Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:45 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:35 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:58 am
Yes...I remember them from the Third Reich and the Stalinist gulags...very nice people, those.
Why do Christians so often resort to name-calling and vitriol.
You mistake my tone. I'm not feeling vitriolic, and I'm not "name-calling." I'm calling up a couple of counter-cases to your postulate.
I'm just pointing out that being "irreligious" does not at all make one "misunderstood," nor does it contribute to making such people "wish others well." I am pointing out a couple of clear cases where they outcome you suggest most certainly did not happen.
I wasn't accusing you. You are not they.
But it's clear that being "irreligious" or "individualistic" does not make one automatically some sort of saintly victim. Manifestly, even brutal dictators are often both. But these things may well be used to rationalize being the worst kinds of imperious aggressor, as in the cases cited.
By your own broad definition, brutal dictators are NOT IRRELIGIOUS, they are ideologues with as much religious fervor as any radical evangelical.
How can you compare statists with individualists who have no interest in any social/political ideology, no interest in, "saving mankind," or, "creating the right society," even a, "free society." Individualists do not support any government, any war, any intentional interference in anyone else's life. You may not agree with that view, but no true individualist [not just the crackpots that claim to be individualist] has ever been instrumental in any human caused atrocity. I'd say that's a virtue.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:58 am
The recognition that most ideological beliefs require an enormous amount of credulity or gullibility is not meant to insult anyone.
Yeah, it kind of is.
That is, unless you think "idiot" is a term of endearment or something.
At the very least, it's an imperious affirmation of the "irreligious" person's self-perceived
specialness.
It's a term of description. If someone's feelings are hurt by that description, it's their problem. Life is tough and believing the world is supposed to be where, "never is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day," is a sad Utopian dream.
I guess you could call not being gullible enough to swallow every preacher's, teacher's, politician's, and con men's lies special. It certainly is rare, but available to anyone who chooses to do the hard work of thinking for themselves.
Don't worry about those who have chosen to make the effort not to be idiots. It's the one's who have chosen to not be special that will be the cause of problems.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:45 pm
And this is why I want to know more about how you achieved such specialness that you arrived in the special 1% of the world who are not, as per Mencken, "idiots." If you have compassion for others, you at least should be kind enough to tell them how to attain the special 1%ness they lack...
What any human being does or makes of himself is by that individual's own conscious choice. All that I've learned I had to choose to learn and do the work required to learn it.
Well, tell us all about that. What did you "learn," how did you come to "learn" it, when 99% of us didn't, and what "work" did you do, in specific, to attain your present state?
Anyone could do the very same thing. Most never do. Why? To answer that question you would have to ask every individual why they made the choices they made. It is not possible to know why anyone else chooses not to learn all the possibly can, not to think as well as they possibly can, to give in to feelings, or desires, or discomforts, or to slide and think they can away with it. I don't know and you don't know why others make the choices they make. You can ask them, and they can tell you something, but you can never know for certain if they are telling you the truth--even if they've convinced themselves they are.
This actually encourages me think you don't actually know how you came to be in the 1%.
As you say, it has to do with "every decision a person ever makes," or so you say. Yet you insist "anyone could do the same thing": it's hard to imagine they
could, if even you, in the blessed 1% can't explain how to get there.
Well, put it this way: how did you manage to avoid the "idiot" trap into which 99% of humanity allegedly fell? Give us your secret, then.
I just did. It's no secret. Even you could do it.
Yeah, you said that.
And then essentially said it was impossible to know how to do it, because it involves every decision ever made, and so none in specific.
So this is tough for you to figure out. You think that one can become an engineer by one day just making the specific decision to be and engineer. Well that does not work. To become an engineer requires thousands, perhaps millions of decisions. Every time the student decides to open the book and study, decides to do the research for his required papers, chooses to study instead of going to the beer bash. To finally achieve becoming an engineer will require right choice, after right choice, after right choice. It is the sum of all one's choices and chosen behavior that are what that person is. There is no, "one,"choice that determines what an individual is.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:45 pm
Bluff. I have to call bluff. If there's
no particular road to where you are there's no way anybody could have followed your path, and it's not true that "anybody could do it."
What are you talking about. I don't care what you think. I have been trying to answer your questions sincerely, because I thought you were interested in my views. I didn't realize you thought we were in some kind of contest or game to be won.
Why would I be bluffing? Who am I trying to fool? I don't care what you are anyone else thinks of me. I don't really care if you believe me or not (though there's no point to our discussion if your not going to.)
I really do think I'm not an idiot and that anyone who believes anything taught by any ideology because it is what that ideology teaches is an idiot and I really think 99% of human beings embrace some ideology.
Call me a liar, or stupid, or idiot, if that's what you think. Lots of people do. I don't really care, but it does discourage me from believing in your sincerity.
I've already explained that everyone is at any moment the sum of their choices. I'm am certain I have no special intellectual abilities, and all that I know and have achieved have been because I chose to learn all I possibly could and think as well as I possibly could, and that anyone could make the same choices and do the same things. Why don't they? I've already answered that too, but you obviously aren't truly interested in my answer to that or you would have read the articles I referred to.
I think that is part of the answer. You don't want to know the truth and evade anything that might make you have to think for yourself because you like the idea that something else can provide you all the answers, and confuse repeating what your ideology teaches for thinking .
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:58 am
I think you're taking for granted you and Mencken are just naturally in the 1%. Maybe. Let's see.
But let's consider another possibility: it may well be that only 1% of the population is so totally un-self-aware about who they really are, how they formed their opinions, and how they ended up where they are, that they just assume they are in the elite 1%.
How do you know that's not the case?
I think the same way you could if you chose to honestly think about what you already know, unless your gullibility has already so corrupted your ability to think correctly you can no longer truly think.
Don't worry about it. If individualists are wrong, it won't do you any harm, and they won't complain about the consequences of their choices if they are wrong and expect everyone else to have, "empathy," for them and to pick up after them. I think that's a virtue too.