Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

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Belinda
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Belinda »

Nick_A wrote:
Simone Weil was a seeker of truth. She wasn't a rebel. Do you know the difference?
Each of us seeks our truth.

Some seek their truth by accepting established facts and values. Others seek their truth by rebelling against some perceived status quo. For instance your perceived status quo seems to be "secular progressives" which you rebel against . Don Quixote rebelled against what he perceived to be dangerous giants set up around his countryside (but were in fact windmills).
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Greta
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Re: Secular Progressives the Scapegoats

Post by Greta »

Why didn't you quote this when making the accusations?
I cannot equate the kind of theocracy that you would promote with any kind of democracy.

I'd know what would happen to women's rights under a "democracy" of yours. I expect they would entirely lose control of their lives and bodies, which would be controlled by theocratic men.
Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:53 amReads like a women's rights control issue to me with my kind of theocracy being the scapegoat. A complete denial of women's obligations necessary to support a free society. Just blame.
Forget it. You are off with the pixies. Women wanting control over their own bodies is reasonable. Should we take control over men's bodies? If you want to prevent abortions, and wish to frame it in terms of responsibility, then one option would be to instead force the man who did the deed without taking responsibility to have a vasectomy.

Then again, maybe men like having control over their own bodies too? Maybe it's not an unreasonable request either way to be left alone without theocratic interference?
Nick_A
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Nick_A »

Belinda wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:34 am Nick_A wrote:
Simone Weil was a seeker of truth. She wasn't a rebel. Do you know the difference?
Each of us seeks our truth.

Some seek their truth by accepting established facts and values. Others seek their truth by rebelling against some perceived status quo. For instance your perceived status quo seems to be "secular progressives" which you rebel against . Don Quixote rebelled against what he perceived to be dangerous giants set up around his countryside (but were in fact windmills).
You refer to subjective truth or that which leads to self justification, your truth, and the highest form of truth for the secular perspective. but a true seeker of truth is concerned with objective truth which subjective truths devolved from. Simone Weil was a seeker of objective truth.

Excerpted from a letter Simone Weil wrote on May 15, 1942 in Marseilles, France to her close friend Father Perrin:
At fourteen I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth.
Most are only concerned with subjective truth and self justification. She wanted to become a part of this small minority who lived objective truth and was willing to sacrifice the pleasures of self justifiction for this pearl of great price. Is it any wonder why such people should be scorned. They are an insult to the dominance of the struggle between subjective truths as the meaning of life from the secular perspective.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Progressives the Scapegoats

Post by Nick_A »

Greta wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 10:41 am Why didn't you quote this when making the accusations?
I cannot equate the kind of theocracy that you would promote with any kind of democracy.

I'd know what would happen to women's rights under a "democracy" of yours. I expect they would entirely lose control of their lives and bodies, which would be controlled by theocratic men.
Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:53 amReads like a women's rights control issue to me with my kind of theocracy being the scapegoat. A complete denial of women's obligations necessary to support a free society. Just blame.
Forget it. You are off with the pixies. Women wanting control over their own bodies is reasonable. Should we take control over men's bodies? If you want to prevent abortions, and wish to frame it in terms of responsibility, then one option would be to instead force the man who did the deed without taking responsibility to have a vasectomy.

Then again, maybe men like having control over their own bodies too? Maybe it's not an unreasonable request either way to be left alone without theocratic interference?
I posted to you on Mon Jan 29, 2018 4:54 pm from Dr. Oxenberg’s rticle
……………….Let us consider Plato’s critique of democracy more closely. As he writes, “In a city under a democracy you would hear that [freedom] is the finest thing it has, and that for this reason it is the only regime worth living in for anyone who is by nature free” (The Republic of Plato, 562b-c, trans. Allan Bloom). A society that exalts individual freedom would seem the diametric opposite of a society under the oppression of a tyranny. But here we encounter a paradox. For if individual freedom is understood as the capacity to exercise one’s will without restraint, the ideal of individual freedom is the ideal of the tyrant as well. Indeed, we might define the tyrannical character precisely as one unwilling to submit to any higher principle than the unrestrained exercise of his or her will. Thus, ironically, democracy shares the same ideal as tyranny, at least insofar as individual freedom is heralded as its highest good.
Plato saw that a society that presents to its citizens no higher ideal than the freedom to satisfy their own private interests, will, by that fact, become a society of aspiring tyrants, competing each with the other for dominance. Eventually, those most skilled at the arts of manipulation and acquisition will come to lord it over everyone else, and the society that most exalted freedom will become the one that is most enslaved……………………..
You are caught up with women’s rights. The idea of sacrificing some for the sake of the greater good or sustaining a free society is insulting to you as it is for the secular progressive philosophy which has the demand for rights as its primary objective.
Belinda
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Belinda »

Nick quoted Simone Weil:

At fourteen I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth.

She was a mystic. The status of mystics' truths is still in doubt. One thing is sure, if you fancy that you have access to mystical truth be very very sceptical, as you could be a self-deceiver. Self deception is very common.
Nick_A
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Nick_A »

Belinda wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:39 pm Nick quoted Simone Weil:

At fourteen I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth.

She was a mystic. The status of mystics' truths is still in doubt. One thing is sure, if you fancy that you have access to mystical truth be very very sceptical, as you could be a self-deceiver. Self deception is very common.
A seeker of truth wants to experience objective truth. They have the need, courage, and will, to pursue this path. What does it have to do with me? You may call her a crazy woman since there is no such thing and Plato was wrong to distinguish between knowledge and opinion. This would be a secular progressive perspective. I admire the seekers of truth who are not content with the glorification of secular opinions and seek to experience the quality of objective truth from which subjective truths devolved regardless of the growls from the Great Beast..
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Arising_uk
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Arising_uk »

Still just hearing endless pages of kissing lies from you Nick_A.

If there is an objective truth then it would be easily understood by all and since you claim there is then slap us with its truth Nick_A. Tells us what this objective truth is that you propose to be teaching our kids?

And please don't keep going on about Plato and knowledge and opinion as if you'd actually read him you'd know that his route to knowledge is through reasoning via questions.

By the by, as usual you avoided a question, so do you understand Plato's 'Good' as your theistic 'God?
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Greta
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Re: Secular Progressives the Scapegoats

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 4:32 pmYou are caught up with women’s rights. The idea of sacrificing some for the sake of the greater good or sustaining a free society is insulting to you as it is for the secular progressive philosophy which has the demand for rights as its primary objective.
Not at all. I simply see no reason why stopping abortions would improve society. Rather, studies tend to show that abortion reduces crime in the next generation.

I note you are blaming and scapegoating again.

Do you realise that you routinely do what you accuse others of doing?

How can you be so unaware of the disconnect between your words and behaviour?

Further, what of some of those bizarre interpretations you make of others' posts? It's as if you are replying to something in your own head and pretending that mental script was theirs. If a "secularist" told you that "Mary had a little lamb" you would probably accuse them of vicarious paedo-bestiality.

A question: Do you think that most people are essentially well-meaning?
Belinda
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Belinda »

Nick-A wrote:
I admire the seekers of truth who are not content with the glorification of secular opinions and seek to experience the quality of objective truth from which subjective truths devolved regardless of the growls from the Great Beast..
Of course you do! However what you want is not the same as what you get to have.
Nick_A
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Nick_A »

Belinda wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2018 8:10 am Nick-A wrote:
I admire the seekers of truth who are not content with the glorification of secular opinions and seek to experience the quality of objective truth from which subjective truths devolved regardless of the growls from the Great Beast..
Of course you do! However what you want is not the same as what you get to have.
Of course. But growing secularism has not yet made it impossible to admire the seekers of objective truth. Efforts at spirit killing have not yet reached their potential. Seekers of truth still exist and have avoided persecution.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Progressives the Scapegoats

Post by Nick_A »

Greta wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2018 5:30 am
Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 4:32 pmYou are caught up with women’s rights. The idea of sacrificing some for the sake of the greater good or sustaining a free society is insulting to you as it is for the secular progressive philosophy which has the demand for rights as its primary objective.
Not at all. I simply see no reason why stopping abortions would improve society. Rather, studies tend to show that abortion reduces crime in the next generation.

I note you are blaming and scapegoating again.

Do you realise that you routinely do what you accuse others of doing?

How can you be so unaware of the disconnect between your words and behaviour?

Further, what of some of those bizarre interpretations you make of others' posts? It's as if you are replying to something in your own head and pretending that mental script was theirs. If a "secularist" told you that "Mary had a little lamb" you would probably accuse them of vicarious paedo-bestiality.

A question: Do you think that most people are essentially well-meaning?
You are unaware that you do not recognize the question. You immediately devolve the question of a women's objective obligations into abortion rights.

You scapegoat because you cast blame. Recognizing the human condition isn't casting blame. Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. He cast blame. Simone Weil retorted that revolution is the opiate of the masses. She is not casting blame but acknowledging that revolution will eventually produce the same results that led to revolution. The problem is the human condition which isn't a scapegoat. Can you see the difference?

People are well meaning on Monday. Then conditions change on Tuesday. They may end up in a traffic jam and exhibit road rage. They are no longer well meaning. it is human nature.
Nick_A
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Nick_A »

Arising_uk wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:19 pm Still just hearing endless pages of kissing lies from you Nick_A.

If there is an objective truth then it would be easily understood by all and since you claim there is then slap us with its truth Nick_A. Tells us what this objective truth is that you propose to be teaching our kids?

And please don't keep going on about Plato and knowledge and opinion as if you'd actually read him you'd know that his route to knowledge is through reasoning via questions.

By the by, as usual you avoided a question, so do you understand Plato's 'Good' as your theistic 'God?
Socrates was called wise because even though he knew subjective truths he didn't know their source or objective truths. You can tell me your opinion of subjective justice but what is objective justice? Is it really such an easy question?
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Arising_uk
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Arising_uk »

Nick_A wrote:Socrates was called wise because even though he knew subjective truths he didn't know their source or objective truths. ...
Nope based upon his conversations with others he decided that he was wise because he didn't profess to know something when he didn't. I think you should read some Aristotle.
You can tell me your opinion of subjective justice but what is objective justice? ...
In what sense would you accept objective with respect to justice?
Is it really such an easy question?
From my point of view it's an already biased one.

By the by, tells us what this objective truth is that you propose to be teaching our kids and do you understand Plato's 'Good' as your theistic 'God?
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Greta
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Secular Progressives are Scapegoated by Nick

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2018 3:50 pm
Greta wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2018 5:30 am
Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2018 4:32 pmYou are caught up with women’s rights. The idea of sacrificing some for the sake of the greater good or sustaining a free society is insulting to you as it is for the secular progressive philosophy which has the demand for rights as its primary objective.
Not at all. I simply see no reason why stopping abortions would improve society. Rather, studies tend to show that abortion reduces crime in the next generation.

I note you are blaming and scapegoating again.

Do you realise that you routinely do what you accuse others of doing?

How can you be so unaware of the disconnect between your words and behaviour?

Further, what of some of those bizarre interpretations you make of others' posts? It's as if you are replying to something in your own head and pretending that mental script was theirs. If a "secularist" told you that "Mary had a little lamb" you would probably accuse them of vicarious paedo-bestiality.

A question: Do you think that most people are essentially well-meaning?
You are unaware that you do not recognize the question. You immediately devolve the question of a women's objective obligations into abortion rights.

You scapegoat because you cast blame. Recognizing the human condition isn't casting blame. Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. He cast blame. Simone Weil retorted that revolution is the opiate of the masses. She is not casting blame but acknowledging that revolution will eventually produce the same results that led to revolution. The problem is the human condition which isn't a scapegoat. Can you see the difference?

People are well meaning on Monday. Then conditions change on Tuesday. They may end up in a traffic jam and exhibit road rage. They are no longer well meaning. it is human nature.
I speak about abortion because it's your pet peeve, so I respond. For me, it's a matter of MYOB.

The human condition you complain about is the animal condition. Over the millennia humanity has been trying to escape the brutality and suffering inherent in nature, both without and within. So far, given the mere millennia with which humans have had so far to make sense of these unprecedented and complex social conditions, human beings have done incredibly well!

There have been many mistakes - murder, cannibalism, rape, infanticide, extreme torture methods, superstitious beliefs, wars, the Plague, the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, violent colonisation and failure to learn from indigenous people, overuse of fossil fuels and nuclear arms, sustainability, oppression, slavery, the list goes on. Humanity has had to deal with and learn from these traps and mistakes, resulting in uneven, but definite, progress on all fronts - moral, intellectual, political, economic, social, technological. Given that there was no manual telling humans how to handle their powers, how can the species be blameworthy?

Consider the climate change situation, with major fossil fuel companies fighting to maximise profits from superseded infrastructure, plus a phalanx of social media deniers, usually influenced by the fossil fuel-invested Murdoch media. This means some influential nations are lagging in this area, weighed down by the inertia of influential companies and the effects of their counter-information offensives, largely sponsored by a fossil fuel-invested conservative media, Murdoch and others.

This is not evidence of inherent human badness, and certainly not of a "fall". It is evidence of the unevenness of progress. Almost nobody talks about this, rather they tend to point to dysfunctional aspects of a few societies and extrapolate that to all of humanity.

However, progress continues, and it continues to be as uneven and potted as it ever was. In the path towards growth many backward steps are inevitably taken. These "backwards steps" on societal scale can last longer than human lifetimes (eg. the Dark Ages) so it's understandable for those involved to see humanity as going backwards. However, this is a personal or limited short-term perspective with more to do with solipsism than clear-eyed consideration of the whole.

It is possible that the human project per se will fail. The end has been predicted for millennia because there is always a tendency to treat catastrophic setbacks as Doomsday. Catastrophe looks like doomsday for those most affected, and for many of our ancestors their personal doomsday did come to pass as they had feared. However, rebuilding and renewed and accelerated progress by survivors has always been the aftermath of major destructive events in both the wild and human culture.

Sadly, "spaceship Earth" cannot carry so many humans for long. This is ultimately the sources of your fears. Not secularism. Or progressivism. Or atheism. Or women. Or liberals. It's the (correct intuitive) sense that all this is not sustainable and bad things will happen.

So yes, all this that we have today will one day be lost. All beautiful things go extinct, as beautiful things have always disappeared and will continue to disappear, only to be replaced by different things with a different beauty. We can complain that it's not the same - that something beautiful will be lost that is irreplaceable. That's true. Yet the new has qualities greater than that which it replaced, and those qualities too will one day be lost and probably mourned by those of a certain generation who see them as irreplaceable.

Given all these "irreplaceable" things being lost and mourned by older generations while the young happily replace them, maybe we need to consider what is truly "irreplaceable"? I remember being "irreplaceable" a few years before retirement, and a year later my job was replaced by AI. The machine, of course, would lack my flexibility (and charm haha) but it would be ultimately more solid and reliable, much cheaper, no holidays, sick days, workspace, payroll tax, etc.

As Kurt Vonnegut would have said, so it goes.
Nick_A
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Re: Scapegoats for Secular Progressives

Post by Nick_A »

Greta
The human condition you complain about is the animal condition. Over the millennia humanity has been trying to escape the brutality and suffering inherent in nature, both without and within. So far, given the mere millennia with which humans have had so far to make sense of these unprecedented and complex social conditions, human beings have done incredibly well!

There have been many mistakes - murder, cannibalism, rape, infanticide, extreme torture methods, superstitious beliefs, wars, the Plague, the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, violent colonisation and failure to learn from indigenous people, overuse of fossil fuels and nuclear arms, sustainability, oppression, slavery, the list goes on. Humanity has had to deal with and learn from these traps and mistakes, resulting in uneven, but definite, progress on all fronts - moral, intellectual, political, economic, social, technological. Given that there was no manual telling humans how to handle their powers, how can the species be blameworthy?
But that isn’t what is meant by the human condition. The human condition is what makes hypocrisy a human norm. Animals aren’t hypocrites. Hypocrisy is a result of the human condition. Granted our species has grown in scientific knowledge but our fallen emotional nature is unchanged and varies within people as it always has. Man is capable of both the greatest expressions of compassion and attrocities. You cannot make a scapegoat out of hypocrisy but the seeker of truth seeks to learn why it governs our nature and what it deprives us of as human beings
“Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison” Simone Weil.
You define progress by learned facts. Real human progress is defined by the quality of the human perspective in which facts are used. Where we have gained scientific knowledge, collective humanity is losing its human perspective. It is being forgotten and has to be “remembered.”

You will blame some scapegoat for the dominance of the results of human hypocrisy. You have not as of yet stopped blaming and opened to witness the human condition as it exists in you and in the world.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/us/los-a ... index.html
4 students hit by gunfire at Los Angeles school; 12-year-old girl in custody
Who or what is your scapegoat which enables a twelve year old to become a crazed wounded thing with no respect for human meaning and purpose? We need a scapegoat. Who or what will you blame?
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