Azarkon

There's where you're not on the same page as I am. To me, people alone do not commit these crimes against humanity - they can't. Nations do, though a few in the nation are more guilty than others. And this is squarely from the Nuremberg trials: how many people held responsible for crimes against humanity said that they did what they did because they were following orders? And did not the whole nation of Germany follow the orders of Hitler, regardless of how immoral they were? These people are not solely responsible for their actions. Their nation - Germany - is, and as long as Germany itself did not repent, its people wouldn't, either. As far as modern Christians go, I don't hold them responsible for the Crusades because Christianity's de facto view of the world had changed dramatically in its principles since then. However, I do hold Christian fundamentalists responsible, because they refuse to change. Consequently, many people do still hold Christianity as a religion responsible for its crimes - and rightfully so, because there are certain tenets of Christianity that simply are not conducive to a peaceful, tolerant world. Fortunately, a good majority of modern Christians no longer believe in these tenets.

See, that's where I disagree. I disagree with the tendency of conservative nationalists to attribute the guilt of a nation squarely onto the shoulders of a few individuals, ignoring the very real and very powerful national forces that were equally guilty. What they're arguing, and what I strongly disagree with, is the idea that the nation is never guilty, and if we did horrible things, it's only a few bad apples that should be held responsible. The Mother Nation / Fatherland is innocent. Always and forever. Bull****. A nation is always responsible for the actions of its citizens, because it's nationalism and nationalistic ideology that made people support the people who took power. So long as the nation is unrepentent of these tendencies, it remains guilty. To ignore the existence of such guilt would be to not learn from the mistakes of history, and those who forget are doomed to repeat them, as we've seen in the short time between WW1 and WW2. As far as racism goes, that's again bull****. I judge a person by his nation because if he's a nationalist, then he throws in his lot with the nation, and therefore it'd be ridiculous for me to judge him as an individual independent of nations. If he's not a nationalist, he wouldn't be worried about national guilt, and therefore I'd have no reason to judge him.

You're never guilty, personally, of your ancestors' crimes. But you're never guilty, personally, of anything with regards to the crimes of a nation unless you were the one calling the shots. Still, your *nation* is guilty, and if you choose to be a patriot of said nation, then you are by implication guilty. You *inherit* the guilt of a nation by virtue of your proclamation of being a citizen of said nation. The nation's guilt remains as long as it remains unrepentent, as long as it fails to change in a fundamental way from its earlier attitudes. Hence, if a Japanese person told me that he was not personally guilty of Japan's war crimes, I'd agree with him. But if he tells me that his country is not guilty, then I have a problem with that assertion. If he tells me that Japan's modern society should not be blamed for its past, I have a problem. And my problem remains as long as I perceive a continuation of the kind of society that led to Japan's aggression in WW2. Once that ends, the country's guilt is absolved. This is not racism because I don't judge a person by his race. I judge a person by his nation, and I only enact such a judgment if said person proclaims himself a nationalist of said nation. Since he/she chose to be a nationalist, then I must therefore judge him/her by the nation. That is only logical.

If your country is an aggressor and you're born under that country and, more importantly, a patriot of that country, then that makes you a potential aggressor. As I said, when a nation commits a crime, it's not only the leaders / current generation that must be held responsible. The entire system of the nation must be held responsible. So long as the system that brought about the aggression remains, the nation remains guilty of its previous crimes. This is equivalent to real life where we judge a criminal's ability to re-integrate into society by how much he's changed from his criminal ways. The nation, like an organism, must be judged as a whole. It's true that historically, every nation has been aggressive at some time or another. But that simply means every nation is guilty until they've changed from their conquistidor ways. I wouldn't blame modern Italy for, say, the crimes of the Roman Empire because modern Italy is nothing like the Roman Empire. But I do have reason to blame Japan, for instance, for the crimes of historical Japan because in many aspects nothing has changed about the country's attitudes towards its neighbors. Same for the US, which has never renounced its imperialist ways and is still seeking a reenactment of Vietnam: hence Iraq.

Works both ways. The aggressor blames others for his own aggression (ie the government made me do it, my ancestors did it, etc.) just as the victim blames him. Sometimes the aggressor even blames the victim for his weakness. Except that, at least in real life, we don't prosecute the victim for his weakness. We prosecute the aggressor. Unless your idea of justice is that it's okay for me to murder people because it's their failure to stop me, I don't think it's relevant at all in this situation.

Ah, but that is the classic excuse of nationalism: don't blame us, blame the people who were responsible for the decisions. Nevermind that we supported them. Nevermind that our culture and society still operates under the same principles that allowed such extremist doctrines to cloud our judgment in the first place. And therein is the greatest trick of the devil, so to speak: the exoneration of the masses through the scapegoating of the few, of the dead. The delegation of responsibility to top government officials, which ignores both the cultural and political conditions responsible for their rise to power. Would the world be a better place without Hitler? Certainly. But he was not the only one preaching death to the Jews, and if he didn't exist, another would've taken his place sooner or later in making the same mistakes. The problem is simple: if a man murders another man in cold blood, we hold that man responsible and all the blame we heap onto him is justice. But how do you hold a nation responsible for its actions? What is justice with regards to a nation? Is it merely the persecution of its leaders? They certainly made the decisions, but did they not do it at the behest of the nation, and were they not merely the most obvious representations of the national attitude? Let's not forget that Hitler rose to power through the German people - he was elected, and not one time in his regime did he lose the popular support of his people. Even to the end, the majority believed that he was a savior. And that is exactly the same issue with separating a generation from its descendants. If we blame a nation's crimes on the generation that committed them we are ignoring the propagation of values from generation to generation, especially in a nation. Anti-semitism in Germany and ultra-militarism in Japan are not inventions of fascism; they were continuations of these two countries' nationals cultures up to that point. And unless that culture changes, the same mistakes will be repeated again and again. In the end, the truth of the matter is this: a nation's crimes are not the crimes of a few top leaders. They are not even the crimes of a singular generation, present or past. Rather, they are the crimes of a system: political, economic, social, and ideological. The blame, therefore, must not rest with people as much as it must rest with the system in which these people are raised to uphold. In this respect, blame and guilt, when raised at the level of national critique, is always viable so long as said system continues to edxist. Of course, the world disagrees as to when such a system no longer exists, and it's necessarily the case that the victims would have a longer memory than the aggressors. So it is that many Jews still do not trust the Germans. So it is that many Asians still blame the Japanese for their modern attitudes of superiority. But are they justified in their criticisms? The answer is not a point-blank "no" that supposes the current generations blameless for the actions of their ancestors and leaders. Instead, it must come from a evaluation of the criticized nation's political, economic, social, and ideological differences from the times of its notoriety. In short, they must demonstrate that they've really changed. Btw, there are always victims, especially in history.

Hence, a focus on cold, hard facts would absolve both sides: the evils will have to be taken in hand with the goods, and people can learn to decide for themselves. If by public morality, you mean a public indoctrinated into the service of ethnocentric nationalism (which is all that is truly imbued by the kind of education we're talking about), then I say down with it. Isn't this a classic case of blaming the victim for the misdeeds of the aggressor? I wouldn't say that the age of imperialism is quite at an end, yet...

I don't think erasing any mentions of a country's past misdeeds or spinning them into an euphemism constitute "telling history." But then this problem is intrinsic to any sort of historical education that attempts to imbue nationalist ideology at the same time. History should be about the cold, hard facts from both sides of the equation, good and bad. It should not dictate morals, nor make a decision as to which side to support in a controversy as pivotal to modern society as the rights and wrongs of Imperialism. As far as guilt goes, this is how I see it: the only way you're going to feel guilt at your nation's past deeds is if you're a nationalist who cares deeply about your nation's history and position in the world. And if you're a nationalist who cares about such things, then you have an obligation to know exactly the mistakes your country committed so that your patriotism is not misguided. Misguided patriotism has cost humanity far too much to be taken lightly. On the other hand, if you really didn't care about what your ancestors did in the past, then any mentions of them in history books are theoretically irrelevant to your conception of modern society. Therefore, it should not trouble you that the history books speak badly about your country. As a result, I suspect that those who are complaining about not wanting to feel guilty about the past are in truth very much concerned with the past and dedicated nationalists. And if this is the case then I'd sooner that you know the past in all its terrible glory, then to repeat its mistakes. Remember, the so-called contemporary values that we abide by in modern society are a product of mistakes made in the past. If we stopped believing that those mistakes were in fact mistakes, then what incentive would we have of upholding these contemporary, post-colonial values?

Programming is the practical manifestation of a discipline. It is not necessary or sufficient to know the details in order to grasp the structured method of thinking that bridges engineering with creative design. For example, most programmers should have a fair understanding of pseudo-code, and if you are able to speak in pseudo-code, then you're more than able to understand what goes on behind the scenes. In fact, add to that ability some knowledge of the low-level limitations, and you'd be set.

Roguelike games, TBS's, and good MUDs tend to make me think. Consequently, all three genres are absent from the mainstream, but then they were never part of the mainstream to begin with (except for, maybe, Civilization).

Just a short note about craptastic socialist policies in the US: I think you'll find that while socialist policies in the US have largely failed, they have largely succeeded in many other countries, especially in Asia. Could culture have something to do with it? I think so, and I also think that the reason socialist programs like free education and Medicaid have failed in the US has more to do with the efficiency of government agencies than with intrinsic flaws. The government needs only to guarantee the presence of universal free education. There is nothing wrong with privatizing the implementation.

I see. Well, it's difficult to argue about this, since no nation has ever willingly reduced itself to another nation's wage status, and thus we have no examples one way or another. I agree with this, but I suspect the policy makers do not, given recent protectionist trends. I really don't think that this is the case. What about things like education? It's true that public schooling has failed in the US, but it thrives in other countries - including China and Japan. At any case, I really can't imagine how society would be if things like free education and minimum mage were removed. They were put there for a reason, historically, due to the exploitation that otherwise resulted (of ex-slaves, immigrants, and/or the poor). But there's a paradox there, isn't there? For the government to protect trade, it must first define what *is* trade, which means interfering with market forces that fall outside of what the government considers healthy trade. A free market economy, like everything else that can be considered "free", is therefore purely ideological: it must be curbed by practical restrictions that prevent the freedom from turning on itself. It seems to me though that part of your argument earlier assumed a flawed socialist society, which is why that comment struck me as odd. In an ideological socialist society, there would be no ruling elite - everyone would, indeed, be equal and upward mobility would be a moot point since everything's owned by a benevolent government anyhow. Yes, practical socialist societies fail, but only because socialism as an ideological system is unattainable. Yes, and my argument is that there has to be policies that guard against monopolistic practices such as those utilized by Microsoft. If they were not caught, and had no threat of being caught, they would've done much worse. The government cannot, therefore, simply practice laissez faire. Yeah but how can we ever find this example until someone out there creates such a Utopian laissez faire nation? It's like arguing that Communism is Utopia: you can't disprove this because there's never been a truly Communist society, so there. In both cases, the lack of practical examples do not justify an argument in either direction. If you tell me to take you on faith that a laissez faire system never creates monopolies, then I will tell you to take me on faith that Real Socialism is Utopia. Without examples, we both arrive at an impasse. I think you'll find it very difficult to argue that any system "just happens" or "is natural", given the historical fluidity of human governments. The exchange of resources on a market - ie trade itself - is intrinsic to human society, but that is not what capitalism describes. Capitalism is not the equivalent - as far as I've ever heard it defined by economists - of Trade. Rather, it is a principle of economics that emphasizes private, individual ownership (something that many cultures traditionally rejected) and a free market (again, something that many cultures never believed in). In fact, this is why there has never been a truly capitalist society in human history. Some of the most successful "adopters" of "capitalism" (in the sense of their economy's strength, not their proximity to the ideals of capitalism) have been essentially a combination of socialist control with capitalist ownership. As such, it would be folly to assume that socialism is merely an abnormal growth on the butt of capitalism, when in fact they coexist in every capitalist society on earth.

You can never be certain about certainty. The difference between science and religion is not in the misconception that the former is always empirical, but in that it is never certain. Science is always questioning itself, whereas religion takes all for granted. Thus, one leads to progress, while the other - stagnation. Edit: as for the Gauss quote, well, we can certainly see where he's coming from, eh?

Math was never a science to begin with. I'm talking Biology, Physics, Chemistry - the three prime schools of science. Each have its share of untested (and some arguably untestable) theories.

Not all of science is empirical.

It's in that same article I linked to earlier. But since you would rather not read the article, here's the text of interest: "China has more than 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world's population, and a workforce of 700 million as against a US workforce of 147 million. To avoid being overtaken by China in aggregate national income, US wages would have to maintain a gap of five times Chinese wages. Historically based technological and economic advantages currently give US workers a nominal wage gap of more than 35:1 over Chinese workers, or 9:1 on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. This comfortable gap is not based on current productive differentials but rather on unbalanced terms of trade and geopolitical incongruity left by history. Yet until wage parity is attained, free trade will continue to be driven by cross-border wage arbitrage in favor of China. But with wage parity, the Chinese economy will be five times the size of the US economy, a prospect not welcomed by the US geopolitical calculations." Like I said, lose-lose situation, but outsourcing is far less damaging to national wealth than wage parity. US purchasing power comes from the historical "incongruity" inherent in the dollar, and that's what allows most Americans their lavish life style (since the goods, most of which are produced in other countries, are cheap by the fact of that imbalance). Take that away and how exactly would you maintain US privilege? Why argue in extremes? Capitalism can coexist with socialist policies, and that indeed is what most people are arguing for in this thread. What prevents the corporations from creating their own governmental structure, then? What prevents them from using monopolistic tactics to exploit the populace? That has never been true in any socialist society in human history. Microsoft comes the closest. But this is besides the point, since governments have never ceased to interfere with any capitalist system in existence. Since a so-called free market economy has never quite existed in its purity (much as a perfect socialist society has never existed), this call for examples is impractical and thus moot. Btw, some of the most successful capitalist societies in history (South Korea, Japan) were government-planned economies. China is going in the same direction, and the world is taking notes. The point is this: when every man is poor (as would occur if wealth was distributed equally), the state of poverty is universal and therefore tolerated. When a few men are rich and the rest are poor, inequity is perceived and leads to violent uprisings. A capitalist society inevitably moves towards the latter. The concentration of wealth is the breeding ground of revolution. This was true with feudalism, and it was true with capitalism in the past. Socialist policies are, in some ways, a way of delaying that inevitability through promoting, to a degree, collective advancement, which is key to national cohesion. You act like socialism = feudalism. What exactly is your definition of socialism? I speak from the perspective of someone who wants to see capitalist nations with select socialist policies (such as universal health care). Therefore, I oppose a purely free market economy. That does not mean, however, that I'm supportive of socialist societies in the sense of ideological Socialism, far from it.

Oh come on. What's America's unemployment rate? It's not 40%+. Workers in China/India are paid 1/36th of what Americans are paid, or less. Basic mathematics dictates that even if 10% of America were unemployed (a huge unemployment rate) and that all 10% of these jobs were lost to overseas, we'd still be losing less money than if even 50% of American jobs were reduced to 1/36th of its wages. It is short-sighted, but that's exactly why free market capitalism is going to be challenged by the US and most other first world countries in the short run - because they don't want to lose their privileges. It is true that in the long run it's only *fair* that countries that work harder get more benefits, but that already presupposes a free market ideology - one that doesn't necessarily lead to a better world, as I'm willing to argue. It's the same in both cases (you don't think the elite that control the US would do anything to prevent others from rising to their power? you're deluded if that's the case), except that in socialist societies the bare minimum line is higher than in capitalist societies. A socialist society would not allow a child to starve to death on the streets if it could help it. A purely capitalist society would - because that's the mentality you adopt when you promote pure capitalism. You have to realize that all this talk about birthright is meaningless because no one - not in socialism, not in Communism, and certainly not in capitalism - starts out on equal standing. Therein is why capitalism fails - when you are born into a society where an elite of monopolizing corporations already control all the means of production, you have as little chance of upward mobility as you would in a socialist society ruled by aristocrats. This is why we have anti-monopoly laws in effect - because we know that in extreme capitalism the monopolizing corporation survives in effect by consuming all attempts to supplant it. Big corporations become bigger. Small companies become extinct. And therefore an aristocratic elite is created de facto rather than (as you claim in socialism) de jure. They can't. I've seen arguments like yours before and personally, it's too ideological - too out of touch with reality. The truth of the matter is this: IT'S NOT HAPPENING. I don't care if you want to shift the blame onto the poor. The bottomline is that the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. The underlying factors are too many to even summarize here, but it does speak of a fundamental issue in capitalism that cannot simply be ignored by blanketing all the poor people as being poor b/c "they aren't trying". You do that, you keep telling them that, and in the end you're only deluding yourself because these people don't see themselve as lazy workers who don't deserve any better. They see themselves as victims, and victims when victimized enough will turn against their victimizers. Not really. If I'm a capitalist tycoon living in a governmental vacuum (ie no restrictions with regards to my tactics) there are PLENTY of ways I can control the flow of resources without government intervention. I can, and corporations are doing so right now, simply buy out any opposition, monopolize the market, and prevent all upstarts from using my resources. In a purely capitalist society, money can do almost anything, and as such those with money already can very well prevent those without money from obtaining money. Resources, after all, are limited. If the rich keep getting richer, it must necessarily mean that the poor become poorer in a gobal scenario. But we don't need to keep talking about this in the abstract sense. Simply point out to me how you can prevent the growing gap between rich and poor in a free market capitalist society, because that is a *real* problem that capitalism, even as it is now, fails to solve. If the poor have so many opportunities, why aren't they getting richer, and how can you make them richer without resorting to any "socialist" practices such as better public schooling? You act like if we did away with all socialist policies in this country the poor would suddenly rise to the occasion, and I just don't see that. Rather, if that were to happen, I think the poor would either become poorer, immigrate, or revolt.

Indeed. And here's another reason health care will never be privatized - when you have a vast majority of the population (the poor, almost exclusively, are majorities in this world) who cannot even guarantee their own lives in an epidemic living amidst a pampered minority, guess what's going to happen? They're not going to just stand by and say, "well, I should've studied harder in school and made more money." They're going to overthrow those in power and redistribute wealth. Capitalism, taken to its extremes, would almost guarantee a Communist revolution sooner or later down the line.

Er... Yes, but that isn't my point. The protections on wages maintain the high living standard of the US. If we were to compete without wage inflation against the likes of China, it *is* true that we'd have less outsourcing, but it'd also seriously affect the wealth of the country. Globalization under free market economy leads, eventually, to the equalization of per capita income (between nations, not individuals, which is really the problem), which given the number of people in the US, basically means that we'll have 1/5th or less of the economic influence of a country like China. It's a lose-lose situation for the US. Read this for an article expressing this view: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GH20Dj01.html Now, presuming that you're not a nationalist who wants to preserve US living standards (as most people arguing for free market capitalism tends to be, rather ignorantly), there is still the issue of rich becoming richer, poor becoming poorer, that is *the* natural outcome of free market globalization. Tell me, in a world where money creates money, how can you ever hope to (with a free market economy, no socialism, etc.) prevent the gap between rich & poor from enlarging (and thus the incentive for a violent revolution?) A country being rich is not productive towards a better, more prosperous society when it is concentrated in a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. China's adoption of free market capitalism has led to it being a country of 300 million well-to-dos and 1 billion poor-as-jack peasants. Free market capitalism leads, inevitably, to exploitation in order to stay competitive, and there's no indication that the living standards of everyone will eventually go up especially since there's no incentive - if there were no socialist policies whatsoever - for the rich to stop the monopoly of resources. Therefore, while you're right that these countries will suffer the same problems as soon as they implement socialist policies, they must inevitably do so - or face the rebellion of the impoverished masses upon whose backbones the riches were built.

Don't worry, with the gap between rich and poor widening in the US, sooner or later we'll have some major riots to wake the goverment up about these issues. Society is never as simple as work hard & reap the benefits. There will always be winners, there will always be losers, and when the losers outnumber the winners and realize it, society will change. I won't claim that socialism is the next step, but I will say that free market capitalism is about to bite the first world in the ass and hard. For proof of this, simply witness the motions in Washington in the coming years towards outsourcing and competition from countries like India and China.

HIV doesn't worry me as much as the number one killer disease in America... Wait, was that obesity or cancer? "

:D To be honest, I started this thread (in a feverish impulse late at night) partially as a way of sorting out my own thoughts in the matter, not so much to initiate discussion. I realized this after waking up the next morning and feeling no particular desire to "champion" my cause, so to speak, which is the reason I have simply let the thread die. Still, I am grateful that some people responded with more food for thought, and some of them are very good points that deserve examination in some future thread that's a bit more... Heated, shall we say? For now, though, let me just say that while human progress is undoubtedly limited by biology, I think we've a long way to go yet before the realization of our potential. Come a day when we can not even imagine anything new under the sun, and I'll accept that we've reached the end. But as long as man dreams, so he may become

How can we expect peace when we prepare for war? How can we blame nations for hating us when we clearly do not like them? Politics have always been a game of power where the "sincerity" of our relations come second to strategic and political self-interest. This cannot be denied. But if so, what is our true enemy: the Enemy of my Friends, or the fact that I distinguish between Friend and Foe? These aren't meant to be insightful questions. They're meant to scratch the surface. Their answers solve nothing. But they reveal deeper issues. I bring your attention to this article: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GK10Df02.html Ask yourself this, regardless of whether you're pro-US policy or anti-US policy: how can we ever hope to achieve peace if the very definition of Alliance/Friendship is the exclusion of the Other? Sociologists, psychologists, and writers have warned us for centuries that communities are built not only on the idea of mutual benefit but are always, rather, reinforced by the exclusion of a certain group. It may seem very practical for the US or another superpower to go out of its way to convert the entire world to its allegiance, but this cannot be: unity cannot be achieved without the presence of an Other against which to define it. Alliances are formed against the rest of the world much as cliques in high school are formed against other students. Thus is indifference born: "I care only about me and mine. You and yours can go to hell." This mentality must be defeated in order for human civilization to make any progress towards a better, safer society. Some may argue that it's against human nature. I think it's a matter of semantics. It's true that, more or less, we can never be free from the "clique" mentality. But we don't have to be. There are two alternatives to our current state of nationalism & regional division: 1) Every man for himself, in which case the clique is individual, and "wars" become individual competitions 2) Humanity is a clique defined against an outside force. There maybe others, but I think you get the idea. It's not so much that we need to be free of cliques. It's that we need to redefine them in ways that will not bring about a return to the Cold War because honestly, I don't think the world can survive another major war built upon nationalism and indifference.

You can somewhat offset that effect by throwing in questions you know the answers to and gauging the prisoner's response wrt the level of torture. Still, it is ethically unsound and isn't guaranteed to produce the correct answer - at which point, you'll have to make the inhuman measure of how much longer you're going to torture said person before you know that he's not lying. A week? A month? Until he dies - after all, what if he's made up his mind to never reveal the truth? I hope these are not the questions that our interrogators ask, because it's a steep slippery slope between interrogation and sadism. Traditional torture is useful, in the sense of political expediency, to produce guilt where it does not exist (ie witch hunts), since there the truth is what the victim is willing to confess. It is not all that useful for producing a hidden truth unless combined with certain... Psychological techniques for exploiting the unconscious.

Too bad most of fundamentalists in the US are Protestant, not Catholic.