If a society advances in technological ability, but does not advance in wisdom and compassion, it has only become more advanced and efficient in exploitation and cruelty.
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Humanity is unique among domesticated animals in that it will put up its own fences, and build its own slaughterhouses as long as they are allowed to choose the decor.
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The pigs have shat in their own slop buckets, and think themselves clever for doing so. “That will show that farmer! Haw haw haw!”
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“This outsider has some nerve, telling us our water isn't clean! Why my grandpappy drank from this pump for years!
Elitist book-learning!
It's all a conspiracy by Big Water!
We want our water free of government interference and scientist meddling!
We want our water all natural, without filtering!
Invisible bugs?! Have you ever seen an invisible bug? Have you got no common sense?”
I'm sure that when John Snow (the real one) had the pump handle removed from the Broad Street pump to prevent the spread of Cholera in 1854, the talk in the street was something like the above.
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Money is, in fact, power, in any society advanced enough to have gotten to the point of using it. Allowing unlimited accumulation of money is, therefore, allowing unlimited accumulation of power. Both power and money tend to draw more of themselves by their presence. Therefore, unlimited accumulation of money leads to oligarchy, stagnation and economic immobility. It also leads, inevitably, to tyranny.
Money is power. Allowing unlimited accumulation of money leads to the unlimited accumulation of power – that is to say, tyranny.
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The rich man buys a whip, then pays the brute man to beat the poor man until he makes more money for the rich man, who uses some of that money to hire more brutes and buy a better whip.
It's no more complicated than that, and it never has been.
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Sure. It's morally corruptive for a poor person to get something they didn't “earn.” But an estate tax is out of the question.
This only makes sense if you start with the assumption that poor people are more corruptible than rich people, an assumption that would make a cat laugh.
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I'm sure you'd sell more groceries without expiration dates, and that profits for those who own grocery stores would go up. In some people's minds, this is sufficient reason in itself to get rid of expiration dates. The “free market” doesn't mind a few thousand casualties a year.
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There are many in the world that will make something beautiful ugly, just so they can leave their mark on it.
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To make something truly beautiful requires skill, patience, and a spark of joy from somewhere we don't understand. To destroy it requires only a hammer, and a spark of hate from somewhere we don't understand.
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I have seen a man beg for food for his hungry family, then turn and denounce all beggars as leeches and parasites the same day.
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I made my career, mostly, in the criminal courts. If you have ever heard someone explain why they murdered a child, or raped an innocent, you know that rationalization is always available to anyone, no matter how vile their actions or how demented their soul. No one is a villain in their own eyes, there is always a twisted reasoning by which one can consider oneself an exception to the rule.
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There is more than enough cruelty and rage in me for any crime. I do not commit crimes because while there is much suffering in the world, I do not want to be the cause of it. I am human, and I see humans.
Gods, laws, and guilt have little to do with it. I do not believe in your gods, many evade the law, and one can always explain away guilt. But deep inside your primal self is the knowledge that you cannot hurt others without hurting yourself – that we were made to work and live together.
This is why those who would commit great crimes try first to convince you that their intended victims are not human, at least not human like you and yours.
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No one who desires power over others is trustworthy. The desire for power comes from a dark place in the human spirit. When people put themselves forth to be granted power, you are forced to choose from among damaged and dangerous people. And you will always regret your choice, just some more than others.
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If you have made an excellent work – something that comforts the weary or gives joy to human beings, know that it will not endure long. There are too many people who find the reflection of their damaged souls in the destruction of beautiful things. They find power in wounding the innocent and helpless. They will tear it to pieces in front of you, smiling, relishing your suffering.
If you attempt to defend your creation, you will descend to their world of force and violence. Let go, and build anew. Again and again.
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“It is a tale as old as time.”
And just as tiresome, I assume.
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I have heard many times that cliche and stereotypes exist because there is a kernel of truth in them. This is a stupid, dangerous assumption. It is perfectly possible, even common for a cliche or a stereotype to be wrapped around an absolute lie. The truth of a proposition has little to nothing to do with how popular it becomes.
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Appreciating art, including food or wine, is not something you're born with. It's an acquired skill that must be taught. Learning to appreciate works of art is not a matter of adopting someone else's tastes; it is experiencing enough, and learning enough to develop tastes of your own born of broad experience and careful observation.
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If you do not think carefully about reason – what it is, why it matters, how capable are you and others of it – you are not being reasonable. If you just assume that being rational is always better, that's an assumption, and an unreasonable one at that.
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The truth of a proposition has almost nothing to do with how convincing people find it. People usually believe things that fit easily with things they already believe, or that flatter the hearer for believing them. The assumption that you will always win the argument if you have the facts on your side is the best way I know to lose the debate, and to end up deeply disappointed.
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I don't like the trolley problem as a thought experiment for many reasons. For those of you who have somehow been spared it, the problem posits an out of control trolley, speeding down the tracks, about to hit five people. You are at a switch, where you can divert the trolley onto another track, thus sparing them. But in doing so, you will kill one person who is on the other track. The problem is usually used to imply that you are morally obligated to divert the trolley because killing one person is better than killing five people.
So. Many. Objections.
First, let's get past the sophomoric answers. This is a thought experiment. It is not a puzzle to be solved. Please spare yourself the “Well, I'd find a way to stop the trolley altogether” nonsense, that's avoiding the question, not engaging it.
Taking the problem as it is intended, is it really more moral to throw the switch, than to not throw the switch?
Maybe, if we assume that all the lives involved have the same social value. I am assuming that social value is important here, since the problem is posed by a utilitarian philosopher. (Phillipa Foot)
But that's a very fragile assumption. What if the one person is a doctor, and the five are terminally ill patients who have but weeks to live? What if the one is a great scientist, or artist, whose loss will set back human development for decades or centuries?
The problem with such utilitarian assumptions is twofold:
First, that they assume that social value is a question of number.
Second, they assume perfect knowledge about all the lives involved. And we never have perfect knowledge.
This is why utilitarian arguments are always popular with authoritarians and utopians (one and the same, usually.) It is easy to justify their crimes against individuals when you are doing so “for the greater good.”
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