And you're brought up in a culture that makes you think that spending a lifetime working for someone else, and buying a ton of shit you don't need, is normal and o.k. That doesn't make it right.
so, what would be a lifetime spent that is "normal" consist of then? are you saying that everyone - every single person on earth - should only be a subsistance farmer for themselves? everyone on earth should be their own doctor? their own, sole educator? protector? entertainer? regardless of their levels of intellect and talent? in this framework, unless everyone helped everyone else for free, society wouldn't even be functional. do you live on a commune?
if certain people didn't spend a "lifetime working for someone else", you'd never be able to listen to Pearl Jam as you do now. hell, you'd never be able to comminucate in this forum.
and who the hell do you think you are to tell anyone else that what THEY feel they need or want isn't right? even if you happen to be smarter than someone else, that doesn't give you the right to tell them what they do or don't need.
you are imperfect like everyone else is. every human (who obtains their means legally and without harm to others) is free to enjoy the fruits of their labor by collecting or consuming property as they see fit.
say I make a numbered list of everything I've ever bought, and post it in this forum. Let's say you AND everyone else in AMT thinks item #478 is something I really don't need. But I think, with the honest whole of my being, that I do need it. whose to say I'm wrong? or are you a god?
Not to mention, I may even agree I don't need it...I may just want it. Humans don't just have needs. They have wants as well. I, like you (I imagine, since you post here), don't NEED to listen to Pearl Jam's music. But we want to. People start businesses to fulfill the needs and wants of other people. not everyone has the talent/intelligence/dedication/luck to start their own business. those who don't/won't, seek employment from those who do - not in some "slavery-light" situation as you paint it, but simply as the function of a society that works by fulfilling OTHER people's base needs and desires. Needing and wanting didn't start at the Industrial Revolution, or the Renaissance, or on the Silk Road. and it certinaly didn't start in 1984 or even 1926.
it started tens (or hundreds, depeding on how you define it) of thousands of years ago with the very first homo sapien.
so, what would be a lifetime spent that is "normal" consist of then? are you saying that everyone - every single person on earth - should only be a subsistance farmer for themselves? everyone on earth should be their own doctor? their own, sole educator? protector? entertainer? regardless of their levels of intellect and talent? in this framework, unless everyone helped everyone else for free, society wouldn't even be functional. do you live on a commune?
if certain people didn't spend a "lifetime working for someone else", you'd never be able to listen to Pearl Jam as you do now. hell, you'd never be able to comminucate in this forum.
and who the hell do you think you are to tell anyone else that what THEY feel they need or want isn't right? even if you happen to be smarter than someone else, that doesn't give you the right to tell them what they do or don't need.
you are imperfect like everyone else is. every human (who obtains their means legally and without harm to others) is free to enjoy the fruits of their labor by collecting or consuming property as they see fit.
say I make a numbered list of everything I've ever bought, and post it in this forum. Let's say you AND everyone else in AMT thinks item #478 is something I really don't need. But I think, with the honest whole of my being, that I do need it. whose to say I'm wrong? or are you a god?
Not to mention, I may even agree I don't need it...I may just want it. Humans don't just have needs. They have wants as well. I, like you (I imagine, since you post here), don't NEED to listen to Pearl Jam's music. But we want to. People start businesses to fulfill the needs and wants of other people. not everyone has the talent/intelligence/dedication/luck to start their own business. those who don't/won't, seek employment from those who do - not in some "slavery-light" situation as you paint it, but simply as the function of a society that works by fulfilling OTHER people's base needs and desires. Needing and wanting didn't start at the Industrial Revolution, or the Renaissance, or on the Silk Road. and it certinaly didn't start in 1984 or even 1926.
it started tens (or hundreds, depeding on how you define it) of thousands of years ago with the very first homo sapien.
I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is. And a lot of that has to do with our conditioning. And I'm no different in that respect.
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
We look down our noses at other cultures that do things differently from ourselves, and consider ourselves to be free, but do we really have that right?
Whilst I think we can all agree that a certain level of consumerism is unhealthy, it and Islam are not analogous - and the suggestion that they are is either very silly, or betrays a massive ignorance where the nature of faith is concerned.
Until we are groomed from birth into believing that we can only reject consumerism if we are prepared to spend eternity in Hell - until we are told that being an apostate where consumerism is concerned is punishable by death - until we are told that to die in advancement of consumerism is the best death you can hope for the comparison will remain a stupid one.
Whilst I think we can all agree that a certain level of consumerism is unhealthy, it and Islam are not analogous - and the suggestion that they are is either very silly, or betrays a massive ignorance where the nature of faith is concerned.
Until we are groomed from birth into believing that we can only reject consumerism if we are prepared to spend eternity in Hell - until we are told that being an apostate where consumerism is concerned is punishable by death - until we are told that to die in advancement of consumerism is the best death you can hope for the comparison will remain a stupid one.
We don't have to think we'll spend an eternity in hell, or sacrifice ourselves outside the stock exchange. But we still live lives dictated by our cultural upbringing and all the attendant indoctrination and peer pressure that brings.
Whilst I think we can all agree that a certain level of consumerism is unhealthy, it and Islam are not analogous - and the suggestion that they are is either very silly, or betrays a massive ignorance where the nature of faith is concerned.
Until we are groomed from birth into believing that we can only reject consumerism if we are prepared to spend eternity in Hell - until we are told that being an apostate where consumerism is concerned is punishable by death - until we are told that to die in advancement of consumerism is the best death you can hope for the comparison will remain a stupid one.
We don't have to think we'll spend an eternity in hell, or sacrifice ourselves outside the stock exchange. But we still live lives dictated by our cultural upbringing and all the attendant indoctrination and peer pressure that brings.
We all agree that our upbringing will influence us. My point still stands - the two influences are not comparable.
We all agree that our upbringing will influence us. My point still stands - the two influences are not comparable.
Sure, I get it. You want to believe that we in the West are free, enlightened, and immune to cultural pressures, while Muslims are oppressed, violent, and dangerous. I understand perfectly well why you need to believe this.
One culture is conditioned to believe that subservience to their God, and modesty in all things sensual and materialistic, will bring them spiritual fulfillment in life, and in the hereafter, while another culture is conditioned to believe that success and happiness can be measured by how many toys & how much money we manage to accumulate.
And while one culture has extreme aspects that allow it to subjugate women, and that sometimes uses violence against those it deems have betrayed it's religious principles, the other culture (the U.S) currently has 2 million of it's population locked up behind bars - many in inhumane and degrading conditions that are tantamount to torture, murders it's own citizens in the name of justice, destroys and ransacks numerous foreign countries, murders millions of people abroad, and promotes, funds, and defends ethnic cleansing and genocide when it suits them to do so. And in this frenzied pursuit of materialistic wealth, we are destroying the very planet we live on, all the while believing that our culture is superior, because that's what we've been conditioned to believe.
Yep, you're right; there's no comparison. We're good, and they're bad.
We all agree that our upbringing will influence us. My point still stands - the two influences are not comparable.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying Muslims have it better than us. I think we're all fucked. I mean, we're all deluded in our own ways; Muslims, Christians, bankers, soldiers...you name it.
As we speak, the ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, and the rainforests are fast disappearing. How much time do we have left before the whole lot goes down the shitter?
Arguing about whether Christianity is superior to Islam, is like placing a wart hog head-to-head with a pig in a beauty contest.
We all agree that our upbringing will influence us. My point still stands - the two influences are not comparable.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying Muslims have it better than us. I think we're all fucked. I mean, we're all deluded in our own ways; Muslims, Christians, bankers, soldiers...you name it.
As we speak, the ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, and the rainforests are fast disappearing. How much time do we have left before the whole lot goes down the shitter?
Arguing about whether Christianity is superior to Islam, is like placing a wart hog head-to-head with a pig in a beauty contest.
I love your optimism.
I think we all also agree that as a species we're prone to buying into divisive bullshit - you needn't convert the choir. However, you're burning an awful lot of fuel hammering square pegs through round holes to make your examples analogous, and missing the point by an impressive margin as you go.
Despite the Christianity versus Islam remark being somewhat of a departure from topic, I'll address it in a way that might reel it back to relevance. Christianity and Islam are equally untrue, and their scriptures similarly barbaric in parts. But while Christianity's history is dripping with blood, you are either lying or confused if you consider Christian belief as likely as Islam to produce people eager to hack others to death in the streets, blow themselves up on a bus or fly a plane into a building. Needless to say, the analogy gap between Islam and consumerism is even greater.
Lastly, the "We're good, they're bad" remark is disappointingly cheap. Nobody suffers more from religious indoctrination than the indoctrinated. We're I to trade places, cell for cell, experience for experience with an indoctrinated jihadist, I'd behave in exactly the same way - such is the power of religion to make even inherently moral people do evil things. Were it otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Didn't Tony Blair claim that God told him to invade Iraq?
An enterprise that took the lives of an estimated 1 million Iraqi's. Seems like Muslims aren't the only ones prone to dangerous delusions.
I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is. And a lot of that has to do with our conditioning. And I'm no different in that respect.
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
We look down our noses at other cultures that do things differently from ourselves, and consider ourselves to be free, but do we really have that right?
again, how are you - or anyone else for that matter - the arbiter of whether what that I choose to do with the fruits of my labor is either meaningful or meaningless? as long as it is legal and doesn't harm anyone else, if I feel I need something to survive, or want something to be happy, the only appropriate party involved in the decision is my conscience. now, you can attempt to educate me as to why you think that is not right for you, and based on that, for me to consider that it may not be for me as well. But that's the extent of your legitimate involvement.
please provide some specific examples of "material crap" that we destroy the environment to "surround ourselves with".
but you did. you said "I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is." that means that you have decided for the rest of us what is and isn't meaningful. hence, the arbiter. I am going to be defensive when you claim to know my conscience better than I do. again I ask, are you a god?
what is your preferred method to enjoy watching PJ videos? on an old b&w cathode-ray 14 incher? you get a good quality sound out of that? but didn't we raid the environment to make those too tho? should the world be without televisions - and therefore computer screens? can you name a greater tool in history to communicate information? are you anti-progressive?
is a $1,000 basketball shoe 100 times less environmentally friendly than a $10 one? should all the world's children not play basketball? are basketball sneakers less environmentally friendly than any other type of sneakers? should everyone on earth who excersizes do so barefooted? even inner-city kids who run in playgrounds with broken crack viles and hypodermic needles lying around?
should disabled people who wish to live independently be forced to cook their own food and wash their own dishes? what about the single mom with 4 kids who works 2 jobs and literally does not have a spare minute to cook dinner and wash the dishes. or should she sacrifice helping her kids with their homework to do those things?
plastic water bottles...I actually have no defense for those...
but you did. you said "I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is." that means that you have decided for the rest of us what is and isn't meaningful. hence, the arbiter. I am going to be defensive when you claim to know my conscience better than I do. again I ask, are you a god?
I haven't decided anything for you because I don't know you and I don't give a toss what you do. I see plundering the environment in order to satisfy our 'need' for material possessions, to be a bad thing. You clearly don't. Good for you.
but you did. you said "I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is." that means that you have decided for the rest of us what is and isn't meaningful. hence, the arbiter. I am going to be defensive when you claim to know my conscience better than I do. again I ask, are you a god?
he also admitted to not being immune to such practices, as anyone with a fucking computer and a brain would do.
Gimli 1993
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
They are brought up in a culture that makes them think this is normal and ok. That doesn't make it right.
And you're brought up in a culture that makes you think that spending a lifetime working for someone else, and buying a ton of shit you don't need, is normal and o.k. That doesn't make it right.
So you ignore the point and make a completely separate point?
Unless of course you think extreme sexism is akin to consumerism.
They are brought up in a culture that makes them think this is normal and ok. That doesn't make it right.
And you're brought up in a culture that makes you think that spending a lifetime working for someone else, and buying a ton of shit you don't need, is normal and o.k. That doesn't make it right.
So you ignore the point and make a completely separate point?
Unless of course you think extreme sexism is akin to consumerism.
I didn't ignore anything. You claim Muslim women are oppressed without realizing it. I then pointed out that maybe you're oppressed without realizing it.
As for sexism being akin to consumerism/capitalism, oppression/indoctrination works in many ways. Or maybe this simply comes down to you believing yourself to be free and enlightened, while those other people are enslaved and oppressed? The same self-serving, one-eyed logic that has sustained bigotry and racism in the World for centuries.
Wilson: Is there a correlation between that campaign [cigarette advertising] and what’s happening with the big oil industry right now and climate change?
Chomsky: These are just a few examples. These are the origins of what became a huge industry of controlling attitudes and opinions. Now the oil industry today, and in fact the business world generally, are engaged in comparable campaigns to try to undermine efforts to deal with a problem that’s even greater than the mass murder that was caused by the tobacco industry; and it was mass murder. We are facing a threat, a serious threat, of catastrophic climate change. And it’s no joke. And [the oil industry is] trying to impede measures to deal with it for their own short-term profit interests. And that includes not only the petroleum industry, but the American Chamber of Commerce — the leading business lobby — and others, who’ve stated quite openly that they’re conducting … they don’t call it propaganda … but what would amount to propaganda campaigns to convince people that there’s no real danger and we shouldn’t really do much about it, and that we should concentrate on really important things like the deficit and economic growth — what they call ‘growth’ — and not worry about the fact that the human species is marching over a cliff which could be something like [human] species destruction; or at least the destruction of the possibility of a decent life for huge numbers of people. And there are many other correlations. In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices. And so this is only one aspect of the PR industry. What Herman and I were discussing was another aspect of the whole propaganda system that developed roughly at that period, and that’s “manufacture of consent,” as it was called, [consent] to the decisions of our political leaders, or the leaders of the private economy, to try to insure that people have the right beliefs and don’t try to comprehend the way decisions are being made that may not only harm them, but harm many others. That’s propaganda in the normal sense. And so we were talking about mass media, and the intellectual community of the world in general, which is to a large extent dedicated to this. Not that people see themselves as propagandists, but … that they are themselves deeply indoctrinated into the principles of the system, which prevent them from perceiving many things that are really right on the surface, [things] that would be subversive to power if understood. We give plenty of examples there and there’s plenty more you can mention up to the present moment, crucial ones in fact. That’s a large part of a general system of indoctrination and control that runs parallel to controlling attitudes and … consumeristic commitments, and other devices to control people. You mentioned students before. Well one of the main problems for students today — a huge problem — is sky-rocketing tuitions. Why do we have tuitions that are completely out-of-line with other countries, even with our own history? In the 1950s the United States was a much poorer country than it is today, and yet higher education was … pretty much free, or low fees or no fees for huge numbers of people. There hasn’t been an economic change that’s made it necessary, now, to have very high tuitions, far more than when we were a poor country. And to drive the point home even more clearly, if we look just across the borders, Mexico is a poor country yet has a good educational system with free tuition. There was an effort by the Mexican state to raise tuition, maybe some 15 years ago or so, and there was a national student strike which had a lot of popular support, and the government backed down. Now that’s just happened recently in Quebec, on our other border. Go across the ocean: Germany is a rich country. Free tuition. Finland has the highest-ranked education system in the world. Free … virtually free. So I don’t think you can give an argument that there are economic necessities behind the incredibly high increase in tuition. I think these are social and economic decisions made by the people who set policy. And [these hikes] are part of, in my view, part of a backlash that developed in the 1970s against the liberatory tendencies of the 1960s. Students became much freer, more open, they were pressing for opposition to the war, for civil rights, women’s rights … and the country just got too free. In fact, liberal intellectuals condemned this, called it a “crisis of democracy:” we’ve got to have more moderation of democracy. They called, literally, for more commitment to indoctrination of the young, their phrase … we have to make sure that the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young do their work, so we don’t have all this freedom and independence. And many developments took place after that. I don’t think we have enough direct documentation to prove causal relations, but you can see what happened. One of the things that happened was controlling students — in fact, controlling students for the rest of their lives, by simply trapping them in debt. That’s a very effective technique of control and indoctrination. And I suspect — I can’t prove — but I suspect that that’s a large part of the reason behind [high tuitions]. Many other parallel things happened. The whole economy changed in significant ways to concentrate power, to undermine workers’ rights and freedom. In fact the economist who chaired the Federal Reserve around the Clinton years, Alan Greenspan — St. Alan as he was called then, the great genius of the economics profession who was running the economy, highly honored — he testified proudly before congress that the basis for the great economy that he was running was what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, they won’t do things, like asking for better wages and better benefits. And that’s healthy for the economy from a certain point of view, a point of view that says workers ought to be oppressed and controlled, and that wealth ought to be concentrated in a very few pockets. So yeah, that’s a healthy economy, and we need growing worker insecurity, and we need growing student insecurity, for similar reasons. I think all of these things line up together as part of a general reaction — a bipartisan reaction, incidentally — against liberatory tendencies which manifested themselves in the 60s and have continued since.
so just so we're clear: you're not claiming to be the arbiter of anything...
....except that these 5 items are not worth the environmental cost
unless these 5 items have been deemed illegal due to their negative environmental impact by some democratically elected group? or some group of environmental experts have conducted scientific cost-benefit analyses and concluded as such? (I'm being serious, I really don't know. it's not like governments and advocacy groups don't deem things illegal/wrong due to their negative impact on the environment. like, you're not allowed to dump garbage in protected areas, etc. just wondering if any official group has done so for these 5 items).
so just so we're clear: you're not claiming to be the arbiter of anything...
....except that these 5 items are not worth the environmental cost
unless these 5 items have been deemed illegal due to their negative environmental impact by some democratically elected group? or some group of environmental experts have conducted scientific cost-benefit analyses and concluded as such? (I'm being serious, I really don't know. it's not like governments and advocacy groups don't deem things illegal/wrong due to their negative impact on the environment. like, you're not allowed to dump garbage in protected areas, etc. just wondering if any official group has done so for these 5 items).
Are you seriously suggesting that corporations and manufacturers do no harm to the environment, and all pollution has been accounted for and regulated? Really? Is that what you're going with here?
Or maybe this simply comes down to you believing yourself to be free and enlightened, while those other people are enslaved and oppressed? The same self-serving, one-eyed logic that has sustained bigotry and racism in the World for centuries.
Oh the irony.
And I still can't believe you won't admit that Muslim women are oppressed. Bringing up consumerism, etc is merely a deflection, and a bad one at that. You will go to great lengths to avoid admitting you are wrong about any portion of your argument.
It's the same as all those Christian ladies out there that believe there place must be in the home and working mothers are terrible. To those people, their lifestyle is not a choice. There are plenty stay at home moms however where it was simply their freedom of choice.
Or maybe this simply comes down to you believing yourself to be free and enlightened, while those other people are enslaved and oppressed? The same self-serving, one-eyed logic that has sustained bigotry and racism in the World for centuries.
And I still can't believe you won't admit that Muslim women are oppressed.
Why? Because you say they are, so therefore it must be true? Did you not bother reading the quotations from Muslim women I posted on the previous page? They don't feel themselves to be oppressed. In fact, they think Western women are oppressed, and they have good reason for doing so.
The fact is that you don't know the first fucking thing about Islam or the Middle East, other than what you've been told by your t.v.
Why? Because you say they are, so therefore it must be true? Did you not bother reading the quotations from Muslim women I posted on the previous page? They don't feel themselves to be oppressed. In fact, they think Western women are oppressed, and they have good reason for doing so.
The fact is that you don't know the first fucking thing about Islam or the Middle East, other than what you've been told by your t.v.
Comparing the "oppression" of western women to that of women under Islam is shameful, and betrays a disgusting lack of compassion - you may as well have just likened female circumcision to the pressure of maintaining your figure. Given Islam's terrifying attitude to free expression, I will grant you that quote mining for testimonies from Muslim women with critical reports will be difficult as they are comparatively rare - for reasons we've already repeated ad nauseam.
But, they do occasionally surface, despite it being considered apostasy and punishable by death - read some Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a kick off.
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
Why isn't destroying the environment natural? If evolution is the accepted truth amongst those who have the uncanny ability to understand what happened billions of years ago, and we are just a collection of cells and nothing more, how can we possibly make natural or unnatural decisions? We are just existing as cells doing what cells do apparantely. Whose to say that humans were destined to inhabit the earth, or that oil in the earth was never intended to be burned? Was the earth destined to remain at certain temperatures and in a certain condition? Maybe over the lifespan of the earth it is natural for species to come and go (like dinosaurs for example).
Edit: Want to clarify I'm not arguing that we shouldn't take care of our fellow humans and environment. Moreso debating what is natural versus unnatural especially for those who don't believe in intelligent design.
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
Why isn't destroying the environment natural? If evolution is the accepted truth amongst those who have the uncanny ability to understand what happened billions of years ago, and we are just a collection of cells and nothing more, how can we possibly make natural or unnatural decisions? We are just existing as cells doing what cells do apparantely. Whose to say that humans were destined to inhabit the earth, or that oil in the earth was never intended to be burned? Was the earth destined to remain at certain temperatures and in a certain condition? Maybe over the lifespan of the earth it is natural for species to come and go (like dinosaurs for example).
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
Why isn't destroying the environment natural? If evolution is the accepted truth amongst those who have the uncanny ability to understand what happened billions of years ago, and we are just a collection of cells and nothing more, how can we possibly make natural or unnatural decisions? We are just existing as cells doing what cells do apparantely. Whose to say that humans were destined to inhabit the earth, or that oil in the earth was never intended to be burned? Was the earth destined to remain at certain temperatures and in a certain condition? Maybe over the lifespan of the earth it is natural for species to come and go (like dinosaurs for example).
For serious? You actually believe this?
I don't think we should destroy the environment. I think we are more than a collection of cells unlike the evolutionists. I'm just wondering how one can judge natural versus unnatural. If humans have progressed to materialism at any costs, why is that unnatural? Evolution is survival of the fittest. Materialism and win at all costs falls right into that.
If evolution brought us here and not intelligent design, and we are just matter thrown together over billions of years, what makes anything natural or unnatural? Isn't it all random and things work themselves out over time? Was it unnatural for the dinosaurs to dissappear or were they just not smart enough to sense impending danger or whatever?
Just putting a theoretical argument out there. Not trying to say we shouldn't take care of our neighbors and environment.
Comparing the "oppression" of western women to that of women under Islam is shameful, and betrays a disgusting lack of compassion - you may as well have just likened female circumcision to the pressure of maintaining your figure. Given Islam's terrifying attitude to free expression, I will grant you that quote mining for testimonies from Muslim women with critical reports will be difficult as they are comparatively rare - for reasons we've already repeated ad nauseam.
But, they do occasionally surface, despite it being considered apostasy and punishable by death - read some Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a kick off.
That would be true if oppression in Islam is evident across the board, but it isn't. Not all Muslims are oppressed. Though I can see why it would benefit you to think so.
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
Why isn't destroying the environment natural? If evolution is the accepted truth amongst those who have the uncanny ability to understand what happened billions of years ago, and we are just a collection of cells and nothing more, how can we possibly make natural or unnatural decisions? We are just existing as cells doing what cells do apparantely. Whose to say that humans were destined to inhabit the earth, or that oil in the earth was never intended to be burned? Was the earth destined to remain at certain temperatures and in a certain condition? Maybe over the lifespan of the earth it is natural for species to come and go (like dinosaurs for example).
Edit: Want to clarify I'm not arguing that we shouldn't take care of our fellow humans and environment. Moreso debating what is natural versus unnatural especially for those who don't believe in intelligent design.
O.k, maybe we were always destined to destroy the Earth, and ourselves in the process, in which case, our destructive way of life is perfectly natural. Not intelligent, or beneficent in the long-term, but natural.
Comparing the "oppression" of western women to that of women under Islam is shameful, and betrays a disgusting lack of compassion - you may as well have just likened female circumcision to the pressure of maintaining your figure. Given Islam's terrifying attitude to free expression, I will grant you that quote mining for testimonies from Muslim women with critical reports will be difficult as they are comparatively rare - for reasons we've already repeated ad nauseam.
But, they do occasionally surface, despite it being considered apostasy and punishable by death - read some Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a kick off.
That would be true if oppression in Islam is evident across the board, but it isn't. Not all Muslims are oppressed. Though I can see why it would benefit you to think so.
Ah, this is a good point that iust concede. I never meant to suggest that all Muslim women are oppressed. I'm sure she choose it and everything they do. But
I don't believe that to be true for a large portion. Just like it wasn't true, IMO, for Christian ladies of the 1950s in the US.
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so, what would be a lifetime spent that is "normal" consist of then? are you saying that everyone - every single person on earth - should only be a subsistance farmer for themselves? everyone on earth should be their own doctor? their own, sole educator? protector? entertainer? regardless of their levels of intellect and talent? in this framework, unless everyone helped everyone else for free, society wouldn't even be functional. do you live on a commune?
if certain people didn't spend a "lifetime working for someone else", you'd never be able to listen to Pearl Jam as you do now. hell, you'd never be able to comminucate in this forum.
and who the hell do you think you are to tell anyone else that what THEY feel they need or want isn't right? even if you happen to be smarter than someone else, that doesn't give you the right to tell them what they do or don't need.
you are imperfect like everyone else is. every human (who obtains their means legally and without harm to others) is free to enjoy the fruits of their labor by collecting or consuming property as they see fit.
say I make a numbered list of everything I've ever bought, and post it in this forum. Let's say you AND everyone else in AMT thinks item #478 is something I really don't need. But I think, with the honest whole of my being, that I do need it. whose to say I'm wrong? or are you a god?
Not to mention, I may even agree I don't need it...I may just want it. Humans don't just have needs. They have wants as well. I, like you (I imagine, since you post here), don't NEED to listen to Pearl Jam's music. But we want to. People start businesses to fulfill the needs and wants of other people. not everyone has the talent/intelligence/dedication/luck to start their own business. those who don't/won't, seek employment from those who do - not in some "slavery-light" situation as you paint it, but simply as the function of a society that works by fulfilling OTHER people's base needs and desires. Needing and wanting didn't start at the Industrial Revolution, or the Renaissance, or on the Silk Road. and it certinaly didn't start in 1984 or even 1926.
it started tens (or hundreds, depeding on how you define it) of thousands of years ago with the very first homo sapien.
I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is. And a lot of that has to do with our conditioning. And I'm no different in that respect.
Destroying the environment in order to surround ourselves with material crap is not a natural way of life. What is a natural way of life? You tell me.
We look down our noses at other cultures that do things differently from ourselves, and consider ourselves to be free, but do we really have that right?
Until we are groomed from birth into believing that we can only reject consumerism if we are prepared to spend eternity in Hell - until we are told that being an apostate where consumerism is concerned is punishable by death - until we are told that to die in advancement of consumerism is the best death you can hope for the comparison will remain a stupid one.
We don't have to think we'll spend an eternity in hell, or sacrifice ourselves outside the stock exchange. But we still live lives dictated by our cultural upbringing and all the attendant indoctrination and peer pressure that brings.
We all agree that our upbringing will influence us. My point still stands - the two influences are not comparable.
Sure, I get it. You want to believe that we in the West are free, enlightened, and immune to cultural pressures, while Muslims are oppressed, violent, and dangerous. I understand perfectly well why you need to believe this.
One culture is conditioned to believe that subservience to their God, and modesty in all things sensual and materialistic, will bring them spiritual fulfillment in life, and in the hereafter, while another culture is conditioned to believe that success and happiness can be measured by how many toys & how much money we manage to accumulate.
And while one culture has extreme aspects that allow it to subjugate women, and that sometimes uses violence against those it deems have betrayed it's religious principles, the other culture (the U.S) currently has 2 million of it's population locked up behind bars - many in inhumane and degrading conditions that are tantamount to torture, murders it's own citizens in the name of justice, destroys and ransacks numerous foreign countries, murders millions of people abroad, and promotes, funds, and defends ethnic cleansing and genocide when it suits them to do so. And in this frenzied pursuit of materialistic wealth, we are destroying the very planet we live on, all the while believing that our culture is superior, because that's what we've been conditioned to believe.
Yep, you're right; there's no comparison. We're good, and they're bad.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying Muslims have it better than us. I think we're all fucked. I mean, we're all deluded in our own ways; Muslims, Christians, bankers, soldiers...you name it.
As we speak, the ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, and the rainforests are fast disappearing. How much time do we have left before the whole lot goes down the shitter?
Arguing about whether Christianity is superior to Islam, is like placing a wart hog head-to-head with a pig in a beauty contest.
I love your optimism.
I think we all also agree that as a species we're prone to buying into divisive bullshit - you needn't convert the choir. However, you're burning an awful lot of fuel hammering square pegs through round holes to make your examples analogous, and missing the point by an impressive margin as you go.
Despite the Christianity versus Islam remark being somewhat of a departure from topic, I'll address it in a way that might reel it back to relevance. Christianity and Islam are equally untrue, and their scriptures similarly barbaric in parts. But while Christianity's history is dripping with blood, you are either lying or confused if you consider Christian belief as likely as Islam to produce people eager to hack others to death in the streets, blow themselves up on a bus or fly a plane into a building. Needless to say, the analogy gap between Islam and consumerism is even greater.
Lastly, the "We're good, they're bad" remark is disappointingly cheap. Nobody suffers more from religious indoctrination than the indoctrinated. We're I to trade places, cell for cell, experience for experience with an indoctrinated jihadist, I'd behave in exactly the same way - such is the power of religion to make even inherently moral people do evil things. Were it otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
An enterprise that took the lives of an estimated 1 million Iraqi's. Seems like Muslims aren't the only ones prone to dangerous delusions.
I've already conceded this.
again, how are you - or anyone else for that matter - the arbiter of whether what that I choose to do with the fruits of my labor is either meaningful or meaningless? as long as it is legal and doesn't harm anyone else, if I feel I need something to survive, or want something to be happy, the only appropriate party involved in the decision is my conscience. now, you can attempt to educate me as to why you think that is not right for you, and based on that, for me to consider that it may not be for me as well. But that's the extent of your legitimate involvement.
please provide some specific examples of "material crap" that we destroy the environment to "surround ourselves with".
I didn't say I was the arbiter of anything. Though I do find it intriguing that you're so defensive.
Flat screen t.v's. Microwave ovens. $1000 basketball shoes. Dishwashers. Plastic water bottles.
but you did. you said "I didn't say that everything we do, and buy, in our lives is meaningless, but a lot of it is." that means that you have decided for the rest of us what is and isn't meaningful. hence, the arbiter. I am going to be defensive when you claim to know my conscience better than I do. again I ask, are you a god?
what is your preferred method to enjoy watching PJ videos? on an old b&w cathode-ray 14 incher? you get a good quality sound out of that? but didn't we raid the environment to make those too tho? should the world be without televisions - and therefore computer screens? can you name a greater tool in history to communicate information? are you anti-progressive?
is a $1,000 basketball shoe 100 times less environmentally friendly than a $10 one? should all the world's children not play basketball? are basketball sneakers less environmentally friendly than any other type of sneakers? should everyone on earth who excersizes do so barefooted? even inner-city kids who run in playgrounds with broken crack viles and hypodermic needles lying around?
should disabled people who wish to live independently be forced to cook their own food and wash their own dishes? what about the single mom with 4 kids who works 2 jobs and literally does not have a spare minute to cook dinner and wash the dishes. or should she sacrifice helping her kids with their homework to do those things?
plastic water bottles...I actually have no defense for those...
I haven't decided anything for you because I don't know you and I don't give a toss what you do. I see plundering the environment in order to satisfy our 'need' for material possessions, to be a bad thing. You clearly don't. Good for you.
he also admitted to not being immune to such practices, as anyone with a fucking computer and a brain would do.
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
So you ignore the point and make a completely separate point?
Unless of course you think extreme sexism is akin to consumerism.
I didn't ignore anything. You claim Muslim women are oppressed without realizing it. I then pointed out that maybe you're oppressed without realizing it.
As for sexism being akin to consumerism/capitalism, oppression/indoctrination works in many ways. Or maybe this simply comes down to you believing yourself to be free and enlightened, while those other people are enslaved and oppressed? The same self-serving, one-eyed logic that has sustained bigotry and racism in the World for centuries.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties ... bertarians
Wilson: Is there a correlation between that campaign [cigarette advertising] and what’s happening with the big oil industry right now and climate change?
Chomsky: These are just a few examples. These are the origins of what became a huge industry of controlling attitudes and opinions. Now the oil industry today, and in fact the business world generally, are engaged in comparable campaigns to try to undermine efforts to deal with a problem that’s even greater than the mass murder that was caused by the tobacco industry; and it was mass murder. We are facing a threat, a serious threat, of catastrophic climate change. And it’s no joke. And [the oil industry is] trying to impede measures to deal with it for their own short-term profit interests. And that includes not only the petroleum industry, but the American Chamber of Commerce — the leading business lobby — and others, who’ve stated quite openly that they’re conducting … they don’t call it propaganda … but what would amount to propaganda campaigns to convince people that there’s no real danger and we shouldn’t really do much about it, and that we should concentrate on really important things like the deficit and economic growth — what they call ‘growth’ — and not worry about the fact that the human species is marching over a cliff which could be something like [human] species destruction; or at least the destruction of the possibility of a decent life for huge numbers of people. And there are many other correlations. In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices. And so this is only one aspect of the PR industry. What Herman and I were discussing was another aspect of the whole propaganda system that developed roughly at that period, and that’s “manufacture of consent,” as it was called, [consent] to the decisions of our political leaders, or the leaders of the private economy, to try to insure that people have the right beliefs and don’t try to comprehend the way decisions are being made that may not only harm them, but harm many others. That’s propaganda in the normal sense. And so we were talking about mass media, and the intellectual community of the world in general, which is to a large extent dedicated to this. Not that people see themselves as propagandists, but … that they are themselves deeply indoctrinated into the principles of the system, which prevent them from perceiving many things that are really right on the surface, [things] that would be subversive to power if understood. We give plenty of examples there and there’s plenty more you can mention up to the present moment, crucial ones in fact. That’s a large part of a general system of indoctrination and control that runs parallel to controlling attitudes and … consumeristic commitments, and other devices to control people. You mentioned students before. Well one of the main problems for students today — a huge problem — is sky-rocketing tuitions. Why do we have tuitions that are completely out-of-line with other countries, even with our own history? In the 1950s the United States was a much poorer country than it is today, and yet higher education was … pretty much free, or low fees or no fees for huge numbers of people. There hasn’t been an economic change that’s made it necessary, now, to have very high tuitions, far more than when we were a poor country. And to drive the point home even more clearly, if we look just across the borders, Mexico is a poor country yet has a good educational system with free tuition. There was an effort by the Mexican state to raise tuition, maybe some 15 years ago or so, and there was a national student strike which had a lot of popular support, and the government backed down. Now that’s just happened recently in Quebec, on our other border. Go across the ocean: Germany is a rich country. Free tuition. Finland has the highest-ranked education system in the world. Free … virtually free. So I don’t think you can give an argument that there are economic necessities behind the incredibly high increase in tuition. I think these are social and economic decisions made by the people who set policy. And [these hikes] are part of, in my view, part of a backlash that developed in the 1970s against the liberatory tendencies of the 1960s. Students became much freer, more open, they were pressing for opposition to the war, for civil rights, women’s rights … and the country just got too free. In fact, liberal intellectuals condemned this, called it a “crisis of democracy:” we’ve got to have more moderation of democracy. They called, literally, for more commitment to indoctrination of the young, their phrase … we have to make sure that the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young do their work, so we don’t have all this freedom and independence. And many developments took place after that. I don’t think we have enough direct documentation to prove causal relations, but you can see what happened. One of the things that happened was controlling students — in fact, controlling students for the rest of their lives, by simply trapping them in debt. That’s a very effective technique of control and indoctrination. And I suspect — I can’t prove — but I suspect that that’s a large part of the reason behind [high tuitions]. Many other parallel things happened. The whole economy changed in significant ways to concentrate power, to undermine workers’ rights and freedom. In fact the economist who chaired the Federal Reserve around the Clinton years, Alan Greenspan — St. Alan as he was called then, the great genius of the economics profession who was running the economy, highly honored — he testified proudly before congress that the basis for the great economy that he was running was what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, they won’t do things, like asking for better wages and better benefits. And that’s healthy for the economy from a certain point of view, a point of view that says workers ought to be oppressed and controlled, and that wealth ought to be concentrated in a very few pockets. So yeah, that’s a healthy economy, and we need growing worker insecurity, and we need growing student insecurity, for similar reasons. I think all of these things line up together as part of a general reaction — a bipartisan reaction, incidentally — against liberatory tendencies which manifested themselves in the 60s and have continued since.
so just so we're clear: you're not claiming to be the arbiter of anything...
....except that these 5 items are not worth the environmental cost
unless these 5 items have been deemed illegal due to their negative environmental impact by some democratically elected group? or some group of environmental experts have conducted scientific cost-benefit analyses and concluded as such? (I'm being serious, I really don't know. it's not like governments and advocacy groups don't deem things illegal/wrong due to their negative impact on the environment. like, you're not allowed to dump garbage in protected areas, etc. just wondering if any official group has done so for these 5 items).
Are you seriously suggesting that corporations and manufacturers do no harm to the environment, and all pollution has been accounted for and regulated? Really? Is that what you're going with here?
Oh the irony.
And I still can't believe you won't admit that Muslim women are oppressed. Bringing up consumerism, etc is merely a deflection, and a bad one at that. You will go to great lengths to avoid admitting you are wrong about any portion of your argument.
It's the same as all those Christian ladies out there that believe there place must be in the home and working mothers are terrible. To those people, their lifestyle is not a choice. There are plenty stay at home moms however where it was simply their freedom of choice.
And what irony might that be?
Why? Because you say they are, so therefore it must be true? Did you not bother reading the quotations from Muslim women I posted on the previous page? They don't feel themselves to be oppressed. In fact, they think Western women are oppressed, and they have good reason for doing so.
The fact is that you don't know the first fucking thing about Islam or the Middle East, other than what you've been told by your t.v.
Comparing the "oppression" of western women to that of women under Islam is shameful, and betrays a disgusting lack of compassion - you may as well have just likened female circumcision to the pressure of maintaining your figure. Given Islam's terrifying attitude to free expression, I will grant you that quote mining for testimonies from Muslim women with critical reports will be difficult as they are comparatively rare - for reasons we've already repeated ad nauseam.
But, they do occasionally surface, despite it being considered apostasy and punishable by death - read some Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a kick off.
Why isn't destroying the environment natural? If evolution is the accepted truth amongst those who have the uncanny ability to understand what happened billions of years ago, and we are just a collection of cells and nothing more, how can we possibly make natural or unnatural decisions? We are just existing as cells doing what cells do apparantely. Whose to say that humans were destined to inhabit the earth, or that oil in the earth was never intended to be burned? Was the earth destined to remain at certain temperatures and in a certain condition? Maybe over the lifespan of the earth it is natural for species to come and go (like dinosaurs for example).
Edit: Want to clarify I'm not arguing that we shouldn't take care of our fellow humans and environment. Moreso debating what is natural versus unnatural especially for those who don't believe in intelligent design.
For serious? You actually believe this?
I don't think we should destroy the environment. I think we are more than a collection of cells unlike the evolutionists. I'm just wondering how one can judge natural versus unnatural. If humans have progressed to materialism at any costs, why is that unnatural? Evolution is survival of the fittest. Materialism and win at all costs falls right into that.
If evolution brought us here and not intelligent design, and we are just matter thrown together over billions of years, what makes anything natural or unnatural? Isn't it all random and things work themselves out over time? Was it unnatural for the dinosaurs to dissappear or were they just not smart enough to sense impending danger or whatever?
Just putting a theoretical argument out there. Not trying to say we shouldn't take care of our neighbors and environment.
That would be true if oppression in Islam is evident across the board, but it isn't. Not all Muslims are oppressed. Though I can see why it would benefit you to think so.
O.k, maybe we were always destined to destroy the Earth, and ourselves in the process, in which case, our destructive way of life is perfectly natural. Not intelligent, or beneficent in the long-term, but natural.
Ah, this is a good point that iust concede. I never meant to suggest that all Muslim women are oppressed. I'm sure she choose it and everything they do. But
I don't believe that to be true for a large portion. Just like it wasn't true, IMO, for Christian ladies of the 1950s in the US.