 sj |
||
|
||
BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity
|
|
|
|||||||
|
BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity |
Share Thread
|
||||||
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: jpk Date: 12 Aug 05 - 05:11 PM a lot of dictatorial despots might disagree with you all,they have or they or living a very comfortable life. the only questions being will they get the just rewards in another life.and can they sleep at night,the sleep part is easy to answer,yes,they had no ethics,morails,or honesty to start with. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Little Hawk Date: 12 Aug 05 - 09:55 PM "a very comfortable life" Uh-huh. And is that equivalent to being happy? Secure? Loving? Loved? Inspired? Self-aware? Fulfilled? Nope. It isn't. It is equivalent to the life of a dog in a large and comfy pen who is happy because he's getting lots to eat every day and he has a nice bed to lie on, while other dogs starve. The dog simply doesn't know any better. We humans don't have that excuse. We know better. Or we ought to... The dictator you have described must be a very insecure and lonely person...a miserable person at some deeper level...or he would never have sought the position OF BEING a dictator over other people in the first place. Such seeking for power is what people do when they perceive themselves as weak, vulnerable, and thoroughly lacking in love. They live in fear. They opt for far lesser goals than living by love, and that is their tragedy. Their lives are a loud and empty bell ringing in a meaningless void. I don't care how well they sleep at night. A totally unaware person can sleep through just about anything, because he was never awake in the first place. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Amos Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:43 PM The Laws of Human Stupidity have been isolated and are covered on this page: http://www.mentalsoup.com/mentalsoup/basic.htm They do much to clarify the question. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: GUEST,Art Thieme Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:29 PM A quote from Lt. Worf on a Star Trek episode: "Less talk. More synthehol." I love it !!! Art Thieme |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Seiri Omaar Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:48 PM So basically, we can narrow the causes of western stupidity down to narrow-mindedness, short-sightedness, arrogance and greed? Or did I forget one there? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Amos Date: 03 Oct 05 - 12:01 AM Seems to me those are categories of stupidity, not causes. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Seiri Omaar Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:49 AM Not really much difference. Those aspects in our esteemed race cause what we can define as "stupid behaviour", coupled along with the evolution of our particular society. Obsession with material goods and individuality (which I am not saying is a bad thing, don't get me wrong here) to the exclusion of other people can make us look bad in the eyes of the rest of the world. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: GUEST,rarelamb Date: 03 Oct 05 - 12:39 PM Well, I had to bite. I just finished reading this post and I have a pretty basic question. In what way is western civilization stupid? I ask this because there seem to be some rather faulty thinking being espoused by the 'spiritualist', socialists and communitarians on this thread. Let start off with what money is. In modern times, we use a fiat monetary system. Where as at one point it was backed by precious metals it currently can not be 'redeemed' for anything. So then what is money? Money is a unit of measure. It represents an interchangeable unit. It represents time, values and worth. When you are talking about money you are talking about what people value or rather their values. How much is an hour of your time worth? How much would you pay for xyz? what is the value of life? All of these things can be measured by money. You can derive this value from either the exchange traded value or by measuring indifference curves but regardless, what a society spends on is what it values. I am not surprised by the modern day malthusians that seem to populate these discussions. I will put forward that we will never run out of 'space' nor will we ever run out of oil. And it is a fallacy that somehow the native americans (western hemisphere) were a group of animal loving communitarians. They fought wars just like they did in the west. And they 'managed' their environment with regular fires to maintain their lifestyles. Like so much else, from each according to his ability to each according to his need is fundamentally flawed. Who determines and how is this to be determined? What is the fair 'price'? Come and join me in the dark side of libertarians. The only thing you have to lose are your chains. =) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Seiri Omaar Date: 03 Oct 05 - 03:44 PM ... and somehow I fail to see the point of that post and how it relates to the topic at hand. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: GUEST,rarelamb Date: 03 Oct 05 - 03:53 PM I posted that I do not understand what is stupid about western civ. The post is labelled "The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity". It's hard to determine the cause if we do not have a common agreement on what is understood to be 'stupid'. I also, commented on a few points on posts made that have fundamental misunderstandings of economics. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Bill D Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:05 PM to promote understanding |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Bill D Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:15 PM more yet again |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Bill D Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:29 PM it's SO hard to explain to some |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Peace Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:38 PM "fundamental misunderstandings of economics" 1) Money has value 2) Money doesn't have value That about sums it up for me. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Amos Date: 03 Oct 05 - 10:33 PM Rarelamb: I think you might do well to go to the beginning of the thread and see the questions on which it was based. Even Libertarians do not understand human nature well enough to remedy depression, hostility, and the bizarre patterns of power flowing to idiots who then abuse it. If you really think all is well with Western civilization, you might want to clear up the word "civilization". I am reminded of Gandhi's remark about Western civilization -- "I think it would be a very good idea!". A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Seiri Omaar Date: 04 Oct 05 - 08:03 AM Otherwise, we just bring out the mallet. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: The Basic Causes of Western Stupidity From: Amos Date: 12 Nov 05 - 09:12 PM A recent commentary deserves inclusion here: "Greetings from Idiot America by Charles Pierce Nov 01 '05 Esquire Magazine, by way of ... The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents—for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power—the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert. In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based. It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it. After all, faith is about the heart and soul and about transcendence. Anything calling itself faith-based is admitting that it is secular and profane. In the way that it relies on the Gut to determine its science, its politics, and even the way it sends its people to war, Idiot America is not a country of faith; it's a faith-based country, fashioning itself in the world, which is not the place where faith is best fashioned. ... How does it work? This is how it works. On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive." A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news in it is where it appeared. On the front page. Of The New York Times." Yeah...media-whirl makes idiots of us all, no matter which end of the counter we sit at. A |
