Why so much interest in the US?

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Walker
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Re: Why so much interest in the US?

Post by Walker »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2017 2:23 am So I'm not the only one that has noticed the absence of an anti-war movement in the US. I suppose it's just not 'trendy' at the moment. :roll:
Conscription causes antiwar popularity. No draft at the present, although I did hear somewhere that the giant Pentagon wants to draft women into the military. With luck, that's fake news because women have no business killing folks.

*

Being is just gonna happen no matter where you are. To be, requires no movement. To be, is the still axis around which movement of becoming, swirls. The swirling is to move life to where conditions are conducive to change.

Those who immigrate to the country in order to be, and not for the purpose of becoming, bring the old ways and the wrong state of mind.

Another reason that the United States is the greatest country on the face of the earth is because of the set of divinely inspired principles that were recognized and codified by serious intellectuals possessed with an accurate knowledge of history and human nature. Given their circumstances they were driven by the need to gamble their lives and destiny with the all-in conviction required to live by those recognized principles.

This spirit appeals to immigrants who have the ambition to leave the past behind and step into the present, something that gets forgotten with the cultural clinging emphasis upon diversity as strength, during conditions of radical change of life (immigration), in which cultural diversity is nothing more than a load of mental baggage that sinks the becoming.

The US state of mind that encompasses the facts of human nature, which includes the corruption of ever-present truth, even encompassing the human nature intellectual growing pains that negate all via cynicism, allows for the change of becoming.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Why so much interest in the US?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Lacewing wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:28 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2017 2:23 am...
Your toxic and bitter rage is tiresome, Veggie. And it's too unbalanced to take seriously.
:lol: Nice cop-out. Do you have a counterargument, apart from insults?

A 'toxic and bitter rage' according to Lacewing:

'It hasn't cocked up the planet, but I'm not patriotic anyway. I don't give a damn what anyone says about this country as long as it's true. In fact I think it's quite funny when people say negative things about it.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/15/135391188 ... r-movement

So I'm not the only one who has noticed the absence of an anti-war movement in the US. I suppose it's just not 'trendy' at the moment. :roll:'
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Lacewing
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Re: Why so much interest in the US?

Post by Lacewing »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2017 9:57 am
Lacewing wrote: Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:28 am Your toxic and bitter rage is tiresome, Veggie. And it's too unbalanced to take seriously.
:lol: Nice cop-out. Do you have a counterargument, apart from insults?
I was saying that I'm tired of discussing anything further with you -- an honest general statement that was not focused on your latest post. Of course there is a lot I could say as a counterargument (and I have), but I've lost interest in wrestling on some kind of narrow, dark path with you. There's no point and it makes no sense.
Nick_A
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Re: Why so much interest in the US?

Post by Nick_A »

Philosophy Explorer wrote: Mon Oct 23, 2017 12:02 am So much is going on in the world. Big countries such as China, Russia and India. Small countries like Bhutan and Nepal and Somalia. Yet many threads here are devoted, directly and indirectly, to the US (even more than to the UK and this is a British website). Why?

My answer is the US is a leading, maybe the leading country in this world. The US has many things going for it. Been around for over 200 years and I expect for many years. Survived many problems and will continue to do so

PhilX 🇺🇸
From the beginning of Mitch Horowit'z discussion with Jacob Needleman concerning his book: "The American Soul.
Mitch Horowitz: Your book “The American Soul” opens with a scene from the Vietnam era, in which you bring a group of students to meet a man of learning. A student is complaining bitterly about what he sees as the nation’s hypocrisy. At one point, the man of learning turns to him and says, “You don’t know what you have here.” How do you understand that statement, and why do you open the book with it?

Jacob Needleman: This person was a man of wisdom but also a man of the world, a businessman, and a great teacher. I had known him for many years and considered him the one who most helped me to understand the nature of the spiritual path. He never talked much about politics but more about the path or way of the spiritual tradition. I wanted these young students to meet him because of his wisdom about philosophical and spiritual ideas. The subject of the Vietnam War came up, as it always did with my students–this was a time when the country was really in agony and young people were outraged. In my own life, I never was able to put together spirituality and political issues. I considered them two entirely separate worlds, and what I thought of as politics was a world mainly full of illusions. This man had come from Scotland and jokingly referred to himself as “the last American.” He really loved this country. The students with me were speaking vehemently against America, and suddenly he said, in a way that commanded complete attention, “You don’t know what you have here.” He stunned everybody. There was a chilling moment of complete silence. Coming from this man of wisdom and depth of spiritual understanding, his words settled in on us like a great question, a deep spiritual shock that made us think and wonder. That was thirty years ago. The statement just sat in me, like a time bomb, over the years. And then about ten or so years ago, I realized that in trying to make a bridge between spiritual ideas and the issues of our contemporary world – to see what light the great wisdom traditions of the world could throw on current problems – I was facing the burning questions of: What is America? What does it mean? What is it for? Who are we, as Americans? What do we have here? These questions, which had simmered in me all those years, drifted to the surface of my mind and propelled me toward writing this book.
What do we have here? Who remembers and why is society apparently compelled to destroy it?
commonsense
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Re: Why so much interest in the US?

Post by commonsense »

attofishpi wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 3:00 pm
Philosophy Explorer wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 1:02 pm
attofishpi wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:27 pm

The US leads the world in arms sales and stirring up trouble so that those arms can be sold. That about sums up the US. Millions of the world's poor dying because of the US arms factory. The United States still supports the manufacture and deployment of land mines FFS.

The youth and not so young of the US buy copious amounts of cocaine from its southern neighbour, Mexico, fueling and feeding the drug cartels, but hey it all works out great, cause then they get to sell arms to the cartels and make shitloads of money!
Simply being picky focusing on the negative. What about the positive qualities of the US?

PhilX 🇺🇸
Ok. I've been to many places in the US, liked most of the people I met. I like NASA and the shit they pull off. I like hotdogs. I like a lot of what the film industry creates. The people on the whole are good people, its just a shame their over-zealous patriotism blinds them to what their government is up to...and the pain it causes to peoples beyond their coastline.
The US was to be an experiment in democracy. What makes the US interesting, whether positive or negative, is seeing how the experiment is doing. Is the experiment now history, or does it continue today? In any event, what conclusions can be drawn thus far? Has democracy been changing? What does it take to maintain a democracy? Is democracy in danger of being replaced?

Social questions arise as well. What drives business, for an individual, for a corporation? Is free speech necessary in a democracy? How is entertainment financed? On the whole, are people in a good mood? Are they friendly? how is transportation handled? Who pays for infrastructure? Who shapes pop culture?

In short, what makes the States unique and what is commonplace in other countries around the globe?
Walker
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Re: Why so much interest in the US?

Post by Walker »

The Constitution and other founding documents, i.e., principles.

Learn it, live it, love it.
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