Korimyr the Rat

Yep. It's all conditioned behavior. Only way to make people behave the way you want them to behave-- the way that society needs to behave-- is to make it the only real option they have. Take away everything that's wrong, make it difficult and boring and drop the hammer on it every chance you get, and the only thing that's left is what's right.

Don't we all? You see it, too. We sit here crying over the lack of freedom "over there" while we ignore what's happening to our freedom over here. After all, we're the freest country in the world, right?

No one's free. We do what we're told to do, we think what we're told to think, and every day we give thanks to our masters for what we're told to be thankful for. The only freedom we can ever have is seeing our chains and recognizing them for what they are, and by design most of us never even have that much.

Liberty is an illusion; it is a lie told to us so that we do not recognize our chains for what they are. Fighting for liberty, you throw away the only thing that is of any true value-- the chains themselves. Your religious and moral values are the core of your identity. Your obligations to others are what give your life purpose and meaning, and their obligations to you are what allow soft pink hairless apes like us to survive in a world full of predators.

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lizzie

The primary area where I think I see over-prescribing is in the world of general and family practice. It appears that many people are being put on anti-depressants for having "the blues", which some think is depression, and others (myself included) do not necessarily believe. Perhaps the blues leads to depression- I'm not qualified to really know with any certainty- but I know that what I have observed personally is depression is far-removed from "the blues", which I see as a quite normal response to difficult emotionally charging experiences.

Agreed. That is why I believe that therapy, education, and other non-medication routes are very important in helping one deal with psychological problems. It just seems that many people are afraid of going that route, and prefer to get rid of the symptoms as quickly as possible, then bury the issue. Maybe it's just a fear of the unfamiliar.

liblady

sometimes a chemical imbalance is just that, a chemical imbalance. drugs work wonders in these cases.

__________________
i'm only here for the booze
and especially for catz,
SOMETHING ANNOYING and colorful

NEUROSPORT

have you ever changed your view on any issue ? or have you kept thinking the exact same thing since you were first exposed to the subject ?

if no then you're not a very good critical thinker. and if yes then you should recognize that whatever you think today can be wrong as well.

if it was possible to know right from wrong in every case with 100% certainty i suppose your ( fascist ) approach would work.

but just as an example lets say you decide that Jews are an inferior race and must be exterminated. but how do you really know that they are inferior ? so they make a lot of money off of other people but they also contribute a lot in areas such as medicine and science. how can you OBJECTIVELY know whether they are inferior, degenerate or whatever or not ? you CANT.

we as humans psychologically crave certainty. we want to think that we know things. but most of the time we do not. we can't base policy on what we wish to believe - it must be based only on facts.

there seems to be a clear correlation between freedom in a society and other things which we consider positive such as prosperity, health, happiness etc.

there doesn't seem to be any examples in history where a society clearly had too much freedom yet many examples where there wasn't enough. therefore i believe freedom/liberty is the only thing we can be CERTAIN of as being RIGHT.

everything else like thinking that your god is better than somebody else's god is lunacy.

your religious and moral values don't give life any more purpose and meaning than heroin does to a Junkie.

just because a Junkie lives for heroin doesn't mean we should mandate heroin injections for everybody so everybody else could have something to look forward to.

Lenin said that "religion is opium for the people". i first heard it when i was like 5 years old but didn't understand it until much, much later of course. but that's exactly what it is. love too.

we don't stone people or burn them at the stake to force them to love somebody. we don't force people to take heroin. why should we force people to accept religion ?

what makes you think that YOU should invent purpose for the life of OTHER people ?

would you like it if i invented a purpose for YOUR life ? if i said that you must love trees for example and unless you plant a tree every day you will be burned alive.

?

Korimyr the Rat

I've been wrong before. I am certain that I will be wrong again. But what is the alternative, to be paralyzed with indecision? To refuse to do anything for fear of being wrong? To be too cowardly to act according to my convictions, according to what I know, just because I cannot ever be 100% certain?

What you propose is a living death.

I can, however, live with the consequences of being wrong. If I kill a man, life will go on for everyone but him. Society will go on. If I kill a million men, even if I kill a billion men, life will still go on. If I'm wrong, I will still be here to try to figure where I went wrong and to try to repair the damage I've caused. If my mistake causes my own death, whether by accident or by "justice", there will always be someone else to take my place, to follow behind me and attempt to clean up my mess as I have attempted to clean up the messes left behind by those who came before me. If I am wrong, someone will come along eventually to undo my entire life's work-- and that is the price that I am willing to pay for having lived a life of conviction and purpose.

I would say that seems to be a function of how you choose to measure "freedom".

We are living in one such society right now. There is much freedom here, but little opportunity for those not born to it. And the reason that there are so few examples of societies that were "too free" is that those societies were crushed beneath the sandals and the jackboots of stronger societies before they could accomplish anything worth remembering.

You can be no more certain of your convictions than I am of mine. You are doing blindly the same thing that you accuse me of-- but I am doing it with my eyes wide open, aware of the possible consequences and willing to accept them. You seem to think that there are no consequences to your policies, and that simply leaving everyone alone-- and changing the laws to follow suit-- is the only way to avoid catastrophic error.

What happens when you're wrong?

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NEUROSPORT

so you're willing to kill people so you can feel important.

what about a man who is willing to rape women so he can feel an orgasm ?

would you claim that your position is somehow different form his ?

certainly. economic freedom and freedom of speech is what counts mostly i would guess.


i don't think you have your history straight. free societies simply cease to be free when they begin to take freedom for granted. as Thomas Jefferson said "every generation needs a new revolution". this means that freedom must be CONSTANTLY DEFENDED or it will perish. it must be defended against DOMESTIC threats, not against other societies.

free societies are generally STRONGER than totalitarian ones. your boy Hitler's only power was in the support he received from relatively free countries like USA in form of investments. and in the end he was defeated by free societies. Free societies created him on a whim and then destroyed him when he wasn't entertaining any more.

freedom is simply an UNSTABLE condition. its kinda like flying. you can't be asleep in the cockpit and not expect to crash. tyranny however is like being buried in the ground - doesn't take much maintenance - in fact you would have to work pretty hard to dig yourself out.

i can't. the difference is i am advocating the kind of society where i would want to live myself and you are advocating the kind of society where you would want to rule yourself. that's a pretty big difference.

i am having a hard time picturing how i can be wrong. i think i could use an outside perspective there. give me an example - a scenario ?

Korimyr the Rat

First: Hitler? Not "my boy." I don't admire Hitler. I don't quote Hitler. Nazism started out as a cynical exercise in politics and only grew more corrupt and debased as it progressed. Nazism misappropriated the symbols of my faith and then murdered its true adherents, setting back its revival by more than forty years-- and the image of that faith is still tarnished by the Nazi filth that continue to abuse it.

Second: Free societies? What free societies? Do you mean the English and the Americans as they practiced "war rationing" and "total conscription"? Or were you referring to the millions of Soviet conscipts on their Eastern border? World War II was surely our finest hour, and there wasn't a "free society" left on the planet by the time it was over.

Third: I don't really want to rule. I want to own land, to raise produce and livestock and children, and do meaningful work that benefits society. I want to wake up in the morning and not feel like I am drowning in a cesspool of moral degeneracy. And most of all, I want to be a part of a nation that believes in something better than an endless supply of fast food, pornography, and drugs. The only reason I want power is because the rest of the human race is too weak, stupid, and lazy to live in a world like that without someone telling them how to not **** it up.

Finally: Yeah. This is your problem right here.

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lizzie

Excellent points. You are the only person I've seen todate who can express your particular political views, which seem to support fascist-type ideology, in a non-offensive manner. The biggest singular concern I have regarding the philosophy is that I believe rare is the person who has the true moral fiber to hold any position of power without becoming corrupt.

Korimyr the Rat

Yes. It's problematic, but it seems that the same problem occurs under democracy and unlike the expectations of the fine gentlemen who invented modern democracy, even the most flagrant corruption and abuse of power have proven to be no impediment to a lifetime of reelection.

If our system is going to be hopelessly corrupt anyway, there's no point in suffering the kinds of inefficiencies that our democratic government creates.

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liblady

thank you, thank you. i am always amazed at the behavior that gets blamed on anti-deppressants.

__________________
i'm only here for the booze
and especially for catz,
SOMETHING ANNOYING and colorful