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Comments
the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his
dishonesty. - Robert Heinlein
And I'll be still alive.
All this thread has tought me is that humanity is fucking scary as shit, and that apparently violently murdering everything is a good idea. Never mind the suffering you cause, the lives you ruin, and the people you slaughter like animals, violence solves everything, kids!
What the fuck?
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have terrorists anyway.
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying until you run out of cake!
And the science gets done
and you make a neat pun
for the people who are still alive!
Umm, a lot of the most idealistic art comes from dark times. Just for example: King Arthur came from the dark ages, all four of the Great Chinese Classics came from turbulent times in their history, the Great Depression gave us Superman and the post-war depression/rebuilding period in Japan gave us Astro Boy. You yourself mentioned Greece, which gave us Hercules. The Norse were never peaceful people and they had Thor.
Yes, as would ancient China (Three Kingdoms seems to indicate that appreciating art was even considered a sign of great virtue) and the Mongols, particularly under Genghis Khan (who was a lot more progressive than history gives him credit for).
Think that statement through though: you have to exist to be able to act.
Okay granted, most people aren't (knowingly) doing any wrong and some people will change for the better. But a lot won't. Just to use an example, drug dealers are knowingly causing harm by what they do. Can you tell me a non-violent way to stop them? (well, I can think of one, but that's a whole other debate)
By the way, if text formatting is giving you a problem, you might want to switch to HTML mode and edit from there (press the icon with the two chevrons--the one right next to the printer icon). Also, don't use carriage returns unless you're using them twice in a row (IE doublespacing). That, plus a basic knowledge of HTML, should fix all your formatting woes.
^^ My house would have dozens of coffee bean silos that would be re-purposed into large-scale M&M dispensers.
And the swimming pool would be filled with Pellegrino.
I'm pretty sure King Arthur's romance came after that (the story version anyway) and I am also pretty damn sure that a story where the main character, a king, is born because his father was tricked into sleeping with someone else, where one of your most trusted knights kidnaps your wife, where the most important character has to even kill his own son/nephew and even dies before the end, is not the most idealistic.
And I'll be still alive.
All
this thread has tought me is that humanity is fucking scary as shit, and
that apparently violently murdering everything is a good idea. Never
mind the suffering you cause, the lives you ruin, and the people you
slaughter like animals, violence solves everything, kids!
What the fuck?
And you demonized the fuck out of yet another point that you didn't even bother to look at from a different point of view. It's always with this "Me against everyone else" fantasy where you think you are the sole survivor of some delusional happy happy anime where nothing ever goes wrong, where everyone else is apparently violently murdering everybody, and are going to war.
How about you get over the fact that you are probably jealous of people that CAN solve their issues with violence and have a high chance of getting away with it, be it somebody pushing you out of their way, hitting you for opening your big fucking mouth, or hurting people that piss them off that are under the delusion that they are untouchable because they have a sharp tongue? All of this bullshit you are spouting is very reminiscent of this little bitch I knew in high school who bitched and whined because they were unable to fight the people that piss them off without getting their asses handed to them, and automatically imagined them into a life of murder and hate-ridden iolence rather than accepting the fact that some people are more aggressive and physical than others. She would moan and cry about how she wished she could do some martial arts or go batshit psycho in front of everyone and tear the person they hated the most into little pieces while making everyone they hated afraid of them.
Except she was all fucking talk, and kept going on about how she was superior to those she hated because she could put them down and punk them out with just a few clever sayings and words, but never keeping in mind that talking shit about people with short tempers will get your teeth knocked out, which the people who she pissed off gladly obliged.
The thing is, Three Kingdoms has both idealism and pessimism. It is neither overly romantic and heroic nor is it grimdark. It is simply honest. And in that honesty, it shows us that people are capable of both extreme awesomeness and extreme horrificness. Cao Cao is a perfect example. A work like Three Kingdoms could not have been made today.
I can't speak for anyone else but I have had another human being at the end of a gun I was holding while on sentry duty in the marines. I had chosen to fight and stop him from reaching for his own gun. In this case my will to do gratuitous and horrible violence to him led to both of us living and unharmed.
Violence or even threat of actual violence will always be useful.
What a crock of shit.
"A real man doesn't die, even if he is killed!"
"I weep for humanity. I weep."
I actually burst into genuine, real laughter when I read this post.
The people who hit her were worthless pieces of shit, though.
The people who hit her were worthless pieces of shit, though.
There is no bridge you will not jump off of to mutilate conversation, is there?
Then maybe you should keep your fucking mouth shut then from now on and learn how to convey your opinions in a way that doesn't create a hostile environment or force a "you vs. me" environment everytime you decide to spew some completely fucktarded shit all over your own thread that only serves to explain why you shouldn't be using a computer unless you learn how to convey your ideas better.
If you
discussbrainvomit things like this in real life I hope you NEVER leave your house and venture into the outside world, ever. I hope you and your entire family (depending on if you aren't a fucking liar and they are just parents dealing with a burdening ungrateful inhuman engine of disrespect and compulsive lying) never enter society until you guys get your fucking shit straight and learn how the real world works and not let some misguided morals influence everything you do.I am not sure if these extremely fucked up views of the world you have were installed by your parents or you developed them yourself, and since you described your parents the way they do, they probably need to be neutered and spayed to stop them from spawning any more people to violate with fucked up ideas and distort them into a COMPLETELY RESPECTABLE HUMAN BEING.
I guess I shall report this thread since all you seem to be doing is being a thread arsonist and driving this stupid fucking thread into the bleeding anus of a black hole that will never go anywhere.
The best way to limit violence is to strike first, strike quickly, and strike with overwhelming force.
Or finding somebody who can do the strike for you, or being somewhere they cannot strike you.
Umm, a lot of the most idealistic art comes from dark times. Just for
example: King Arthur came from the dark ages, all four of the Great
Chinese Classics came from turbulent times in their history, the Great
Depression gave us Superman and the post-war depression/rebuilding
period in Japan gave us Astro Boy. You yourself mentioned Greece, which
gave us Hercules. The Norse were never peaceful people and they had
Thor.
I think that the examples you provide may be good ones though I think there are many counterexamples as well. T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," in addition to other works written during or in the aftermath of World War I come to mind. I have not read the Great Chinese Classics, so I do not know if they are idealistic and I thus I cannot really comment on them, sorry.
Additionally, I do not think that even in cases where wartime societies created great art the fact that war existed in those societies gave their people a greater appreciation for art. In short, I do not think there is enough evidence to support the idea that war and violence can help lead to great art. Even if there may be some correlation there, I do not know if the causation story is as clear as your argument seems to make it out to be.
I think that the idea that warlike societies have had a greater appreciation of art is pretty difficult to prove in general. If one defines things like The Iliad or The Odyssey as great works of art for example, then I think one necessarily must agree that works glorifying or depicting violence can be great works of art. However, I was under the impression that the whole question we were arguing about was whether or not violence can be or is a good thing. Thus, I think that talking a lot of works that glorify war or revenge probably just points us back to the original question rather than really answering it at all.
That being said, I would like to hear what you think having a greater appreciation of art means because I am not clear on the definition of that phrase for you.
Think that statement through though: you have to exist to be able to act.
Okay granted, most people aren't (knowingly) doing any wrong and some
people will change for the better. But a lot won't. Just to use an
example, drug dealers are knowingly causing harm by what they do. Can
you tell me a non-violent way to stop them? (well, I can think of one,
but that's a whole other debate)
If most people are not knowingly doing any wrong and some people will change for the better, I think that really weakens the argument that killing many people is a good way to deal with suffering. As I said earlier, while I disagree with violence, I do not think that the solution is just trying to ignore violent actions.
I believe that imprisonment is a fair way to isolate violent threats from society (if the prison conditions are adequate) and I think that it may help rehabilitate people as well. Even if rehabilitation does not work for certain people for whatever reason, I think that one can still point to imprisoning as a better solution than killing (especially in the case of non-violent criminals like drug-dealers).
Honestly, I think that killing drug-dealers is probably one of the least justified uses of violence to avert suffering since they typically cause more indirect than direct harm to people. I can understand if you think sending someone to prison does not necessarily stop that indirect harm, but killing someone for dealing drugs does not seem like proportional punishment to me.
By the way, if text formatting
is giving you a problem, you might want to switch to HTML mode and edit
from there (press the icon with the two chevrons--the one right next to
the printer icon). Also, don't use carriage returns unless you're using
them twice in a row (IE doublespacing). That, plus a basic knowledge
of HTML, should fix all your formatting woes.
Thanks for the advice. I think my main problem was that I copied and pasted someone thing from a word processing document and that messed up my formatting. I had never had an issue with this stuff here before.
As for the topic of self-righteousness and pacifism, I think that pacifists have an incredibly good reason to not act morally superior to others. While it may seem as though some who argue against violence are simply weak themselves, I think the cause of non-violence is a pretty great one and should transcend individual selfish desires to look morally right and such.
Obviously, blabbing about it on the internet will probably not achieve much, but I think that those who have had the courage to work against violence have done many great things. I have a tough time believing that such a perspective is merely cowardice if some of the most famous advocates of it like Martin Luther King and Gandhi have been killed for advocating and trying to act out non-violence.
I admit that part of my distaste for violence has to do with being a coward and hating to see others suffer (rationally or irrationally). I also understand that just saying "why can't we all be friends" will not solve complex international problems like terrorism. In that way, I think that sometimes non-violent activism can actually be short-sighted. However, I think that even if the whole world is a mess when it comes to violence, it is possible to chip away at that problem a little. I believe that not responding to a bully with violence and persuading others to do the same is one possible method of chipping away at that incredibly embedded problem.
Personally, I would like to live in a world of peace. Given that world history is filled with wars and yet today's world is not peaceful, I think we need to try something different. I can understand not being able to relate to what I say if you have a goal that is quite different from mine though.