[ExI] Religions and violence.

[darren shawn greer]

> Tomasz Rola wrote:
>
>
>
> On the other hand, one could hardly disagree with these Hitler's words:
>
> "I want everyone to keep what he has earned, subject to the principle that
> the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But
> the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an
> agent of the State ..."

> Sounds like good presidential candidate, isn't he?


A democratic presidential candidate would be unlikely to use the word 'state' and 'control' often in the same sentence -- it makes dyed-in-the-wool indivualists and libertarians and even
those in the middle very uncomfortable. Hitler constantly did this. His shtick
was to say to his people that everything would be alright as long as they
surrendered control to the state. But first he would whip up their insecurities
-- deep-seated and fairly universal--about the state of the world: economic,
social, racial, technological and national. Psychologists call it
"anchoring. You  take a universal fear or feeling -- such as existential
loneliness, for example -- and you connect it with an external entity, such as
a political party or a religion or a cult. "You feel this way. But if you
join us and relinquish your individuality for the sake of rigid hierarchy,
those feelings will disappear and you'll be safe."



This has to be repeated over and over in
order for the neural-linguistic programming to take effect, and Hitler did
that. He says it in practically every speech, and of course, the fasces, the
symbol of his political ideology, is a faggot of sticks held together by a
twisted bar of iron. There is a fasces engraved on the wall of the U.S.
Congress, btw.


>Samantha wrote:


> The "community" is only a collection
> of individuals. It has no special rights that trump those of the
> individuals it is composed of. The widespread belief that it does is
> precisely what makes horrors such as Nazism possible. It is what is
> destroying even that one time symbol of deepest appreciation of the
> individual and individual rights, America.



Rampant indivualism is one of the
reasons corporate America has been able to join forces with the government of
America (and other countries of the west) to erode the rights and freedoms of
those same individuals it proclaims to exalt. I would also argue that it was in
part what made Nazi-ism possible as well. Crush the unions, under-fund the
NGO's, create powerful corporate lobbies that out-perform grassroots lobbies,
insist to your people that they are genuine individuals dependent upon no-one
and accountable to no-one and that their individual freedom is more valuable
than anything else on one hand, and on the other scare them by insisting that
they are alone and vulnerable (because you have destroyed all their collective
power-bases.) Then you make your move. This is what fascist governments usually
do. We often confuse fascism with racism, because it was such an obvious
feature of Nazi-ism. But  this is only a narrow component. A broader
definition would be simply a welding together of government and industry at the
expense of the citizenry. My favorite explanation of it is by FDR's
vice-president Henry Wallace in his 1944 New York Times essay, "It Can
Happen Here,"



http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm



As an (I hope) interesting aside, Hitler
early in his reign issued an edict (or proclamation or whatever he called it)
to restaurants across Germany that told them exactly how to cook lobster, and
to make sure they were dead before going into the hot water. He considered
boiling lobster alive to be inhumane. Besides the obvious irony, this only
proves to me that Hitler was human and not a sub-human or inhuman monster. I
don't mean to imply that he wasn't grossly horrific in his humanity. I just
think Elie Weisel's words apply when thinking about the Nazi empire. He said
(general paraphrase) that if we think of the Nazis as inhuman monsters and not
as humans capable of monstrous acts then we will be unlikely to be able to
prevent it when it starts happening again.



My two cents.



Darren












>
>
>
> I hope this is sarcasm.
>
>
> [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism ]
>
> Now, the problem is, every Nazi individual could implement this ideology
> in slightly different way. Even in some cases, he could only pay lip
> service to it. While this is not freeing him from guilt, such cases must
> be treated differently from cases of active supporters of Nazism. And I
> see nothing unusual in this approach.
>
>
>
> Mr. Rola, if your philosophy is so nambe-pambe that you're too squeamish
> to even condemn the Nazis then something is seriously wrong!
>
>
>
> Mr Clark, my philosophy is, everybody should get what he deserves. But
> before I tell what he deserves, his case should be examined. Otherwise I
> am no better than a mob.
>
>
> Unless given your adulation for the above the mob says he deserves X in
> which case you think your individual opinion is not relevant, no?
>
>
>
> It is nothing like being weak minded. Quite the contrary, I think it is
> weak thing to go by, flow with the current, without questioning things and
> agree with everybody around without objection, just because "everybody
> does so".
>
> You sound like a healthy individualist there.
>
>
> To be a good man, good human, means to me actively researching
> and making decisions. I mean, to be good, one has to be active, not
> passive. To make decisions is to actually do some mental work, not simply
> accepting being told (or suggested, like the news do) what to think.
>
>
> Yep.
>
>
>
> There is nothing wrong with it. I can be either right or wrong or between.
> If I am right, I am right. In other cases, I should learn and understand,
> so I can correct myself.
>
>
>
> writer Naguib Mahfouz who's novel is banned in most of the Islamic
> world for
> blasphemy.
>
>
> Well, Nobel Prize wouldn't be worth much if it wasn't controversial.
>
>
> I'm not talking about being controversial, I'm talking about using force
> to prevent someone from reading a novel from a Nobel Prize winner. Are
> you really sure you want to defend this?
>
>
>
> No. I am sure that I am for allowing people to choose by themselves. I
> consider this to be an error on the part of Islamic authorities.
>
> The first error is even allowing such "authorities" in the first
> place. But by the Hitler quote above that you admire I suppose you are
> in principle find with any claimed "voice for the community or
> collective" "authorities".
>
>
>
> As I have
> mentioned in one earlier post, such overreaction is a sign of weakness or
> lack of confidence. This might be connected with possible cultural shock,
> that Islamic world experienced after WW2.
>
> Are you making excuses for an inexcusable breach of human rights? Why?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> the very fact that Islam is dysfunctional shouldn't stop me from
> analysing it.
>
>
> But it should stop you from defending it.
>
>
>
> I am not defending it. I refuse to attack it before I find good reason for
> this. That's a big difference. But it does not prevent me from condemning
> terrorists (of all kinds), for example.
>
>
> Have you looked at it much at all? Irrational religion (is there
> another kind?)? Check. Militantly intolerant? In many parts of the
> world, Check. Anti-individual rights? Mostly, Check. What exactly
> do you need to examine beyond this?
>
>
>
>
>
> This last part is aimed at the apologists for all religions not just
> Islam, when they preach about the wonderful things these organizations
> have done they always ignore one little fact, it's all based on a
> colossal lie. Doesn't the truth count for something?
>
>
> If you mean lie about God's existence, this had not been proved yet. Truth
> would count much more if you could prove it. Before that, "lie" is true in
> 50%... or more.
>
>
> Mr. Rola, regarding Christian or Islamic philosophy, did you really find
> it necessary to put the word lie into weasel quotation marks, and is
> this really a direction you want this debate to move in?
>
>
>
> I have no intention of moving this debate anywhere. Mr Clark, if you want
> to escape from belief, you cannot use belief-based arguments. So, if you
> would like to prove that God does not exist, you should use rational
> arguments.
>
> *sputter* It is up to asserters to prove God does exist. Not the other
> way around.
>
>
> So, like in math books, we start with A, B, C, and go on using
> logic until we arrive to Z which states "God does not exist".
>
> Also I would hope you know that proving a negative is scarcely
> possible. You can show contradictions or that necessary consequences
> of the truth of a proposition do not occur. The first is not that
> difficult with most notions of "God". The second is not doable as
> "God's Will" is always claimed to be mysterious and beyond our puny
> understanding. Not to mention that the priesthoods go through pains
> usually to make no predictions. When one of their member does and it
> falls flat generally no one changes their belief one iota.
>
>
> And after
> that, "quod erat demonstrandum" (which was to be proved), but this last
> sentence is optional. For a good example of how they do this, I remember
> group theory from my algebra course. This is what would satisfy me.
>
>
>
> What? That leads me to think I am wasting my time typing this.
>
>
> - s
>
>
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