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What is a slave and what is a prisoner? (rough notes)

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Sand
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22 Sep 2009, 2:01 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Sand wrote:
To be alive is to be an active agent in the universe. To be dead is to be a set of rather complicated compounds no longer coordinated towards any purpose I feel enthusiastic about. If I were a male praying mantis and my genetic disposition provided my mate to bite off my head to release my sperm to continue the species I might have a different attitude but seems not necessary for my species, whatever the emotional temperament of my wife.


I can respect that. On the other hand though, I'm also personality quite familiar with the feeling that this very existence is a big nothing - especially for the amount of blood, sweat, and tears invested in growing up right, becoming an adult, trying to make your way in the world, trying to become enough of a man or woman to be an adequate mother/father, raising kids, etc., all of that seems like a draconian price to upkeep one's life in decent standing - then just have it all evaporate out into nothingness again as a zero sum. Can't help but mention that we're also hopelessly tethered to this thing called DNA which will, by its own mechanics, insure that we remain benighted in cruelty, baseness, and stupidity as long as we continue to draw breath as a race on this earth. For someone who does perhapse get existentially sickened watching nature shows and seeing the vulgarity that genetic survival-of-the-fittest imposes on the quality and value of this existence, a big nothing becomes an even bigger nothing.


Life is what is. Some people are competent, some are not. Some are lucky, some are not. I make do with whatever is offered and find it more than adequate. Every moment is a precious treasure to me.

Perhaps I should be more explicit. A good many people are only half alive. I am an artist, a designer, a poet and a few other things. I notice and observe every moment I am alive.



Last edited by Sand on 22 Sep 2009, 2:43 am, edited 2 times in total.

Henriksson
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22 Sep 2009, 2:24 am

ruveyn wrote:
And I am very bright. I am smarter than 95 percent of the human species now alive.

That's what you keep saying to yourself. No doubt you have knowledge in many areas, but your pretensions of being able to objectively measure 'intelligence' falls short.

Also, I'm more Swedish than 99.86588062% of the human species now alive. :wink:


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ruveyn
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22 Sep 2009, 5:41 am

Henriksson wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
And I am very bright. I am smarter than 95 percent of the human species now alive.

That's what you keep saying to yourself. No doubt you have knowledge in many areas, but your pretensions of being able to objectively measure 'intelligence' falls short.

Also, I'm more Swedish than 99.86588062% of the human species now alive. :wink:


140 on the Wechsler test. Several times, too.

ruveyn



techstepgenr8tion
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22 Sep 2009, 6:44 am

Sand wrote:
Perhaps I should be more explicit. A good many people are only half alive. I am an artist, a designer, a poet and a few other things. I notice and observe every moment I am alive.


I'm a lot of those things myself, though I think rather than to the end of glorifying the natural world its more in effort to preserve and honor my 'self' as something separate from it and separate from its dictatorship over my life and that of others more or less my celebrating depth, celebrating the kinds of thoughts and emotions akin to spirituality (I think a lot of more epic/etherially aimed music has transcendent aims).



Henriksson
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22 Sep 2009, 7:05 am

ruveyn wrote:
Henriksson wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
And I am very bright. I am smarter than 95 percent of the human species now alive.

That's what you keep saying to yourself. No doubt you have knowledge in many areas, but your pretensions of being able to objectively measure 'intelligence' falls short.

Also, I'm more Swedish than 99.86588062% of the human species now alive. :wink:


140 on the Wechsler test. Several times, too.

ruveyn

Maybe you should read this.

"The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured." - Alfred Binet

I also wonder why you responded to my tongue in cheek comment in this thread as if I was serious? I thought you were smart, most people would realize I wasn't serious.


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22 Sep 2009, 8:42 am

As an Australian I was taught in school that the Australian colonies were started because after the American war of independence Britain could no longer send convicts to America.

Recently I thought "Wait a minute. I don't remember reading about prison colonies in America"

That is because there weren't any! England SOLD their petty criminals on the American slave markets as "indentured servants".

Australia too was built on slavery. The Governor could give huge land grants to people and then give them convicts to work the land.

If you want to see modern slavery look at conscription into the army. If the government can grab you, force you into the army and make you go overseas to kill people, then you don't own your own body or soul. The government does.
This means you are a slave.



Awesomelyglorious
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22 Sep 2009, 9:01 am

Vana wrote:
Quote:
but a person approaching death never has to given these constraints a worry at all.

Is there someone who is not approaching death?

The term is relative. Saying a person has one year that they expect to live, and saying that they have 50 years that they expect to live, and we see different behaviors. The person with a longer life will save more so as to spread income across all living periods, and avoid risk so to avoid loss of future expected years. The person with a shorter life has less expected living periods and loses less through risk, so they don't save and take more risks.



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22 Sep 2009, 9:09 am

Sand wrote:
This enthusiasm for not being alive is a rather huge piece of black humor worthy of only unthinking adolescent non-thinkers. Anybody who looks at the world with even a modicum of sanity knows that the basic possession of value that every living thing should hold most dear is life itself. If pain makes that not possible then there is absolute defeat but religions and nations have always held life cheap in comparison to the total nonsense they put forth of an afterlife or liberty or freedom or whatever. A person can sensibly die in the attempt to attain liberty but the goal is to live free, not to die. When you die you are not free. You are simply not. You are totally defeated.

So, you are saying that there are unthinking non-thinkers? Wow!!

Sand, here's an issue. I don't believe that there is an objective sanity. For sanity to exist, there must be a notion of "proper order" or "purpose", and those notions can't exist out there in the universe. So, really, all insanity is, is the label that the "sane" place on those who are unlike them in ways that they consider to be wrongful. So making a demarcation of sane vs insane and pretending it is objective is just to me a sign of an "unthinking non-thinker" to use someone else's notion.

Not only that, but to say that "death is total defeat" presupposes that a person does not have values above their own life, and that their identity is fully tied to their physical existence. If my identity is instead tied to a child(could be parental, brotherly, etc), and if by my death, I save that child, then I have won, there is no question about that. The goal only includes living if you want it to include living, but there is no objective goal.



Sand
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22 Sep 2009, 9:55 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Sand wrote:
This enthusiasm for not being alive is a rather huge piece of black humor worthy of only unthinking adolescent non-thinkers. Anybody who looks at the world with even a modicum of sanity knows that the basic possession of value that every living thing should hold most dear is life itself. If pain makes that not possible then there is absolute defeat but religions and nations have always held life cheap in comparison to the total nonsense they put forth of an afterlife or liberty or freedom or whatever. A person can sensibly die in the attempt to attain liberty but the goal is to live free, not to die. When you die you are not free. You are simply not. You are totally defeated.

So, you are saying that there are unthinking non-thinkers? Wow!!

Sand, here's an issue. I don't believe that there is an objective sanity. For sanity to exist, there must be a notion of "proper order" or "purpose", and those notions can't exist out there in the universe. So, really, all insanity is, is the label that the "sane" place on those who are unlike them in ways that they consider to be wrongful. So making a demarcation of sane vs insane and pretending it is objective is just to me a sign of an "unthinking non-thinker" to use someone else's notion.

Not only that, but to say that "death is total defeat" presupposes that a person does not have values above their own life, and that their identity is fully tied to their physical existence. If my identity is instead tied to a child(could be parental, brotherly, etc), and if by my death, I save that child, then I have won, there is no question about that. The goal only includes living if you want it to include living, but there is no objective goal.


No. You have lost. The child has won. You can lose to make someone else win but losing is still losing. Sanity is a legal term, not a medical one.



Vana
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22 Sep 2009, 11:00 am

ruveyn wrote:
And I am very bright. I am smarter than 95 percent of the human species now alive.

Good for you, that is fantastic!

Wombat wrote:
If you want to see modern slavery look at conscription into the army. If the government can grab you, force you into the army and make you go overseas to kill people, then you don't own your own body or soul. The government does.
This means you are a slave.

"No one can make you do anything against your will, not even the government."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvt-xPlj4M0



Sand
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22 Sep 2009, 11:17 am

Vana wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
And I am very bright. I am smarter than 95 percent of the human species now alive.

Good for you, that is fantastic!

Wombat wrote:
If you want to see modern slavery look at conscription into the army. If the government can grab you, force you into the army and make you go overseas to kill people, then you don't own your own body or soul. The government does.
This means you are a slave.

"No one can make you do anything against your will, not even the government."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvt-xPlj4M0

But perhaps they can persuade you you will suffer less if you do as you are told. A fanatic masochist, of course, is unpersuadable.



Vana
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22 Sep 2009, 11:37 am

Sand wrote:
But perhaps they can persuade you you will suffer less if you do as you are told.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1BZhKngBUM

Quote:
A fanatic masochist, of course, is unpersuadable.

Everyone is free to choose slavery. Mind-you, it gets obnoxious when the whole world goes Nazi.



Sand
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22 Sep 2009, 12:14 pm

Vana wrote:
Sand wrote:
But perhaps they can persuade you you will suffer less if you do as you are told.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1BZhKngBUM

Quote:
A fanatic masochist, of course, is unpersuadable.

Everyone is free to choose slavery. Mind-you, it gets obnoxious when the whole world goes Nazi.


The whole world had its opportunity to turn Nazi and it didn't seem to work out too well.



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22 Sep 2009, 1:01 pm

Sand wrote:
The whole world had its opportunity to turn Nazi and it didn't seem to work out too well.

So in your view, the USSA, Oz, etc is not the largest and most sophisticated police state the World has ever known?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 660529314#



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22 Sep 2009, 1:12 pm

Vana wrote:
Sand wrote:
The whole world had its opportunity to turn Nazi and it didn't seem to work out too well.

So in your view, the USSA, Oz, etc is not the largest and most sophisticated police state the World has ever known?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 660529314#

Is it either Hitler or Total Anarchy in your view? I can agree that America does do a lot of bad and irresponsible stuff to both it's citizens and innocent people abroad, but "police state" is pretty overdramatic in my opinion.

Anyway, I don't find argument by videos very convincing, if it's used too frequently and nothing is said about what the video is about.


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Sand
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22 Sep 2009, 1:15 pm

Vana wrote:
Sand wrote:
The whole world had its opportunity to turn Nazi and it didn't seem to work out too well.

So in your view, the USSA, Oz, etc is not the largest and most sophisticated police state the World has ever known?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 660529314#


The USSA I have never heard of. Oz seemed to be ruled by a fake wizard and was, to my knowledge, no more real than Barsoom or Never Never Land. All states have police that seem inevitably to misbehave. That seems to be a pandemic with police everywhere. That the USA is moving towards totalitarianism seems to me a mere removal of the hypocrisies that have plagued it( or mischaracterized it) from its beginning.