony nor acheiving one’s potential have a direct equivalence to integrity.
For this analogy to be valid, the “treasure” should be the same in both cases, since it is only th emethod that you have opened for dispute. In one case, we have a map which purports to show the location of buried treasure. In the other, we survey the landscape and decide for ourselves where the treasure has likely been buried.
Our relative expectations of success, of course, depend greatly upon the authority of the map and the accuracy of our innate “treasure sense”.
Got caught by teh nack arrow – sorry for the duplicate post.
Wait until Astorian gets his hands on Moby Dick, his version will look like an episode of Flipper.
Jackmanii,
Are you one of those “card-carrying” liberals? By the way, “unclear” is subjective. But, assuming you have a point, assailing ancient motives is not as easy as I would like it, or they wouldn’t be ancient, would they? It takes a little bit of verbosity to get around the age-old mental blocks.
Pariah,
Let’s assume you make sense. I have been accused at least twice of promoting a substitute dogma for criticizing dogma. This is invalid criticism, not merely by conveniently employing two definitions of dogma, but because it pretends that dogma is bad while defending it. Another cheap trick is to paint me as representing a “side” to a coin. I’m not a card carrying anything and I think that unnerves alot of people, who can only deal with a dogma or superstition. Remember, dogmatists effectively put down other dogma’s, but not for it being a dogma.
dlb,
You say there is no critical thinking free of axioms. Fine. Let’s assume this for a spell. Are you then saying that critical thinking is invalid if you can’t state the axiom upon which it is based? This leads to another question. Are you saying then that everything is based on an axiom(s?), even conservatism? What, then, is this conservative axiom? Now, if we disagree, or can’t seem to locate this axiom, what then is the state of conservatism?
Everyone:
Open Challenge to state axiom of conservatism: IF God, divinity, creation, forces of evil, doom, apocalyse, nostalgia, heaven, afterlife, sanctity, eternal judgment, moral integrity via adherence to extra-legal codes, moral responsibility (causes or blame), or any identified specific religious value, or any assertion whatsoever of correcting, punishing, forcing, rewarding, or assuming anyone is bad or lazy or criminal or lacking in zeal or performance of duty before the fact or without proof, IS THEREFORE nowhere to be found in this general axiom of conservatism, I will withdraw. (I’m getting worried already).
Hint: this axiom cannot include any assertions about non-addicting “drug” use, more prisons before the fact, abortion, proving one’s worth in society, ideal families, workism (work for its own sake, even for free), adultery, patriarchy, morality of tax code, unequal opportunity, absolute/fixed/immutable “social” laws of nature, or any bias towards race, gender, sexuality, or social status, and especially asserting that one should “…truly believe his or her doctrines, and act from them.” and that conservatives should “…reserve their scorn for the pragmatists who seem to act from no moral base whatever.” (quoted from dlb).
Why is the latter unfit for an unbiased conservative axiom? Because these are moral-based judgments and identify either an unfair demand of personal preference (very unaxiomatic) or axiomatic religious morality, if there is a difference(!). This would then partially validate my criticisms, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?
Let me take stab: Conservatism is that which conserves energy and resources and protects the natural environment, by definition. Anyone agree? Oh, wait a minute! That’s CONSERVATIONISM! Nevermind.
I guess Webster’s is probably wasted in this thread. But what the hey:
[quote]
con·ser·va·tive
adj.
[list=1][li]Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.[/li][li]Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit.[/li][li]Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.[/li][li][list=A]Of or relating to the political philosophy of conservatism.[/li][li]Belonging to a conservative party, group, or movement.[/li][/list=A][li]Conservative. Of or belonging to the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom or the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada.[/li][li]Conservative. Of or adhering to Conservative Judaism.[/li][li]Tending to conserve; preservative: the conservative use of natural resources.[/list=1][/li]
n.
[list=1][li]One favoring traditional views and values.[/li][li]A supporter of political conservatism.[/li][li]Conservative. A member or supporter of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom or the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada.[/li][li]Archaic. A preservative agent or principle.[/list=1][/li][/quote]
BTW… I counted a 20:1 comma to period ratio in one paragraph/sentence. Gotta be a record, Call Guinness
Wait, so Brian…you want us to define a political philosophy without discussing morality? Can’t be done, says I. And that’s not restricted to conservativism…that’s true of any political philsophy, because by its nature, political philosophy says, “When people come together as a government, they should do X”, and any time someone says “We should do X”, they’re taking a moral position. They’re stating values that are important to them. Remember, this isn’t political science…it’s philosophy. I could quote Arrow or Huntington for you, but that really wouldn’t help answer your question. (I think Huntington did try to define conservativism, but…) Sorry, Brian, you’re asking the impossible.
Bunnyhurt said to Pariah:
**
The dogma under the porch Pariah was describing surely had problems, but I don’t think he/she was proposing to put it down. It’s been a good, faithful dogma. And it’s not suffering.
Speaking of suffering … tell us more, Brian!
And I have brief news for you, Little Child: The world isn’t black and white. You seem unable to grasp that. I’m sorry if you take this revelation as an “attack”.
I take it you can’t address the notions I brought to the table? I thought not. It isn’t the first time that’s happened.