The Difference Between The Civil War and WWII

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Note that this was the second Confederate national flag. The first was the Stars and Bars. The problem with it was that it looked to much like the Federal flag. This also caused confusion on the battlefield.

This is a fallacious argument if you consider the nature of the human beast...

Your assumption is implicitly based on the belief of the inherent morality of humanity...
It is axiomatic, to me at least, that individuals are more likely to default to self-serving egocentricity at the expense of others, given the right circumstances/environment...

While the cultural values of the time are deplorable by today's standards, it was evidently quite common...
The same could be said about many elements in Nazi Germany, and of course most of Europe regarding anti-semitism...

The cultural depersonalisation of the black community allowed the more basic nature of man/person-kind to emerge...
While there would-be/are individuals who had/have an inherently greater internal moral compass, history will confirm, IMO, that the majority of individuals in the human gene pool possess the "jackal gene" which allows the activation of group think, confirmation bias, etc...

While I understand your emotional involvement, I would like you to consider the adage: "Passion is the nemesis of objectivity..."
Most people default to moral outrage in the context of your presentation and it is fine as such...
However...
If one's intellectual integrity/credibility is to be established, one needs to adopt/engage the discipline of maintaining an object mental stance...
If you simply want to vent, well s**t yeah, indulge the inner emotional reptilian beast which is overwhelmingly the origins of "man's inhumanity to man..."

You hoomans are very interesting beasts...
Spock out...

Well said, after all, I firmly believe that people are basically evil!

I don't believe people are "basically evil." I believe they are "basically selfish, with altruistic intentions at times."

I'm a pretty selfish guy, but I enjoy helping others.

I'm a Lutheran, so I was raised with the concept of human nature being essentially flawed.

Just because you're "raised" with something doesn't mean you have to believe that "something."

I was raised to believe that blacks should not marry whites; but I'm married to a black woman.

But I could understand the concept of "upbringing" having an "imprinting" effect on you without you being aware of it.

Whatever. Only wish General Sherman had atomic bombs and nerve gas. Hey, I lived there five years. It would have done the place good.

Okay. Now this is starting to go too far.

On the whole, the place is just that bad. A book was written called Better Off Without Em on how the rest of the USA would be much better off socially and culturally without the Southern states messing up our politics and institutions. I entirely agreed with it.

Come on dude. They still belong to the same species as us. They aren't irredeemable.

Nerve Gas is a form of cruel and unusual punishment. I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy.

Another Thing: In another thread, I proved that the middle and lower classes in the United State have essentially been disenfranchised by the plutocrats. The Democratic Party is a corporate warmongering party, just like the Republican Party. There are plenty of social problems in the American south, but these problems do not significantly effect government policy, as the billionaires control everything anyway.

Additionally, I'm afraid that the mods may lock this thread. Nobody wants that.

Sorry, its just a by product of having lived in Mississippi for five years.

What do you mean "believe"?...
Is there any doubt?...

Soon I will be doing a study into what it actually means to be "evil"...

Cheers...

Ironically, by helping others one is "merely" servicing one's "selfish"/ego-centric desire to do so...
Nature and nuture motivate one's behaviour...

Question: Do you gain a warm and fuzzy feeling when you help someone?
If so, your are "simply" indulging in your personal needs/desires...

There is a famous study involving an altruist who committed suicide after he gave away all his possessions and couldn't satisfy his need to "help" anyone anymore...
(This may be an urban myth but I don't think so...too lazy to research).

My point is that we have certain inherent psychological properties which motivate us and drives our behaviour...
Positive and negative stimuli...

A mother's inherent need to nurture their child/children...
Most animals have this instinctual behaviour also, and without this, species which produce dependant newly born offspring simply wouldn't exist...
Evolution would have ducked up, as it has done so many, many times throughout the eons...

Biological creatures, humans included, have much in common with a wind-up toy duck which waddles haphazardly into the distance...

Now don't get me wrong...
I love little cute harmless duckies...
Wonderful personal and cultural benefits because of their existence...
Power to them...
Very much better than the sociopaths and psychopaths out there that deserve a geno transplant...

I don't care if my altruism is "selfish"---especially if it is proven to be useful.

To be sure, it's true you don't have to believe everything you were raised with. But also being a student of history, I don't see a whole lot of goodness among the human animal, just as those Deutscher theologians of the 16th century believed.

It is called: "unconscious bias"...

But consider this:
You are not the garden variety of hooman...
You are more intellectual than most...
And educated individuals are less likely to be slaves to their childhood indoctrination...
Hence, they are one of the first targeted as a result of a political coup, for example...

However...
Globally speaking, intellectuals are overwhelmingly in the minority, surely...
The uneducated "great unwashed" is a force to be reckoned with and feared if manipulated by our covert social architects...surely...

Spock out...

Last edited by Pepe on 31 Jan 2018, 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.