Karl

Ah the old Alinsky outrage. LOL I have no idea what you regard as discrimination, to whom it pertains, or in what form. Is it regular murders, beatings, burnings ? In our country no one is much bothered except to raise an eyebrow at some particularly bad conversion-although the town centre 'queens night' has been known to get out of hand- lots of fighting between the 'lasses' and sometimes the police are called when they stop cars and spread themselves across the bonnets causing damage. It can be a bit high spirited, but no one bats an eye. I don't think you have any understanding of animal 'lovers'. We have had several programs promoting the idea of 'marriage' to their pets (who they often believe we're once human lovers in a past life). It's hardly outrageous to suggest this tiny group of will expect the same rights as all other groups. It's a bit of a stretch to say that all want to dress for political purposes, but it's true to say that many liberals who are not transvestite wish to use it to batter other groups. Again, that's straight out of rules for radicals and the advancement of the political left who are intellectual atheist bigots. I notice you aren't outraged when you cite 'uneducated religious bigots' as if that's OK. It's sounds like you are prejudiced and discriminating against religious people by the looks of things. The implications are that all religious people are racist morons and should be punished for being so. I seem to remember that another religious group was once blanketed with a similar prejudice.

Sounds like someone has been coaching you on rules for radicals LD. You have stopped participating in refutation and taken to playing to the crowd. Personally I think the kind of liberal bigotry is typified by positive discrimination by a minuscule group of people who wish to dress up as the opposite sex. Where does it go next ? Will we have to accept animal sex-will hotels be forced to accept dogs, pigs, sheep and donkeys next- that a person is so convinced they are an animal that we should not only accept their behaviour, but will be forced by law to condone it. The mind boggles. I also don't think that Bodhcitta has anything against transvestites and that you are pushing the argument that way because you have run out of coherent refutations.

Everything beyond the faculties we are born with just to be precise. We don't learn consciousness, sensation, or perception as those are axioms. We can know pain and pleasure even if we have yet conceptualised those sensations. You will have to explain how a baby is born with this 'program running' which has skills and flaws built in -which as you know would verge on determinism and then you say that these flaws can be fixed which suggests self determination. You see the logical hole you just fell into ? Either there are predetermined flaws, or there aren't. You can't run this half way argument that suggests it is both, because then you run into another kind of logical contradiction A is also not A and that will require another philosophical answer to explain that. So, I have no issue with you refuting my argument, but to posit something to which you have not offered proof and is also contains its own contradictions for which you would also need to prove is a tough call. By all means give it a go. I shall get the popcorn on ;-)

You choose your values and ethics, how are you unaware of what you have chosen ?

What is its purpose ?

Or in your case 'majority'.

I've never found a violent/peaceful apple, star, or circle.

It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Freedom according to Liminal_luke is the freedom not to be free. An Orwellian concept for sure. Everyone is free, but some are freer than others.

Well said DB.

Is this a version of do what I say, not do what I do ;-) It is factual and well documented. Blacks were putting their own people in slavery and selling them to the white slavers. Blacks had been enslaving each other for thousands of years and black Mulslims were Enslaving White Christians in Europe. The revisionist history is to believe that somehow blacks/whites/gays/women are somehow superior or inferior, that they are incapable of barbarism. its horse shit. Blacks today are killing one another in horrific gangland violence just as they have done in ancient tribes. However, this is the reason we should ditch all forms of tribalism and deal with one another as individuals.

Collectivism is what you mean. Bad philosophy. States and Religious authorities act this way. I doubt the average man would if he was not the pawn of collectivist ideologies. This is the result of being immoral, to acting against reality, to compromise. This is the result of anti-life philosophies than dominate our societies today.

Then you would be dead very quickly. Man is not adapted to competing with animals, living in the open, chasing prey with nothing more than his bare teeth and hands. He must make fire to heat himself, clothes to cover his body for protection and warmth, a bed on which to sleep, a spear to hunt his prey, a knife to cut his food, a container to gather water, a shelter to live under. Technology isn't a neurosis, it is a necessity.

There is no destination beyond death. An Apple is an Apple, a star is a star, a circle is a circle. They have attributes and natures but beyond that nothing can be said of them. An Apple can be said to have a purpose because it is a function of a tree to seed itself, but has no control of its destiny. Your Mother and Father found some commonality, some shared values, they saw it was better that they were together than apart.m

Depends on how you define weakness ? Mans only tool of survival is his mind. He must eat, sleep, drink, keep warm, avoid damage, stay dry at a minimum. He does not have the automatic perfection of an animal, so from that perspective he is weaker. However he has immeasurably greater flexibility as a complex life form and it's flexibility which improves survival.

Man is defined by his nature. Reason is a faculty which gives mans mind wings to fly, propellers to swim and wheels to out perform any other animal on the planet. We can build super computers, fit artificial limbs and organs, eventually terraform a planet, turn darkness to light, desert to fertile oasis, we can travel to new planets, or make the tiny its robots which will conquer diseases. We have harnessed matter itself to produce energy and can communicate effortlessly across vast distances. We can create incredible works of music, sculpture, art and written work. Our imagination is boundless and our creativity virtually limitless. We have dragged ourselves from darkness and cave in a mere tick of the clock. What greater capacity does he need ?

Exactly. The problem is that people want to promote their totems to the wider community but to do so without incurring any argument. Once you put your product up for promotion you cannot expect people to humour you. As I've said previously 'judge and be prepared to be judged'. If you believe a certain thing works for you and that it can help others then there is no harm in that promotion, but the promoter must seperate themselves from the thing they are promoting and observe it objectively once in the public domain. It's like any other kind of good. Just because I criticise Citroen cars does not mean I dislike Mr Citroen, or those that like buying Citroens, but, quite clearly it indicates a different scale of values and not commonality. Thus, argument was invented to thrash out our differences without resorting to clubs. An argument might well get personal, but it isn't going to kill, maim or rob.

Also when someone dresses 'tribally' they appear to be setting themselves apart. It doesn't matter if it's a top hat or a veil. We instantly begin to assess the threat of someone who dresses tribally because they might be hostile. In a weird backlash we now have accusations of 'cultural appropriation' by whites who adopt the tribal looks of another culture. This is really liberal bigotry.

Yet you didn't react with violence, you reasoned it out. Good integration :-)

It's interesting because there is a clear cultural difference between Europe and Japan despite many years of integration. I was on holiday this year and met a Japanese girl who had immigrated to Britain and married a Scottish guy who was on the trip with him. She was the daughter of a farmer. It struck me that she was much more like the Japanese women pre war. Far more reserved and respectful, also more mystically naive ? I'm not sure those are the right descriptions and there was a slight language barrier anyway so we might not have understood each other. Her partner was very outspoken, quite anarchic and a little abrasive. They were good company, but very different characters which made it even more striking. I wanted to ask her more about her life in Japan and the culture/upbringing but didn't get the time.

That was just a natural reaction to someone that had a sufficiently different culture to yourself to put you on alert. Did you think 'I am superior to this man because my race is superior and therefore he should not be here, next to me" or "Jews are responsible for all the evil in the world ...etc etc ) that's how racists think.

That's a racist and sexist remark. I would say you are ignorant of world history. The US isn't a very old country, so, rather than disparaging it, you should review European history to get a perspective on the US. You would discover that it was the white races that were oppressed and conquered throughout Southern Europe. It certainly wasn't unusual for white slave trading to take place. The first US slaves were white. Black Africans also took white slaves and blacks alike. The history of oppression does not come with a particular skin colour, sex or, sexual preference. There are many examples of females owning slavery companies. This need to associate white heterosexual males with all the ills of the world is getting beyond a bloody joke. I regard it as violent racism and if you despise it in one race, you must despise it in all and begin with yourself.

A lucky charm has the same effect. We begin to attribute our luck and to make decisions on what we believe to be a lucky object. You are Japanese Junko ?

I know horoscopes are mystic rubbish Junko, but if you believe in them that's fine by me. Actually I think your thread has been very good, it has engaged several of us in very productive discussions and without any animosity. I think it's your calming affect working here because your words seem to have the effect of a 'state break'. Instead of people getting emotional, we are all having rational discourse. Well done to you, even if we aren't sticking exactly to your topic, thanks for allowing us to wander.

There's a vast difference between being a torture victim and being free. It is incorrect to say we are "victims of circumstance" in the sense you mean it, which sounds like the malevolent universe theory. Instead, we are free to choose and must choose our lives as the standard or not to. It's only now, when I write this, that I really understand the immense mental change that's occurred in me over the last 2 years. I hold to the idea of a benevolent universe and by that, I do not mean the power of consciousness to manifest things. I mean that the universe isn't a monster and that we have the possibility of living peaceful, happy and productive lives, but that there is no guarantee we shall. We have to choose to try, or to see it as a hopeless task. There is a point at which, if you hold to your ethics without compromise, that you must choose death over life. Once you are no longer free to achieve your values, to be productive and happy then you can only endure if you choose to. A torturer will effectively cut the link between mind and reality in order to break the victim-to deprive them of their values and attempt to install a new set of values that depend entirely on the torturer. It's impossible to hold to principles where freedom to do so is deliberately and systematically eliminated. How one survives intact in those circumstances I have no idea. I don't have any answers to recovery either, because, once that link between reality and mind has been severed violently then the mind may have gone permanently. I know that in situations such as German/Russian death camps, those that survived did so by clinging to reality through tiny, regular activities that gave them a sense of control-their freedom was never removed entirely, they held a portion of themselves inviolable and unbreakable. No one really knows if they have the mental toughness to cope in those situations and then one must choose at some point that dying is better than living-if life has no possibility of improvement. I'm not a psychologist, I do not know how to impart an objectivist philosophy, other than to throw a book on a table and walk away from it-promising nothing and saying nothing. I can say "this is how I think" but not how anyone else shoukd think, we all have to choose. I don't believe any reprogramming can occur because we aren't robots. If a person has become reliant on their captor and is no longer independent, then they might swap the reliance onto a psychiatrist/therapist/councillor, but they remain dependent. Until they choose not to be dependent they will remain dependent, just as people choose to remain ignorant, or choose to evade will do so until they choose otherwise.

Mans nature is his capacity to reason-to use his mind as his tool of survival and happiness.