"Aggressive" atheism versus "gentle" atheism...

"Coexist" x= "Cant Agree". One can easily coexist and even collaborate on common goals even in the absence of a consensus.

By taking exaggerated offense at a minor, probably offhand comment, the doctor was being pretentious.

@Antiteilchen: I cant speak for Handle, but I believe that he was trying to provide an example of people alive today who have a carefully thought out system of ethics that has nothing in common with empathy, although its perfectly rational. Randians have no use for the golden rule, I can tell you. In short, your making some assumptions about your own values that may not be entirely justified.

I would hardly say that piece about a free market of children was intended to come off as non-empathetic by the author. He clearly seems to want us to think that it will make everyone happier and allow children to have parents who really want them, rather than getting stuck with their biological ones, among other advantages. This type of idealization of Capitalism can be especially annoying to analyze and expose because of all the unspoken assumptions, and it can be hard to tell whether the author is being deliberately intellectually dishonest, or even delusional.

Empathy is the ability to understand how other people feel, not the desire to make them happy (I would know). "Sympathy" is what you mean.

There's where the Golden Rule falls short, I admit. People can have differing opinions on how everyone shall be treated.

edited 5th Dec '13 2:29:42 PM by Antiteilchen

To an extent, this is true, but to an extent, "purging" is a fairly accurate way to put it. Not everyone calms down as they get older; many people become more passionate in their beliefs instead. It's kind of a mixed bag, and those people who just cement dig in their heels harder are the ones who are the problem. More often than not, they're a problem that isn't solved by persuasion or education, but by waiting for them to grow old and die.

A lot of the violent prejudices we've worked to abolish have been done by educating the young to keep them from ever becoming those people in the first place, while those people eventually stop spewing venom by getting old and dying off.

edited 5th Dec '13 2:38:10 PM by TobiasDrake

So depressing... but oit's true of science too, isn't it?

OK, lets continue it there.

edited 6th Dec '13 8:03:13 AM by Antiteilchen

That would be because you experience relatively high levels of empathy. You should be aware, if you are not, that this varies quite widely across the population. Not everyone shares your ability to respond in that way. I would be happy to discuss this further with you, but it's actually off topic for this thread. We could take it to the Psychology thread, where an extensive discussion on this very topic has already taken place.

Empathy plus selfishness equals hiding the poor away in ghettos and prisons and outskirts and projects rather than eliminating their poverty. Altruism plus Lack of Empathy results in a Principles Zealot, a Knight Templar, or someone who blunders their way through the world giving unwanted, unneeded help.

Honestly that's how I expect to be myself when I'm 87 and robot human marriage is being debated or what ever social issue is the issue at the time.

people generally don't grow more passionate as they grow older. Just proudly stubbornly refuse to 'get with the times'. They of may be open-minded for their era but not today. There is no way to stop becoming 'those people'.

But I don't want to like Gromiti. Why can't kids keep playing Pokemon and Zelda and Mario and Street Fighter like they used to?

Keep in mind, however, that the 50s and 60s kind of warped what normal was considered to be for the US. It was a period of excessive conformity followed immediately by an era of wild rebellion. Society does tend to swing back and forth, but it normally isn't anywhere near that extreme.

How about the Twenties and the Depression?

^^^ Ah come on grandad! They got Spiral Dragon! He was around when you were a kid right?

50s society was experiencing a backlash against women's liberation. Mainstream society was unironically telling women to Get Back In The Kitchen.

edited 6th Dec '13 2:02:15 PM by joeyjojo

I mean did you see those ads? Also, wasn't that when the whole "In God We Trust" and "Under God" thing got started?

edited 6th Dec '13 2:03:50 PM by TheHandle

Yes the 'under god' that was added, literally because of the fear of atheist Communists infiltrating the us government.cite_note-26cite_note-27

edited 6th Dec '13 2:17:17 PM by joeyjojo

That was because in political discourse of the day, as the Cold War was getting properly started and people were getting more conscious of it, it was in some sense more important to be against Communism than it was to be for anything. People wanted to put an added emphasis on anything that was seen as different from, or opposite to, Communism. Religion was one institution that people (especially politicians) wanted to embrace as a relatively easy way to highlight that they're not like the "Godless" Communists.

"In God We Trust" and "Under God" were two instances of such association of patriotism and anti-Communism with religion.

That's kinda weird. From George Orwell's work, I understand that the good press Stalin's Soviet Union used to have in Europe during the war was insane, like, people would deliberately censor themselves and each other about Stalin's atrocities without any official government censorship intervening, at least in the UK. Wasn't it the same for the US?

Also, I'm reading A Confederacy Of Dunces, and I find it kind of surreal that an old man calls the cops "Communiss", and they arrest him for that.

I mean, what if, say, you're a Frenchman, and say "Why, yes, I am a Communist, I fought the Nazis with La Résistance, back during the war, and I helped guide the US Troops during D-Day. They sort of acted like they owned the place for a while after that, but Charles De Gaulle got them to stop it. Still, Communists have about a third of seats in Parliament. Why, is this relevant right now?"

edited 6th Dec '13 2:26:56 PM by TheHandle

Yes, very much so. There were some people for whom the term "useful idiot", although not actually invented by Lenin, was made for. Look at the disgusting Walter Duranty.

You must remember that the #1 contributor to the war against Germany was the USSR. It was the primary power among the Allies. (In Asia, Japan's primary opponent was China, but China was never as close to the other Allied powers as the USSR was.)

Still, even during the War, Western powers were making plans against the USSR. For instance, the RAF had planned a bombing run of oil fields in what is now Azerbaijan, after a previous reconnaissance mission had revealed that the oil fields were very poorly protected against fire. In 1945 Churchill ordered a plan that became known as "Operation Unthinkable." It was a war plan against the USSR, and the name really says how heavy the costs were expected to be; yet the plan was made.

Almost as soon as the War ended the US press (and other media) began talking about how US came and "saved the day." That more than 80% of Germany's casualties had been suffered on the main European front of WWII - Germany's Eastern front, against the USSR - was only the focus of post-war analysis in academia. In popular culture the idea was that the US was present in all of the "important" battles, with other Allied countries providing backup. (It probably wasn't quite as one-sided as that, but that's the popular conception of the war in the US today.)

I can't find the quote, but I vaguely recall reading something said by Churchill about how it was good that the USSR and Germany were killing each other, so that countries the UK was closer with didn't have to do that sacrifice. He did, in later speeches, remark on the fact that the majority of the work of crushing Hitler's government was done by the USSR; so in popular discourse in the UK, the Soviets weren't initially vilified as much as they came to be in the US during the Cold War.

Interesting how recognition works. So he got accolades for that, huh?

Sounds less like an idiot and more like a jerk. The sort of jerk that would think Military Service is a good thing, or that in fascism The Trains Run on Time.

Was there a Red Scare in Britain?

edited 6th Dec '13 2:40:36 PM by TheHandle

Again yes, to a certain extent, but bear in mind that between 1945 and 1951 Britain had an explicitly socialist government which was arguably the most popular in its history which was following a wildly popular socialistic program of socialized medicine and nationalization. There were certainly many fears of the Soviets on the right, but nothing like McCarthyism.

And how didn't something similar happen in the US? I hear the New Deal and Roosevelt were extremely popular.

That was before the war, though.

The USSR was never going to allow the countries it conquered to become anything else than satellite states. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia... They established a huge sphere of influence, which Western democracies then felt the need to counter on every front - culture, politics, even operations like Gladio (which, through assassinations and false flag operations, sought to ensure that Western European countries wouldn't move too far to the Left.)

Then there was the Berlin Blockade (1948-49,) Cuba (1953-59,) Korea (1950-53,) the victory of the Communists in China (starting before WWII and ending in 1950,) and the building of the Berlin Wall (1961.)

One mustn't think that the US was alone in becoming paranoid about the other side, or in escalating the perceived conflict. From the beginning it was also the USSR trying to extend its influence to wherever it could reach. It was perfectly reasonable to be afraid of the Communists - but people living in neutral countries should also have always feared the West.

edited 6th Dec '13 3:16:51 PM by BestOf

What irks me is the assimilation of "Communist" to "USSR", and the whole "Blocks" system. Also, France and the like almost became US Satellite States, it was a bit of a close call from what I hear.

edited 6th Dec '13 3:20:38 PM by TheHandle