With all the talk of the Anzac spirit, acknowledgement of heroism and remembrance of past struggle what effort is going into preventing future wars? We know some causes and exacerbating factors - too many people struggling over too few resources, unequal distribution of those resources, increasing population, religious and ideological conflicts, those in power wanting to keep and expand their power and those out of power wanting to gain power. Do some of us really want war to give meaning to our lives? How many wars have our leaders deliberately put us into? Can we act rationally to attack the causes of war? Do we want to?

David f my first thought was I do not like this thread.
But then I remembered and re read it.
Anzac day, good memory's and bad come.
After returning home from ww1 with crippling injury's and a VC an Aussie HERO had a woman hand him a white feather publicly on a bus.
That generation saw dreadful acts from some women.
Or [hope she still feels shame] the dreadful woman who hurled red paint on a returning Vietnam veteran and called him a baby murderer.
Anzac day remember the acts of our country best,death suffering and horrible things.
I am proud of the efforts of every one alive or dead.
It is not glorifying war but warning us about it.
Telling us to be aware how bad it was is and will be.
World peace is a wonderful dream we all should do every thing we can to get it.
But forgetting the past, being the first to lay our weapons down,will not stop war,just hasten the next one.

Dear Belly,

There was no mention of unilateral disarmament in my post. To argue against unilateral disarmament when it was not suggested is setting up a straw man. I mentioned some of the contributing factors toward war and questioned whether some of us actually want war.

I certainly did not argue that unilateral disarmament is a rational act to attack the causes of war. However, we can ask how many and what kind of arms do we need. We can recognise that armament races can lead to war.

Why did you argue against unilateral disarmament when it wasn’t suggested?

You mentioned two dreadful women – one who handed a veteran a white feather and the other who called a returning Vietnam veteran a baby murderer. You also wrote: “I am proud of the efforts of every one alive or dead.” I doubt that you are proud of the acts of those women.

In war as in peace some act well and some act poorly.

Some soldiers may be there simply because they can’t avoid it. People’s memory fade. My father was in the Czarist army in WW1. He hated the czar and the Leninist government that followed. I was taken aback when I heard him proudly say, “When I fought for the czar-“

Soldiers in any army bond with their mates. In WW1 there was a soldier’s song, “We’re here because we’re here.” Sometimes that’s all it’s about. Others have made the decision that they should be there, and they didn't ask if they need to be there.

Some use Anzac Day to ride their own hobby horses. Australian Christian Lobby head Jim Wallace on twitter said that Anzacs did not fight for Islam or gay marriage. Of course they didn’t nor were they fighting against it. It is Wallace’s hobby horse, and I am not proud of him for using Anzac Day to push it. His words caused me to start the thread.

I still ask if we can act rationally to attack the causes of war and if we want to.

im still fighting other wars
on two other topics

its both sad and despairing that belly
has bought the spin..indeed made it worse by saying he backs every bit of it

thats not good belly
they claim the right to sin
in your name..meaning your to blame

how can one as seemingly good as you
support the murdering of children..[unionists and non union]
friend and enama..

war is for those who love to murder
its all about killing our youth..
destrying that others built

its kill or be killed..
there is no skill in killing
there is plenty to be ashamed of
and not a lot of which to be 'proud'

thats like accepting your team
wether its right or wrong..your putting credit..

where only shame does belong

look my good friend
say i come to your house
bomb it into the dust..rape your wife
destroy your trust

think of the vile done in your name
and then your feeling pride?

just for the killing
war is a shame

its not you that is to blame
but those claiming to be doing the thinking for you
chosing who will die or live..for a hill in the middle of nowhere

oh belly i weep that you feel proud
you bought the spin...

to kill
is a mortal sin

i will weep for you
when you get sent to die in a futile war
when your kids go off to die..i will even then still cry

mate war is hell
let the leaders go and fight
too many kids have died..and you think thats allright

Well we can vote more anti-war candidates into federal parliament next election, that is a good way to go about it;

We could lobby for binding CIR (that's the reason Switzerland has remained neutral for so long).

Sitting around and hoping somebody swoops down to rescue us from ourselves is nothing but a lazy gesture, when simply changing our own conduct is actually very easy.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14633 might be of interest on this subject. It's by a New Zealand Anglican priest and called "Easter and Anzac: Worshipping the gods of war."

I make no sorry mate for my comments,and spoke of those who took part in past wars or lost loved ones.
No peace ever can come from one sides good wishes.
Research would tell of just how far we have come.
Our involvement in world war one was as a servant state to England.
It was as near as I can tell a family squabble, Royals have much to answer for.
Thankfully, women do not send men feather saying they are cowards any more.
Gutless act that was driven by total support, even to the point of sending men to die, for an empire we are better for the death of.
Heated? yes I have memory's still of story's told around bush camp fires of returned men being given more than one white feather in the name of Britons Royal family and an Empire that left todays world problem still alive and dieing harm.

Dear Belly,

You're still setting up straw men. Nobody has advocated onesided action. You're still arguing against what nobody has said.

However, I will say it.

Onesided action can lead to war. One side arms then the other side arms to match it. Now you're in an armament race. Sometimes they lead to war.

Onesided action can also lead to peace. One side makes a peacable move then the other side may match it. Now you're relieving tensions. That may lead to peace.

Onesided actions can lead to either peace or war. Depends on the circumstances.

While you support in part what I said think its time to leave Dave.
You seem to be using the word Anzac in a way I do not want to.
And in todays world if it was us who first lay down our weapons we would be defeated very soon after.
Not sure what direction you want the thread to take so leave you to it.
But history, including the Pearl Harbor attack,Germany's Blitz Kreeg and many more near misses can be laid at the feet of not being prepared.
Good luck with the thread.

'One under god' said that "to kill is a mortal sin".

Always?

mortal sin".........what religion understands that now days.

LEAP

death is only of concern to the matters of the flesh
spirit is eternal..it cant die

its a mortal sin because this mortal egsistance directly determines our next reality...our next eternal life

to kill kids..who havnt yet had a chance
to chose to reject lifes [mortal] sins...is a true crime

in time we all realise killing anything is wrong
even to kill a beast to 'live'

we have mans[mortal mans rules]
that state thou shalt not kill
[spirit isnt bound to those rules as spirit in eternal
ya cant 'kill' any life in the next life]

thats sort of the pain of those chosing hell
you can go through the whole pain and agony
of death and dying..but not be 'dead'

in affect those who love killing
can be 'killed' again and again
for eternity..

[or as long as they chose to love killing]
but able.to 'kill'..molest mutilate..rape
only those who love the same vile

in time even the most pervers realises
they dont really lust after their 'per-versiions]
as much as they believed..

its all rather self correcting
thus there is no need to judge

if you love hurting kiddies
or killing huns or nasties or mozzies

you go to the place where the kiddies are
who love to hurt..*only each-other
you become that you hate

thus are *as hated and despised
as those you chose to hate /despise

[but only others hating /despising
the same 'things'..as you]

recall jesus said
mine fathers house has many rooms
some in heaven..others in hell]

we chose our room
by that we chose to love

what i hate is we have days where death is beatup
but not days where we are taught the next bit
the forever/eternal bit..
*that comes after they died

how good would it be to be free of fear
to do good fearlessly..knowing evil simply cant hurt you
and in the end we all get justice..and they get what they want too
ie they chose it..by loving the pervesions the chose to love

there are in 'that part of heaven'..we call hell
eternal wars..

you can die a hero's
or a cowards death millions of times
for eternity if this is your wish

then get right back up
and get killed again
and again
and again

its groundhog day

till you decide you want something better
yearn for something better..

but the better thing..
is not a 'thing'

davidf,
the situation seems hopeless. Looking at it objectively, indeed indifferently, your question seems to imply that the human world as it is is worth preserving. I don't believe it is. Or at least its being worthy of preserving lies for me in its capacity for positive change--sadly, I can't see there's much of that so perhaps the sooner we wipe each other out the better.

However, in the context of competition for wealth and resources we've dominated, a good way to start might be to dismantle the west's monopoly. Since wealthy nations have shown themselves to be spectacularly unwilling to make sacrifices in the interests of equity (indeed they've thrived on exploiting inequities), it's ironic that global capitalism is in the process of exacting just that--fairer terms of trade, though sadly more in the interests of capital than altruism or equity. This automated programme of economic reform (market growth) will never be accomplished of course because the whole thing will collapse or the planet will die first. In any case the west would lose its dominance, and it won't cede that. But at least the shift of wealth will to some extent reciprocate the poverty that's been visited on the Earth's poorer real estate hitherto. The west will be all guns blazing, however, before the transition effects the quality, so same ol' same ol' and it's not going to help the anti-war effort.

The only other thing I can suggest is that we stop romanticising past conflicts and the military--the perennial instrument of man's worst excesses. I would say we should only wage war in defence, but we've made war big business and we can't expect the big players not to use their new toys.

Sorry, nothing positive to say.

Dear Squeers,

Capitalism is a devil on which one can blame all the ills of the world. However, it is pointless to do so. Wars did not start with the advent of capitalism nor will they cease with the demise of capitalism.

It ignores history to set up capitalism as a devil on which to blame the ills of the world. The problem is deeper than capitalism. Industrialisation whether socialist or capitalist has much the same effect. Capitalism in its modern form is a recent phenomenon.

Whether or not the human world is worth preserving is another issue. I identify with my species.

True enough David.
Human history is replete with one form of domination or another over the exploited and disempowered, our former masters aristocracy of one form or another. Capitalism is just the latest tyranny, but the most dangerous and entrenched to date. I suspect, because it it's so broadly distributed--though still within a small minority--its ideological bi-product quickening social emulation.
I can see why Marx conceived human progress in economic terms; communism is the logical next step if we consider that the collective wealth has been progressively more evenly distributed. It hasn't really of course--generation of wealth has simply become more efficient, a science, and the crumbs are more plentiful--so long as you're near the apron of the table.
Whatever the evils of the past were, capitalism is the evil of the present. So long as it prevails we must find our solace in heaven.

"Industrialisation whether socialist or capitalist has much the same effect".
I disagree there. Give credit where it's due. Capitalism is its own industrial dynamic, it cultivates and harnesses human industry, whereas failed socialism only forced it. Capitalism will be the death of us because it can't be moderated.
Wars meanwhile promote growth.

David f.,

Your initial question was - "Can we act rationally to attack the causes of war?"

Well, wars usually arise in the wake of an ideological justification, emanating from a contention over territory and/or resources.
As you point out, belligerence seems to come with the human deal. Although we have the intellectual capacity to rationalise against hostile action, unfortunately we employ the same talent to reason in favour of conflict....our rationalisation toward aggression, in the case of a threat to our wellbeing and security, seems more compatible with our instinctual behaviour.

Therefore, it doesn't appear to be a realistic assumption that man will one day have the willpower to overcome his warlike nature.

Dear Squeers,

Capitalism has been moderated in Sweden so it can be moderated.

I disagree with your statement "capitalism is the evil of the present." Capitalism is one of the forces in the present. It is 'the evil' sounds like a fundamentalist preacher. I don't agree that capitalism is an evil. It is an economic system which has been controlled in certain circumstances. I don't agree that communism is the next step. We don't know what the next step is.

Poirot, you may be completely correct.

Thank you OUG for your reply, I would query further but I just can't be bothered.

Dear Poirot,

On second thought if men really had a warlike nature we would not need conscription. Most contacts of humans with other humans are peaceful. I have been in the army. Part of the training is to overcome our inhibitions of destroying other human beings.

Indeed, that may be so, David.
From a personal perspective, I find it difficult to imagine being involved in a physical skirmish - that is something alien to my experience.

Most humans are socialised within their culture to preserve human life.
They come to an "intersection" when they are threatened or are required to expand their territory by force.
The "training" you mentioned is in essence a deprogramming of one type of social value.

The question is, is this value acquired or instinctual?

Dear Poirot,

You wrote: "The question is, is this value acquired or instinctual?"

It is not the question. It is a question. The fact is that whether the attitude is acquired or instinctive we can be changed by programming.

If we can be changed by programming we can be changed for peace.

thats ok mise
im a bit tired as well

only moved to post by quoting david's words
as they stir a response in my mind

how spirits work..is they feed off our thought energy
love our fear energy...and when they find a suitable victim
love feeding more of the same thoughts..that result in more the energy...that energises them..[attracted them in the first place]

[demon's love negativity..fear hate greed glutony etc]
higher spirits love the higher things..good art soothing music architecture invention...

its what we have in our minds
give our attentions to..that more is given applies
in this realm and the next..[also refers to sorting sheep from goats;..same concept]

anyhow to davids quote
'"Capitalism is a devil""
no the greed of more attracts demons

.."'on which one can blame all the ills of the world.""
but we need think it first
those who only have good thoughts only attract good
[many feign it by thinking nothing..but jjesus was ione who came close]

""Wars did not start with the advent of capitalism""
but wars cost money
rome needed money to pay for its wars
european kings even lent from the money changers[at ursury]

lest we forget many assasinations from ceaser to jfk
was by them minting their own money
[cuting out the money changers
WHO HAVE PAID FOR BOTH SIDES OF MOST WARS]

who ever wins
they get their cash back[with intrst]
ever heard of war reperations/looting?

""nor will they cease with the demise of capitalism.""
less war..only means lower levels of war instruments

we revolt..[civil wars with ropes]
when the money changers get too greedy

""It ignores history""
measured from one war to the next

""to set up capitalism as a devil""
yes thats absurd
some do use their money to help other's
ok not the church/state..not big bankers..but some

very few..most have the
greed is god demons..on their backs

""The problem is deeper than capitalism."'
sure their greed over-rides others need

Dear Poirot,

http://www.withcompassion.com.au/noahsarkclubhouse.htm is a beautiful example of conditioning of natural enemies to friendship.

Another example from the animal kingdom showing that 'natural' enemies aren't necessarily so: http://tiny.cc/gkhbk

continued from
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11924&page=0

xtains shouldnt judge..
it dont matter a hoot
what was the reality ...of yesterday

our living god lives..
*in real time..

lives inside us all..
*right now*

so saying though
i note the pope in a box

[well 3 boxes really]
[i understand porn..is only double wrapped]

but see its the same thing
as that toughening up thing
the army does

only this xtian version..
is called can-anon-isation..

[not the armed forces..
;bar-SS-teurd-isation]
that comes..'from' hell for sure

anything with the word
cannon in it..must be suss

unrelated

i wrote this learning
for the pope in boxes 3

who may or may not be..*in that dark place
where many of the middle/ages popes..dwell
[recall the inquisition..
that came..;..direct from hell]

anyhow

what if you
were in a dark place,..say in a box
what difference to you..where that box is

how could you learn or care to learn the colour of the box
from within..its too dark to tell a black thread from a white thread

and the outside
well who cares

how would you know the box waas even the 'right-way' up
or the right branded lable...or indeed even if it were a box

so whats the point of this uncertainty

if your in a dark place
thats where you chose to be

ok...[for now]..your not 'in' a dark/place
but rather only able to se the outside of it
and god is inside it..inside you

remember
when you were in the dark box

or even a warm comfortable womb
you were the life within..inside..
without even seeing
or knowing..
the shape of the container..
or its look feel reality..from its out side

continues

anyhow as you now know it well
have even given it a face
and call her mum

cause[now]
its you on the outside
you now know..[in the light]..egsactly what you are
sasdly for the one good sustaining you your very life
he is still in the darkness..simply being the life sustaining
creater being..doing what he does so well..him who shall never see the light

cause he is too busy doing living
from within every living thing living
onl;y by him doing the impossably complex things
every life needs..to keep on living

even in the next light relm
he still sustains that living from within

now se you as that 'box'
wioth that good loving living life force..within

the good living light love logic[god]..being
sustaining your being[you being]..
the living being
your so busy being

recognise the life force within you
hey box head..ya want me to box ya ears
lets call this energy[life force]..within god

get it
good

see you are alive
but its not you doing it
your just a box[meat..you know
that stuff left over..when the life force departs

thats how you even know your alive
[logic/light/love/life..sure sign's of him within]

you know your alive
but you also must know...
its not you..*conciously doing 'it'

ok science..'says'
but it dont got a clue
it cant make life..only prolong it
or mutate it..test it poke at it..but in the end is onlu GUESSING

its got theory
yet life goes on
from dep within the urge to kep living goes on
and on and on...

so strong we are EVEN prepared to KILL others
to keep it going...on

sorry im having a brief break

i feel the dark forces of anger
and we got no time
for blame or shame

for we are all in that cold dark place
this is about ending murder..[war..!..]
remember that 'other'..L.A.W..?
thou shall not murder?

Thanks David and morganzola for those heartwarming examples - although they are both unusual examples of socialisation between species, I don't necessarily think they explain the penchant humans have for violence amongst its own.

Man is capable of abstract thinking. He has evolved into a being that relies on his instincts, emotions and his intelligence, his ability to rationalise. This makes him a formidable entity, not only to the planet, but also to his own species.

Eugene Rbinowitch wrote:
"Human emotions and instincts include many noble ones: passionate love and steady friendship, devotion to fellow men and self-sacrificing loyalty to a group. But man's "parliament of instincts" includes also dark passions - hate and intolerance, cruelty and indifference to the needs and suffering of others, lust for power and the joy of domination - the emotional and instinctive inheritance of millenia of desperate competition for survival among individuals as well as societies....In the course of evolution it has served as criterion for the selection of more viable societies and eliminated less viable societies....Since homo sapiens appeared on earth, his only steadily growing asset has been his intelligence , his capacity for critical analysis of the facts of the situation, and prediction of likely consequences of his individual or collective behaviour."

Our competitive instinct is so ingrained that even if there is peace, we indulge in competitive sport to satisfy our need.

What a strange species we are, as it seems even with our capacity to predict outcomes - such as the overburdening of the planet with our excess, we now spend time rationalising against what our senses tell us in the hope that if we ignore it, it will somehow not be a problem.

David, I don't believe it would be possible to use rational thought and "programming" to disabuse an entire species of its instinctual competitive nature - in fact, many movements and philosophers have had that very idea, and somehow the theory is always skewed by man when it is put into practice.

ok i have calmed my inner demons

and once more realise to
look to the right/..light..bright side
to try to love god..[good]
by loving thy neighbour

not murdering hiom and looting his children
and raping his wife..[the fruits of war..
ie what many...*are fighting for]

leraving out those who murder others from
malice bias fear or simply cause in war they can

[why am i hearing
the chant from hell..

..""YES WE CAN..!""]

back to your notes johan

SCIENCE has no idea how god within us/all..does it

ok they got theories..buzz word's
auto response..autonimous..natural..or logical

buts lets recall
science has never 'made' life
[ok sure it put dna..into a living cell]
but thats like me saying i invented a computer..
simply by writing a program..its hokum..[spin]..food for the athiest

you dont know how your doing your life thing
[and not meant to know..god knows and look at where it got him
sustaining to live some truelly extreem living 'beings'
yet got loves them all...he is addicted to living
dont really know much else but life must go on

your aware
your living
but why are you chosing
who keeps living..and who keeps loosing

your whole life
you studied that outside
thinking its you..[and so it is]

but the real you..[your soul]..lies deep within
and within that lies the eternal living spirit..sustaining it all to live

sustaining it all from within
fel the good inside you...any bad within isnt ';him'
any fear any negativity ..that aint him..its mainly you

fel the good life energy in you
within you..flow through you
feel the influx inflow input from without
from life and the other dimentions[heaven and hell]

mo0re shall be given
to whatever you focus on
focus on death..and the demons will help give it
focus on luife and the angels will sustain you to keep living

solgers know..if you got love in ya heart
evil cant hurt you..as hard as it is..even in battle..keep the love

only one in a 1000 bullits ever made a kill
cause they were fired in anger..they couldnt hurt the good
but in a second of time..a fleting bad thought..of even the most good

and your outa the game
jesus couldnt die till he despaired

feel the influx..the inflow..of god within
from without..returning to you..its inner source

but not just you..ALL LIFE IS SACRED..
all life has him within

[that we do to the least]
hurts who the most?

equally the least..

with this influx
as much as thee./.with the most

the influx is within all living 'being'

get to know
the good within you
the good in others..is the self same good

war is over if you want it..
was the fruit of war
ever that good

or ever more fully..understood?

stand down soul-dier
lets us die no more in war
after all what were we really ever fighting for?

lets give those truelly LIVING..even now
both in heaven and hell..

the peace they..''died'..as we all tried hard ...it to bring
but couldnt get it through..to all of us at once..even to you

recall the inner voices
regardless if from heaven or hell

its time to stand down and tell them
let your inner good god voice be your guide
we respect the good inside us..by obeying only that good

feel the eternal internal within
how else can the thought
of loving other
get in

thats a teaching from
outside the box

Dear Poirot,

You wrote: "I don't believe it would be possible to use rational thought and "programming" to disabuse an entire species of its instinctual competitive nature"

I don't think it is necessary or desirable "to disabuse an entire species of its instinctual competitive nature" I think we only need to de-emphasise violence in a sufficient percentage of the population, and, since humans are a herd animal, most of the rest will go along.

I think both competition and cooperation have their place and are both desirable in the appropriate circumstances. Both attitudes are instinctual. Peter Kropotkin wrote “Mutual Aid” which tells of the many acts of cooperative behaviour in nature. It is still applicable.

Dear OUG,

You quoted me as saying "capitalism is a devil." You quoted me out of context.

I wrote:

“Capitalism is a devil on which one can blame all the ills of the world. However, it is pointless to do so. Wars did not start with the advent of capitalism nor will they cease with the demise of capitalism.”

I don’t think there is any such thing as a devil or a demon. They are just products of human imagination. I don’t think capitalism is evil or a devil. It is an economic system.

had you said david
that there is no satan
we could agree..he is a product of human imagination

but my beloved brother demons are quite real
to those who believe in such things

and how else..but by some vile spirit influx
imprinting this sort perverted..ignorant..uninformed
thinking

*upon the future pope..
of the 'great' britons

"If I were reincarnated,
I would wish to be returned to earth
as a killer virus to lower the human population levels.."

-- Prince Phillip of Great Britain,
speaking to the athiestic..World Wildlife Fund

or how about these thoughts
made by one good man
to another..who would keep the flock ignorant
of the truths..such as i have previously poste

"If the truth is that ugly -- which..it is --
then we do have to be careful..about the way
that we tell the truth.

But to somehow say
that telling the truth..should be avoided
because people may respond badly..to the truth seems bizarre to me."

--Chuck Skoro, Deacon, St. Paul's Catholic Church

everything must be in context
we decieve others at our own risk

demons are real to those who think them real
their faith..gives them reality

faith is a two edged sword
in believing lies..we risk making
our own deceoptions real..if only to us

the worst ones are those that lie about god
or lie about living after aparent'death'
or waiting for a judgment day
or day of reserction

heaven is full of people stubbornly feigning death
because the swallowed the lie..of reserction day
others terrified..they will be judged

when its all according to
that we chose to do..here

and when...we get...*there
..getting more..

David f.,

I think our "herd instinct" is perhaps the biggest hurdle for man to overcome in seeking to become a "peacefully acquiring being"....and I wonder if man as he has evolved can really be expected to be other than the result of that evolution.

It's a large planet - and man has migrated to every habitable part of it. His "herds" or "tribes" are many, and each exhibits distinct social traits, refined by intelligence and rationalisation. These rationalisations, more often than not define differences as opposed similarities...and we are guided by them in our identification of friend or foe.

A world where every man is kind to his neighbouring social group is an idealisation. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong (or new) about such an aspiration - it's a notion that's been around for eons, and it's more commonly depicted as "heaven".

those who love to do the dark things
go to the dark places

those loving others
go to the place..of love of others
[in the light]

haters to the place of haters
murders to the place of murder

ie sortuing the sheep
from the goat

or the wheat from the tares
at the harvest[mortal death]..
instantly*

sorted by..that we loved..yearned..
chose to do..while..*in these mortal realms

war mongers
go to the place of eternal war
looters go to those loving to loot

those loving to rapeene..
to the realm..of eternal rape
raping..*only each other

looting..*only each other
lying..*only with/to..liars

decievers
only decieving those
who woul;d be decieved
want to be decieved to

its not complicated
a child can grasp it

[children of course..go to the place of children]

till 'other' loves..THEY THEM SELVES CHOSE..[in time
..sort them...into their rightfull place[realm/room]

as jesus said
''mine fathers house
has many rooms''..

[some in the light
others in dark places]

those who reject the light
*chose..to hide in the darkness

reject the love
you chose hate

reject grace

you reject mercy
well its your choice

why did jesus own
not get his mess-age

heed his cautions
heed his teachings
do as he revealed our father does

anyhow time shall reveal
to those who shall not grow old
once they get released from this prison planet

where we each
serve out
our life :..sentanence

I also think competition is desirable and even healthy in the right circumstances, preferably on a level playing field where it comes down to talent, ability and enthusiasm. The Olympics for instance is hardly about sport at all, and certainly not about sportsmanship; it's not even about patriotism, whose true form of love of country I respect. It's about which government as the most money to inject into the technology of sport in the interests of international one-up-man-ship and increasingly, profit.

Of course when we speak of competition per se and in the capitalist context, we talk of who can amass the most money, material assets and other cultural capital--competition of this kind is fundamentally materialistic and demeaning of what God-given talent (rhetorically speaking), human aspiration and spirit might be capable of in a healthy intellectual environment.
I doubt, in fact, that our species is competitive, in a vicious way, by nature. Human nature is surely moulded largely by human society, its institutions and its mores--which today are all subject to competition for wealth.

sorry, above I meant to finish with "which today are all subject to competition for wealth 'and influence'".

Squeers,

You are right that much of our idea of sporting competition has been usurped and is now an avenue of profit. Rational man will, it seems, always find a way to enrich himself - often disguising his purpose.

It seems that competiveness in man is more of a dynamic "between" groups. One would imagine that "within" a grouping the instinct for cooperation would be a dominant characteristic.

It is by arranging ourselves into social groups that we achieve the most beneficial material outcomes. However, as much as inclusion suggests unity, it also suggest separateness from those excluded....and this can engender either belligerence or amity depending on the circumstances in our relationship to those outside the group.

Perhaps if man was capable of overcoming this separation of identity, he could then allow his natural cooperative instincts to dominate.
- don't know if it's a realistic possibility, though.

This is a fascinating subject, because it goes to the very heart of symbolic identification among mankind..
The human need to identify with a neighbouring group is crucial to the type of relationship that ensues.
Discussing early man's sources of identification and how it affects the chances of cooperation, James Shreeve writes:

"Imagine two Paleolithic hunting parties meeting in some border area between their separate territories. Their two clans are knit together by a history of reciprocal exchanges and common traditions, including a particular way of fashioning spearpoints. This common point of reference allows them to meet without hostility: "Ah, I see by your spear that you are of the River People. Seen any deer?".
Suppose one of the groups later encounters a third hunting party, whose weapons look different. Even if the others never intended their spearpoints to "say" anything when they made them, the weapons will transmit a distinct social message to the River People: "Weird spear! Not River People!" and probably "Watch out!".
Thus, as soon as the River People's spearpoints carry a social message, all spearpoints necessarily carry meaning...."

A sense of commonality is the key to harmonious relationships between groups. Mankind still operates under the same rules of engagement. A threat from "outside" - whether real or imagined - engenders a belligerent stance, and preservation of one's social group or "community" is still the overriding instinct that it always was

poir quited..."James Shreeve writes:

"Imagine..lol..hunting parties*meeting""

sadly he dont have..a clue
about what would happen next..

they certainly wouldnt recognise..'strangers'
by the shapes/designs..of their flint wepons

[do you recognise people..by their
fingernail design..or nail polish?]

neighbours mostly recognise*..neighbours
and then each..has their 'own'..area
but each..also has their law

like..if you wound a beast
its yours..regardless of where it dies
[the only way two/parties..would meet is if one
was in mercy dash..[persuit of a kill..gone wrong]

also this..""Seen any deer?".
[my coat of arms..is the head of the deer]
im not happy..about people killing deer

neighbouring tribes..had their own totum/duties
in my case the deer...it is my duty*..to know all about deer
[too much to reveal here]...

but know if some hunter came here
chasing his kill..dear...well
he would know better
than to come..near

"Weird spear!Not River People!"

you would only be able to tell
once you removed..the spear..from the 'kill'

""all spearpoints/necessarily carry meaning...."
sure..but who
goes near a spear
carried by someone..*you dont know?

its a spear dear..

but as usual..in your own words
you are correct

""A sense of commonality is/key
to harmonious relationships..between groups...
..Mankind still operates
under the same rules..of engagement.""

so its best we learn..where our bonds are

""A threat from "outside"]

is a perception..in..*this day and age
only for a needless fear..or bias..or beatup

""whether real or imagined"'

its wrong to say..
'it'..''engenders a belligerent stance,"
as the unseen inner/threat..is worse than any..'outside'/threat'

[a threat
is a threat]

the..""preservation of one's..social group..or "community"

is a divisive deciete

only made..""the overriding instinct that it always was""

..to keep us divided
and in fear

heck..look at the tribalistic..nonsense of sport
their adverts..revert closer to the beast...everyday

seven sold out
from..reporting..real current affairs..
on sunday..with some roghneck..sports/thug..
eating up..near half an hour..*of prime-time..on air tv

as part of a deal
a *franchise agreement..
to broadcast sport/rorts...in lue of news

if were returning back to tribalism..
at least get..*the rules right

OUG,

What do you mean, "if we're returning back to tribalism"? - we never left it in the first place...... it's just a more sophisticated version, that's all.

its not as if tribalism is giving us as much as we think
but those who seek to lord it over us..find tribalism..works

look at our mates like belly..alp tribalist
or the many others like the minester for his party

its divide and conquer
if your sport suits our adgenda..you get funding
but if your a woman cricketer...you dont

the whole party system is pure tribalism
then there are the various mens clubs..or womans asosiations

its about getting the recognition..of your numbers..
so others who know numbers listen to you

how ya think the rsl..or rotery or apex
or footballers or cricketeers or bif business
or the cathaholics..or the white brother hoods..get govt
[thus govt funding]..

to hear their poor me
gimme..$$$..cry..

and get their new stadiums
bailouts..subsidies....gifts..trips
tax advantages..exclusive licence..special powers ..airtime..[voice]

tribalism works
for the chief's..over their indians
simply by them..knowing how to play the trible numbers game

mine is bigger than yours
give it to me

OUG,

Tribalism is very much part of the human paradigm.
There is no relevant symbolic difference between a spearpoint in Paleolithic man's world and a footy scarf in ours.
They are both symbolic and are immediately identifiable in a tribal sense, denoting whether their carriers are one of "us" or one of the "other".

Dear Poirot,

My oldest son is an anthropologist who has lived with two Brazilian peoples, the Canela in northeastern Brazil, and the Xikrin, who live near the Xingu River. Most tribes have a totemic animal which they don't eat. He has gone on hunting trips with the Xikrin. They will invite a member of a neighbouring tribe to go with them. He can eat and bring home the Xikrin's totem, and they can do the same with his. The source of identification also acts as a bonding mechanism.

While he was living with the Xikrin there was an argument about women, and part of the village moved away to set up a new village. That is the subject of his book, "Dualism and its Discontents."

David f.,

That is fascinating.
I often think that if I'd had the chance to do it over again, I would have liked to have pursued anthropology.

Have you been watching "The Human Planet" on ABC (Sunday)? I've encouraged my young son to watch it with me - mainly for him to learn that other human beings in our day and age live "totally" different lives.
It's been a real eye-opener for him seeing indigenous people relying on their knowledge to survive in their natural surroundings. One thing that has stood out is the cooperation between various members of communities and the unquestioned acceptance of gender specific roles, and their assistance with the smooth functioning of the community.

poir

ahh symbolism
yes

indeed

..good point david

this system ensures that the animals
each have a safe area

and the other tribe that preys
upon your totum..protects the one..you in turn..prey upon

we used to have the same system[as such]
where the deer..belonged to the king
living free in the for-rests

i only have the right..to the head
because its body was eaten..by predators
and the head left 'free' on the forest floor
even with its horns intact...that grow out of crowns

the preditors..are usually the law animals
they came here[there]..for a last jugment

my story goes we gave up our body
to hold off a law beast's..judgment

but thats another story

the main lesson..is by the totum system
i protect your food source
you protect mine*

hardly 'tribalism'
..as its been..re-defined today

but such is life
the word/changers are as bad a threat
as the money/changers..yet change has been made..a 'law of life'

anyhow so much more to this topic
so little mortal time left to fix things

im not sure im ready to sacrifice my life
to feed the laws canivore beast's..again

[my other totum is a single ox horn]
from when the law carnivors..held their second meeting
this time there were old carnivors..with them..so then..they took the head

[for the soft brain bits...and the eyeballs
cause the old..*without teeth..couldnt eat me-at]

they also took my tongue
so im reluctant to speak

the other vesion [duel-ism]..
goes that we were burnt on a pire
and..only the single ox horn..didnt go into the flame..

[yet still belongs to god]
hence the flame/name

lol my other totum
is an open book
[yes really]

but im talking up
what approaches a flaming
off/topic..troll

its not..who was on the grassy knoll
but who was in the drain..still it looks like
the servant..[driver]..did it...lol

Poirot

Just have to comment, I too have been watching Human Planet - and discovering just how closeted I am in western middleclass culture. It is wonderful to see people living with their environment as in the natural bridge weavers or the efforts made by a father to get his children to school - a 6 day journey over a frozen river threatened by an early spring thaw.

My thought for Anzac day is that we remember the loss that war creates, to try to think of better ways of settling differences than by destroying innocents - it is the civilians who suffer the most casualties of war. And the solders who return alive but broken in ways that carry through generations.

Yep I agree, always it was the bigger people in government that made a bigger seen on the wars. I am talking about ww1 and onwards. While us little people had to suffer for it. What disgraces me most of all that the bigger people meaning government didn't and still do not take it personally. which us especially the generation before had to suffer for it, why what for?

Talking about a fair quality I think if the government cared or cares about the nation I think they too should have took it personally or take it personally instead of generations before and generation of today? what do you think? That's my opinion in a fair term.

Just enjoyed my bit of tribalism. Followed the baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets. I regard it as a harmless bit of tribalism.

Our tribalism is fostered by myths such as those of religion, nationalism, ideology and racism. One myth is the messianic myth or that of pie in the sky by and by. It denigrates the present in the hope for a glorious future and possibly an updated version of an Edenic past. It creates a history with a sharp beginning and a defined end. It may justify atrocity as a necessary means to attain that glorious end. I believe we emerged from a murky past and gradually developed consciousness. History will end when nobody is around to write it. A great deal of harm has been done by the idea that history has a direction and meaning. Those who believe they are on the right side of history also may believe they are entitled to slaughter those who are on the wrong side of history. Thus the Jews had no place in the tausend Jahre Reich, and the class enemies had no place in the formation of the Marxist classless society.

Germany will not dominate the world, and there will be no classless society. One of the ways to rouse people for war is to say that another entity wants to rule the world.

Jesus is not coming back. If he were the messiah he would have been sufficiently competent to get it right in the first place. The idea of Jesus coming back to fix things is just another version of a cargo-cult mentality. The historicism of Marx is a secular variant.

All we have is the present, and all we can do is to make the best of it in hopes that it will carry a bit into the future.

Rather bleak, davidf.

But spare some compassion for rationalism, secularism, objectivity (lol) etc etc. These shall surely guide us to the promised land?
Verily, I do believe this age surpasses all others in terms of sheer credulousness.

yet again we agree david
jesus aint comming 'back'

but then also..[again]
we disagree

the holy book says
he will 'rule'..from heaven
[this will need a valid system to commune with other realms]

or at a minimum..those claiming to act...
as his representatives on earth..tio act like he did

do as we sen him do..[so to speak]

why are you so against other dimentions
[even science gives them a possability of being]
is it to hard to concieve there is more to life than..'life'

time after time i have explained
how energy cant be created nor destroyed
[thats not me saying it but science]..

we know life comes only from life
living sperm enters a living egg
[science has never made life]

the life energy at physical death..goes somewhere
here is a living being..and here is a dead being
the only difference is the life/force..is gone

we all have a future
those who think death finishes it..might be in for a shock
but those who have thought about it will have bragging rights

and if im wrong
you can..*never say to me

i told you so
i of course will only smile and wink..
and say there is me..as i was

before i sat down
and studied the science
and found much of it fraud

at least try to act supprised
when you die..and find out...your not dead

and things are even better..than i have tried to explain

Dear Squeers,

I don’t think my view is bleak at all. I see more hope in living in the present than in believing in Christian or Marxist pie in the sky by and by. I don’t think there is any promised land. That is more of the messianic nonsense.

I applaud rationalism and secularism. However, we have an irreducible irrational component in us, and I don’t think that is entirely bad. Although their conclusions were stated most rationally I think an irrational component in the psyches of Newton, Darwin and Einstein caused them to reject the received wisdom of their day.

Sometimes irrationality comes masked as rationality. The Marxist class struggle is only the religious battle between good and evil wearing the clothes of rationality. His advent of private property as original sin and the eventual millennium of the classless society is mystical nonsense masquerading as materialism. To characterise an economic system as evil is more mystical nonsense. It is analogous to characterising a predator-prey relationship in an eco-system as evil.

Recognising that the present is what we have is a great start in making the future a little better. The economist Keynes had this to say for long run prophecies: “In the long run we are all dead.”

classic davidian/quote

""Sometimes ir*rationality
comes masked as rationality.""

never a truer word spoken
take mr/ein-stein..[one stone]

who has a theory*..E=mc2

energy
equals
[mass..times the speed of light]
..times the speed of light

ie a really big *number
but as useless..as teats on a bull

but mixed with the lies
and deceptions

we get masses of truth..

[re/energy]

energy can*t be created...!
nor destroyed..!

but einstein
can claim lol
..*to multiply a weight unit
with a distance unit..

to make lol
an energy unit

how clever are you david?

YOU WANT MORE SCIENCE?

how about presure..in a container
you got taught that the 'presure'
is caused

*by particles BOUNCING off the walls

ie pure hokkum..!

[what really is happening
is at the atomin level...

right at the place
where an atom..has its orbiting electron..or electrons

squash in more air molicules
and their electron orbit planes
are forced to interact...nearly touch*

but in more..they push each others
orbiting electrons
..into lower orbital planes..

[and do this..to enough of them]
you get a change of state...

you can do the same with cooling..!

but heat it..or release the presure
the electrons/neutrons..etc..*

*RESUME their normal orbit..arround the atom
and become the air constituants..etc

THAT they were
*before we began these..*NEW/revealation's..

thats what really happens..!

...i have put up
three BASIC..delusional..ERRORS of science

there are hundreds of others..
but correct just THESE 3

LOL..

*if you can

[3 seals broken]

davidf:
"I don’t think my view is bleak at all. I see more hope in living in the present than in believing in Christian or Marxist pie in the sky by and by. I don’t think there is any promised land. That is more of the messianic nonsense".
But you believe in the Enlightenment do you not?

Marx didn't believe in pie in the sky nor original sin nor evil as a primal force either, and neither do I.
Messianism is interesting but so far as I know Marx never even used it even by analogy. He certainly never believed in any form of Messianism, nor utopia. These are just words you use to parody a thinker you but poorly understand; this statement is self-evident and based on your words.
Of course some post-Marxist thinkers have used messianism, 'somewhat'--Horkheimer, Adorno and Benjamin to name a few. This was nothing literal of course, but more in the way of their concern that even if a better human world could be achieved, there would be no redemption for past sins, most notably for them, the Holocaust.
I used the word "evil" for our economic system, but then you've used it several times to attack Marx and I don't think either of us meant it in any literal sense.
What disturbs me about rationalism is its complacency, which tends to support the status quo in its moral insensibility. This is necessary and even admirable in the lab, but since rationalism in its various garb is today setting itself up as an anti-doctrine, its faux-doctrine translates as cold-blooded objectivity, resignation and ultimately conservatism: "Recognising that the present is what we have is a great start in making the future a little better".
With respect, this is nothing but rationalisation, puerile subservience to a morally indefensible state of affairs.
“In the long run we are all dead.” True, but at the moment we're alive and this amounts to abnegation of responsibility!

Dear Squeers,

I think I understand well enough to recognise crap for what it is.

David f.,

Keynes also had other things to say while speculating on the chances of capitalism delivering an equitable outcome.

During the Depression he wrote that in time we'd: "once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful....But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice, and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still...."

It won't be long before his "hundred years" are up - and I see no sign that capitalism is moving away from avarice and usury as the cornerstones of its ascendancy.

Dear Poirot,

Keynes made a valid critique of capitalism. We can hope and work for something better than capitalism.

However, I don't believe we can look to anything better from Marxism. One does not have to parody Marx. The bigot condemns himself in his own words. "On the Jewish Question" concludes:

"The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism." That is proto-Nazi talk. "The Jews control society." is vile antisemitism.

He also prescribed a totalitarian society. In the Manifesto Marx advocated 10 points. Most of them would produce tyranny. 6 is especially pernicious.

6.Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

There goes the right to publish what the state doesn't want you to publish. The followers of Marx produced a number of totalitarian tyrannies and murdered possibly 100,000,000 people.

However, my recognition of Marx for the bigot that he was and the sheer nastiness of what his followers produced according to his prescription is not in any way a defense of capitalism.

Marxism is worse, but there certainly can be something better.

Marxism is worse than capitalism. I want something better.

Poirot,
great quote!

davidf,
Try to understand that Marxism is an intellectual tradition, a critique of capitalism and not an alternative to it.
Marx recognised that capitalism could not be reformed but would have to be overthrown. I agree with him, though I think this could be done by peaceful means, a simple wealth cap for instance would be a start. Capitalism is a formula for endless growth in a closed system, period. Swedish capitalism is no more sustainable that the ethically disgusting US version. Democratic socialism was only ever a temporary reform facilitated by Keynes et al and paid for by consumerism, permanent war economies and credit.
Capitalism is today in desperate straights and production of commodities within a spectrum of western satiaty is pathologically driving globalisation--growth, conversion and development of new markets in the increasingly desperate attempt to distil a profit. Marx predicted it all.
Anyone who thinks capitalism can or will be reformed is deluded.

I listened to a good example of scientistic complicity the other day on the Science Show. Withal its doomsaying and talk of innovation, not a word about simply cutting consumption--the obvious way to husband resources and cut emissions. Because that would negatively affect economic growth, and CAPITALISM MUST GROW!
No, scientific innovation to address these issues will be paid for "via" consumption and via population growth (offshore) and infrastructure, and the rape of the planet and depletion of natural resources, until the capital (now dodgy credit) finally runs out and the whole thing collapses, leaving the chosen ones (probably the wealthy) to start again in a somewhat shabby and worse-for-wear and beyond redemption garden of eden.

davidf,

I didn't address your other calumnies above because I've done so before. Marx was not an anti-Semite and either from ignorance, your own bigotry or pure shamelessness, you quote and paraphrase him out of context.

Calumnies? I quoted the old bigot accorately. I cited the Marxist record accurately. He was a horrible antisemite. Not only in his essay, "On the Jewish Question" but there are many other documented instances. Sander L. Gilman in his book, "Jewish Self-Hatred" documents Marx's bigotry. I know you are besotten with his ideas, but that does not deny his bigotry.

He also favoured some nations over other nations according to what progress they had made in his scheme of history. He favoured the Russians over the Poles, and the Turks over the Greeks. His bigotry was not confined to Jews.

His followers have produced a number of tyrannies.

To say he was not an antisemite goes against the evidence that he was.

Dear Squeers,

You wrote: "Marx was not an anti-Semite and either from ignorance, your own bigotry or pure shamelessness, you quote and paraphrase him out of context."

In our arguments I have not in any way attacked you as a person. However, in referring to my "bigotry and shamelessness" you have attacked me as a person.

I don't wish to engage further with you.

davidf,
given that Marx and Marxism have been victim to a decades-long ideological campaign against them in the west, you would have no trouble finding both academic and popular texts in support of your condemnations. The humanities, like the sciences, are generally stooge to the state.
As I've attempted to explain to you before, while no doubt Marx is a bigot in the PC context of our "enlightened" times, in the context of his own day he merely used the standard figurative language at his disposal in his criticism. Thus the Jew and Jewishness were the time-honoured tropes used to deplore matters of fiscal degeneracy.

"He also favoured some nations over other nations according to what progress they had made in his scheme of history. He favoured the Russians over the Poles, and the Turks over the Greeks. His bigotry was not confined to Jews".

This is priceless! He certainly didn't in the sense of attributing racial superiority--or promulgating eugenics--although that "was" the rationale propagated by many western naturalists of the day--it was called "science" and a great many of your own benighted nation still think it's rigorous today! Read Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man".
In any case wealthy nations still observe an international hierarchy by allowing a third of the world's nations to languish in poverty and starvation--nay, they even exploit them for their own luxury and call it philanthropy! And all while we wax lyrical about human rights. It some humans have more rights than others--this is where the concepts national borders and patriotism come in handy.

My saying, "Marx was not an anti-Semite and either from ignorance, your own bigotry or pure shamelessness, you quote and paraphrase him out of context", does not constitute an attack on your person, but is a reasonable surmise based on evidence out of your own mouth. How else should I account for your misrepresentations than by reference to at least one of those influences on your rhetoric?

However, if you choose to take offence rather than consider my criticism, that's your privilege.

I think we have here a fairly good example of symbolism giving rise to an ideological "separateness".

David, you branched off at the top of page nine and began to highlight ideas and movements that you found unacceptable. Squeers and I did the same thing in our criticism of capitalism.
You also baited Squeers, knowing from past confrontations that he would react predictably to your suggestions and inferences.

This is the way of man. He calculates reactions based on his own actions and words - and he predicts future outcomes based on prior experience.

In order for mankind to overcome his 'us" and "them" attitude he would have to jettison his prejudices upon the receipt of each new challenge - begin with a "fresh-slate" approach every time.

A highly unlikely eventuality.

You're a shrewd observer, Poirot and quite correct, indeed we all anticipate responses when formulating our polemics. We're all drearily predictable and protective of our prejudice. I wonder if it's possible to break through and arrive at a philosophy that's true and just in itself and for all seasons. I doubt it, and so we settle for pragmatism, which then cedes to expedience and rationale for a host of sins.
So we need an enlightened but practical philosophy tailored to the circumstances but which maintains a few non-negotiable ethics. Something like the American Constitution, only one whose clauses we actually observe.
We consign all such enlightened deliberations and constraints to the logic of the market.

i barely know marx..or his ism's
but do know he hated all religeos beliefs
a true equal opperuinity biggot..but i cant comment on stuff i have no knowing about..

lennon i think hated poles
i seem to recall bolchovics hated xtians
i recall a death march that killed 25 million christians
[but wether it was natzies or bolchovics or lennonists or marxists
again its not for me to declare..earlier david posted some huge number of dead
""murdered possibly 100,000,000 people.""

the way he goes on..you would think they were all jew
[northern jews...not sematic jews..
who dont have any standing..even in their own holy-lands]

yet the black jews
are more despised by the blue eyed [northern]jews

so let david clarify
clearly he dont know science

anyhow squeers said

""Anyone who thinks capitalism
can or will be reformed is deluded.""

under its own laws...letting them go bust
it could work
but what with..this ongoing..communistic bailout..
in usa..lol...yep..i guess your right

alaso support this
""scientistic complicity...With all its doomsaying
and talk of innovation,..not a word about simply cutting consumption""

add in lack of results in the big claims

nixon said cancer cure in his term
since then 65 BILLION..in govt funding..and nothing

or the underLYING fraud of many of its base principles
[see previous QUESTIONS to david]

""No,scientific innovation to address these issues
will be paid for "via" consumption and via population growth (offshore) and infrastructure,""

AND GOVT MONEY..!
dont forget govt largess
where capitalism..knows better
investing in real things..not delusional spin
[to wit the lie of the global hollow-cost..no capitalist
..dumb enough..to swallow that spin..but only too happy for govt tax to buld it..then lobby for privatising its proffits

just like ge..and nuke power
or nasa...or dna sequencing and monsanto

""the rape of the planet
and depletion of natural resources,
until the capital (now dodgy credit) finally runs out""

yes no wonder david didnt like where you were going

""redemption""
no lovers of theft
..dont go to heaven

nor those loving money..or greed..ursury
or biggots/haters/racists...nope/nope/nope..

not even a pope

David f.,

I wonder if, even with the differences expressed by Squeers and yourself (and me), that we should not take this opportunity to overcome our human penchant for dividing ourselves from each other and productive discourse.

Here's the perfect opportunity to challenge exactly that human behaviour which separates us and leads to enmity.

In highlighting our antipathies to this or that movement or belief, we are in effect ideologically marking our territory - drawing a line around our viewpoint and separating ourselves from the "other".

It is a very human thing to do - it's what mankind has always done, both with rhetoric and with action.

I wonder what it would take for mankind to move beyond this behaviour....because if he is not capable of such an adjustment there is little hope for an end to war.

you talk sense pure
but some have closed minds
have fixed thoughts..they would rather die
than admit the dont know..or worse admit..they believed the lie

good thing deebait is done by opposing parties
all to often..those on the same side are more divided

anyhow again fraud science raised its head last night
but to try to point that our..or worse correct it
is floging a dead horse

as i fear the moderator
has left the room

couldnt face the thought
that fruited from his one anz thought

left without a zac
all the right answers
but not asking..the right question's
for the wisdom of pre digested thought..to supply a reply

Dear Poirot,

I appreciate your attempt at peacemaking. You wrote: “Here's the perfect opportunity to challenge exactly that human behaviour which separates us and leads to enmity.”

Better not to have enemies and live in peace. Hopefully we can live in peace with our enenies. One way is by being separate. Sometimes it is impossible to avoid confrontation. Then one must either fight or find some way to avoid fighting. That is not the case here.

Squeers maintains that Marx was not an antisemite. We have both read "On the Jewish Question" which Marx wrote. I don't see how one can deny the antisemitism of the man who wrote it. Yet Squeers does. I see no point in further discussion of the matter.

I object to being characterised as having bigotry. I don't want to call names in return, get an apology or get more explanation from Squeers justifying his comments. I just want to end my part of the discussion. That is what I did. It is also bigotry to deny prejudice when it exists.

I realise that Squeers is frustrated when he called names. How could someone see things so differently from the way he does? Yet I do. How could someone see things so differently from the way I do? Yet he does.

I would rather have Squeers as a friend. However, I accept that I probably cannot.

Sure we have differences. I no longer wish to explore that particular difference or discuss it since I don’t see that it can be resolved or that it has to be resolved.

I see hope for the end of war in avoiding conflict. Let us live in peace with those with whom we disagree. Let us avoid discussion where there is little chance for agreement or necessity for agreement. I hate the slanging matches in the Australian Parliament.

You mentioned rhetoric or action. I don’t want to produce more rhetoric. The only action I want is to remove myself from this conflict. I prefer to do other things with my time.

I wish all in this discussion well.

davidf,
I apologise for giving offence. I was rather blunt. I agree that it seems futile arguing these points as in any case the matter could not possibly be resolved one way or the other in the space allotted here or the time available probably to either of us. I only urge that antisemitism is a relative term in history and has degrees of virulence at any time.
I hope we can continue to discuss other subjects in future as I value and mostly agree with the things you say.

David f.,

I accept that you do not relish being characterised other than you see yourself.

You complained that Squeers attacked you as a person and , therefore, you had no further wish to engage with him further.

I noted in preceding posts, however, that you had no compunction in characterising Marx in terms which you object being turned upon yourself.

"....my recognition of Marx for the bigot he was..."

"He was a horrible anti-Semite."

"His bigotry was not confined to the Jews."

Do you believe we should then employ a different principle for those at an historical remove - or should we employ "one" principle to govern all discourse where defining someone's character in an unfavourable manner is likely to lead to enmity?

i blog to pass the time
before finding 'blogging'..i was an activist
before that i read books...[while listening to radio..and tv..at the same time]

i love science..knowledge..
when i found much that pases as science was fraud
and activism [protes]..dont work..and media was full of spin.lies

i began reading the so called holy texts
[of all the tribes]...soon found that was filled with lies as well

no doudt david has walked a simular path
but not come to the same conclusions

so im wondering why we bother to post
is it to make some point...debait that we believe
express..or impress..

in short im confused
about just what others are doing here

what is belief..that is faulse
or what is belief..that is in a fixed mind
or is stuck in the past glories..or past misseries

we can all agree marx and lennon and hitler
pol pot/idi amin/and obami bin larden are vile
that they diss-credit anything they claimed to believe in

just as blind deaf and dumb religeonists make dumb wars
when carefull reading of them reveals they were trying to bring peace

we get the same delusions..in armed forces
suggest to them that they are the problem
they say..but were only killing raping
murdering bombing civilians..killing kids

..destroying towns cities
whole civilisations..
to bring peace

its funny how david was just fine
argueing about that nasty marxism
but when i revealed the ABSURDITY*..of

energy=mass[weight]..times the speed of light
[times the speed of light]..to wit a enegy unit is what
a jule..a horse-power..a watt..in short its a loose thing[spin]
sold to ignorants

as a mantra..to hypnotize the great unwashed..
into taking their next mercury laced vacination
that will dumb them down..[or make them even more docile]

so the war monger-als
can make more war

murder the next...'jew'
be they arab..or smokers..or whatever
you either say all war is wrong..or take the blue pill

if you take the ignorant pill
its hard to see what good posting lies can do..to end the wrongs

we are all children'of the one god
live with.it..or prove those lot..arnt gods own..neither

OUG:

"we can all agree marx and lennon and hitler
pol pot/idi amin/and obami bin larden are vile
that they diss-credit anything they claimed to believe in"

OUG,
I don't agree. I fail to see how you can associate Marx and John Lennon with the others.

And OUG,
I wish you would substantiate the claims that you insist with such conviction. I'm still waiting for a single thread of logic or shred of evidence that might make your religious claims, for instance, look like more than eccentricity.

On science, I don't accuse it of deliberate fraud, only of naive complicity in the maintenance of the status quo, the same fault I find with religion and indeed all the institutions.

Dear davidf,

A question that I think worth reflecting on is why our states act to take us to war when the often vast majority of us would wish otherwise.

While cries of 'the elite or powerful always act against the wishes of the majority' might be relevant in dictatorships I would have thought it much less so in democracies such as ours.

Why do we continue to elect people who are prepared to allow, order, encourage, our state do things we personally would be repelled by?

Locking children behind razor wire? Enforcing brutal sanction regimes against populations. Bombing residential compounds of leaders and killing 'grandchildren'? Torture? Assassinations?

You asked “Do some of us really want war to give meaning to our lives? How many wars have our leaders deliberately put us into? Can we act rationally to attack the causes of war? Do we want to?”

An examination of the relationship between the Individual and the State might yield some answers. Why is the killing of an unarmed man lawful when done by an instrument of the State that derives its legitimacy from our support, but considered evil by us all when done by an individual?

What mechanism is at play that allows us to be happy, consciously or sub-consciously, abrogating such power?

squeers
i loved john as much as i possably could
he was my working class hero
but then what with the joko

well nough sad

and the marx brothers mate their just sick
beating up the fat bald guy..

nope mate we will have to agree to diss-agree
anyhow of the names i put up..most of them you must agree with

we will agree to diss agree on marks and lemon

on the other thing
re god being real...mate i knew there was no god for over 30 years
then things happend..wierd things but good things..and i began looking
soon saw good in everything

met god believers in many strange places
but the kicker was getting speared by a drugged out and drunk dude
and comming away with only a blister on my left hip

that scabbed up and fell off in two days

a full blown charge with a spear
[on good friday..2002]

my only though was at last this insanity [life]
is over..closed my eyes..threw up my hands[didnt want them speared]
and waited to open my eyes..to frontup to god in person

[ie put love into my heart]
loved the guy spearing me and then nothing
i opend my eyes..holding the spear..and the guy running away like the devil was on his tail screaming[he thought he had killed me

so to the two people what witnessed it
it should be on the ol parlement security cams

anyhow
i know god is real
couldnt care less what others chose to believe

and i still dont talk about the 'wierd stuff'
thats between him an me

Dear Poirot,

We are discussing things with each other. In discussing things with each other I believe we should maintain civility and not attack the other person as a person no matter how much we object to that person’s ideas if we want to keep the conversation going. That does not apply to public or historical figures we discuss. I think Marx was a vile bigot. Whatever he was, like Hitler, he is dead. whatever I say can’t hurt him. Yes, I think there is a great of difference in talking to a living person and trying to maintain a civil discourse with that person and talking about a historical or public personage. Both Marx and Hitler are dead, and both to my way of thinking cast a malevolent presence over the world.

Some revere Marx, and some revere Hitler. Why should I hide my feelings about either? Expressing my feelings about either may lead to enmity. If that risks enmity sobeit.

I am specifically concerned in being mutually civil with the person with whom I am holding a conversation.

Dear Squeers,

Although I didn’t ask for it I greatly appreciate your post of 4 May 2011 11:05:26 AM

Technically Marx was a Jew hater, but not an antisemite. Antisemitism was a word coined in the late 19th century in Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred"), and that has been its normal use since then. Marx wrote his essay "On the Jewish Question" in 1843 predating the invention of the word.

Probably oug meant V. I. Lenin not John Lennon. I think it is his idiosyncratic spelling.

I do not feel comfortable discussing anti-Semitism on an olo list. However, I would be willing to discuss the matter with Poirot and you offline. I think it is possible to have a reasonable discussion with both of you. I don’t think it possible to have a reasonable conversation w some people on the list.

OUG,
Marx was a philosopher-sociologist-political economist who offered a compelling critique of the capitalist system that is more relevant now than it was then; he dreamed of a better, fairer world. I think he overestimated the human drive for fulfilment. It seems we're mostly lambs and scavengers. Marx didn't kill anyone, willingly lived a miserable life for his convictions and has lived on in infamous infamy ever since. He doesn't belong in that company any more than Lennon does.

Thanks for telling me a bit more about your life and experience, and I respect your conviction however weird the premises. I've had some "weird" experiences of my own, as I suspect most people do. There's no doubt this rationalist age inhibits people from revealing the weird stuff for fear of ridicule. So good on you for leaving the closet, unfortunately it doesn't help the rest of us.

davidf,
I'm aware OUG meant Lenin.
You utter Marx's name in the same breath as Hitler's three times in your last. I only wish Marx was here to put you in your place, though I doubt he'd bother. Please feel free to demonise Marx to your heart's content on OLO, but unless I see some solid argument or evidence behind your vitriol I shall be as brutal with you as you are with him--though I shall endeavour to be just.

csteele,
you make some excellent points. I think the reason the State is able to get away with actions that do not have majority support is because they are kept as sacred cows. The military is the perfect example; it is so shrouded in medals, machismo, ceremony, solemnity and allround bullsh!t that it's tantamount to blasphemy to utter a word in dissent. I was struck by the fact that Bin Laden was "dead" or "deceased" rather than "killed" or "summarily executed", and that this was an "accomplishment". But any doubts I had were dispelled by the comforting images of the celebrants at ground zero.

Dear csteele,

I think there is one form of government in the world. No single person can rule alone, and no mechanism can insure that the masses of people control their government. All governments are oligarchies. What differs is how the oligarchy is formed. In the capitalistic democracies the oligarchies are generally formed by the moneyed who finance the election. Then the legislatures generally do their bidding.

In Australia corporate money goes to both Labor and Liberal Parties. It is not given to express conviction for the policies of either but to gain access. Approximately 80% of the bills passed by the legislature are backed by both parties. There are some variants. The Catholic Church has more influence in the Libs due to Abbott’s connection with Cardinal Pell. The labor union oligarchy (not to be confused with the workers) has more influence in Labor.

There is a significant difference between the US and Australia. Due to party discipline Labor and Liberal vote as a bloc. In the US politicians are not compelled to follow the dictates of their party. In Australia the corporations give directly to the party. In the US the corporations give directly to the individual candidates. In Australia they are for sale wholesale – in the US retail.

In Fascist states the oligarchies consist of influential party members, industrialists and land owners.

In Marxist states the oligarchies consist of influential party members.

In Libya apparently the oligarchy has consisted of the most influential members of Gaddafi’s tribe.

In Iran the oligarchy is composed of the most influential Shiite clergy.

In Israel the parties are financed much as they are in the USA and Australia, and the oligarchy is similar.

It doesn’t matter what the people want. The wishes of the respective oligarchies are what count.

Dear Squeers,

I coupled Hitler and Marx because apparently Poirot thought I wasn't giving sufficient respect to the memory of Marx. Does that also apply to Hitler? Any historical figure should be fair game.

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/tikkuns-spiritual-response-to-the-assassination-of-osama-bin-laden is a site which comments on the rejoicing at the assassination of bin Laden.

David f.,

Excuse me if I'm somewhat bemused by your logic on the subject of personal criticism.

This is pertinent to the thread subject as well as it demonstrates a splendid example of why mankind is seemingly incapable of overcoming his indignation to rise above his animus.

In a situation where two or more parties are expressing views, your belief seems to be that any one party should be permitted the luxury to inflict provocation at will - as long as it doesn't include personal insults.

Knowing that people identify with their beliefs and those of their mentors - in effect taking psychological ownership of these entities - it seems that such a willful barrage of provocation is designed to evoke an act of hostility in response.

Provocation comes in many forms, and is not restricted to the realm of personal insult to an individual or group.

To deliberately set out to provoke an outburst, and then to display indignation at the predictable response does seem a trite disingenuous.

Dear Poirot,

You have an interesting use of the word provocation. I think any belief is fair game, and any idea is fair game. I don't think of that as provocation. Apparently you do.

I don't think any person that you are dealing with is not fair game. People should be respected. Their ideas need not be respected.

To me Marx is one of the monsters of history. His followers murdered more people than the followers of Hitler.

As far as I can see the Marxist murders were as much the product of his ideas as the Hitler murders were of his ideas.

I don't see why the Marxist victims can't be mourned and remembered as the victims of Hitler are. I don't see why Hitler should be condemned for his murders and Marx be revered.

Do you see that as provocation?

David f,

My idea of provocation is someone deliberately rattling someone else's cage to incite hostility.

How do you separate a person from their ideas?
Without their ideas, what are they?

Btw - "genuine" respect is usually earned.

Dear davidf,

Forgive me but I'm not buying it, well not totally anyway. Work Choices played a big part in getting rid of the Howard government undoubtedly against the wishes of the monied classes and the corporations.

The final words in my last post should probably read 'abrogating responsibility' rather than power.

What is happening when we give our governments permission to act in a manner we would not condone of ourselves? I can not accept the blame lies with the 'oligarchs' especially in a country like ours. 

The phrase all care and no responsibility comes to mind. Is it because governments allow the parking of individual responsibility?

I am confident enough in my fellow Australians to think that if an Afghan refugee family were to lob up in most communities they would be looked after without resorting to a years detention behind razorwire. I'm equally sure that the majority of them want mandatory detention to remain a government policy.

Is the secret ballotbox a contributing factor. Are our more basic instincts prevailing when we vote unscrutinized? What system might we employ to hold us more accountable individually?

Dear Squeers, 

In a sense I agree but they are our sacred cows we are keeping. The medals and Anzac day parades do not speak to the victims rather they adorn the men we are prepared to send to do our killing. In thanking them for their 'sacrifices' we are including the fact we have asked them to become a little less human by nurturing a willingness to kill. Do we need a return to a citizen army?

Dear Poirot,

What ideas, concepts or viewpoints should not be discussed or examined? What ideas do you think should be free from being questioned or even attacked?

We can't separate people from their ideas. Peoples' feelings may be hurt if their ideas are attacked. Yet if we set certain ideas off limits it would be generally be those in power who would set the limits. It would be a way to preserve the status quo.

It is true. There will be people who will deliberately provoke by voicing ideas that some will find objectionable or attacking ideas that most people accept. You cannot shut those people up without also shutting up people who voice ideas that some will find objectionable or attack ideas that most people accept because they want to expose a wrong, feel certain things must be said or for any other legitimate reason. Who is to decide what kind of speech is provocative? The powers that be can limit speech by saying that certain speech is harmful to social order or provocative. To give government or any subset of society that power is to allow them to limit speech that will point out wrong.

Free speech is risky. People may follow a plausible tyrant or a provocateur. Yet without free speech tyranny is certain. I use the criterion that one should not use speech that abuses the person you are addressing, but that no belief or idea should be off limits. We can also use common sense. I will not use certain vulgar words if I feel that the person I am speaking to will object to those words. I am not going up to a person and hammer at them because they have religious beliefs that I don't agree with. However, if someone comes to my door as a Jehovah's Witness did today trying to push their beliefs on me their beliefs become fair game. What criteria do you use to decide what speech or expressions are acceptable?

Dear csteele,

The oligarchies and the warmongers don't always win. However, the oligarchies do have more power than the general public. The more democratic a country is the more chance there is of limiting the power of the oligarchies. However, there is no way of assuring the best decisions are made. Sometimes the general public may make a worse decision than the oligarchy would have made.

One mechanism to compensate for bad decisions is to allow dissent. In the case of war democratic countries allow conscientious objection. With free speech people can still speak against a decision after it has been made in order to reverse it.

We don’t abrogate power and responsibiity since we don’t have it in the first place. The fact is that almost all governments have a monopoly on violence and power. Unless there is a breakdown we generally don’t have private armies or militias. All we can do is try to limit the power of government. The US Constitution was designed to give the people power through their representatives to decide on war by giving Congress the power to declare war. The result has been that almost all wars by the US have been undeclared.

I am against automatic detention. The US and Canada do without such centres, and both countries have a much higher proportion of people who have entered the country without going through any immigration formalities. I am not sure the majority of the country would be for such centres if there was a referendum on the matter.

I think the secret ballot is a great thing. Without it people can suffer penalties for voting in a way the powers-that-be disapprove.

I took a petition generated by Andrew Bartlett that asked for discussion and debate in parliament before the armed forces would be authorised for combat to a men’s club I belonged to. Nobody would sign it. Some said it was the government’s job to decide on such matters. Others agreed but would not sign. They did not want to put their names to it.

david i value your inputs/wisdoms
freespeach does indeed compensate
for the lack of an actual choice..[re voting]

when i voted..i voted blindly..mostly for people i have never met
on a short blurb they put in the local paper..or the party

but as both parties develop the same loyalties to bid money
and advised by the same corrupted public service..
who we dont get to pick...

who tell govt whats what..usually via lying to them..
or restrixcting their info..[see latest post here]
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4443&page=0

where im now convinced obama's witness of osama's look alikes exicution...was photo shopped..in live time..[think michael jorden playing with himself]

as was done to george busche before him
[he was so certain..it seems the way security agencies get them onside]

in short i feel we need to sepperate powers
pm's presidents..gov generals..should oversee
not make decisions..guided by a skeptical privey council..[thats why they arnt in the constitution]

anyhow i need the wisdom of posters
need to hear the contrasting facts

i know there was a murdering scccccum bag in russia by his works
wether it was lenin..or marx...isnt as important as knowing..
whoever done it..was advised*..to do it

[and they
*never get held to account]

its THEM..that is the only real and present danger
only by removing their acces to the true powers

[and armed forces/police/judges]
....can things ever..*hope to change

anyhow im not concerned with the acts of men
im more intrested in knowing..and making known..the only truth
[the love grace mercy...GOOD of god]

that im forced to reveal
the insanity of our leaders advisers
is the only way i can see..to end their GENOCIDING

the human race..
that god for some reason loves
well...im only..trying to serve him

it would be so much easier to hate
but my god is loveing..man
what-else to do?

csteele,
the world has changed in 100 years.
ANZAC Day is part of a boom industry that includes tourism such as annual pilgrimages to Gallipoli Cove and Kakoda; "reel" patriotism as the heroics of the Hollywood treatment; patriotism as mardi gras on Australia Day; video and online gaming, wherein killing is indulged interractively in all its gory glory; war as real-life make-believe for all ages in the form of "skirmish"--the grand finale of the so-called STRENGTH programme delivered by Scripture Union to its naive acolytes in State schools; state funerals on the odd occasion a soldier is killed (hundreds die in industrial accidents every year).

What all this lurid patriotism does, and is meant to do, is put the whole military/defence spectrum at a remove from the ostensible accountability of democratic government.
It has nothing to do with oligarchy and everything to to with emotional manipulation of the masses. All this emotional investment is simultaneously the great allure of the military--the proving ground for "real" men.

War has been professionalised, like the Olympics, and you have to be a real-life GI Joe, and on heart, to play.

Dear Squeers,

I agree with your description of ANZAC day. It is not an expression coming spontaneously from the masses. It is emotional manipulation of the masses. This emotional manipulation has been orchestrated by an oligarchy consisting of members of the media, the political class, the churches and the media. There is a basic oligarchy. However, for particular tasks various subgroups of the hierarchy are active.

David f.,

For this whole thread I've been mindful of the human predisposition to belligerence - and it's interesting even just examining our tactics during debate.

I believe in free speech - and you're right, we can't separate people from their ideas - they come wrapped in the same package. So how does man overcome a situation where he is moved to hostility, not only by physical threat, but also by ideological imperatives?

Words and their meanings are intellectual and psychological weapons for us to fashion at will. Like literal weapons, their composition and symbolism give rise to varying degrees of effectiveness and, more importantly, the style of their exposition has great resonance upon the ensuing response.

It's not only the content of a discussion that is important, but also the approach chosen by the parties involved that shapes the emotional tenor of the exchange.

Poirot,
I agree that we can't and shouldn't separate people from their ideas, but Marx's ideas have been systematically distorted, abused, misunderstood and misrepresented since they were conceived.

davidf,
what you're describing seems rather attenuated and unconscious a phenomena to me to be described as "oligarchy". I think a much more accurate and usefully self-reflective description is "hegemony":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

Dear Poirot,

Your post was interesting. You wrote: "So how does man overcome a situation where he is moved to hostility, not only by physical threat, but also by ideological imperatives?"

It is unreal not to acknowledge feelings of hostility. However, we can try to consider the other person by expressing our feelings while trying to keep the hurt to a minimum.

Yesterday a JW came to my door. When I disagreed with him he said, "I did not come here to argue." He came to promote his ideas. However, the price of promoting your ideas is to allow those who differ with them to argue with you.

You said, "overcome the situation." I don't agree that we have to overcome the situation. We can try to it keep under control and minimise the harm done,but no encounter where people differ can be made pain free.

Maybe I am reading you wrongly. What do you mean by 'overcome the situation?"

Davidf.,

By "overcoming the situation" I mean the human leaning or condition that drives us to hostile actions - to a warlike attitude.

It seems innate that we gravitate to a warlike stance when certain conditions prevail.
In fact, our ever developing intelligence has been enhanced by our constant interactions - peaceful and hostile - with other groupings of humans over the millenia.

It's just that I can't envisage a human condition where belligerence could be done away with. I think it's a fundamental behaviour.

Btw, I used to try and pick the brains of JW's when I was younger, but now I simply tell them I'm not interested and wish them well (while slowly edging the door shut) - but, of course, that is not engagement - it's the opposite.

im unsure the value...is aptly represented with the words argue

david/quote..""the price of promoting your ideas
is to allow those who differ with them to *argue with you.""

[i..too have had many debaits with jw]
i dont argue with them
[i realise they are fixed in their beliefs
i use them more to test my own beliefs]

and had many a good half hour with a few of them

its about seeing it not as a conflict
but an oppertuinity

to get to know...an other aspect
of the one good giving us all our lives

[maybe it's just cause i get so few visiters]
but here they come...and here we go again

[what we hate in others
we often hate within ourselves]
i found i love the good[god]..within me
thus find it easy to love the good [god]..within them

david said.."You said, "overcome the situation."
I don't agree that we have to overcome the situation.""

now there i see how it must be hard for you
[the jw..is only trying to do what they think
is best for you...[they ask for nothing..come only to give you a leaklet]..thinking that will help us save our souls

you must know..these deciples of the christ
really believe..only they are the chosen
just as your people believe the same

before they asumed the frail faul doctrine errantly
you must recall jesus was claimed to be of the jew
[teqniclly he is the saviour/messiah..of the jew]

these people
if they knew you to be you
would love you all the more

but instead..you really believe
these called by the nazereene
that you...""We"
""can try to it keep under control
and minimise the harm done,""

but david
will the mesiah only say what we expect him to say/do

or comes he to bring a change..
to change what we 'man..have been unable to do
thus need his help doing..

what?

""but no encounter where people differ can be made pain free.""

WISE words to live by

""no encounter
where people differ
can be made pain free""

thinking of a certain messiah
who came to his own..who knew him not

thus even his own rejected him
think back to the stiff necked people of old

so fixed in their rituals/rites..status..
that EVEN their own messiah
couldnt even get them to eat..
[without the ritual
..of washing their mitts..[hands]

refusing to eat..but his deciples didnt know that law
thus made it..AS IF..feeding 4000/5000..'all they wanted'
was a mirror-call..because none 'wanted' to eat..without the
SACRED HANDWASH RITUAL...even doing it twice

and his new converts missed it alltiogether
hey look a mirracle...lol...[as revealed by their eating of the shew-bread in the temple]..where the messia revealed

'its not what man puts in his mouth
which makes him unclean..but that which comes forth from 'it'

and still those
claiming the christ
DONT know his own people...

[who refused to eat..without the "ritual'
that should read rit-u-'EL']..so fixed
was their own love of rite/ritual

""Maybe I am reading you wrongly.""

its not for you to say

[how goes that parrable
stick..in one eye
plank in the other?]

"" What do you mean by
'overcome the situation?"

know your a leader of men
at least help those decieved by the darkones
to know what the living loving messiah came here to do

ie unite our fathers house
to bring the dived sects..back under the one roof

to reveal the lie of jud-gment day
and reserction day

[and that he died...let alone died..for us to sin]

to teach that god is not man..yet is IN all men
that some critters have higher levels of god awarness..[thus un-kosha]
and so much more..that he is all living..all loving..all grace..all mercy

and love
isnt as high a quality as
grace mercy charity...doing good..WORKS
not bad thoughts...honouring his good with our lips
not having passion..to do as we know our father does..for even the least

Dear davidf and Squeers,

I am going to have to disagree with you both.

Anyone walking toward the Shrine through the pre-dawn streets of South Melbourne on an ANZAC day may well get a sense of shared purpose but hardly one of triumphalism. It is predominately a pilgrimage of remembrance though I do grant there is less evidence of a recognition of the futility of war as the years progress.

I am however going to submit that the glorifying and 'medalling' of our armed forces is in some ways a measure designed to assuage our guilt. In a democratic society we are collectively responsible for, to put it crudely, brainwashing our servicemen and women and sending them off to invade and kill the citizens of another country.

The one thing I will grant Howard was his frankness in often telling us the real reason for our involvement in overseas conflicts, because in was in 'Australia's best interest'. This was never more starkly displayed than the deployment of 450 Australian troops in early 2005 to the Al Muthanna province in Iraq to guard Japanese engineers left vulnerable by the imminent withdrawal of supporting Dutch troops.

Cont..

Cont..

Howard's overarching reason was “there was a real possibility that the Japanese could no longer remain there, and that would have been a very serious blow to the Coalition effort.” but he was happy to acknowledge “The Japanese element of this is quite crucial because Japan is a major regional partner.” The Financial Review speculated at the time that Howard's visit to Japan scheduled for two months later to discuss the stalled free trade agreement between the two counties “would be a handy foreign policy trophy” if he were to bring home the bacon.

I remember writing a letter to my local paper saying I didn't want Australian troops dying just so I could get a cheaper price on a DVD player.

I think most Australians feel that our alliance with America is very much in our 'best interest' and the thought of putting that at jeopardy scares the hell out of us, even if it means participating in unjust wars. That is why we are unlikely to have the balls of NZ and why we keep voting, through our covert system of secret ballots, in compliant governments despite our overt protestations.

Governments allow us the hegemonic expression of the self interest of the majority. Unless it is faced up to and discussed openly we will always have it subsuming our better selves. Without the discussion we will continue to blame other forces like the perceived oligarchic stalwarts the churches, the press, the military, political parties and corporations. They can indeed be condemned for emotional manipulation but only of a compliant if not willing populace.

csteele,

yes, I agree completely. But shifting hegemonic ideology has proved difficult to say the least. Raymond Williams's notion of "cultural materialism" theorised hegemony's being vulnerable to piecemeal change that would eventually amount to revolutionary change if only the whole population was culturally involved in challenging the various components of the staus quo. Jurgen Habermas theorised something similar with his notion of the "public sphere". I can only describe Williams's project as a dismal failure that gave us identity politics, while Habermas's by his own admission fails at a certain level of social complexity or massification, wherein organisation becomes chaotic and prey to larger forces. The best antidote I've come across so far is the work of Takis Fotopoulis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takis_Fotopoulos and his interactional concepts, "inclusive democracy" and "paideia", whose current debasements I would say are "representative democracy" and "ideology". Representative democracy amounts to the perpetual evasion of responsibility. The ancient Greek word paideia refers to education, from an early age, in the ethical and principled running of the state, so that individuals grow up passionately engaged, rather than passive, with political and ethical questions.
Our current system is merely indoctrination into institutionalised life, where we are absolved of such considerations. Even if we want to challenge our cultures ostensible mores, we are powerless to do so and forced to comply even in our dissent as the hegemon is monolithic.
This is why I'm so passionate about getting RI out of schools. I would like to see it replaced with ethics and programmes from an early age that are devoted to the age old question, "how should we live"?
Fotopoulis recommends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_Democracy and I think this has great merit.
Please note it is 'not' a Marxist agenda.

Squeers,

Very good point.

Humans, being intelligent, are masters at deception and misrepresentation - and one thing that drives hostility is to be on the receiving end of contrivance and subterfuge - especially if a false idea is digested and then perpetuated.

Hi again Squeers,

The above is in reply to your last post addressing me.

Dear Squeers,

I think oligarchy fits my purposes better than hegemony. Oligarchy means rule by the few in a polity. That is exactly what I meant.

Hegemony means more than that. According to Raymond Williams it can also mean class dominance or dominance of a nation over another nation. According to Williams the meaning of hegemony is especially important in societies where electoral politics and public opinion are significant factors.

Hegemony also covers less ground than oligarchy. By mentioning oligarchies I want to include those controlling groups in the fascist and Marxist one-party states. That also doesn’t seem to be what either Williams or Gramsci meant by hegemony.

Dear Poirot,

I hope I have ‘overcome the situation.’ I got angry at your posts which were critical of me. Although I have not consciously meant to be provocative maybe subconsciously I have. At least that is how you saw me, and I may have given you cause to see me that way. I’ll try to look at myself more closely.

With JWs I sometimes ask them about their background. Most of them seem to come from another fundie background. However, I have also talked to those who had been Church of England or Jewish. From the JWs they apparently got a previously lacking certainty.

Dear csteele,

I agree that people can get out of Anzac day more than triumphalism and glorification. I am unaware of any evidence of guilt or feelings of collective responsibility for the actions of the troops. I am uneasy about the notion of collective responsibility. I along with many others demonstrated against going to war in Iraq. In spite of our protests the nation went to war in Iraq. Why should I feel responsible for an action of which I did not approve, demonstrated my disapproval and which was carried on without my consent?

David f.,

I suppose I was on your case, but really just to highlight that fact that we are "only human"- and we tend to employ certain devices during our interactions - and we all react pretty much the same way.

Just on the ANZAC question. I was reading a piece by Peter Cochrane on the myth that grew around Simpson and his Donkey. He was a local hero in Galipoli. A fellow called The Reverend Clarence Irving Benson wrote a book titled "The Man with the Donkey" on Simpson's exploits and included many letters to display his apparently conservative leanings. In fact the letters took up nearly a third of the book - except that Benson had censored them so severely that it almost amounted to blatant falsification of character.

Cochrane wrote: "The uncut letters reveal a Simpson who was fiery and compassionate about political and industrial affairs, who was pained by the injustice of the class system he had left behind in England and who wanted things to change. Benson cut out Simpson's hostility to class privilege, his references to The House of Lords as being full of "a lot of empty-headed fools"....he cut out most of his brawling and bravado....the letters that spoke of slackness and unemployment must have chilled Benson to the bone."

Yet, Simpson and his Donkey became part of a conservative myth, a tale of King and Country, replete with Christian associations.
No doubt Simpson was a hero in his own localised way. What Benson did was to help the legend grow by censoring the real man and reforming him into something else.

Many of the ideas taken on board concerning the nobility of war are "helped along" by censorship and idealisation, when the reality is often vastly different.

davidf,
despite your preference, modern western capitalism is by definition not oligarchichal--the term is just not that rubbery. Unless you mean corporate oligarchy--which is unrepresentative and the soul of capitalism. I do agree that late capitalism functions like an oligarchy via blind subscription rather than tyranny.

Hegemony is not nearly so crude as 'dominance' per se, whether national or international. It is ideological--thus US culture is internationally hegemonic, at least with the masses. Nor is hegemony divisible in some crude sense of a monolithic class, like aristocracy; but hegemony cuts through all professions and so-called classes, ideologically enforcing a set of dominant established norms that are more or less self-enforcing until and unless the weight of popular opinion shifts. Williams uses Gramsci's idea of hegemony, though he also develops it; rather than seeing hegemony as solid-state, Williams saw it as subject to broad-scale cultural manipulation. And so it is, as I allude above, but not sufficient for meaningful reforms to be enacted--thus even gay marriage has had years of agonising and is still far from accepted.
Of course Gramsci was just another evil Marxist for whom evil didn't pay off and he died in a similarly destitute state as Marx for his pains--serves them right no doubt.
Hegemony is conservative and doesn't like change. Examples of this in our own culture are legion.

So-called Marxist states are nothing of the kind. Stalinism for instance was not remotely modelled on anything Marx preferred. Neither was it an oligarchy.

In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky wrote:

"Those who want to face their responsibilities with a genuine commitment to democracy and freedom - even to decent survival - should recognise that barriers that stand in the way. In violent states these are not concealed. In more democratic societies barriers are more subtle. While methods differ sharply from more brutal to more free societies, the goals are in many ways similar: to ensure that the "great beast" as Alexander Hamilton called the people, does not stray from its proper confines.
Controlling the general population has always been a dominant concern of power and privilege....Abroad, it is Washington's responsibility to ensure that government is in the hands of "the good, though but a few". At home, it is necessary to safeguard a system of elite decision making and public ratification - "polyarchy", in the terminology of political science - not democracy.

Dear Squeers,

I am not going to argue Marxist theory with you. However, your remark that the Stalinist state wasn't Marxist sounds like the apologists for Christianity who claim the Crusades and the Inquisition weren't really Christian. The Manifesto specified that transportation and communication be in control of the state. I have read enough of Marx to know that the Soviet incorporated quite a bit of what Marx prescribed.

Discuss Marxism with Marxists or those who want to discuss it. I really don't want to discuss it with you. I get more enjoyment in discussing the Bible with JWs or watching fish fry. One has to watch to make sure it is neither overdone or underdone.

We got started on Marxism because you wanted to substitute a term Marxists use for my use of the word, oligarchy. Unfortunately I responded. One can deny the record of Marxism by maintaining the Marxist states weren't really Marxist and the Marxist states were so-called Marxist states. I am not interested in that exercise.

Dear Poirot,

I am aware of Simpson. From what I know of him he was a Communist, an atheist, acutely aware of his class status, very brave and very loyal to his comrades. It is a pity that he died a heroic death rather than living a long and happy life.

I heard Chomsky speak a few years ago in Town Hall in Sydney. During the question period he was asked about the influences on him. He mentioned his social milieu and a number of thinkers. He got another question from the audience noting that he didn't mention Marx and was asked whether marx was also an influence.

"Oh, sure."

The ruling class whether it is capitalist, Marxist or whatever will do their best to make historical narrative support what they want it to support.

The 'we are good - they are bad' gestalt has appeared in many places.

We respond in many of the same ways to similar stimuli. These are truisms we can do little about. Think I'll do a Sudoku.

davidf,
you are the one who keeps invoking Marx, so as to summarily consign him to the flames of your ideological incinerator. Marx seems to be your "king Charles's head"?
Marx's thought was corrupted long before the bolsheviks got to it, before he even died, and the Soviet outrage was based on a literal reading of Engels's naturalisation of Marx, which saw the "dialectic of history" as inevitable. Sheer nonsense of course. Indeed Marx famously said himself, a premonition perhaps, "all I know is that I am not a Marxist".
But of course being well-read in Marx you would know all this.

I don't want to discuss Marx with you either, as I've said before, but I will go on defending him so long as you go on making him your straw man.
quid pro quo.

Since this thread is about the reasons for war, and whether man has the capability of overcoming his warlike behaviour, I think this passage by Arundhati Roy is pertinent.
I realise it's one more belt in the direction of America, but it's difficult to discuss this issue in today's world without including the one surviving superpower.

Roy wrote:
"The policies the U.S. government is following are dangerous for its citizens. It's true you can bomb or buy out anybody that you want to, but you can't control the rage that's building in the world. You just can't. And that rage will express itself in one way or another. Condemning violence is not going to be enough. How can you condemn violence when a section of your economy is based on selling weapons and making bombs and piling up chemical and biological weapons? When the soul of your culture worships violence? On what grounds are you going to condemn terrorism, unless you change your attitude toward violence?"

I haven't been watching the news with all the hoopla surrounding bin Laden's demise... and whatever all the hysteria means, one thing is for sure is that it's a sure-fire way to lock the populace into a them and us mindset.

Arundhati commented on the fact that people might like to delve a little deeper into the reasons behind 9/11 saying:
"If you're trying to understand something, it doesn't mean you're trying to justify it. the fact is, if you can justify all the wars that you have fought, all the murders that you've committed, all the countries that you've bombed, all the ecologies that you've destroyed. if you can justify that, then Osama bin Laden can certainly use the same logic to justify September 11. You can't have a political context for one kind of terrorism and no political context for another."

note to self

johan
tomorrow get links to lateline
and todays public tv broadcast

begin clips
from the last one on public tv
[the one about the boat
breaking the dipwitt gadflie..*s's..*blockade in libia]

contrast this with the flotila sailing on gaza

[how does each colonising copntroling ss respond]

[compare mad-daffy's
attack on the libia attack
on an unarmed..civiliabn resque boat
on a mercy mission[bringing in stuff..

note clip..shows stuff being unloaded

wonder if they were guns[eh]
or a suicase nuke's

but lets get real*

what im really trying to say...is

recall them brave mariens..[26]
who attacked a sick old diabetic
protected by a few kids and two men?
killing the diabetic

WHY GO only...THE EASY KILLING...?

why not go..the hard one...*[gad-fly]
IE not a frail...ol old SICK guy..
allready in some prison

*held hostage
for all we know?

but look at them mug mariens..from the 6th
how would they have gone
*..offing ga-daffey..
[the one with guns cluster bombs
and 200,000 paid to kill mercinaries]

to wit not the half wit killed in foreign lands
[virtually dead..two guns]

why ya dont think..the would have sprung a suprise
on gadaffey..in libia

you know
THE ONES
BOMBING A MERCY BOAT

ok we know obama thinks troops
are there to die....rate?[@..8 per DAY]

why THERE DYING..
when obama
got a broken usa to fix...!

he needs the troop's home...!
to fix the whirly whirly [typhoon[cyclone]..damaged homes
that has blown away whole towns
AND THE FLOOD..

and upcomming big shake
[quake..san fran fault time]

USA NEDS THE SICK AND POOR
to come home..

so you guys..yes..you mugs woth guns
vote on who goes home...!

[yes you mugs in uniform...DYING

pick half of you to go HOME
to help out
with the upcomming big quake...and yellowstone breathing
ooops sorry the floods and destroyed homes

your cuntry needs you home

AND ITS YOU>>!
who tell us
who goes get wet..and splinters..[to wit
who goes home
to help rebuild usa...tomorrow
but back to film clip links

ok
then watch the fema clip
[hey fema got all them camps
move the floodes or blown away
into the camps
while the troops do their TRADITIONAL[and only duty
guarding the national estates[nat guard]..

come home

doint miss watching the s?pastic boxer
a truely impressive ATHLETe...[noting some rip off company near that clip,,has extra booty...lol..going to sponser[waste it on grand pricks racing team]

WHEN IT SHOULD BE SETTING UP THE SpASTIC KID
at real footy games..SPONSERING the kids intro sport

some with sponcer a fatty team..on a smaller pitch..give these a place with the athletes..[let thm be our true heroes

dont miss the spastic dudes clip
[i will get it for you in the morning]

then about three clips on latelind
in reverse order...while obvama gives the real order
bring in gadfly...ALIVE..now go

you better be able to explain

ps compare the gadfly attack..on the boat braking seige
to the israel sewioge braking flet going from greeze..to gaza

compare the misiles
to the boarding of the gaza fleet
but get gadfly..then we will see who next
only heroes ned to apply

heck send the same 26
tell them they know the mission

now go
bring home gadfly

find link
[how goes the nice word]..
gifted/blessed...disadvantaged...true...honest..gutsy

dont miss watching the boxer

and then watch the aqrab guy
talking real good stuff to kerry

oh dont miss the lateline business

and make sure to watch.."INSIDE JOB""
its huge..start there mr bailiff...!
do deals find every penny

continues at link
this following
a continuation...from the link
see link

just give me the one straight story line
from beginning to end

and dont begin it with
'he was in the watrers for 3 days
then made a video..in 2012

lets hear the truth
ie you didnt TRUST OPRAH?

strike on
[opra/

ball one
[obama..touring the cyclone towns..

home run
[the actual mission footage...
as cover for

see link
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4443&page=0

fair enough.
some media is changing

see link
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4443&page=0
but
not murdock*
he stink..[like the cheapest ink]

""so all the Innocent nice people
in the near and middle east.""

can become...OUR peskety..boat*people
PUT INTO PRISON CAMPS..here!
for being afraid

when we should be sending them back home..
in peace..to a sanctury*
in their *own cuntry...

THERE>>they get
our proection/imunity*..
and returned with honour..[and our ambasidorial/protections]..

*back INto..
THEIR OWN* HOMELANDS!

with...ambasidurial..*immunity

made our honerd guests..
in their own land

accorded..our..native title rights
then bring..the refugees home*..to their own propper home
and be leaders/healers..earned their way home

[peace mean people simply told to go home
let god take it from here
or else

take them home...*SAFELY*

.. the rest of the vision..lol
at link
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4432&page=0

belly/quote/

""so all the innocent..nice people""..!

..ME..
here they can go nuts..in prison camps
7.30 report?

imprisoned [on their own lands
like...[just like...*palistein..!]]]]

{&%$#@&*
hence,,,,!
...............the dare...!
see link
(*%&@#$!
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4432&page=0

belly/quote..

""My heart
is not in
..........the crying and twitching""

*nor is mine..ol sun

this is
..the time
..*of CHANGE>............we can really believe in

GHANGE>>>>*>>WE CAN CHOSE*
TO BELIEVE IN""
[0]

or indeed can collectivly...*grasp
*..with both hands

[we collectivly*

[all of us]
never had a better chance
to end war...and dictraiter ships

*..OVERNIGHT*

>>>..!

read link..

""I remember them dancing in the streets after 9/11""

and saw the same..in usa..just yes-ter/day

only protesting students real/cause..WAS*HIGHjacked
by special fema agents[there not at the floods]
or the cyclone

WE NEED TROOP"S
at home...now
but back to the 'dancers',,on tv

the...*save our teachers...protest group&*

/was *silenced..lol..[highjaked by them 'dancers'
and the cause of the protest was lost..[highjacked]
by clever media driven SPIN*

how gullible
you lot can occasionall be..[lol]

DANCING>>SINGING>>
right in front of white house
yes

i agree..WAR'ss lies.. IS ...SIC*
great redirection..

but whats
*the ONLY true/TRUTH

the one egsactly authoritive cettified true,,full timeline

*and seeing egsactly
what the pres

..YOU mr osama.obama big ban-ana...
let us see..what he SAW>>>!

and more
of the SAME media silence spin and spun lies
LIES..

in palestein too

so tell me belly?..
which dancing looks best?>>

the freedom one..
in..[peace
or the war one?...
in...{pieces?

""Just so happy
we have leaned folk..*
..like we do..

to keep us informed."""

no sweat bro*
mate..me too!

cheerrs
to you too

note to self
..but link back..to the link
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4432&page=0
need some links
..to this link

..at the other link
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4432&page=0

belly quote"""SCIENTIFIC FACT? arjay?
good grief!""

dont swweat on it ..bells
thats a long long..

many many
* years..from now

[millions..billions
of generations..from now]

buttt....er

what..*IF WE STOP WAR...NOW
we Are all..ready for peace"

agree
or we send in 26 men on a mission..!

with..*the eyes and ears..
of the president...wideopen..listening..seing what they 'see'..

first hand witness..!
him..via his mates..recording...your testimony

him..comming to you
only for him...to talk to YOU...
or hear or listen or advise YOU

he is..capable...of now being every where
his thugs go

not only to sick old boggy men
wife girls/boys and 2 men?
tweo sparrows
and 3 rats

SO
make peace
*now

or obama says
'game over';

and...*dont think he wouldnt do it

he should..would will or could

and who dares stop him...*

peace out man...lol

Dear Poirot,

Roy’s description of the US and the reactions of the rest of the world toward the US seems to me accurate, but it also seems to me to miss what is pertinent about reasons for war.

I don’t think the problem is with the US regardless of how predatory the US is. The US had two great rivals in the last century - Nazi Germany and the USSR. If either of them had won out and gone on to be the sole superpower it is quite possible that their oppression would be worse than the oppression of the United States. If Germany had won I would probably have been eliminated. If the USSR had won I think the world would have been worse.

It is like describing the behaviour of the top predator in an ecosystem and condemning that top predator for its ruthless attacks on those further down in the food chain. If we remove the top predator from an ecosystem some other creature may emerge to become the top predator, the system may collapse or something unforeseen will happen. We don’t know the consequences of removing or curbing the US. Maybe China will do it. Of course the analogy of the nation state system with an ecosystem is somewhat faulty as analogies generally are.

We humans have lived in various groups which have competed and cooperated with each other. At times various groups have grown large and powerful – the Athenian Empire, Han China, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Mongol Empire etc. Now the US is the Leviathan. Invariably these concentrations of power have been opposed and have been curbed or eliminated. All have left some marks on the world.

Many believe in a religious or non-religious millennium which will bring peace to earth. None of them that I know of seem plausible. A world government under the UN as presently constituted might be more oppressive than the US. Anyhow, I think the US is a symptom of the problem and not the problem. The elimination of the US would not bring peace.

David f,.

Well, all things come to pass - empires, like foaming waves, rise and fall....and the American empire, I believe, has begun the first phase of it's descent.

There's no doubt in my mind that China will take over the mantle, although I think they are also gunning for collapse - and probably more rapidly than most examples because overpopulation and the accompanying pressure of their artificial social arrangements which they have instituted to compete and out-capitalise the capitalists.

Man is a strange entity - far too flawed to realise his dreaming desire of perennial fortune and peace to become a sustainable reality.

I wonder if America will go out with a bang, or the more commonly experienced whimper?

Dear Squeers,

Thank you for the references. I am making my way through them.

Dear Davidf,

I too marched against the Iraq war on a rather bleak and wet Melbourne day. It was my children's first protest march and I think I may have cured them of the inclination in the future.

But less face facts, polls had around 87% of Australians against the war with many actively protesting. When it came time to vote however nearly the same percentage ticked the box of one of our major parties. I would put it to you that many we marched with did the same despite taking to the streets which is about as strident as most would have been politically in years, if ever.

To them I anoint responsibility. This was not a sin of passivity but an act of voting for the two parties that are prepared to take us to war at America's behest.

As to the question of guilt, perhaps it is the eye of the beholder. Reflect however on the current move to tighten disability payments, much of it budget driven, there is no mention of the largesse of the veteran's Gold Card. We can call it what we like but for me the silence has its roots firmly mired in guilt.

I don't want to pass judgement on the reasonableness of those feelings but they are real. Plus they are held by those who might have strongly disagreed with our involvement in a particular conflict.

Finally I will grant the armed forces use the glory of service to attract personnel but most of us would say if the alternative is not to have a viable armed force then they can glorify to their hearts content because it is in our interest to do so.

csteele:

It seems to me the explanation for the discrepancies you illustrate are based on an inherent dualism in human nature and society, idealism/realism, in which the latter nearly always wins out due to its more manifest demands, in the process rationalising away the claims of the former. Idealism has always been an important factor in human action that I'm inclined to think is in part innate rather than merely indoctrinated. The more we subscribe to the realist paradigm, the more pragmatic we become, idealistic actions functioning only to absolve us of guilt by association or ruthlessness. Most of us today are utterly won over by realism and its insistences, and idealism is either affected, dismissed out of hand or conceived--cynically or sincerely--as tantamount to neurosis. In our empirical reality--chthonian depths filled--concerns over ethics and justice can be rationalised as luxuries that can be sacrificed when pressed.
In my view the only hope for our humanity lies in establishing idealistic foundations that take precedence over tawdry realism at least to a point. The problem with exigent realism is that it ever forces ideals to retreat when the situation is far far from desperate. It's no contest between idealism and realism.

Dear Squeers,

Idealism is not always odds with realism. They may at times coincide. Neither prevails. What prevails is short term interest. Uncontrolled population growth is an example. Thinking people know it is radically going to affect us but not next week. Most nations have done little or nothing about it.

A Chinese official when asked about the results of the French Revolution answered that it was too early to tell. To me it is significant the China is the only nation whose government is seriously concern with population control.

csteele,
I'm sceptical that guilt is the inhibiting or insulating factor exercised when it comes to veteran's affairs or militarism in general. While guilt and gratitude are no doubt factors, at least for thinking people, I still think it's more about heroism and patriotism as sacred cows for the unthinking zealots. If these awe-inspired concepts were exposed to the light of critical reason they would reveal their bewildered and unspeakable content: fear, confusion, despair, compassion, hate, cowardice (and yes, bravery too--or rather fool-hardiness, access of panic), abandon, violence--both blood and sexual lust etc. Perhaps most disturbing of all there are those who carry out unspeakable acts during war with cold and calculating indifference.
All of this, in the popular consciousness, is suppressed, swaddled in sentiment, wrapped in a flag and fantasised and celebrated as something wholesome, sanctioned by God. Guilt implies genuine soul searching. I don't think most people look beneath uniform.

davidf,

Wasn't that Mao himself?

I'd like to agree with you that idealism sometimes attends realism, but I see little evidence. And then it depends on the nature of the idealism. Certainly selfish idealism often attends realism.
And then again, idealism attending realism can be a positive evil, for instance the crusades.
I've been studying Hegel and had a minor breakthrough understanding him--so have been a bit caught up with idealism. Hegel btw, I'm convinced, was not an idealist--at least not in the sense that the world is merely a product of thought. This has been the accepted interpretation until recently. But that's perhaps for another thread.

Squeers,

Ï think it's more about heroism and patriotism as sacred cows for the unthinking zealots."

Absolutely! - these are the wrappings that cover all the other emotions you mentioned.

Besides exposing the white-washing of Simpson's character, Peter Cochrane wrote, regarding Benson's analysis of the Gallipoli campaign:

"The ANZACS had confronted what Benson referred to as "the worst influences that had assailed civilisation" and they had prevailed in "a baptism of blood that was to weld us into a nation". Their ideal suggested the dignity and purpose that a defeat could bestow. They were moral exemplars the likes of whom could again renew the nation and save the world. "

Heroism, patriotism, dignity and purpose are far easier to digest than fear, confusion, despair and hate.

Dear csteele,

I am glad you also protested.

We have a limited number of choices. We can either make a donkey vote or put a preference number to the major parties. I think it's unreasonable to fault people for not making a donkey vote.

Dear Squeers,

I forgot who said it, but I thought it was a wise comment regardless who said it.

There are parts of the Manifesto that recommend the practices of Stalin. If I write an article you can argue with it.

Dear Poirot,

I have been thinking about a possible breakup of the US and a possible rise to dominance of China. It's a big topic, and I thought I might write an olo article speculating on it. One thought is that China has made a practice of not interfering in the internal affairs of other nations so in spite of their internal repression Chinese domination might mean other nations would be freer.

I think your last post was very good.

David f.,

I'd look forward to any article you'd care to write on the subject of China's probable/possible usurping of America as the dominant world power. It's a fascinating scenario, and one that gives rise to all sorts of variables, both for America and the wider question of allegiances between various global interests.

I'll probably put a few thoughts up on this thread in a while when I've got a little more time.

Dear David F.,

An important element in any peace process is the international community and its mechanisms for restraining conflict among its members. Trade, travel, and telecommunications have made the nations of the modern world more interdependent than ever before. In a world where all nations face a common threat of direct or indirect involvement in nuclear warfare, some reliable method is needed to limit conflicts among sovereign states.

We've got two vital elements for international peace-making. The first is the United Nations, which provides a forum for world opinion and a mechanism for conflict resolution. The second is a growing body of international law that specifies the rights and obligations that nations have toward one another - particularly with respect to aggression.

The major difficulty with international peace-making is of course, that compliance with the resolutions of the UN and the rulings of its World Court are voluntary, as no country is willing to surrender its sovereignty to an international body. The Un is most effective when the superpowers are able to agree on a course of action and mobilize their blocs to support it.

Even so, the organisation provides an influential forum for world opinion, and while it does not always prevent war, it probably helps make it less likely.

David I'm not sure whether we will have another war sometime down the track. I certainly hope not. I do believe that through collective action, ordinary people with few resources other than their own determination can change a national consensus for war to a national consensus for peace. The Vietnam war came to an end largely as a result of the antiwar movement in the US. It was a social movement that consisted disproportionately of young people including many college students. Once people no longer take their world for granted, but instead understand the social authorship of their lives and futures, they can become an irresistible force in history. Whether we choose to destroy our civilisation or save it is a collective decision that hopefully may well be made within our lifetimes.

Hiya Lexi - good to see you back.

David f.,

I referred earlier to China's artificial social arrangements - and perhaps "artificial" is not exactly the word I was looking for...what I was referring to was the migration of adult workers to the cities and their abandonment of their children to the care of grandparents. This is the new paradigm in China and the practice has fueled the incredible and sustained economic growth of that country.

58 million children - or a quarter of China's children and one third of its rural children are affected in this way. In many cases, whole villages are inhabited only by grandparents and children.
Added to this that for every 100 baby girls born there are nearly 117 boys born.

So we have a country that relies on communist apparatus for controlling a population that has been set to work to compete within a capitalist economic framework - truly a force to be reckoned with.

One can't help but feel that the social implications of such an arrangement will have a knock-on effect somewhere not too far down the track.

Here are a couple of articles (one of a movie tackling the subject) that might be of interest.

http://www.last-train.com/about/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013173770_chinakids17.html

so tell me
what role the media play
in the way..these different realities [-isms]..evolves

like hitler youth
[children hating]

first remove the mote from thyne own eyes

sad how you see
the clear media lies in other lands
but miss it

in our own backyard

too many cooking/cop/murder/police state shows[here]
not enough info or fact

to much spin
bbc reports...today hard press release
that the bin liner was running his empire
from his safe house[without phone/internet]

so likely by cammel..and on pap-irus notes...
run to the frontlines..via runners and rumours

ya gotta love how poor the spin is

here is a fat high cheekbones old person
most certainly not..the frail/old sick bin liner

note the nhand holding..the 're-mote'

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110507/ap_on_re_us/us_bin_laden

ie cia says bin liner ..LEFT HANDED
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden

even the oppisite line
to con-firm...bin liner as ever being real
now further proof of life....lol
http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/hes%20alive.jpg

mate hes been dead since 2001...!
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/04/top-us-government-insider-bin-laden-died-in-2001-911-a-false-flag/

still faking
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384420/When-U-S-bombing-started-took-children-moved-cave-Startling-insight-life-Bin-Ladens-young-wife-gave-terror-chief.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384420/When-U-S-bombing-started-took-children-moved-cave-Startling-insight-life-Bin-Ladens-young-wife-gave-terror-chief.html

look at her fingers
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/05/06/article-0-0BE8183200000578-439_634x542.jpg
PHOTOSHOP[over./lay]

all spin
http://whatreallyhappened.com/

conclusion
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/osama_dead.php
its a beat up
TO BRING IN
neo/HITLER YOUTH'ss...
to terrorise the people..in usa
into giving up life/property and freedoms

like with the natzies/jews
and chrystal naght

like
israel/palistein
http://theintelhub.com/2011/05/06/osama-bin-laden-staged-media-spectacle-to-be-used-to-ramp-up-full-scale-police-state/

lets not turn blind [moted]eyes
upon israelies..love of terror's..special powers*

like immediate dna tersting
no need to wait 48 hours..to do all them NEEDED steps..!
http://www.healthnewsreview.org/blog/2011/05/guest-blog-cnn-promotes-sanjay-gupta-as-certified-medical-examiner-in-bin-laden-story.html

bah its spin

so those who serve the same old war systems
need as an excuse to kill the lot of us..

if we dare protest in the streets

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2011/05/02/2011-05-02_final_bin_laden_doomsday_tape_may_be_released_by_al_qaeda_disciples_us_officials.html#community

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/05/israel.iran.bin.laden/?hpt=T2
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/the-heavy-weight-of-zionism-felt-daily-in-palestine/

Hi Poirot,

Happy Mother's Day!
It's good to be back. And I've got an upgrade to my computer which is great. So much stuff on there now - it will take a while for me to get used to it all. But I'm happy. (Been a frustrating couple of weeks - with my ancient computer).

Yes, welcome back Lexi, and happy mother's day to all the mums.

Happy mother's day. Good to hear from you, Lexi.

Going to see the ballet, Don Quixote. Possibly, the end of war is a quixotic idea.

Dear Squeers,

Thanks for the welcome back and the Mother's Day wishes. I'll be heading off soon for a delish lunch with my family and our mothers as well as my loveable grandson. I'm looking forward to it very much.
Happy Day to you and yours as well.

Dear David,

Thank You.
I still remember my first ballet experience. Our Music teacher took our class to a Matinee performance of "Les Sylvides" (I'm not sure if I've spelt it correctly). When the curtain went up there was a blue mist emanating from the stage and the dancers were in their classic white full length dress. I simply gasped and sat there mesmerized as they slowly began to dance. It was magic, and I've been a fan ever since. Don Quixote sounds wonderful. I haven't actually seen any performances of that particular ballet. I imagine it should be very colourful. I agree that perhaps war ending is a Quixotic idea. But
sometimes these ideas can snow-ball if enough people get behind them.
All we need is the right leadership?

I'm not looking to offend anyone but I'm going to call the statement "I think it is more about heroism and patriotism as sacred cows for the unthinking zealots", as a touch elitist and more than a touch dismissive.

There may be many who don't have the time nor the propensity to contemplate these issues as we are doing yet I invariably find that if the opportunity avails itself most people are not "unthinking zealots" and often reach more humane conclusions than the 'elite'.

Those who watch the Jon Stewart Daily Show may have caught his last show of 2010. He devoted it entirely to the stalled Zadroga Bill which was designed to set up a trust fund for 'first responders' after 9/11. It had looked as though it was doomed to die until Stewart, a 'left-leaning', small 'l' liberal, comedian, did his show. Chris Wallace of Fox News picked it up calling it a "National shame". The bill looks certain to now pass.

Jon Stewart is the last person one would call an 'unthinking zealot'.

The buttons he pushed were far more about guilt than patriotism, though granted patriotism is a great vehicle for dressing up guilt.

Poriot makes the point; "Heroism, patriotism, dignity and purpose are far easier to digest than fear, confusion, despair and hate." but they all come from the same parent and are all genuinely human.

Dear Lexi,

I am pessimistic about ending war.

To my way of thinking an international community would consist of the peoples of the world coming together and expressing their commonalities and their differences. The UN remains a forum composed of those representing the government of the nations composing the UN. The UN is another layer of control over an international community. Various UN agencies have done worthwhile things. However, the UN to my way of thinking is not an international community and is not likely to become one.

The words, peace process, to me is a negation of peace. It makes peace something on the never-never. The process continues but never finishes. I want peace not a peace process.

We do have a growing body of international law. What is lacking is an impartial enforcement mechanism. No government may want such a mechanism.

The World Court is not part of the UN. It's the popular name of the Permanent Court of International Justice, established pursuant to Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The protocol establishing it was adopted by the Assembly of the League in 1920 and ratified by the requisite number of states in 1921. It dissolved in 1945 when its functions were transferred to the newly created International Court of Justice,

I don't know what you mean by not liking to see another war down the track. Australia is at war although the fighting is not on Australian soil.

I was in the United States during the Vietnamese War and protested against it. My impression is that the Vietnamese resistance contributed more to the end of the war than the protests. The protests were not significant until the body bags came back in large numbers.

The ballet was beautiful even though the plot seemed to have little to do with Cervantes’ book. While I was at it I did not think of the wars that Australia is waging, the refugees from those wars, the many hungry, the many obese and the destruction of the environment. My thinking about it would have done no good

The following is about the opponents to WW1 in England, and the frenzy against them and for the war.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/i-tried-to-stop-the-bloody-thing/

[an extract from the piece] The whole piece is worth reading.

Unlike, for example, American opponents of our wars in Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, or Afghanistan, the Britons who opposed this war had no major newspapers and only a tiny handful of legislators on their side. For someone in a prominent position to advocate any compromise was considered close to treason. When Rev. Edward Lyttelton, the headmaster of Eton, proposed some possible peace terms, the resulting uproar forced him to resign. From Parliament to pulpit, ferocity reigned. “Kill Germans! Kill them!” raged one clergyman in a 1915 sermon, “ . . . not for the sake of killing, but to save the world. . . . Kill the good as well as the bad. . . . Kill the young men as well as the old. . . . I look upon it as a war for purity. I look upon everybody who dies in it as a martyr.” The speaker was Arthur Winnington-Ingram, the Anglican Bishop of London.

Csteele,

John Stewart is more than a comedian - he's a particularly savvy social and political commentator, who happens to use humour to deliver a penetrating message. Like his stable-mate, Stephen Colbert, he was, and still is, an antidote to neo-con politics in the U.S., especially in the guise of Fox News. Both of them staged a successful rally in response to one by Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement in Washington.

I don't think you can equate their style and scope with the average patriotically conditioned man in the street, who wouldn't for a moment challenge, or even question, the narrowly defined ethics of perceived wisdom. Indeed, if these people watched Colbert, they'd be battling to ascertain that his character is a send-up.

Jon Stewart and his ilk are miles in front when it comes to lifting the edge of the rug to see what's been swept underneath.

csteele,
no offence taken.
"Unthinking zealots" is a strong phrase but I don't resile from it. The unthinking zealot in this context is the common patriot and I suppose it is technically elitist to describe him/her as such, albeit they are in the vast majority. I do think that those who look critically beneath the palaver are a tiny minority, but not "elitist" in any strict sense of the word. Elitism in the strict sense conjures notions of supremacy "within" institutional thinking, and to that extent I was not being elitist, as I try to think outside those terms that are laid down for me as categorical. To be critical of an institution's "actions" is to tacitly condone its "essence", thereby making no critical examination at all. If anything, by criticising its actions we imply that they are "deviant" from its essential purity and wonted propensity. There is no such purity in patriotism, or arguably in any institution. True and honest critical thought is far more painful to one's sensibilities than the boast of protest. As if the virtual entity or its agenda was open to criticism--it is the nature of institutions to be impervious to it!
I know nothing of the Jon Stewart campaign but the buttons he pushed only reinforce the dogmatic US mindset of victimhood, indignation, heroism and revenge as its entirely admirable responses---no real self or social-examination at all.
I remember thinking after 9/11 that here was the US's chance to show the world it was a truly great nation, by taking thought and responding moderately, diplomatically and self-critically; but there was and is none of that, just arrogance, self-righteousness and shallowness. We saw the patriots in action recently over the revenge-killing of Bin-Laden, cheering at ground zero.

Poirot

Re: Colbert Report

After moving from his segment spot on the Daily Show, Stephen and started his own show as a "right wing bully", he had a large fan base of right-wing conservatives until the penny finally dropped.....

Shame about the shows no longer being shown on ABC2, although I do watch online - but not the same as sitting relaxed in the living-room.

I find both shows very cathartic after being subjected to narrow minded thinking of all and any political dogma.

Apologies for being off-topic.

pat-roit
pat-rot-ism

t-ERROR

died for us?
died for our sin?

they will not grow old
but the reasons for murder..never grow old

at the fall of night
we will return to our caves
and with the aid of murder she wrote[csi/bones/murder cooking and mayhem[ahem]..shall we foerget

till the next time we fear [hear] the call
then we shall remember

feel the guilt and go off quitly..to die..for another lie
to put yet more gore
on other peoples shore

that we know for sure
we know peace only when its pure

war to make peace

is like fu.."KKK'ing...for virginity
or murdering..to make life
or getting clean..by rolling in the mucKKK

Apologies for not posting a link to better explain what occurred with Jon Stewart.

Those who follow The Young Turks may have seen this clip, it presents a good summary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knqpgj0x7xY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

What is at play here? Taking the position of an American I say guilt is playing a far greater role than patriotism. The first responders were those who ran toward the collapsing buildings as the rest of 'us' ran away in sheer terror and confusion. While on the surface the narrative may well be 'we need to support our heroes' these were people doing what they were paid and trained to do. Why should they be getting extra? It is because we feel we owe them something more even though we do not know any of them personally. The reality is it saves a focus on our own fear and confusion.

What are the motives of Stewart? Primarily patriotism? Hardly. Why did Capitol Hill see the need to act once the issue was given air? Guilt and shame is obvious.

The left's apportioning blame to unthinking zealots, oligarchs, and subservient governments and the right's dance with the heroics of service men and women all need to give way to a greater sense of responsibility for what it done in our names and with our tacit permission.

As an aside I have been thinking about the deep patriotism of Americans. Perhaps it fills the hole left by their rejection of the types of collectivism that defines a country like Australia eg universal health cover.

Dear David,

I'm glad that you enjoyed the ballet. Theatre, good books, for me are an escape - one can dream. And the truth is - we need to dream: souring imagination is the glue that keeps our souls from shattering under the impact of a prosaic world.

You're right we are likely to be disappointed if we expect dramatic results in the form of an immediate end to war and militarism. All over the world hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers devote their skills to planning new and more efficient ways for humans to kill one another; millions of workers labour to manufacture instruments of death; and tens of millions os soldiers train for combat - many actually going to war. From a moral and even an economic
point of view, this vast investment of human ingenuity and energy seems a tragic waste.

For millennia people have hoped for peace in their time. Today, as usual there is no shortage of grand proposals for peace. Yet wars continue as before, sometimes creating the discouraging idea that hopes for peace are too "idealistic." The prospects for peace look much more encouraging, however, once we recognize that war and peace are really opposite ends of a continuum, and the movement along this continuum, in either direction, is the result of social processes that develop and change over time under the influence of government policies and popular pressures.

As for the Vietnam war - When the antiwar movement first challenged the war, it received little support from politicians or the press, and its goals seemed almost hopeless. But the tide of public opinion gradually began to shift. In the 1968 presidential primaries, an antiwar candidate backed by student volunteers did unexpectedly well and President Johnson decided not to run for re-election. From that point on, political debate on the war focused not on how to stay in it, but on how to get out of it. Through collective action, ordinary people with few resources other than their own determination changed a national consensus for war to a national consensus for peace.

Dear Squeers,

You said; "We saw the patriots in action recently over the revenge-killing of Bin-Laden, cheering at ground zero.". Well perhaps we did but if I had lost family members or friends or even just lived through 9/11 as a New Yorker then I may have well joined them. To label them solely as patriots I think is a little flippant.

If I found a person who had just grievously harmed or murdered my family and I took his life whether he was armed or not there would be an expectation I would receive sympathy for my actions from the public at large and leniency from the justice system. Nor would I expect to wear the label of 'murderer'.

Where it does become an issue is when the cold hand of the government decides to fill that role. We expect better from the 'collective us' that is what civilization is about.

That connection between the death of Osama and the cathartic effect on New Yorkers should also be the one that drives deep disquiet when a Madeline Albright say the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it".

I am one who believes the vast majority of humans are deeply empathetic and what is important is facilitating that empathy and guarding against anything that hinders or hijacks it's full expression.

csteele,

"I am one who believes the vast majority of humans are deeply empathetic and what is important is fascilitating that empathy and guarding against anything that hinders or hijacks its full expression."

Too true - one of the abiding and most deeply held of man's behaviours is his "empathy"....but let's not forget the media's role as a fascilitator of government expression in all of this.

My problem is that man's disposition to empathise is often caught up in the fervour generated by the media.
So that a mass outpouring of empathy is in effect employed as a media weapon to serve as validation for whatever is in the interests of the the powers that prevail.

The ordinary man in the street is like a poppy bobbing about in the field, swayed in whichever direction the media breeze is enticed to blow.

csteele,

I'm not labelling Bin-Laden as 'murdered', I said 'revenge killing'. I do understand the emotions of those directly involved and sympathise, though if it had been a loved-one of mine I wouldn't have put on a show for the cameras. I suspect a great many of those aggrieved stayed quietly indoors, unconsoled, after Bin-Laden's execution.
I absolutely agree that "We expect better from the 'collective us' that is what civilization is about". We ought to have ethical foundations that governments hold to steadfastly, how else can they expect their citizens to respect them or ther values? Our governments all prate about values, human rights, God's laws etc., but it's empty rhetoric.
People are indeed capable of great empathy, but not self-examination.
Anyway, I respect your opinion and will think it over. I hope you will think over my opinion.

I hesitate to make generalisations about the great majority of people as to their empathy, humanity, guilt, aggressiveness or whatever. I find that those people I am drawn to and know best, even those I disagree deeply with, are like me in many respects. Therefore if I make generalisations based on the behaviour or attitudes of those I know and extend those generalisations to the general population I am likely wrong because the sample I started with is probably unrepresentative of the population as a whole.

Dear David,

Well said. Unless we have real experience and knowledge, what can we say that won't sound foolish, or worse - bigoted to someone who knows and appreciates more than we do. I'm finding that the more I live and learn, the more I realise how little I know and I'm not likely to be in a position to have something worth saying unless I spend years immersing myself in gaining knowledge, experience and understanding - and only then if my agenda isn't hostile. It's one thing to feel that I'm on the right path, but it's another to think that mine is the only path

David f.,

Regarding the Great War, I have a book titled "The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy" - and it seems there was an enormous and exceptional fervour from this section of the British population in favour of war.
The author, David Cannadine, explains:

"To some degree, this patrician response was part of the general enthusiasm for war at this time, but there were also specific reasons why so many rushed so fervently to the colours in the Autumn of 1914. For more than thirty years, they had been the object of radical (and sometimes not so radical) attack: for their unjustifiable monopoly of the land, for their unearned means and their unearned increments, for their reactionary attitudes to social reform, for their anachronistic possession of hereditary political power, and for their leisured lifestyle and parasitic idleness....there were many grandees and gentry who genuinely believed that the best years for their kind and class were emphatically over.. But then came the war, which gave them supreme opportunity to prove themselves and to justify their existence. By tradition, by training, and by temperament, the aristocracy was the warrior class...They knew how to command....Here then, was their chance - to demonstrate conclusively that they were not the redundant reactionaries of propaganda, but the patriotic class of knightly crusaders and chivalrous heroes, who would defend national honour and national interest in the hour of its greatest trial."

The aristocracy lost one-fifth of its young men during this war - a proportion far greater than any other social class. "Not since the Wars of the Roses had so many patricians died so suddenly and so violently."

Dear Poirot,

The origins of that aristocracy is of interest. There were nobles of the robe and the sword. Many nobles had ancestors who had become rich during the industrial revolution and had purchased titles. The ancestors could have been of common stock. Nobility was ranked with those of the sword who had earned their titles on the field of battle superior to those who had purchased their titles and those with older titles superior to those with younger titles. Spilling of blood was an equaliser. Nobles of the robe could prove themselves.

its all good and well for the elites
to claim a high casualty rate

but lets face it they are rather useless
without their maids and butlers..[groomsmen..and their cooks]

lets not go past the fact that their yes men[and nannies]
raise them thinking they are god...

others were only too dumb to keep their heads down

in other words they swallowed the coolaid
[but i would like to see the casualty numbers]

proporuinatly..they are a percentage of one [percent]
we out-number..them 99 to one...so for their higher ratio
dont beat...our sheer numbers

where they need only loose 10
we need loose....990

of course if i have a good publicyst
he can make anything look right

but then others get that gut feling
how do they know

a rich person can go awol...
and chose to buy a new life...with his trust funds

the poor got no option..

when dah masta say go...
[to die over there]

we go

OUG,

I don't think Cannadine was trying to make the toffs look "good". He was offering an explanation as to why this social class reacted so enthusiastically to this war - and not only the men, but also the women, many of whom remembered the day of call-up with long-cherished pride.
Cannadine on the excitement:

"And so it was - for the women no less than for the men. When Lord Tullibardine was told by the War Office that he must mobilise and command the Scottish Horse, his wife "nearly burst with pride."And twenty years later, Viscountess Barrington could still recall "the pride and exaltation of fond parents and wives, their willing offering of their sons and husbands, to fight in so great a cause in the early days of the war.....At the same time, the older generation of grandees did all they could to encourage recruiting in their localities."

David f.,
Cannadine comments on the fact that many of those killed were not necessarily from aristocratic families, although those of note were counted among them.

"But this haunting image of doomed genteel youth, of an aristocratic holocaust, needs to be set in proper perspective. Many of those who were posthumously recruited into the so-called "lost generation" were in fact from the middle-classes."

Dear Poirot,

There is a deeply moving story. I think it was by Bruce Chatwin. During WW1 local families are all requested to come to church for a meeting - especially the young men. The minister, local army officers and local gentry speak about the struggle going on in France and the duty of all to join in the struggle. The trucks are waiting outside to take them to the camp. All of them go.

Dear Squeers,

Thank you for the empathy :) and certainly value your opinion. I am sorry for the disjointed postings but reception is at the best haphazard where I am. Back to a computer soon for a fuller response when I can do your posts justice.

To all,

I have just come off the Mount Difficult walk in the northern Grampians. Absolutely spectacular views but a tip for the young, do not leave it till after lunch to attempt it. Doing it in the dark is not recommended.

Having to really push the pace up to the summit over some difficult terrain certainly had the legs trembling.

Part the way through the descent on a very short break with not a hell of a lot left in the tank and feeling a little sorry for my self the thought crossed my mind about what the Diggers had to endure over the Owen-Stanley ranges.

It served as a bit of a 'kick up the pants' and we made it back just on dusk. I am now enjoying the soothing qualities of a youngish Cab-merlot from a vineyard near here, hardly something they were afforded.

My reason for relating this is because it begs the question, am I a Zealot reveling the acts of war beaten up by our media or am I just an Australian taking inspiration from the heroics of past deeds done by our soldiers?

Acknowledging heroism does not have to mean we buy the whole package.

Please note that however unrealistic it might be the primary force of the comparison is 'guilt'.

Dear csteele,

Thank You for sharing your experience with us. It must have been really something - to have accomplished what you did - and you are to be congratulated. As for the topic of war - it would be great if we could achieve peace in our time - it scares the living daylights out of me quite frankly - the possibility of nuclear war. The proliferation of nuclear weapons adds to the danger.

I can understand your thinking about our diggers as you did your climb. In each war there are numerous courageous men and women. Some are known, but most perish and are known only to God. These heroes embody human nobility in its highest form and stand as beacons in its otherwise bleak history.

We need new ways of thinking to cope with the nuclear age. It's here that writers, with their concern for the human condition and their special skills with language, can enable us to imagine the horrific reality of nuclear arms and nerve us to build an alternative future.

as a death[as a way to die]
nuke bomb is a fast way to move on
[ok the slow radiation death can get messy
but a direct blast..and in a flash our body is gone

of course the spirit survives
and the trouble with the blast 'death'
is the relitive lack of warning..given the spirit

i recall after ww2
[the bombing of heroshimera..and naggersussy]

those who died had a good case
for not believing they had actually passed over
it took 4 years to close the last of 'that' wars..healing centers

anyhow
now we know
if all of a sudden we think we are in heaven
or hell...[we can think oh we got nuked..im dead..yet im not dead]
worse case senario...

we are eternal [from now on]..spirits..
having an incarnate life experience...

we all die..some just had a better shopt at life
lets hope they didnt waste their life gift on petty things

didnt just talk
but actually did
tried to do good

once we all do good
it will be just like when god walked ammoung us
[no jesus wasnt/isnt 'god']

god walks ammoung us
once we recognise
the god with/in

as well as..
the good [god]..without

nuked
gone in a flash

Dear csteele,

Last month I was at Alotau, Milne Bay, in PNG. Raw Australian troops who had never seen combat before and US air force men who were there to build an air field defeated Japanese ground forces for the first time after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were battle hardened marines. The defenders were helped by the fact the Papuan guide purposely led the Japanese landing parties to a site farther from the allied air fields than they wanted to be. The Japanese killed the guide when they became aware of what he had done. I saw the marker at the point of the furthest Japanese advance. 600 diggers and Americans along with 10,000 Japanese died there. They fought ferociously from 25 August 1942 until 7 September 1942 when the Japanese retreated. We can only honour them. That victory contributed to the later victory at Kokoda since the Japanese were denied the air support they would have had by taking the air fields.

hey david a good sumation...
but as i see it....i wrote as a response to this
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12013&page=0

i said what i thought here
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12013&page=0

to fully read your comments

but lets summerise

""We can only honour them.""
dont waste a breath on honouring those you call DEAD*

they live on in the aether
those deserving the hopnours of demons
are getting it

and those derserving of the honoyurs of the good
are getting theirs...

so now lets get it clear/here

surving murder..
has its own rewards

but how we survived..
is OUR OWN GUILT/creddit/shame
that you that have NEVER killed..simply cannot fully grasp

the laws of the good
SAYS we shalt NOT MURDER
dropping bombs on children
IS MURDER...is but one innocent DIED
by your hand..of your chosing...

we who..are allready..in hell
'we'..NEED..NO MORE.."honouring..
from the demons..who haunt us..in this..war guilt realm

""That victory contributed to""
that victory...involved MEN TURING ionto
[reverting]..back into..*BEAST

how can war
not bear
the mark of the bea-ss'ts..[of war]


""the later victory at Kokoda""

ensured the islanders/natives...would in future
be abused...by the us installed dictaiters..impirialists..
ran from java..by new york bankers

[black faced slavemasters
insttead of yellow faced]


""since the Japanese were denied""

the natives mearly serve their next 'king'
wanting to exploit their resources...
and violate their bodies

while building up great billions
in bonds gold silver
in swiss banks

while their sacred trust
[the people and THEIR estates]
are decieved..into bound servitude]
sold by fear guns bombs and wars gore

Dear Johan (OUG),

Leonard Clark writes in his introduction, "Our own century is, alas, very rich in the poetry of warfare." And it seems that even though the ghastliness and degradation of warfare does come across in his selection, the selection also brings to the surface some of the finest qualities in human nature.

I personally prefer though, what Christopher Marlowe had to say:

"...Accursed be he that first invented war,
They knew not, ah, they knew not simple men,
How those were hit by pelting cannon shot,
Stand staggering like a quivering aspen leaf."

"Tamburlaine the Great." Act 2, Sc.iv.

In a nuclear war however, there will be nobody standing, and there will be no leaves remaining to quiver.

John Dryden said it equally well when in, "Alexander's Feast," he wrote:

"War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying,
If all the world be worth the winning,
Think, oh think, it worth enjoying."

Dear Lexi,

One can give due honour to those who fought without honouring those who caused them to be fighting. One can also give due honour to those who refused to participate in slaughter or encourage others to participate. Bertrand Russell and Eugene Debs are far more worthy of honour than Alexander the little and Napoleon.

Alexander the little wept because he had no more worlds to conquer. A little imagination would have made him realise that there are many more worthwhile things in life than subjecting peoples and being an efficient organiser of slaughter. We name an excellent brandy and a fine pastry after Napoleon who lowered the average height of Frenchmen by two inches.

Dear David f.,

I chose that particular verse out of Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," because of the anti-war sentiment contained in the words. The same criteria was applied in the verse I selected by Christopher Marlowe.

Thomas Hardy in 'The Man he Killed' puts it at the level of the common soldier:

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because--
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like--just as I--
Was out of work--had sold his traps--
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.

Dear David f.,

The historian can establish that an act took place on a certain day, but this, by historical standards, constitutes only chronology or, "factology." The moment the historian begins to look critically at motivation, circumstances, context, or any other such considerations, the product becomes unacceptable for one or another camp of readers.

As Napoleon said, "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

Absolutely, Lexi. That also goes for biographers.
All hail Herodotus!

love the words...lexey

but its squers queer words
that rings in me ear

""All hail Herodotus""

hero-dot/us
hero dotage
dont dote on heroes

funny word that
begins with 'hero'

much like words ending with the oath 'el'...good*[god]

must be a bit of creativity
behind that hero...*''honour''

what gives?

the true hero
is he who holds his peace
when the whole world goes insane again

Dear Lexi,

One cannot even always establish facts. The Battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbour on 15 February, 1898. The enquiry concluded that a mine set under the ship blew it up. If it is a was true that a mine did it who placed the mine there will probably remain unknown. The US used the explosion as justification for the Spanish-American War. The identity of the agant placing the mine if there was a mine placed will probably remain unknown.

Sorry, the implication above being all hail Herodotus over Thucydides--they're often compared--the exacting historian and celebrant of the Peloponnesian War, favoured by posterity over Herodotus until the post-modern populist era.

Lexi,

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

The other pertinent point here is that it's always been the "educated class" who have written it down - so in many cases it's a subjective version of past events.
And again, one is gets a differing angle depending on whether the version is couched from a macro or micro perspective.

Dear Poirot,

Good point. It's all subjective. The guys who wrote the Bible thought the world was flat.

where does the bible say the world to be flat
where does it say the earth is 7000 years old

seeme we attribute to loosly...things to the holy texts
trhat the messengers didnt put in...!

even then translations have subverted the true mmeanings
they werrnt ever to be written down..many reported by others..and
much written well after the fact[heavilly edited and rewritten]sure

but i dont recall the flat earther thing
nor the 7000 sun rotation cycles

Dear OUG,

I got these examples from the web. You can find more if you're interested in the topic - just Google - "flat earth bible."

Daniel 4:7-8. "I saw a tree of great height at the center of the world. It was large and strong, with it's top touching the heavens and it could be seen from the ends of the earth."

According to the web:

"This was allegedly an inspired dream, yet it conveys a flat-earth concept, because no matter how tall a tree would be, people on the other side of a spherical earth could not see it."

Matthew 4:8. "The devil took him (Jesus) to a very high mountain and displayed before him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence."

According to the web:

"The only reason for the "very high mountain" was that the altitude would make it possible to see to the ends of the earth. Only on a flat earth would this be remotely possible, so the New Testament writers were as ignorant as the Old."

Let's not forget that:

People of those times were ignorant of scientific facts - they thought the earth was flat, that sick people were possessed by demons and that essentially everything was caused by either gods or demons.

Lexi and OUG,

Your discussion made me wonder when it was first postulated that the earth was spherical.
Here's a little info on a Greek named Eratosthenes - although he wasn't the first to assume the earth was round.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes.

The other point, of course, is that even though this knowledge existed, it was confined to a relatively small group of people, and the route taken to wider dissemination is often convoluted before it reaches the minds of the general population

Dear Poirot,

Quite possibly most Greeks at the time of Eratosthenes were aware that the world was round. At that time the Bible was not clouding up their minds. John Dragoumis, the cultural attache to the Greek embassy on London, said that the arrival of Christianity was death to Greek culture. I am not sure I quoted him accurately, but that was the sense of what he said.

David f.,

Too true.

Another interesting subject is Islamic guardianship and preservation of much ancient Greek knowledge during the Dark Ages when Christianity held sway in Europe.

Last night I watched the new film "Agora", all about the rise and barbarism of Christianity in Alexandria between 300 and 400 AD, scenes including the trashing of the library, numerous stonings and the appallingly cruel torture and killing of the brilliant philosopher Hypatia by the Christian mob. Roman rule, barbarous in its own right, had to be overthrown, but the Christians set back philosophy and learning for a thousand years.

Syriac Christians and oriental Jews, often collaborating, preserved much of the writings of the ancient world which were lost to Europe. These peoples were able to keep their identity to a large extent after the Islamic conquests and made Islamic scholars aware of these works. Europeans then got those works from Islamic scholars. This was one of the influences on the Renaissance.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-closing-of-the-western-mind-by-charles-freeman-642541.html

Freeman points an accusing finger at early Christianity – the charge being that the authority of the church and its political supporters destroyed "the tradition of rational thought" that was "among the major achievements of the classical world".

Sometimes in the fourth or fifth centuries CE, he insists, faith won out over reason. It was a victory which determined the course of Western culture until, in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas re-discovered Aristotle and restored the place of scientific research.
Even the most fervent exponents of the irrationality of the classical world would accept that much of our own tradition of scientific enquiry finds its ancestor among the Greeks of the fifth century BCE, rather than in early Christian culture a millennium later. As Freeman points out, the Western tradition of astronomy is often said to go back to the correct prediction of an eclipse by the Greek scientist Thales in 585 BCE. The last recorded astronomical observation of antiquity was by the pagan philosopher Proclus in 475 CE. It was not until the 16th century that "these studies began to move forward again".

The review also is critical of the book. Look it up for those parts.

There was a great deal of irrationality in the ancient world, but in general polytheism was much more tolerant of dissent and enquiry than monotheism.

The Moors in Spain had a crucial influence on the preservation of ancient knowledge - and in the development of their own.

http://www.culturespain.com/articles/what-did-the-moors-do-for-us

Talking about the irrationality that existed in the ancient world...

I came across an interesting article on the web (sorry, I've lost the link). But the questions being asked were:

"Since when do we respond by burning things that upset us? The answer given was - for millenia actually. Christians were burned for years and they didn't enjoy it. There was Joan of Arc. There were people who thought Harry Potter books were the "devil's text."

Books are supposed to be the repository of history and cultural memory and the ink on their papers will last for generations, but light a match and there goes the library of Alexandria. The author of
the article went on to say - "I've always hoped that book burning would be one of those things we'd leave behind once we became more enlightened (once they installed indoor plumbing in your home).
I think book burning is always a sign that something has gone awry in our civilisation..."

"It's impossible to boil any religion down to a single sentence. As some people have tried to do (recently - Jones in the US with the burning of the Koran) and others on both sides of the debate. To say
"Christianity is purely a religion of peace," is as great a fallacy as to say "Christianity is founded on hatred." The Bible encompasses both cloud and fire, both turning the other cheek and the arm of the Lord that smiteth..." There are those who read and believe it.

Dear Squeers,

By the time Roman rule was overthrown, Roman rule and Christian rule had been united. Theodosius promoted Nicene Trinitarian Christianity within the Empire. On 27 February 380, he declared "Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial religion, ending state support for the traditional Roman religion. Hypatia was murdered in 415 after Christianity became the official religion. Local officials probably collaborated in her persecution.

Diocese and other administrative terms of the Catholic Church are identical to the names of analogous units of the Empire. The Empire still exists in church structure,

Who burned the library is problematical.

From http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm

“The suspects respectively are a Roman, a Christian and a Moslem - Julius Caesar, Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria and Caliph Omar of Damascus. It is clear that the Royal Library could not have been burnt down or otherwise destroyed by all three of these characters and so we find we have too many sources for the event of the destruction rather than a paucity. As scholars of the Gospels will vouch, this too can be an embarrassment. How we decide to reconcile the stories will depend almost entirely on how we criticise the sources and which of them we choose to consider most reliable.”

Christians often accuse Muslims and vice versa. We really don’t know who did it.

lexie...heard of poetic licence
i would hate to be the one that needs remind you
poetry isnt science...nor is dream...

even if the earth was 'flat';
its unlikely you could physiclly see that far
[thousands of miles]...

as for jesus being shown 'all the kingdoms'
that would have been...'via vision'

please lexi your one of the more clever who visit here
people who quote...'bits'....clerly have an adgen da..for quoting that bit

those who revised the holy books...all had their adgendas

anyhow
i should finnish with the adnonisment my mother gave me
[just because peter...jumps off a bridge...would you?]

its only too easy to simplify things to absurdity
[yes im as guilty as any]

but clearly the evidence of a DREAM
or of a vision...well thats no evidence at all..

justy as the claim of xtian religeon
being the religeon of the peacemaker
or the koran a book of war

its just predigested bias
[but i love that you actually looked at their root]
and better posted the actual quote]

put me with those thinking you special
so we need to be speacially hard on our...man-godess
lest she feel..her feet arn't made of clay....like the rest of us

comes a time to make peace
but only..*by letting the dream's
delusion's../vision's..of the past....GO

they were never ..'the reality'...
for they were but im-ages/mir-ages
excuses given us by those..seeking only to make..their next war

Dear Squeers,

I am finally in front of a computer and not having to post via an Iphone.

I have had a chance to better review some of your links, especially Takis Fotopoulis, and I have to say you are well read with a mind notably better at understanding concepts than my poor brain. I will endeavour to give him another try.

My thoughts are mostly organically sourced and these coupled with a very modest ability to think a little spatially allows me to kick the traces every so often.

I gather that in many ways we are in complete agreement. Where we appear to diverge is where we are prepared to place responsibility, or rather to what degree it should be apportioned, for the actions of our government.

My contention is that in advanced democracies like Australia the governments we elect represent us, not just on paper but our aspirations, our fears, our prejudices, etc. while the governments we depose have found the corruption of power divorcing them from the same. I am of the firm opinion that the Australian people have mostly got it right in elections for the last thirty years.

We fail to truly understand democracy when we bemoan the election of Hamas, or a referendum that installs an Islamic state such as in Iran.

We also get uncomfortable when we fail to recognise the same mechanism is at play when a populace keeps a capital punishment advocating party at bay even though the majority supports it, and when a party that takes us to war while the majority oppose it.

I think the government and the media get to tinker, through our permission because we accept the way society frames these institutions, with a portion of our lives. But ultimately they are not the leaders on substantive matters no matter how much they might think they are, instead their success or otherwise is contingent on how well they follow.

Dear OUG,

I appreciate your posts and kind words. Over the centuries warfare has shaped and disrupted societies, altered the course of history, and led to the slaughter of hundreds of millions of people, combatants and non-compatants alike. Why do people go to war? The answer seems to be that war occurs as a result of a political decision - usually a decision by older men that younger men should fight for what older men believe to be worth fighting for. There can be no war unlesss the leaders of at least two societies with conflicting interests decide that they prefer war to any alternative means of settling their differences. The soldiers themsleves go to war - frequently not knowing what they are fighting for, and usually terrified of meeting the enemy in battle - because a legitimate political authority is determined on that course of action.

War is actually a highly structured social activity. It can't be sustained without a strong political authority that can persuade people to risk their lives for a purpose beyond themselves.

csteele,
I'm envious of the adventurous lifestyles you and davidf seem to enjoy. I've only "read" Don Quixote and cannot escape computer screens!

You're both too modest and too generous. I don't say so from too refined manners, but from being immersed in David Hume presently--and not due to Radio National's festivities over his 300 birthday, but for my own reasons. Thus your modesty is apposite, as like you Hume put no faith in his unassisted--by empirical evidence--reason whatsoever, seeing the "manifold" of outrageous "contradictions and imperfections in human reason" as incorrigible, "so wrought upon me and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another".
It's an enduring human conceit that we think our common opinions have any reference to the truth of common experience. We press on opinionated regardless..

I'd say our governments only represent and appeal to our crudest common denominations--institutions--and not individually at all. I therefore differ with you that Australian electorates have "got it right" for thirty years. For me, Labor and Liberal are indistinguishable and elections are fought over tiny variations on the same themes.
Capital punishment and war are perfect examples, but also religion, patriotism etc. Each of these captures sufficient discontented voters by default since Australia is a middle class nation whose members by and large, despite their misgivings, don't like change. The marginal parties are only there to field the protest votes and provide a valuable service to the majors.
The trouble is that democracies are no longer radical and elections provide a wealth of empirical data to the contenders. We're so caught up with our earth-shattering opinions that we don't realise we're being played. Democratic elections are a science in their own right and the phenomena long since gave up its secrets. Elections in countries like Australia decide whether it's Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum that get's the Lodge for the next 3 years.
The media knows all this but are forced to play the same populist game.

Dear Lexi,

I hope I haven't made the Mt Difficult sojourn more intrepid than what it really was. If rated as a climb it would be easy, as a walk it is rated difficult and while vertically it is under 500mts, the length of it at around 10kms round trip and the boulder hopping involved makes it unwise to try and cut any time off the trip which is what we foolishly attempted to do. Pushed ourselves well past what was wise.

The views however are stunning. This is a link to the site of someone who did it a couple of years back.
http://www.townsvillenet.com.au/mountains/mtdifficult.htm

Dear Davidf,

The trip sounds fantastic. For a long while I had a Zero bullet dug as a child from the side of a turret emplacement in Darwin and our landlord at the time had been a Hurricane pilot who flew from an airfield near Katherine.

His spirit visited my mother the night he died. What can I tell you, sometimes us rational types just have to shrug the shoulders and wear it.

As a teenager schooling in Singapore a group of us played in the gun emplacements and the deep tunnels of the abandoned British fortifications on Sentosa, now all developed of course. Some of the British maps were still on the wall of a command centre 100 feet down a ladder. All very Boys Own stuff.

And why shouldn't it grab the imagination of youths such as us. Who wants to load the dreadful toll of war on the young? Fortunately for the species experience and wisdom is sometimes respected but not always.

In many ways a young Australia reflected suffered from a lack of shared experience and wisdom about war. The Boer war was 18 months of mainly successes for the Australians and the spectre of mechanised warfare was only just being seen.

Perhaps new technologies recording oral histories can pass on the horrors of World Wars in a more visceral form to future generations though time's dilutions are difficult to combat while the stories of heroism only increase in their potency.

Dear Squeers,

I probably would agree with Hume, opinions often seem to be just the fingernails of attitudes, good for poking and prodding and picking ones nose, but just dead skin-cells after all.

Attitudes are primarily formed by experiences. I have had just enough success on achieving things with politicians to be positive about the power of the 'everyman', given the inclination, to progress issues and bring about change.

Most politicians I know are to some degree insecure and in need of affirmation from the public. That they are delivered up to us like this is one of our system's saving graces.

As a young man I was quite frustrated with democracy in action but having been a member of community groups and sporting boards I have grown to appreciate how it involves so many of our citizens and serves to get things done in so many areas of our communities. I love watching it in action. Evolution rather than revolution sounds like such an old person's 'comfort' cliché but having children makes one wish it for their lives.

So when you say “The trouble is that democracies are no longer radical and elections provide a wealth of empirical data to the contenders.” I can only reply “Thankfully!”. However let a government try and dismantle Medicare for instance and we will see radical. We certainly remain capable of it and I see the Tweedle dee and Tweedle dum effect as evidence of the restrictions we put on those contenders.

So while we might be getting played to some degree I think it works both ways and really both sides know it.

Or I might just be suffering from the twin attitudinal pathologies of optimism and idealism.

Dear csteele,

You wrote of spirits visiting in the night. I do not believe in any sort of supernatural being, but I have had two odd experiences. One night I awoke possibly around 2 am. I remembered a dream of being in a room with flickering lights. I looked up at the ceiling which was made of doors fitted together. In the cracks between the doors I could see there was a raging fire.

When I got up I looked at the news on the computer. It told of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center buildings in NY city. It was 9/11 in the US and 9/12 in Australia.

''Or I might just be suffering
from the twin attitudinal pathologies of optimism and idealism.]]

it isnt your fault
it was written in the stars

this is the 'joining'
of jupiter with mars

the birth..of the age of aquarius
[the stars line up...and apparently
do a clever dance in so doing for a few more days yet]

but heck
its friday the 13 th
so expect some dark thoughts today

csteele:

"So when you say “The trouble is that democracies are no longer radical and elections provide a wealth of empirical data to the contenders.” I can only reply “Thankfully!”. However let a government try and dismantle Medicare for instance and we will see radical. We certainly remain capable of it and I see the Tweedle dee and Tweedle dum effect as evidence of the restrictions we put on those contenders".

The restrictions we put on the contenders is surely nothing more than "Conservative democracy", as complacently self-validating as any monarch who draws his legitimacy from divine appointment. Bourgeois complacency is no less conceited. Nevertheless this might be considered all to the good and its institutions part of a generally salubrious vitality, that is if there was no pressure on it to change--conservatism abhores change.
But what if radical change is vital?
The problem is that there is a great deal of empirical evidence insisting on the need for change, that the current state of affairs is drastically unsustainable and unethical in many ways.
The essence of conservatism for mine is pig-headedness. Empirical evidence cannot compete with its conceits--the manifold "contradictions and imperfections in human reason" that Hume bemoans. These may easily rationalise the most dire threats, especially when technical ignorance prevails, as for instance it does with the science of AGW: a conservative, contented and ignorant democracy gets to decide on such matters.
Institutions, including patriotism (getting back on topic) are the glue that holds it all together. However antiquated, mystical, unethical or downright vile, they're rarely interrogated or gainsaid.
Humanity is no longer governed by kings and queens in sprawling kingdoms fringed with forest, we're now great unwieldy leviathans, bodies of billions. Somehow we have to abandon our outdated institutions and learn agility in response to the momentous effects which no longer just happen, but which we precipitate.
Living in a fantasy world of chivalry, like Don Quixote, is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Sorry it sounds like a sermon.

Dear csteele,

Thanks for the link. I'm not a great hiker - but I do enjoy my local evening run. The most spectacular place that I've hiked around in Australia was Cradle Mountain in Tassie. One of my favourite overseas places to visit was - Yosemite National Park in the US. Lake Louise in Canada and Banff National Park were also awesome. One day I hope to make a trip to the outback here in Australia and take in the natural wonders.

Talking about oral histories. I did my work experience at the State Library of Victoria and they gave me the job of cataloguing the oral history collection. Listening to people's experiences was an extremely moving and educational experience.

Dear Lexi,

The 'outback' is a truly marvellous place, I have visited a reasonable portion of it and a favourite place is Karajini National Park in WA. The very deep red canyons with their mirror smooth walls are very evocative.

Dear davidf,

While you say you do not believe in a supernatural being what you have described can only be labelled as a supernatural occurrence since putting it down to chance seems quite lame. How do you reconcile it, or do you, like me, just shrug the shoulders?

Dear UOG,

Optimism and idealism as dark thoughts? That is in itself very dark.

Dear Squeers,

I will not condemn your dissatisfaction because it is exactly that emotion driving the changes we see in the world today, most pointedly within Arab dictatorships. However I will try and explain the sense of wonder I get about the times we are living in. The fully fledged democracies that include women we are enjoying are only around 100 years old, the scourge of slavery has been routed, the reach of the internet and social media is breaking down walls everywhere, the welfare state, universal health cover, the UN, the eight hour day, the forty hour week, unions, universal education, women's rights and equal pay, flights to the moon, dramatic advances in medicine, and on and on. We are alive with change. It is beating at or doors and rattling our windows like no other time in history. Conservative reactions might betray a fear of the pace, but they have as much chance of holding the tide back as the good King Midas.

I mean WOW!

I can understand those who may want to hop off but I'm in for the ride. As for 'agility' I will defend the human race here by saying I see extraordinary willingness and capacity to embrace change throughout much of the world.

You may want to sniff the winds of change Father Sancho, so do I, but perhaps we should also be prepared to occasionally take a bow and smell the roses at our feet.

csteele,
so my disenchantment is akin to that of Arab dictatorships?
Oh well, that's the usual payment I get for trying to move debate beyond, in this case national, self-aggrandisment.

Now that I know your jingoism is impervious to and resentful of criticism--as patriotism tends to be--I shan't dampen your party spirits with anything taxing in future.
Conceit dislikes to have its foibles told.

Dear csteele,

Billions of people on this earth, I am pretty sure, did not have a dream, similar to mine. They didn't wake up and see the news of the World Towers in rubble and say, "My dream last night had nothing to do with the destruction of the WTC." Mine was related because I related it. The dream could have had some unrelated cause. I certainly would not ascribe a coincidence to the supernatural.

David

Dear Squeers,

The first chance at OLO for a few days so you will have to forgive my writing on the fly. I have been reading some pretty inspiring and exciting blogs from citizen activists in Egypt and Libya. Perhaps a little too enthusiastic.

Just to be clear I was comparing you to the activists rather than the dictators.

I apologise if I have caused offence. Nor do I take any at being referred to as conceited, self-aggrandising, jingoistic, patriot.

Our differences on this topic do appear to be rather irreconcilable but that shouldn't be a reason for taking any skin off.

I feel it comes down to perspective (or to be a little Hume about it we have different perception bundles). To me your position is that we are being led by and ultimately failed by our institutions, further we are too 'pigheaded' to do anything about it. It is not an unreasonable stance however my take has us, through our democracy, as the ultimate future setters, though prepared to give up a degree of control for a stable system of governance.

I am prepared to say there were undoubtedly times in both Egypt and Libya as well as Syria, Iraq and Iran where the stability brought by their dictators was probably welcomed by the majority of the populace. Our system has a more benign head of state but one it is taking us a long while to agree to dispense with.

Perhaps our institutions serve as the repositories of our sense of reason, free to a degree from being a 'slave to our passions'.

Hume was certainly a conservative, especially when it came to changing our institutions. Perhaps I am more like him than I care to think. Must be my Scottish ancestry.

Dear davidf,

My father worked as a diver. I have a very vivid memory of my mother at the kitchen sink suddenly stop and say “Something's happened to your father”, then bundling all us children into the car for a speedy drive to the wharf when he was working. An accident had seen him very nearly drown and he had been thinking of us as he passed out convinced his time was up.

My grandmother was quite matter-of-fact about the episode saying many Scottish women from our clan were 'fey'.

When one does not have a decent explanation that doesn't offend ones sensibilities it is better to 'shrug the shoulders' and let some things pass to the keeper.

csteele,

perhaps I did overreact a bit, or at least I accept your distinction between activists and dictatorships. In complementary fashion, my criticisms were more of institutional invulnerability to criticism and our subjective complicity, though there was an element of hitting back. Thank you for your graciousness in reply. Hume btw recognised that we all have the same "bundles", but that "reason" was idiosyncratically prey to internal impressions, “our passions, emotions, desires and aversions”. Human reason, unconstrained by empirical evidence, was prone to eccentricity.
Advanced market democracies are dominated by vested interests possessed of highly refined technologies designed to manipulate and exploit Hume's "internal impressions". Institutions serve to constrain these idiosyncratic resources within manageable and, importantly, "predictable" bounds. Is this not self-evident? If it's not, that's because we are simultaneously tutored to grow self-esteem, the more exaggerated the better, in the process of being cultivated for harvest. Thus we have solid investments--material, ideological and self-affirming--in the farm, putting it above criticism, which becomes tantamount to blasphemy. Hence Johnson's "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". It's ironic, a system built on egotism that's utterly compliant. This is not a conspiracy theory; the system evolved. Evolution is nothing if not opportunistic and ruthless.
Thus I'd thought I'd made a compelling case for recognising some of the inherent weaknesses of representative democracy and especially its institutional obstinacy. Popular democracy is highly admirable, all things being equal, but all things are not equal and its institutional conservatism is a definite weakness when agility is called for in response to less tangible, home-grown threats like AGW. If an aggressive neighbour threatened, action would be swift, but we're much less inclined to be self-critical.
I'm inclined, then, to agree with davidf that a benign oligarchy would be preferable, especially if its court was amenable to specialised appeal and responsive to internal degeneracy as well as external threats.
Devolution into tyranny is of course the worry, but perhaps this could be avoided if the oligarchical membership was temporary, and privilege was honorary rather than material.
Humility and devotion is precisely what Peoples' Governments lack.

Dear Squeers,

There are a few things I might get you to expand on if you have the time.

You say “Popular democracy is highly admirable, all things being equal,” then continue with “a benign oligarchy would be preferable,” particularly if “privilege was honorary rather than material” since “Humility and devotion is precisely what Peoples' Governments lack.”

Just some quick thoughts. I suppose one way of making our institutions more reactive to the will of the general populace would be to follow the States by having our law enforcement chiefs popularly elected along with our district attorneys. Why not elect judges?

But the separation of our courts from our parliament continues to largely remain in place in Australia. We as a society prefer it that way, perhaps intuitively keeping passions at bay from the servants of our reason.

In some ways we had achieved a measure of benign oligarchy in this country when the public service was at its most powerful. Frank and fearless advice and all that. Keating then Howard have put paid to it.

Further while I'm sure you don't want a bunch of Ghandi clones as our ruling class the sentiment you have expressed about humility and devotion is precisely why countries that have thrown of corrupt, venal dictatorships often react by installing the religious classes and their laws as their preferred rulers.

it seems i will be logged out after two hour's
[thats bull grayham]..to put it nicely
change for change sake[bah]

but back to the topic for now

""we all have the same "bundles",
but that "reason" was idiosyncratically prey
to internal impressions,..“our passions, emotions, desires and aversions”.""'

include
that we hate in others
is that bit of ourselves we end up resisting

""Human reason,
unconstrained by empirical evidence,..was prone to eccentricity.""

thus why govt/media
sek to give stuff that fels like fact
but is in reality spin...spun upon the ignorant

[like libia is as much as like when..
iraq's/sadman insane wanted euros
for his oil..

[just as gadfly...wanted to be paid
in african gold dinars]

the real reaason behind the media spin..to war


""Advanced market democracies
are dominated by vested interests possessed of highly refined technologies designed to manipulate and exploit..Hume's "internal impressions".""

ie note
not gut feelings
but pat-rot-ic feelings

backing your team

""Institutions serve to constrain
these idiosyncratic resources within manageable and, importantly, "predictable" bounds.""

takle one for the team

""Is this not self-evident?
If it's not,..that's because we are simultaneously
tutored to grow self-esteem,..the more exaggerated the better,
in the process of being cultivated...for harvest."""

well put
the harvest of spin
wont fill your stomache mind

""Thus we have solid investments--material,
ideological and self-affirming--in the farm,"'

firm?
in-house?

>>putting it above criticism,
which becomes tantamount to blasphemy.""

nair a truer word spokens
ok words]..

Hence Johnson's "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".
It's ironic, a system built on egotism that's utterly compliant."""

when the mans right he is right
not all right..not far right..not right out there
just right...this time

note
[generalised comment..not specific]

if even a LITTLE BIT wrong..IS WRONG
maybe even for the right reason

yet in being wrong
that wrong corrupts the whole cake

""This is not a conspiracy theory;..the system evolved.
Evolution is nothing if not opportunistic and ruthless."""

now hang on

this is wrong[by biased]..
wrong teaching re 'evolution'

EVOLUTION is a species limited process
NEVER HAS MICRO EVOLUTION resulted in a macro evolution

NOT EVER has a lizard 'evolved'..into a bird
or a coldblood EVOLVED..[fish]..
into a warm blood..[mammal]

the miss direction..re evolution
being accorded..to oppertuinism?...
[out of genus]

for the physical factors of survival...
has been much miss represented

studdy of darwins finches..reveals in dry season more short beaked 'survive'...in wet seasons more long beaked
[yes this is oppertuionism..BUT...mate its got nothing to do with..''evolutioon'[as in making an ape a man]

but its the cloak of logic
sustaining the insane
to taker good/god..[out of the picture]

if no god..then what?
[so sell the athjiests a god free EVIL-loot-ion

nor ""ruthlessness"
WITHIN...its family...
[out of pig headed ignorance]

only for danger or food[survival]
NEVER OUT OF MALICE..rarely out of ignorance

""Thus I'd thought I'd made a compelling case
for recognising some of the inherent weaknesses of representative democracy and especially its institutional obstinacy.""

a picture is worth a 1000 words

""Popular democracy is highly admirable, all things being equal,
but all things are not equal""....!

""and..institutional conservatism
is a definite weakness..when agility is called for..in response to less tangible,..home-grown threats like AGW""

where the problem..IF indeed a true proplem
is caused by deteriation of the sky..[by grenhouse axcting GASSES]
not just one gass..but many[at least 10 so far..many far worse affect]...like methane..and nitrouse oxide....

WHO ESCAPE bl;ame and shame
cause theyu are made by good/ol farmers..and miners
sheepfarts and home composting bins...nitogen fertilisers and gas drilling.

""If an aggressive neighbour threatened,
action would be swift, but we're much less inclined to be self-critical.""

or made to feel*
they will beat us up with smarter facts

ie..we arnt smart enough to rebut
the science LIES the facts stand upon?

""I'm inclined,..then,
to agree with davidf..that a benign oligarchy
would be preferable,..especially if its court..was amenable to specialised appeal..and responsive to internal degeneracy

as well as external threats."

yeah me too

""Devolution into tyranny is of course the worry,
but perhaps this could be avoided if the oligarchical membership was temporary,...""

or a..completly sepperated power?
no powwers to lend to friends..no power to criminalise
no powwer to make war...or pick favourites...no need for lending]

""and privilege was honorary
rather than material.""

never underestimate the ability of men to lust after money
power...gratification..ego..[only good god is perfect]..

""Humility and devotion
..is precisely what Peoples' Governments lack.""

yes certainly..but so much more needs to go wrong
for govt to think it right to oppress its sacred trust


csteel..quote

""I suppose one way of making our institutions
more reactive to the will of the general populace
would be to follow the States...by having our law enforcement chiefs popularly elected along with our district attorneys.

Why not elect judges?""

sdo much wrong with that
but lets take this no further than the constitution

''where state laws are devergent..
they fall under federal powers..""

if non egsistand[or divergent]..
they become of null affect

"'But the separation of our courts from our parliament continues to largely remain in place in Australia. We as a society prefer it that way, perhaps intuitively keeping passions at bay from the servants of our reason."'

the joke of sepperation of powwers is nuttts
lawyers become polititions
making laws...constructed by civil servants[lawyers]
to be defended by lawyers...and judged by lawyers..who are only legslated to manufacture 'orders'..[orders are the cash remedy]

ever heard of money orders
THE ORDER IS MONEY[as good as gold]
[show him your order]..[orders convert into bills]
by signing a bill it becomes a negiotiatable security note

""while I'm sure you don't want a bunch of Ghandi clones as our ruling class..the sentiment you have expressed about humility and devotion..is precisely why countries..

..that have thrown off corrupt,..venal dictatorships
often react by installing the religious classes
and their laws as their preferred rulers.""

where govts got it wrong
is THINKING/believing..they are allowed..to make laws

nor make wars..
nor make treaties...[on behalf of 'we'..others]

NOT IN MY NAMe

csteel,
Am I really that poor a communicator that you fail completely to grasp what I'm saying?
As soon as time permits I'll get back to you, but may I ask in the meantime that you compare my post with your inferences and consider again whether they actually tally?

OUG,
I'm very flattered that you've taken occasionally to annotating my posts, and I'm glad we often agree, at least to a point.
On evolution; it's perfectly acceptable to use the word as an adjective in the way I did, to describe the evolution of modern social structures.
Evolution per se is another topic.

Dear csteele,

There are cases for which we do not have a ready explanation such as my dream and your mother's feeling that something happened to your father. However, it is taking a big leap to say it is something supernatural or in support of any religious belief. We don't yet know all the natural processes that take place, and it is possible that we will never know on an analytical, experimental level. Your parents may been so close to each other that they could communicate feelings at a distance by some means we know nothing of. I have members of my family that I am close to who live in the areas immediately affected by 9/11. I later found that one of them was driving a car in New Jersey and actually saw a plane plough into one of the Towers. So even if my dream was not coincidence I don't think it was any supernatural manifestation.

Dear Squeers,

I fear I may be a waste of your time. If I can't attach things to the concrete then I have difficulties.

A failing indeed but I have learned to live with it. It is why Hume frustrates me. For instance for all his pontifications he seemed to be either lazy or inconsistent when asked to reflect on our institutions, although that may be a little unfair for the time.

Thank you for your patience anyway. Will catch you on the next one.

Dear davidf,

Happy to accept what you say, that what we deem as supernatural may well be natural though as yet the mechanisms remain hidden, but you have to admit the idea does raise some tantalizing prospects. A universal human consciousness created through our interconnectedness at this yet unknown level. Something those in the past may have referred to as divine.

Dear csteele,

We can interpret the experiences we cited as a reason to suspect thst humans who have connection with each other can communicate thoughts and feelings in some way that we don't know. However, to extend that to the concept of a universal human consciousness is, I think, not justified. I think all humans have some common reactions to similar stimuli. However, I don't even know what is meant by a universal human consciousness. Can you and will you give an example? If you answer yes to that I will ask for the example.

david quote...""to extend that...

ie..""thAt humans..who have connection with each other
can communicate thoughts and feelings..in some way that we don't know...""...''to the concept of a universal human consciousness..is, I think, not justified.""

ITS FUNNY DAVID..LAST NIGHT SBS
damm cap loc...anyhow there was a science program
on 'conciousness''..just last night....

[as usual..they didnt explain nuthing]
sure they went into a mummy brain...

ended up with numberless neurons...[all interconected]
but couldnt 'find..NOR EXPLAIN''...conscieniousness

ie the me/you/i
..in all that neuron connection

]fact is science dont know
[thus you get a fool dorkins saying there is no heaven
on his science instruments...yet he KNOWS he isnt making himself live]

he knows science has never MADE A LIFE
and dont got no idea where the me is in all that brain activity

in short they dont know
and cant replicate that god alone does
..*for everyone..[living]

""I think all humans have some common reactions to similar stimuli.""

yes we NEED TO KNOW....why?
how..who what why and when

those who dont know make up spin
yet the truth is so simple even a child can grasp good[god]

""However,
..I don't even know
what is meant by a universal human consciousness."'

lets try to guess
it means an awarness beyond that a beast would have
of the higher things..applied to higher reason..than the self..

to be human is to know we are all flawed
all works in process

uni-verse-al..is the one united god/[wholly spiritus]
[goodness/grace mercy applied]

equally..with compassion

to all
sustained to live..by gods good love
by his good/will alone

""Can you and will you give an example?"'

sure...every good thought comes from god
a not good thought cannot come from god[good]

we are all like sheep/goats/wheat/tares
depending on which inner voices..
[from which realms]..

*we chose to enact..
*into this reality..

Dear davidf,

LOL, a touch droll my friend.

An answer and an example is forthcoming.

Yes.

As a bit of a fan of the original Star Wars perhaps the notion of the 'Force' is a portrayal of a universal consciousness. A connectedness through time and space.

Children seem to be a little more tuned to whatever it is as do tribal peoples.

But us adults are not bereft of the 'gift' even those who are uncomfortable about acknowledging it. Port Arthur certainly had my antenna screaming. A deeply foreboding place of misery and yes evil.

If one accepts there is a mechanism at play I'm not sure that one can be confident about it only engaging between people who know each other. I mean if yogurt can be shown to do it then why not humanity, especially with our six degrees of separation.

Possibly all flights of fantasy but as I move through a reasonably rational existence I do enjoy little disturbances to my complacency that difficult to rationalize occurrences seem to bring on a regular basis.

All good fun.

Dear csteele,

You didn't give an example. You cited a movie based on a fantasy and made generalisations about children, tribal people and 'gifts.' I have dreams and fantasies, too. They can be fun. I had a great one the other night. I was dancing with a luscious woman in a filmy black dress.

I don't think there is such a thing as a universal human consciousness. However, if there was evidence telling of such a thing I would consider the evidence. What we know and see is wonderful enough without fantasy, but fantasy can be fun. I just enjoyed "Sappho's Leap" by Erica Jong. It's a reconstruction of the life of Sappho bringing in Greek mythology and having Sappho encounter the Amazons, the Land of the Dead, centaurs etc.

Dear OUG,

"You wrote: sure...every good thought comes from god
a not good thought cannot come from god[good]"

God is a creation of man. If there is such a thing as a God there is no reason to think that the Bible, the Koran or any other scripture around has anything to do with God. There is no more reason to believe in the miracles described in the Bible then there is to believe in centaurs, amazons or the other bits of Greek mythology. However, if one does take the Bible seriously as the word of God, God creates evil.

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil:
I the LORD do all these things.

Creating evil means creating evil.

stimulated thinking

quote/david..""God is a creation of man.""
the abrahamic version of god...could be
construed to be a creation of man
but..

to put..the due on man
when the due is definitivly..NOT from man
[ie the uni-verse/creat-ion/creat-ures]..
reveakls the foible lies with men..[not god]

""If there is such a thing as a God""

god is neither thing
nor man..rather all things...all man

""there is no reason to think that the Bible,
the Koran or any other scripture around has anything to do with God.""'

i certainly agree
we can take..but on faith[that mens words]
acturatly represent what the writer intended to convey
or indeed that the many messenmgers..claiming to reveal the god/good..were in fact..ascribing that truelly good..of god

""There is no more reason to believe in the miracles described in the Bible""

i fully agree..indeed have rebutted many so called miracles
[gods miracle is in nature[reflective of the nurture inherant in nature...]

he dont 'do miracles'
[anghels and demons often do]
and im not sure even of angels doing

as jesus said ye unbelieving nation[needing miracles]

the feeding of the many is simply a description of a rule obsessed group[sitting oppisite each other...ignoring their hunger..in lue of being able to wash their hands[the rite of eating]

simularilly the miracle of water into whine
[not just any water..but effectivly TOILET water
no one wopuld serve their guests the best whine from a dunny..!

jesus said its not yet my time..[at canna]
and i believe him

""the Bible..as the word of God,""

thats bull[look at the names
they wrote it[inspired by angels/demons..but not god
he has enough to do making us live[natural reflex]..
[autonimous system's..gravity/light/logic..logus]..all good/god



""Isaiah 45:7
I the LORD do all these things.}..

yep..the lord might
but the lord is many lords
there is but one good/god

but god does..so much more
its from god..if its all good

""Creating evil..means creating evil.}}

mate they were dislectic

use the letters
vile/veil/live/evil
now read it from left to right
now change it to latin..or chinese

mere words..of men
god is living...

*LIFE is his sign...not words

Dear davidf,

You asked me what I meant by a universal consciousness and the example fitted the task perfectly. If you had asked specifically for a real example then I would have deferred as the ticklish feather of speculation is only served by us not having a concrete example to give.

We can though speculate about armies being gripped by universal panic, the terror of a few transmitting through the ranks like wildfire resulting in total routs. Perhaps there is an ability to spread utter panic that does not rely entirely on deed or word but the powerfulness of the emotion.

Mob behavior and the debasing effects it can have is perhaps a potential flag of something else at work.

Who are we to know but if we agree the door is opened through our individual experiences a peek at the possibilities should not be condemned.

csteele,
If I may, I agree entirely with your last comment. I even think that something of the sort is more likely than not. Of course as you say we can only speculate as to possibilities and it would be foolish to adapt beliefs to those speculations.
I don't think we begin to understand the mysteries of life, consciousness or even objective reality itself--which is finite form rather than self-subsistent. For me that makes anything possible. I'll even go out on a limb and say I think it's highly unlikely that this stupid flat, empirical reality we perceive is all there is to it.
I toast the mystery of life!

Dear Squeers,

I'll drink to that...

Talking about life's mysteries: -

PS: How can a 2 lb box of chocolates make you gain 5 lbs?

Dear csteele,

I asked for an example. That means precisely what it said - not something from a movie or a rumination.

david is still seking an egsample
[after squeers sqibed?..with army routs
and mob's

so lets see from the beginning what has david so pedantic

""We can interpret the experiences we cited
as a reason to suspect that humans..{who have connection with each other}..can communicate thoughts and feelings..in some way that we don't know.""

the rerason...'we' ..suspect'..it is we have heard of mothers knowing their child is in danger..or friends knowing other friends are in danger..[the reality is we get these thoughts all the time]..but usually they are wrong...

of course in the next life
we are allways spot on..

[but hey you dont believe in living
after physical death]..so lets save our breath

""However,..to extend that
to the concept of a universal
*human consciousness is,..I think,..not justified.""

sure for now the animal instincts
are better and more accurate..
[ie volcano eruptions..or dogs smelling cancer]

or even such things like flying south..for winter
or coral spawing..in synche

""I think all humans have some
common reactions..to similar stimuli."'

and the powers that be have made us automotons
via a dumbed down education system...[pushes our buttons]
runs our body clocks..even controls our thoughts..[media/spin]

[not natural events
natural beauty...or anything inspired of gods nurture[natural-good]

''However,I don't even know what is meant
by a universal human consciousness.""

because huh-mans..have presently
individual conscience....
yet collective..un conciousness
of others sufferings/plight/circumstances

as squeers has said
let those who use the words..explain them..!

he gave you egsamples