Meshugger

While i haven't followed the Austrian presidential elections, i did however find this interesting: https://archive.is/C6oqM So declare your opponents as enemies (=far-right, what's a far-right anyway?) of the EU, threaten with sanctions and refuse to debate them. What a time to be alive in this democraship. Original link: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/juncker-vows-to-use-new-powers-to-block-the-far-right-nq5r5tnqq

Uh-huh.

Unconditional love is an alien concept nowadays.

I don't know, maybe she actually loves him and the accusers are like a den of vipers who only want fame and money. What do you know?

As far as I can see it, you're all hot chicks.

Hahaha

What a coincidence! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

Are you assuming that she is that competent? Also, are there no more debates before June the 7th btw?

This thread makes me nostalgic about being young again. Back when the parents were completely clueless on why Pantera was totally dope. Fun times.

What cant you do nowadays that you use to do before the joining the EU? In the case of the UK, it is the dependency of the European Commission acting as the executive and the European Council & Parliament as legislative. They cannot work independently without them as long they are in the EU. In the case of countries within the Euro-area, they in turn cannot even control their state finances or currency. Why bother when you can have representation on a national level instead? Even the most hardened cynic have to admit that they have to at least try to work in the interest of their constituents, as they represent them.

They should leave. The EU has turned from a free cooperation of states into a behemoth of beaurocracy larping as the new aristocracy with a common rules for everything, which in turn will eradicate the very differences that we celibrate.

This is fallacious, sorry. Again, "with this, therefore because of this". What you have in reality is the observation that most, if not all, societies that have survived long enough to leave records seem to present religious or spiritual practices of some sort. That's it, end of story. You cannot claim that it's a part of "human nature" simply because of that. I'm going to counter with an alternative explanation, which I'm sure you've heard before. If we accept that natural selection is not a mechanism restricted to living beings, it stands to reason that there exists a natural selection of societies, effected by cultural genes (memes, as per Dawkins). Hence, it's possible that religious practices confer some sort of competitive advantage to societies that adopt them, over those that do not. As a result, over time you would have more cultures with different religions but essentially similar practices, than cultures without. No appeals to romantic and vague notions of "human nature" needed when the much better understood natural selection will suffice. edit2: oh, you didn't say "human nature", you said "human condition". My bad, feel free to explain the difference. There's a difference and that's why i think we are talking past each other. I see the differences as following: - The human condition is about how we handle mortality, meaning and existence, with vehicles like art, philosophy and religion. It's inseparable from us. - Human nature is about how humanity developed, why we have a will to power, nature vs. nurture and so on. Memes do play a role in that case, i agree. No, Byzantium wouldn't be Byzantium without the Orthodox Church, but it also wouldn't be Byzantium without the Paganism prevalent even after Constantine converted to Christianity, and it wouldn't be Byzantium without the incorporation of territories that had been previously part of the Macedonian empire, some of which were in turn part of the Persian empire before and therefore under its influence, and so on and so forth. Interestingly, there is the theory that the reason for initial persecution of Christianity in the Roman empire was due to concerns of infiltration by Zealots. That is, it's possible that what came to be the official religion of the state was in its inception influenced by the political aim of rebelling against that very state (lol). And, of course, let's not forget what Christianity draws from Judaism. The point I'm making is that claiming that there is a founding religion (or any other thing) you can clearly point at in a culture* is a simplification. About the Soviet Union comment... I have no idea what you're talking about. *also the point about the divides between one "culture" and its predecessors and successors existing clearly only in textbooks edit: they really need to fix the forum. I'm using Notepad++ to write posts up... I do not even think that we disagree here really as i didn't claim that a civilization would exist disjointed from any other form culture, religion or any other flow of historical currents.

Okay, let's try to approach the problem from a different angle. You do agree with the idea that the three core cultural pillars of western civilization are to be found in the antiquity (Greco-Roman culture, for lack of a better word), Christianity, and the Enlightenment, right? Sure, but i see the enlightment as a natural consequence of the degenerate process of hierarchy in society. It couldn't have happened of not christianity preceeded it. (...) Religion and spirituality is too inherited into the human condition for it not to exist as part of civilization. Hierarchy is... a process? Which is also degenerate? Care to unpack that a bit more? As for your other observation... it's true in a sense, but it also seems to be missing the point? I don't think religion's a part of civilization because it's "inherent to the human condition". It's a medium through which cultural mores can be efficiently communicated, and it provides a coherent way to interpret the world around you, and both of those are extremely useful functions if you want to build a civilization, but I don't think there's something unique to religion that makes it better at those things than the alternatives. I see civilizations as a cyclic process. In the beginning, or lets say it primordial state, there's a strong societal hierarchy with the sacred on top (church, priests) who interpret the supernatural, then the sovereign of state (emperor, king) who has completed the rites and rituals to legitimize its authority of the natural world (heroism, virtue), then the warrior class, then merchants and the peasants. These erode through time, as civilizations grow and fall, and we now live in the age of merchants, where materialism is the reigning value. In that way, hierarchy has denegerated from the sacred of the unknown to the material man. I do think we can reach an understanding with your second paragraph, because religion per se is not what necessary makes society better, one only has to look at the blood rituals of the Mayas to acknowledge that. It gives us meaning though, for the good and the bad, which is very important for a sustainable civilization, and i think it that will be among us until the sun explodes.

Trump seems to be shaping the next talking-point: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/734768900282454016

Okay, let's try to approach the problem from a different angle. You do agree with the idea that the three core cultural pillars of western civilization are to be found in the antiquity (Greco-Roman culture, for lack of a better word), Christianity, and the Enlightenment, right? Sure, but i see the enlightment as a natural consequence of the degenerate process of hierarchy in society. It couldn't have happened of not christianity preceeded it. What i am pontificating is that if the western civilization would to collapse and we would have to start the whole thing again, then it would be with a new religion. Religion and spirituality is too inherited into the human condition for it not to exist as part of civilization. No, Emperor Stalin didn't choose Atheism "for the lulz", either. He did it because it gave him two extra hammers per tile, which he was going to need later on to build tons of Nuclears. Or rather, it happened as the result of a myriad factors, not the least among them the fact that ecclesiastical authorities in Russia had property to confiscate, and wielded influence that might threaten the Bolsheviks' already tenuous grip on power. So again, using your own reasoning, the Soviet "civilization" is an example of a civilization with no founding religion. Never mind that considering Soviet Russia as an entity separate from the rest of the history of Russia is meaningless outside of textbook compartmentalization... much like your artificial separation of Byzantium from preceding Roman (etc) culture and customs. Besides, you do realize that the Byzantine empire predates Justinian's laws regarding Christianity right? How can something come before that which it's supposedly based on? edit: dammit, production in Civ was shields, not hammers. My argument is invalid. What's your point? That religion bears little meaning in a civilization and that it is only a tool of the ruling class? If that's so, then that's quite a cynical outlook i can tell you. My point was that Byzantium wouldn't be Byzantium without the orthodox church, which was the result of the split of Rome and the customs that preceded it. The Justinian code was to emphasize of the natural consequence of such. The Soviet Union was the natural result of when experimenting with materialistic philosophy, brought to us by the enlightment. which is much like the capitalistic one we have in the west, but just the other side of the coin.

Well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis So... whatever is made by law to be the official state religion at a random point in its history, is now "the founding religion a civilization is based on"? That's exactly the kind of goalpost shifting I was alluding to -- if anyone thought I was being a tad too cynical, your post has invalidated any such objections. Even better, your own reasoning provides a counterexample to your theory in the shape of: I do not think we are talking about the same thing here. My point wasn't that Justinian just picked a random religion amon many just for the lulz, but rather that Byzantium was based on the orthodox church and how the laws established continued to influence the region and the eastern civilization even after it fell.

Wasn't it Baal? Or is it the same with a different name?

Midsomer murders: WoT-edition.

How can you disagree that there hasn't ever been any great civilization without a founding religion, if you don't even have a definition yourself of what "civilization" and "religion" is? What was the religion the Byzantine culture was based on? The polytheism-ancestor worship of the Roman kingdom? Christianity? Whatever the ancient Romans may have inherited from the Etruscans? Heh. Well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis

Meshugger, I have no idea why people like him. I was merely answering a question you asked. That was what my retort was about. Your argument is missing an important part of the whole picture, namely why people are drawn to him to begin with. I disagree Meshugger. My point wasn't why people like him, but why people should not like him. Is that argument necessarily fallacious if I don't include why people like him? I don't think so. Additionally, I would not attempt to read peoples minds to be able to tell you why they like him because that would be witchcraft and I think they still burn witches in California I didn't say that your argument was fallicious per se, i said that it was incomplete because the reasons that i stated. For example, the october revolution in Russia didn't happen because people thought that regicide was a swell idea, or that the nation needed a good Holodomor or two or that they were fond of a spiritual decline. The reasons were of course something completely different, and in order to adress them you will have to understand the underlying causes of such unrests to begin with. Otherwise we are all doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again.

Meshugger, I have no idea why people like him. I was merely answering a question you asked. That was what my retort was about. Your argument is missing an important part of the whole picture, namely why people are drawn to him to begin with.

There wasn't one religion until late in the Roman Empire with Constantine. But religion as such was definately one of the foundations of the Roman Republic of old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_maiorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietas

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-must-weed-out-ignorant-americans-from-the-electorate/2016/05/20/f66b3e18-1c7a-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html It's not the establishment who is out of touch, it is the voters. Hahaha, oh my, oh my.

Your ignorance does not offend me. lol

Yeah, totally different from what the press said about Bush, about Reagan, or about Nixon. Not at all that the whole word 'Fascism' is starting to lose all meaning. Mesgugger why do you think people like Trump ? And many of his policies are idiotic and wont benefit the USA at all, like the Trump Wall and his plans to deport 11 million people ....yes thats right, its all hyperbole, grandstanding and false bravado I think that he is popular because he recognizes the same problems like Bernie and he also benefits from the position of being an outsider. He treats the election circus like the scam as it is and orchestrates it like WWF-fight: He goads each candidate who all simply cannot handle simple street banter who finally later implodes by their own incompetence and people like him for that. He baits the media on both Twitter and in interviews with the very kafka-traps of their own using, forcing them to recognize that he has a point and therefore emerging as the winner of the argument, and people like winners. To point, his strenght of being attracts a lot of people. I also believe that he is popular because the white middle class has been slowly displaced, both culturally and politically the last twenty years and Trump just happens to be the right guy at the right time and place. The jobs of the avarage Joe is outsourced and the sudden change of demographics undermines the social cohesion and making people feel like strangers in their own communities where Trump, and Bernie to a degree, adresses that issue, of which the establishment has turned a blind eye to. There's the cultural aspect of forced diversity, third wave feminism, celebration of every other sexual orientation except normal heterosexuality, celebration of depravity and banality, celebration of victimhood and safe spaces which has simply left a cultural vacuum for people like Trump, who represents himself as positive, assertive, strongly masculine, pulling no punches and apologizes to no one. Pretty much like the video below: self-hatred and negative outlook is the current mantra and Trump is the opposition to that: There's probably more, but that's what i have been getting so far.