BS: decadence and religious intolerance

Subject: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: grumpy al
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 02:34 PM

Has anyone else noticed the way the western world is unfolding?
to me, anyway, it seems to be paralleling the colapse of the Roman empire, with countries sliding into total decadence, intolerance and greed. This is just an observation but am I alone in this way of thinking?

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 02:36 PM

Well, I fon't agree with you, I don't think. What countries are you thinking of ?

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Peace
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 03:47 PM

Grumpy Al: Yep. Much of it here started with soap operas.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: MMario
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:10 PM

reality tv

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:31 PM

This nation, in particular (the United States of America) has been compared many times to the declining Roman empire. The comparison began about the time when we started really slinging our weight around as the Leading Nation, after WW II in what Henry Luce insisted on referring to as the American century. Very imperial, nicht wahr? Vale! And even in the early Fifties, we certainly had the moral decadence and decline to point to -- hippies and beatniks and pot, oh my!

But the differences between the late era of Rome and the present life oif the United States are far more than the similarities. I wouldn't worry about that aspect.

Decadence and intolerance are nasty ugly things, and we ought to try to create bertter alternatives, for sure. I am open to feasible suggestions. Galloping forth to invade other nations is not one.

A

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Once Famous
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:46 PM

Amos, this country is just fine with me except for of course, the so-called progressives who are out to ruin it.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Peace
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:49 PM

PS BTW, my 'here' was to do with Canada. I won't presume to speak for other citizens of other countries.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:56 PM

Martin:

I don't know anyone out to ruin the country. What sort of progress do you think would be positive or helpful?

A

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 08:20 AM

If I thought religious intolerance would get rid of ALL religions on the planet, I'd be the first to jump on the bandwagon.

Most misery in this world can be traced back to somebody's religious beliefs and their intolerance.

I'm for ending religion, but opposed to intolerance.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 08:31 AM

The USA is the greatest nation in the world.
I know this because many of my friends who have never been outside the US say so often and with great gusto.
If the US were truly an empire ruled by a Ceasar that claims he is either selected by God or is in fact the hand of God then the Senate would rise up and slay him.

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/bushromana1.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 09:39 AM

Isn't decadents something to do with having ten teeth?

:D

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 10:17 AM

you...you mean...Burkina Faso ISN'T the greatest country in the world?

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: mack/misophist
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 10:47 AM

Is intolerance the word you really want, or is it bigotry?

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Once Famous
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 11:14 AM

Intolerance is not the same as bigotry.

if one is intolerant of certain people's customs and cultures that does make one a bigot. dislike is not hate. disdain is not hate. criticism is not hate.

The great radical leftist liberal lie is wrapped up in the word "intolerance." Easy to preach, almost impossible to live.

The thought police can go fuck themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: dianavan
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 02:03 AM

If you are intolerant of someone's language, customs and values (their culture) but demand respect for your own, doesn't that make you a bigot? Or does that make you a hypocrit? Maybe a bigot is an extreme version of a hypocrit.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: *daylia*
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 07:44 AM

If you are intolerant of someone's language, customs and values (their culture) but demand respect for your own, doesn't that make you a bigot?

Maybe it just makes you human. The typical social/mental/emotional "software" inherited / foisted upon innocent human beings from birth onwards usually leaves MUCH to be desired, and takes a millenia (or several) of concentrated effort (+ Divine Grace) to upgrade.


Now, where's the best place to find decadence?

(At the end of dephrase!)

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 08:54 AM

I mighta mentioned that "the South would rise again" and it is allowing Boss Hog his best shot in history to try to do what the Roman's couldn't do: steal everything!!!

And how has Boss Hog positioned himself to have this power? Simple. Preach all that moral crap which everyone knows is just thinly vieled rasism, hatred and hypocrisy...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Ooh-Aah2
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 02:33 PM

Let's not forget that the idea the Roman Empire fell because it was 'decadent' is a bit of ancient Xstian propaganda. Rome had lax sexual morals (yay!) and massive parties (huzzah!) for centuries before it went under. Embarrassingly for Christianity this happened only a few decades after the last Pagan Emperor, the heroic Julian, bit the dust, something that the remaining Pagans were not slow to point out. Whoops! How to explain? Well, Rome was paying for it's sins - etc, etc... hence the 'decadent' theory. The real reasons are extremely comlex, but Edward Gibbon in 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' thought that Xstianity played a major part by its insistence that this world wasn't really important, and the sidetracking of thousands of ambitious young men into church careers rather than into the army defending the borders.

So if the Western world is on the point of collapse, which I doubt, the right wing fundies are far more of a threat than we who like to shag around a bit and drink beer.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: annamill
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 02:40 PM

Yea decadence!

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 08:09 PM

No, it started with Sesame Street with those fast switches of viewpoints---pulsating letters and numbers((((((((((((1))))))))))))))).

Then Music Videos. Lingering film shots were completely out the window and retro.

Then MTV

Then the demise of the Nashville Network

The death of Princess Diana.

Now no NHL hockey!

"Oh, the humanity!!" ----- (a quote from Herb Morrison of WLS radio--Chicago---describing the fiery crash holocaust of the lighter-than-air aircraft Hindenberg at Lakehurst, New Jersey)


What's next? maybe Soylent Green.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 08:52 PM

The Romans poisoned themselves into oblivion, just as we are doing today.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: GUEST,marks
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 09:41 PM

I seem to remember the Romans expanded their empire beyond their capacity to have their rule enforced. Toward the end the legions were spread too far.
If Augustus had learned from the fiasco in the Teuterberg forest when Quintillius Varus got his a** kicked by Hermanicus, and withdrew the remaining legions to a smaller perimeter, history would be different today.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: mack/misophist
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 10:36 PM

Lead poisoning must have played a major part. It was more wide spread than at any other time in history; more severe than at any time except the start of the industrial revolution. They even used lead acetate to flavour cheap wine. The population declined and they lost the will to keep the 'useless' local marshes drained, so malaria returned to Rome for the first time in centuries. The sewers deteriorated and other diseases became worse. The Tiber silted up, and the city, which had once had a bustling river trade lost it's economic reason for existance. By the time it finally fell, the only industry of note left was the Church. Meanwhile, the senatorial class had moved away from it's traditional career path - a mix of elected and military posts - and focused on personal enrichment by any means possible.

Recruiting common soldiers was never a problem in most of Rome's history. Few were Italians. Whoever Rome conquered, she recruited. Thousands were willing to join, as long as they were sent elsewhere, which was army policy anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:23 AM

We don't just accept decadence, we seem to be marketing it agressively---I googled "decadence,definition" and came up with this:


Decadence
Definition:         [n] the state of being degenerate in mental or moral qualities

Websites:                 

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Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:26 AM

and for "Intolerance":Ê        Ê        

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Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:28 AM

Speaking of lead poisoning

Washington DC and the surrounding Metro area to its north has the highest toxic levels of lead in the drinking water of the entire USA
for the last 5 years.
The reason is human error compounded by 200 year old pipes.

Of course we have no money to replace pipes since we are at war.

Whenever the news covers this they usually mention schools with high lead levels and not homes.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 01:36 AM

It's been attributed To Oscar Wilde (and Winston Churchill) that the United States is the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization.

So, as usual, there's nothing new here. The religious angle has always been with us (check out 'Elmer Gantry').

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 03:39 AM

Donuel - I can't understand how citizens tolerate high levels of lead in their schools and homes. Is it because those that do drink the water are poor (dare I say, Black) and uneducated? How can elected officials sit by and see their citizens slowly poisoned unless they do not value human life. The politicians drink bottled water, of course.

Looks like another Donuel creation to me.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Peace
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 03:46 AM

Isaac Asimov theorized that because only the ruling class in Rome could afford plumbing (plumbum is Latin for lead, and lead is the material Roman piping was made from--easy to hammer, shape, join together, etc) they did poison themselves and die out.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:16 PM

well, they HAVE been replacing pipes in DC, but the problem was only discovered and made public recently, and you can imagine what it will eventually cost to replace everything with lead in it.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:22 PM

The water in the DC area is the worst I've ever encountered anywhere. And that's not including the lead content. It must have hundreds, if not thousands of carcinogens in it.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Ooh-Aah2
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 04:03 PM

It's not just the water. When I lived in London, it was found that children in the borough of Greenwich had frighteningly large quantities of lead in their brains from car-made pollution. I'm proud to say that I always cycled, a very scary activity in London.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 08:00 AM

Bill, if your own country's in a mess, it must be very tempting to find somewhere less advantaged to ridicule. I suppose in your case, that does mean Burkina Faso. Just a novelty name in the atlas to you? Well chosen, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 01:31 PM

You don't get lead poisoning from lead pipes generally, I believe - the surface gets chemically modified in use. It's the other uses of lead which are the real killers.
........................................

Arguing from historical analogy is pretty questionable. It's a pretty fair assumption that at some stage America will go down, but there's no reason to assume it'll happen the same way previous empires have gone, and hunt out detailed symptoms.

We've never been in this historical place before, with one single overwhelmingly dominant power structure, with the whole world in play at the same time, and with instanteneous communication and easy access to genocidal weapons.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 02:11 PM

...and with the global ecology on the verge of collapse.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Peace
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 02:29 PM

The US has made much progress in eliminating some significant sources of lead in recent years. The use of leaded gasoline was phased out during the early 1990s. Leaded plumbing solder and lead solder on food cans were both banned during the 1980s. Lead-based paint was banned in 1978. However, today there are still about 38 million homes that contain some lead paint—about 40% of all US housing. Leaded gasoline emissions that were deposited over the years in the soil near highways and busy roads continue to contaminate many yards. And thousands of old lead pipes that continue to serve as water service lines in many older US cities also continue to leach lead into drinking water.

The above is from

www.nsc.org/issues/lead/

FYI

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Peace
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 02:40 PM

The Romans were aware that lead could cause serious health problems, even madness and death. However, they were so fond of its diverse uses that they minimized the hazards it posed. Romans of yesteryear, like Americans of today, equated limited exposure to lead with limited risk. What they did not realize was that their everyday low-level exposure to the metal rendered them vulnerable to chronic lead poisoning, even while it spared them the full horrors of acute lead poisoning.

Google EPA History - Lead Poisoning or try

www.azsba.org/leadepiarts.htm

Maybe history would be a good place to start.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 02:52 PM

And of course, the Romans were just poisoning themselves with lead. The "Industrialized West" is poisoning itself and much of the Third World with many hundreds, if not thousands of different kinds of poisons.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 05:43 PM

Fionn..I 'hope' you could see my tongue planted firmly in my cheek at "Burkina Faso", in response to Donuel's similar remark...of course I realized it is one of the poorest, saddest countries in the world...and of course I realize that NO country can claim to be 'best'...and I don't think I have ever ridiculed anyone's country. My country, just like all others, has its virtues and its failings....but I'm not sure I'd characterize it as "in a mess"...(except perhaps, politically.)

Please...don't go out of your way to find cultural/ethnic bias in every little remark from an American....

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 06:59 PM

It's not all that easy spotting whose American and who isn't anyway, most of the time. So long as they don't use words that are spelt different, or talk about football.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 03:24 PM

indeed, so McGrath!..but the very colour of their braces will give them away when they sit eating biscuits on the bonnet of their Bentley.

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 09:44 PM

Donuel -
Re your Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:28 AM

The reason that DC can't replace the pipes is that the money is needewd to pay for a new Baseball stadium.... NOT because of the war.

Try to get some fact right...

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 04:04 AM

If there was no war in Iraq, wouldn't there then be money for both a new stadium AND new piping?

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: The Shambles
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 04:17 AM

More on the subject of religious intolerance.

The manager of a second Birmingham theatre company is considering staging a play cancelled after a violent demonstration by the Sikh community.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4112985.stm

Subject: RE: BS: decadence and religious intolerance
From: The Shambles
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 04:19 AM

Birmingham play closed by mob