#CalExit for life !!!
Yes and no. The far left believes in relativism but that is under assault by liberals. It’s harder for us though, we do not get to rely on that sloppy and tattered crutch of
“Because God said so”
Which LITERALLY is the same justification for someone to help the needy or say… Saw an infidels head off. Well, my GOD said so so I guess I’d better oblige.
This is the ethics and morality of a SLAVE, not an autonomous moral agent, not someone who refuses to bend the knee like a DOG not a MAN.
So yes, it’s harder, there is no universal standard of ethics, it IS relative on a cosmic scale, but we are not random cosmic creatures. We are humans, we have evolved over the eons with a common collection of intuitions and behavioral heuristics. There is variation to be sure, but most people are inside the line of SOME common themes. And when they are not, we have the outliers like psychopaths and sociopaths, where something is LITERALLY wrong with their brains (thanks god, so benevolent in his gifts to his children that he saddles them with moral intuitions that are the opposite of what he demands). Cultures emerged as more and more people gathered and in modern times our morality and ethics is a blend of how we were wired over thousands and millions of years by nature, and the cultural software that combines the two aspects into a whole.
This is the source of all ethics, religious or otherwise. And while there is no absolute standard, there are some standards that tend to lead to more human hapiness and flourishing than others, assuming we can agree on what those things are. And if we cannot, for example I do NOT consider being beheaded for not believing in Allah a good thing, then we can agree to disagree, with my side killing the other to rid the world of discordant moral codes that are incompatible so that my side wins and theirs does not.
We’ve been here for quite a while.
You’re here for… Six whole posts.
So, which label are are you that you’re trying to weasel out from under here…?
Without a warning? You don’t even give out a warning?! What wrong with you? Be like you know somebody feeling pretty down, hard time dealing and you say “Here, try this guy Cormac McCarthy, cheer you right up!”. Blows his brains out, its your damn fault!
Do you think that said attitude (highlighted by me) should NOT be one that we can teach all of our citizens, all of our children? One that we should, as a society, value, encourage, and foster? That we should just throw our hands up in the air and just meekly cowtow to our most base impulses? Allow propaganda, fear, hopelessly one-sided bias, and other lower complexes to dominate our thought, and thus our political (and other) outcomes?
So, why (and how) have some learned to turn the trick, while others haven’t?
I for one DO think there is something wrong with you if you allow these lower impulses to control your life, choices, and destiny. It simply leads to a type of hapless nihilism, made all the more poignant when those who have embraced are unable to see the moral and intellectual emptiness of their positions.
[Note I personally do not think they are the “greatest” of virtues, but that is a topic for a completely different thread. They ARE superior to their counterparts I mentioned above.]
Outside of sociopaths, only a very small percent of people are rational. Herd mentality is simply too inborn of a trait, especially in low-average IQ, which is the majority, regardless of political alignment.
Well, we do have the shining example of The Donald on Twitter:
To say nothing of his eight years pretending that Obama was not a U.S. citizen.
And In case people forgot how peacefully people accepted Obama’s election in ’08.
“Greatest of virtues” was a poor choice of words on my part; I agree that “superior virtue” is probably a more moderate way to express the idea.
I simply don’t believe it’s possible to teach a large portion of a society to be reasonably strong rational thinkers, however you choose to define “reasonably strong”. Rational thinking is very difficult, and being reliably good at it is a rather rare trait in my opinion. Even in my limited experience in structured “intellectual pursuits” (chess, math, science), this seems to be a difficult skill to cultivate among myself and my peers; it’s just incredibly difficult to maintain the mental discipline required for any reasonable length of time (i.e. many minutes straight). Nevermind trying to walk around and live life generally as a rational being.
Yes, we should make the attempt to teach critical thinking, if only to arm people with another potential tool with which to try to understand the world and live in it. But I don’t really expect much success, not because people are inherently stupid, but because it’s just really difficult to develop the skill. So yes, I do think we’re “stuck” following our “base impulses” to a large degree, and we should learn how to best navigate life under those limitations.
Well, this kinda post proves my point. You are just SO sure you’re the ones who are right, that “reality” is on your side. Most things, my friend, aren’t that simple at all. All the evidence isn’t anywhere near as one sided on all those issues you mention as you say… and those aren’t at all the only issues either. Abortion?, guns?, crime policies?, immigration?, terrorism?, free speech?.
Look, we all think we’re right. We wouldn’t hold an opinion about something to begin with, otherwise. But we all should accept the possibility that we just might, possibly, be wrong. We’re not talking about issues as uncontested as the Earth being not being flat here.
The idea that your side (whochever side that is) has the uncontested REALITY is actually also very dangerous, for free speech and democracy itself.
Is any of that worse than what the never Trump folks are saying and doing now?
I don’t understand your question.
And how does it matter how long I’ve been posting here?. I’ve, for that matter, lurked for quite a while.
I haven’t seen Trump burned in effigy, yet. I have NOT seen Obama attacking Trump subsequent to the election. I have seen Trump supporters hypocritically claiming that Clinton supporters should stop protesting.
Overall worse? Perhaps not. However, anyone whining that the “other side” lacks civility needs to go clean up their own side before expecting anyone to listen to them.
Yeah. There being an objective truth and moral right and wrong (and I share the thought that there is such a thing) though, doesn’t mean that we know it. Or that it’s even possible to.
True. But I’ve changed my political opinions, a lot, more than once in my life, and I do find the left to display this attitude to a greater degree, and to manifest it more in a refusal to engage in debate at all.
Obama has to act like a President. His attitude should be different from that of a common citizen, which Trump was then.
Doubt that Trump represents the general attitude of people of the right wing, either. I don’t think the left even thinks he does.
I don’t think so. No one could say anything if that was the case.
My post refered to an attitude that goes well beyond this election in the US.
I don’t feel the need to defend myself anyway.
Opposition to SSM is fundamentally rooted in bigotry against homosexuals. It is predicated on the assumption that homosexual relationships are inherently less valuable than heterosexual relationships - even the “softest” opponents base their opposition on a fear that allowing gay people to marry will somehow be damaging to the fabric of society. Notably, they are generally unable to explain the exact mechanism by which this will take place. Harder opposition generally is accompanied by slanders, such as comparisons to bestiality and pedophilia, or dismissal of homosexual relationships not being based on “real” love. The idea that gay marriage is directly related to hurricanes hitting the US remains a position espoused by mainstream conservative figures.
Having spent close to two decades arguing those specific points with a variety of homophobes of different stripes, I admit that I sometimes cut to the chase and just go straight to calling them names. It is, perhaps, not the most constructive option, but dealing with the same bullshit, over and over and over again, tends to wear on the patience a bit.
I apologize that your feelings are occasionally hurt because I’m in genuine fear for my rights and personal safety. Clearly, your needs are the major concern, here, and I’m sorry for losing sight of that.
Where to start?
Firstly we have the birther thing where lots of assertions were made by trump e.g. that no american met / knew Obama in his youth, then years later when the whole thing had become an embarrassment he just told the shamefaced lie that it had all originated from Hillary.
Then you have nonsense like seeing thousands of muslim americans celebrating on 9/11, or saying obama pledged to take 250,000 syrian refugees. Or saying we don’t vet immigrants or refugees at all. Or that allied countries including south korea don’t pay us for stationing military forces there. Or that the vast majority of murders of white people are by black men…notice how inflammatory many of these lies are.
And that he can’t release his tax returns because of the audit, which of course he continued to say even after the IRS said it wasn’t true.
And in this campaign you have a whole mess of crap, mostly just to paint a picture of an america falling apart domestically and a whipping boy abroad.
So we are supposedly “giving Iran $150 billion plus”, unemployment is up, crime is up.
And note I didn’t just reference trump but the whole machine of trump, his surrogates, Hannity et al, and maybe certain online sites like Breitbart. How can you try to reason with people who’ll happily assert that Afghanistan is “obama’s war”?
Well, HuffPo said Hillary had if sewn up. Some gambling sites paid out Hillary bettors before the vote. I recall Anderson Cooper discussing whether Hillary was running up the score campaigning in red states. Wang said he’d eat a bug if Trump got more than 240 electoral votes, giving Hillary a 99% chance of victory. Don’t you remember that? He ate a bug on CNN.
There are different ways to interpret low turnout. What jumps out at me though is that while Trump got a hundred thousand or so less votes than Romney, Clinton got millions less votes than Obama. Why didn’t Dem voters show up? Complacency is one explanation.
Somehow, a way must be found so that Trump is our fault. Reverse engineered, starting from the conclusion and working backwards, weaving a complex and fragile web of assumptions and evasions. The Cirque du Soleil of rationalization.
So, OK, fine. Its transparently stupid, but you never cared what we thought about you anyway, right? What is it now, some sixty percent of everybody thinks he très suxxor? Probably his high water mark!
Probably if there ever was a way to rid ourselves of him, you’d tell us it was your idea! Complain how we got in your way!
And that’s OK, too. Two weeks ago, we might have cared at least a little. Now, there’s much bigger fish frying us.
Most likely, no one should.
No one would be permitted to whine about how the other side should behave or make broad condemnations of their opponents that relied more on emotion that facts if that were the case.
Overly partisan rhetoric is generally false and self-serving. This election has only re-asserted that fact.