Originally Posted by Yoda
But how have you discerned that, I wonder? How would you arrive at that conclusion?
first, better argumentation than in the previous mails, bravo Yoda, i mean it.
looking around with open eyes, reading books and watching movies, observing the movement of the stars, etc etc... everything is a proof of impermanence and subjectivity.
not listening to school education's lies helps too, and getting informed/making your opinion on your own permits to detect those lies, mostly well hidden, even in official dictionaries, to put one example.
or the inherent evil of human suffering
human condition like anything samsaric is suffering. necessary, not evil.
else you chose your ideology out of a hat.
we all chose one, didn't we? i could ask you the same question.
logic dictates the opposite is true, and I've already told you why: because no meaningful discussion is possible with someone who doesn't believe there's a truth to get at in the first place, which would be the entire point of such a discussion. Would you argue with someone over the best way to get to a place they didn't believe existed at all?
i understand that argument of yours. but if there's only one truth whatever the question is, only one person is right, absolutely right, and that position of yours doesn't leave any free room for other interpretation of facts, history, theories, ideologies, ... so why at the end would you be willing to discuss? just to prove how right you are and how wrong the others? when one does, shouldn't that person always try to learn something too? to me it seems more humble and, to use one of your words, "right", than always being persuaded you detain the truth and others don't, always wanting (and thinking you're able to be) the teacher and never the pupil.
any system of thought pushed to its extremes shows some weakness, mine like yours (although you're the one that'll try to persuade others of the contrary, your system of course is perfect and has no failure at all...
).
i chose mine since i prefer to have
one limit of tolerance rather than
1000 different ones. "everything is relative/subjective" has one sole limit of tolerance/adversary: its opposite: "every single thing is objective (and thus, objectively right or wrong)".
yours has 1000 limits of tolerance; if one political system is right, all the others are wrong, if christianity is right, all other religions are wrong (or at best, they detain some petty elements of truth that only your religion has entirely), if one word is offensive, no free interpretation of that word is possible, etc...
and since there's one absolute truth, this is true everywhere, anywhere, any time, objectively.
that's exactly the system of thought i've been struggling against all my life.
not if you can only avoid it by never believing in anything at all.
i do believe in some things. i wouldn't try to convince people of my opinions though, except the "limit of tolerance" of my system, that begins where their tolerance ends too.
that though you have some negative emotional reaction to words like "puritan" and "taboo," not everyone shares those connotations
that's exactly how it all began, with the word "elitist". i can use your own words: not everyone shares the connotations given the word "elitist". plus, come to Europe and tell anyone you're a puritan (whether you really are or not, just to test), and you'll see that yes,
everyone here does connotate that word negatively. and try and call someone puritan here, it's an (objective
) insult.
you fail to see how subjective your comments are, and how your attacks can just as well be applied to you and your convictions.
So, The Bible is "disgusting" because it believes some things are "right" and some things "wrong."
i didn't call the Bible disgusting. but your system like the subjective!!! way it was read and interpreted by people, the church... and missionaries is one proof more that tolerance ends where your (and the missionaries') conviction that there's only one truth begins. in my system of thought, you wouldn't kill infidels or torture people that don't accept your faith, you would learn from the Cherokees and Apaches and their religion and not force your Bible upon them, you would respect the fact that some cultural systems are patriarcal or matriarcal, monarchic or democratic, Buddhist or Muslim or Avestic, that the men in some tribes in Africa can have 3 wives just as there are other tribes where women can have 3 husbands, ...... etc etc, and you wouldn't see any contradiction in believing in something, choosing your way of life and moral principles etc, while still being able to respect other ways. i don't want 3 wives, i don't wanna be to my wife one husband next to 2 other ones, i believe in faithfullness and monogamy, i do NOT believe in the power of majorities or that because most think so, it makes it true, that is i do not believe in democracy and would prefer some sort of monarchy (which only your close-mindedness makes you see as "objectively" despicable - i don't care, first, since objectivity doesn't exist, second, because history in many cases proves you wrong)... the difference with you is i don't wanna change/convince/baptize anyone (especially against their will, like missionaries did all over the world, like the French revolutionaries/bourgeois (a fact too often forgotten) did in France and Britanny and Savoie (
nope, they're not the same country!) and the US still try to do in Iraq and will keep doing so etc...).
some of your friends of thought thru history even called that "giving us the honor of being educated by them, to be shown the truth...
rings a bell??)
If not, and if it is simply your preference, why try to talk me out of mine?
did you actually read my post? i know you did, so, do you interpret things so differently than me there's no use in even using the same language?
when one says: "keep you Bible for you", is he trying to convince you into adopting another religion?
doesn't sound so to me, or i would have said, like your Xtians throughout history, "burn your sacred book(s), destroy your idols and adopt the only one true god".
or that we all have our own preferences and subjective opinions and therefore no one can say which is better?
...uffffffff, so much energy to come to an intelligent conclusion...
If these things that you believe were not truths, but merely preferences of yours, what reason would you have for trying to persuade me of them?
must really be the Xtian point of view that when you talk to people, you're trying to convince them you're right...
again, you make the mistake of applying to me a system of thought that's yours.
1) yep, they're preferences of mine, like yours are nothing more than preferences of yours
2) the only thing i ever wanted to convince you of, is not to adopt my political, religious, social... opinions, but to see that yours can be right somewhere, some time, for some people and peoples, like mine can be right somewhere, some time, for some people and peoples.
of course,
in your system, the contradiction is too big: since there's one truth only and one god, how could several truths and several gods coexist in the same universe at the same time?
oh, sorry, i forgot: for you there is necessarily only one universe too!
from what basis would you claim that they are superior to my own
all the time, repeating and repeating, there's no superior system of thoughts. i would add there's one though, that has been the cause for exterminations, wars, religious intolerance, censorship on TV and in movies and comics and novels, etc... and this one is not mine!
in Europe, as far as TV/other media censorship is concerned, we call that an insulting word: "puritanism".
try and apply all your questions to yourself first.
Without objectivity, my beliefs cannot be wrong, or even bad; just different from your own.
wow, if you actually could think that very simple, tolerant way, we would all part friendly........ and so would it have been all over the world in all those centuries and we would have been spared most of the wars... and boring TV political contests...
We've argued about countless things, in terms of politics, society, and culture, and you've made dozens of forceful statements on each. This is not by any means the only thing you've tried to convince me of.
we could keep talking about 1000 more things, you're the one that thinks he's right and the other(s) wrong, and the one that wanna persuade other people, infidels and pagans and opponents to democracy, of the one unfathomable truth (yours). in your system, there are 1000 things to persuade of, on each single subject. in mine, whether we talk politics or religions or whatever, there's one only: that i am as right as you are, depending on the eyes of the beholder (place/time/country/ ethny...).
And even if it was, how many objective truths you're trying to convince me of is irrelevant to the point being made; it can be one, or it can be ten-thousand. The same counter-arguments apply.
idem here. i take your sentence. you see? some things you say i do agree with completely. (like two citations above too)
Great. So do it. Defend that same statement directed at a specific race of people, rather than a country.
the man's and woman's brain are biologically different.
Asian people cannot drink as much alcohol as White people, since they lack an enzym.
wouldn't i have added a scientific fact like the last one, and ended the sentence with "white people", i'd probably be sued for racism, right?
don't they therefore deserve to be judged individually, rather than generalized about?
it' bullsh!t to deny that there are constancies observable in each country, within races too, and the existence of individual differences doesn't contradict the existence of differences between peoples, races, countries, whether cultural, biological, etc... even the color of the skin influences the resistance to the sun and heat, thus having influences on the (cultural) way of life of different peoples. we now live in a world where such scientific facts are not to be mentioned since they could be related to that taboo word "race". how stupid is that?
The result is that you defend the indefensible (such as a racist worldview, or a monarchial political system).
define racism first, i know at least 3 definitions of that word, including the simplistic one found in dictionaries.
i could say "i don't know how democracy is defensible", and actually i don't, but in my system there may be one place, one time, one universe, where that system might not be so bad... i see how monarchy is, how weird einh? and who's close-minded here?
Ironically, by being so open-minded, you open yourself up to more manipulation and restrictions than the people you have such an obvious disdain for.
nope, i can still fight something, someone, some ideology, but knowing that it's a choice i've made, only a choice, not because i've got the only truth.
that's how old European pagans thought before the intolerance of judeochristianity was brought upon them at the edge of a sword.
Even if I did come from a country full of bigots, it wouldn't change the fact that you appear to be one. Your response, then, is ad hominem
so is yours, since i did say it depends on the definition and simply who you apply the word to. like, to me, you are the bigots, and there's not bigger bigotry than your way of thinking.
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Are you saying this is torture?
