qaliqo wrote:
Sure, there always are. Can you name a couple? I'll admit that I can't...
1) Because in modern days going to war and enslaving people is generally counter productive given pre-existing stores of capital that have to be wastefully reallocated and damages that can generally be done through warfare to existing capital stock, whereas trade usually allows access to that stuff without as much damages and waste and controversy.
2) Because people today value human life and on some level consider it intrinsically valuable. (note: point 2 isn't a point about objective morality)
3) Because it is disgusting on an emotional level.
4) Because attempting to do so can cause economic and political instability in the global system as war not only destabilizes matters by ending pre-existing agreements with the invaded nation but also because a willingness to take from weaker groups signals a nation that is dangerous and that needs to be "put-down" by the other powers for reasons 2 & 3, and because such a power is a threat to their own interests.
5) Because it is incredibly difficult to wage war, with holding actions frequently getting bogged down by guerrilla warfare.
6) Because encouraging a war economy ultimately reduces the useful productivity in the world economy by diverting resources to military protection efforts where they could be used towards consumption and creating better consumption goods.
7) Because in most military efforts, members of our own group have to die and this is distasteful.
Umm.... do you need more.
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Yes, an absurdly beautiful tapestry. Kafka and Monty Python were both existentialist. Absurd can be a good thing, too.
I'd have to disagree. Absurdity is abhorrent. It mocks the human drive to understand the world and the human pleasure in understand it, and even enmeshes people in paradoxical positions that they cannot understand and are horrified to walk through. I mean, the notion of absurdity seems to feature somewhat prominently in various elements of the horror genre. I mean, HP Lovecraft comes to mind. I don't think that the kind of absurdity found in humor is what is being talked about when talking about reality.
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The Calvinist God comes with a lot of the obviously false baggage of Judeo-Christian dogma; throw out the afterlife, assume that people are eternal in the sense of being a constant from outside space and time, it all makes sense, some people always were/are/going to be Hitler and some were/are/going to be Gandhi and the vast majority will not be so obviously good or evil, but always just what they are, once one "steps outside".
Ok, that doesn't change the issue that was originally at hand, does it? I mean, the issue at hand involved a God. You seem to reject this with your little theory B thought experiment.
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You are exactly correct in my estimation., it
is all an appeal to an unknown will. Read any Crowley? He clarifies a lot of spiritual thought and muddies a lot of rational thought, but on the whole books like
Magick Without Tears offer a great deal of insight into the good, the bad, and the ugly. My whole take away on will is that IF NOT a single will at work on/in the entire universe THEN will is a perception to which no thing corresponds. Can I prove it? No. Am I more than suspicious that all is one? Yes.
I haven't read any Crowley and generally have shown no real interest.
Well.... ok, but given that dichotomy, I would have to deny the will. I mean, materialism makes more sense than invoking a random spiritual mystery. At least given our currently vast ways to mess with people heads using stimulus in the right places.
19 Dec 2009, 3:44 pm
