The problem with such things as the EU rolling back and allowing states to make decisions, is that it is not possible, due to the bureaucratic gridlock-sure structure of the Parliament and the enormous distance of the representatives to what they represent. No such officials are elected. No one knows them. They are appointed from corporations and afterwards they return to that fold.
No democratic decision has ever been successfully implemented. It was either never meant to have that dynamic, or It wasn’t thought through very well, made in haste. The appearance of wealth that was created is sustained by an increasingly drained populace, the disappointment with real politics, as governments could no longer decide for themselves about big capital questions involving geographical and geological assets , gave rise to populism, which is always a focus on local problems.
Immigration and government stimulation of isolation and religion as a means to have immigrants vote predictably in Holland has completely altered the country, which can be said to be deserved as we invented modern slavery, but it is no longer a civilized country, on the whole. I wish I could disagree with Turd, I can only disagree on historical accomplishments, such as what we did in physics, with Lorentz and them, before the war.
I hold that values are primary to anything, to consciousness certainly, and that they are formed out of ontological circumstances and remain themselves ontological circumstances. A human values air and this is to a great degree a definition of what a human is, and it sustains the way in which he can be conscious.
Nations are all formed from different value-priorities. They had different things to gain and to lose, their ancestors settled for different reasons and upheld and cultivated different values. A person is born in a culture, an environment of values, and his functioning as an entity, his way of engaging the world, the type of value he puts in and expects back, is rooted in this environment.
Conscious values emerge from necessary values, i.e. valuing freedom comes from already knowing freedom, such as a seafaring island people would. Valuing merciless discipline would succeed as a standard in an area as poor in resources as Prussia. These are basically the two value sets that are set against each other, in the supposed Union. It has rather been a sustained tension, that produced a lot of situations, some of which were lucrative. But it wasn’t ever a viable structure.
Okay… let’s break this down, see what your trying to say.
So a value isn’t consciousness, but Conscious things use Values primarily.
So my first presumption is it is a unconscious of sorts. Alright, that in and of itself is fucking useless, so I shall go to your further clarifications.
Air is “necessary”, or a “precondition” for humans, allowing them to live. A “human” is therefore defined by his air breathing? If I go back up to the first definition, it is consciousness. Your looking at definitions of things… so I can take from this the necessities a thing can make due without is what makes a thing, and valuation… the awareness of this, occurs on a unconscious level.
Well… this is gonna cause some subjective-objective issues, if your defining things unconsciously without a name. Thing must be visual and not linguistic. This would rule out mnemonic ordering? Algerbraic thinking? I don’t think large vertabrates can survive like this… so let’s dig deeper…
Okay… we just jumped from a level of pre-conscious thinking into state formation, without a single conscious thought occurring. Did Adam name anything in Genesis yet? Or are we talking the actual birth of a nation here?
Okay… the gap besides, let’s dig deeper…
Seems reasonable enough… but wait… if values are unconscious, and consciousness is dependent upon them… how do we know if our values actually differ? Is there more than one way to consciously express or act upon the same value? What actually cues us into knowing if a value is the same or different, or if they even exist, or are unseen by unbelievers in values, in the same way atheists do not see angels, or Christians global warming, taoists don’t see Nirvana, or Buddhist see the Tao? These are conscious appelations of things, not the unconscious of emergent thingyness.
It brings up a vital question, can two see the same unconscious thinginess that allows one to consciously see things? What is property then under your philosophy? Can science even exist?
Lets look farther…
So we get some weird ass undefi ed word calked culture. My experience is Nietzscheans drop this word before advocating something completely shitheaded, cruel, fucked up and ignorant, so I’m slapping my safety glasses on. Some minority is undoubtedly gonna get tortured or killed.
A person is born in a culture… let’s say culture is dumbed down synonymous with nation… differences in settling down, upholding and “cultivating” different “values”.
So I guess culture is the differentially cultivated values of a nation, that are unconscious, but informs all consciousness none linguistically of thinghood.
So would “cat” or “elbow” be values? Like in art, Found Objects, objet trouvé?
Or because they are linguistically defined, they can no longer be merely valued, and hence why most people scoff at such bullshit art?
Born into a culture… how? Born into their own unconscious? Doubt this, sounds absurd, solipist even, in and of itself.
An environment of values… they are born into a environment of values… a found art museum. Okay, you think we are born in non-linguistic museums… do we have an awareness of the utilitarian function of the objects before they were found? Example… a knife is the found art then of iron ore + foundry + coal… just a bit more processed. But it processing involved knowledge of welding, verbally passed, of physics, taught and learned through a educational system. Something scholastic, not unconscious values derived from despositional analysis of a thing, creating a thing, in a kind of intellectualized aesthetic synthesis.
And his functioning as a entity… well that fucking opens up a can of worms. Is he functioning as a entity, or us he making the world up solipsistic? Is he the Butterfly dreaming of being Chuang Tzu? Important question to ask if values aren’t conscious, but somehow manipulated via some hitherto unexplained magic.
His way of engaging in the world… what he puts into it and expects back… that is the Matrix/Chuang Tzu Butterfly/ Maya / Gnosis issue here.
Is rooted in his environment…
What the Fuck are you saying? If values can be manipulated, then values are despositional, and therefore environmental too. Are you saying your theory is a self programming virus that takes elements it contacts with, consumes it… is modified by it, and shits it back out… this engine itself is “values”? If this is the case, everyone needs to stay away from AA meetings or else Stargate Replicators will come and Value-Ontologically consume you.
So some kinda magic feedback loop of a unconscious value moves the conscious mover, who in turns moves back the environment, to which the value originated from in a unconscious-conscious-unconscious cycle. Thus isn’t much of a improvement on the old Platonic Unmoved Mover formula.
All you did was emphasize a regional national/cultural component that behaves genetically via some sort of mutation, from unknowing to knowing back to knowing… while rejecting it’s linguistic or academic transmission of thinghood… it us something gained from the lay of the land, and not by axioms or ideals. So your using Plato’s Ontology system while dicking his Epistemological presumptions, for something even more nebulous and harder to prove. Sweet. Lets push further now…
Okay… so now we got necessary values > conscious values.
I presume it is for a thing to exist for you, the observes sees the subject as
I necessitate seeing a thing within my regional/cultural/national terrain. So I see the thing… one not of my cultural or national history will not see it. Example… Dutchman is hungry, so he looks with his eyes, and behold, cheese. Prussian gets hungry, he opens his eyes, see no cheese. Does the object exists because of the need to see it, like… does need flow out of the Dutchman to see cheese… and his eyes create cheese, and this ex nihilo creation sustains Dutchman, then Dutchman sleeps… becoming values purely, and tirnins into cheese for someone else? I don’t know how the aesthetics effects physics and cognition… this shit is all weird and all over the place. Is light hitting the object and going into a persons eye like with Descartes, or is the mind seeing the object with it’s own observational powers like with Aristotle? It can be most fucking anything if your fucking around Plato’s ontological presumptions like in the above… shit might not even exist, might be a dream.
Now… how the fuck do you start defining shit, on a rule base linguistic format, like your Plato all of the sudden, when before your all like “Fuck you Plato, I don’t need your language or learning, We learn stuff through object analysis of valuation”.
Your Sea = Freedom vs Prussia Discipline = Poor formula dies not fit fucking at all with anything I just read. Your presenting a dialectic dichotomy… most philosophers can digest that shit without any of the complications inherent in your anthropology above.
What your saying us, your not into that other shit everyone else is doing, in regards to transmitting knowledge… you think everyone is doing it the way more complicated way, minus a user guide or instructions ever being typed up… until time you actually gotta make a point, then you drop everything and just use a simplistic explanation using words and formulaic rules to express your idea?
Who the fuck does that? That is fucked up dude.
Prussians left hippocampus, an egocentric civilization.
Dutch Right Hippocampus exocentric civilization.
That is what you said. You didn’t know how tobsay it, because you his behind ontology and values and cultures and blah blah blah blah, but your actual definition has nothing to do with it.
This isn’t culturally specific, Chinese developed the same damn system that you just promoted under the proto-daoists. I believe I wrote a long thread in this site on it, if I can’t find it, I will post it again. It pops up often across many societies, it is a aspect of our mental architecture, built into how we process information. Anyone who studies the history of statecraft readily sees this when exploring multiple cultures. Your “values” if the explanation given by you is accurate, is sensory… multi-modal (mixing the senses) and internalized, but not well intergrated. Your anthropology produces a race of idiot savants that may lack the ability to find food, or teach each other to walk. They would lie in their own shit till they died, autistic in the extreme, because they are ONLY relying on the Orbital-Frontal - Amygalda circuit. Your whole skiddadle above focuses almost solely on this circuit, you should research it and slap yourself upside the head afterwards. You don’t have to be a Nietzschean, just talk the science. We even have something called “The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test” that specializes in this very region.
In regards to your Nietzschean fascination with inventiveness and genius, that does take place linguistically, in terms you stumbled in describing above, in the prefrontal visual cortex, especially what connects the right eye to the left. It forms a feedback loop where a individual such as myself can look about in real time, pick up objects and create something out of them, a new idea. This differs from instantly knowing, relying on larger mental networks, being in the epicenter of.
The INTJ/ISTP/ENTJ based in the right dorsal lateral is the ultimate master of this, but the INTJ especially. Most people can’t easily experience this without years of training. Video games that emphasize Real Time Strategy play on this endless feedback loop, and I do mean endless… look how long campaigns for Total War or Sins of a Solar Empire plays on for.
You failed to present a good reason why Germany and England/Netherlands couldn’t get along together. In opposites there is balance, and neither society is a monoculture. US emphasizes both. I suppose it is why we can have our art and burn it too.
I’m afraid you don’t quite get how the Prussians came about to being under their best Kaisers, or how strict and retarded the Dutch could be. Germans colonized far more lands than the Dutch managed, I’m proof of this. Both I and Joker are Germans… we move a lot.
I’ve seen similarities in the US, we have growing debt much faster than prosperity and we also have loss of small businesses being overrun by conglomerates. Maybe not as bad as you have it, I guess. Anti-trust laws and taxation need to be strictly enforced against certain key companies (e.g. Amazon) in certain sectors of both US and European economies, but they almost never are. If you visit most small towns in the US and you’re going to find the same 6-7 corporate chain stores, in clothing, groceries and restaurants. And the funny thing is that most people don’t seem to mind or even notice this.
Debt is the number one problematic issue. I ask why is there so much debt? I don’t see very many people or politicians asking that question.
Blaming the banks is easy, but banks are just doing what they do. They are capital-intensification and -growth machines, nothing more; the real problem is a total failure of politics, which means a failure of human being against “pure capital machines”. The feedback loop is that capital concentration and growth leads to increase standard of living and economic security for the mid classes, leading to votes for status quo, leading to cowardice, leading to deference to capital-- at that point a stalemate ensues, which is broken by capitalizing on human psychology directly, by converting existing values and value-systems into transactable commodities. Once that happens “the people” have already gone into debt, literally this is what debt exactly means: the commodification of values and value-systems, which means the making-capital of history and social-cultural forms. There really are no parallels to such a thing if you look at the world pre-20th century.
So we need to conclude that the structure of human being has changed so much in the last 100 years that there is now an intense cross-historical tug of war between former and present methods. This isn’t so much generational or young vs old, although it is a little bit of that such as you saw in the UK votes – in fact every person of whatever generation now is at least a little bit “historical” and also a little bit “modern”. Since modern means a person “consumes their own values” then historical simply means a person doesn’t really do that. The historical exception is where this modernity did appear rarely in the old world in the form of artists, writers, libertines. Bourgeois hedonism was only a prefiguration of what modernity would become post-1900, in terms of the psycho-social possibility of consuming what we care about.
Loss of political will, loss of belief in politics, loss of politics as a check against and means of directing and shaping the world-historical force of capitalism, loss of a significant tax structure for funding large-scale modern industrial-technical first world western societies, and gradual expansion of public sphere spending into private sphere (no, there is no contradiction between this latter point and the first point about politics’ failure to regulate capitalism, in fact they are one and the same point witnessed from two sides) is all a factor in what happened to the US and EU in terms of debt and loss of local human-owned economies and lives. Or you could look at it as Marx+Freud, but there’s no point in blaming the messengers. Might as well say Marx and Freud contributed as say Nietzsche did; these guys foresaw the under-realities that were shaping conditions to come. If they have had any causal effect it can be most understood as actually delimiting the total effects of these (post)modern capitalist trends of the death of politics (human-applied philosophy) simply because they spoke up and made things more visible.
In terms of the EU and Britain today, I hold to my two main points that 1) reactionary nationalistic movements today are not driven by philosophical values or by wanting to address real problems and concerns, but by the same kind of purely emotional non-thinking fear-based rhetoric and capitalization of human impulses that we saw in Germany leading to WWII, basically is all to stop immigration, and 2) that some kind of functional, real global cooperative among nations is absolutely necessary both politically and economically. I would not defend the Fed Reserve, ECB, IMF, and all the rest of it, but that doesn’t alter the fact that some global structures are necessary – this is a world-historical, philosophical imperative for the human species. So when I take points 1 and 2 here and multiply them into the larger equation of your own points about Europe today, what do we get? That’s where I want to go, that’s where we need to be looking. I believe points 1 and 2 here are irrefutably true, and that is a problem for how things are shaking out right now even if you do hate what the EU and international banking has turned Europe into. And this goes back to your point about how to measure prosperity, which cannot be measured by quantities and speeds alone; quantities and speeds are like sub-value structures, like what strict biology is to consciousness: a kind of pre-value condition of values, an inferential reality, a “pleasure principle” feedback loop into values as living organic being/s.
And yet, there are recurring ideological patterns, quite visible to those ,looking for some common element. The idea of the middle, class, whose will has supposedly been muted shows some tangible elements of misplacement of the value ontologic misreading of those, to whom political will, based on intrinsic social and psychologocal economies have become untenable.
The excluded middle could be interpreted and typified by Great Britain, whose exclusion from the anti monarchial, anti Marxian, types of social organization of the past,continues on the new and most elementally classic reduction of those values.
It’s odd that the country, the empire, cut adrift from the most extreme causal agent of the enlightenment,/industrial revolution, and progenitor of the new cultural mix per empire,should be the most instrumental in its dialectical anti
mix. The place that such ideas evolved from, not as the continentals would have, saw it in terms of real excercise of will-through open conquest , of regaining military alliances of other versions of the Romam Empire, no, Britain did not really share this vision
She wants unity, but not directed from Brussels-Berlin, but recreated from a more recent pattern, retaining a hidden agenda, of a more basic laissez-faire having primary ties to the general idea of a empirically based power sharing.
She shifts the idea in the middle, and seeks to dominate from
outside through process of direct goal oriented progression toward that of he praxis seeking exclusion of a denied overt middle, for the sake of retaining the formal social arrangements of monarchial rule.
This is protypical of the denial of continental ontological
value per it’s own organizational and structiral manifestation
of the pattern belies any attempt to belittle the auspicious amid and almost intuitive political amd economic substratum
of the English sense of individual self awareness.
The English are the ones who really appreciate the value of the anti thesis as a procedural mechanism of the excercise
of the will, amid their exclusive, literally., geographically cut off position from the continent.The very idea of the most valuable currency signifies this latent symbolic value of retaining the literal value of currencies of value through measurement by weight, the pound. Here is a symbolic retention of process laden acquisitive praxis.
It would be vastly premature to discount the EU, as an organization rattled by merely a political distancing, merely a move, to imply the tour de force which was Watterloo, the pro generation of the birth of the New World, and the most subtle and lastiing agent provocation of empire building.
She, by all means, wants to retain EU, unification, but only through the incorporation of her self through exclusion.
In affect she is the one most keen on retaining an identity
Isolated, as an island of doubtless position within the sense of separation as an island nation.
European globalism has failed Europe in some big ways, the uncreative measures to simply use enforced debt and austerity on countries with economic challenges shows the brutal capitalistic nature of those making these decisions. A 1:1 ratio of debt to GDP is not good, and it’s above that in some European countries. Where do the EU leaders think the money is going to come from to pay down these debts? I can see Fixed’s point about Europe being turned into a work horse for centralized finance, these loans of billions of euros are just finance mechanisms to keep reaping steady profits from interest payments and fees for the limitless future. But the US has this same problem, and again it’s a failure of politics to check the power and influence of special interest capitalist international investors who basically just want to beef up financial portfolios and play God with the world’s markets for their own personal gain.
Leaving the EU is going to be a tug of war between UK and the EU, because the EU is going to try and shove all cost and losses onto the UK while the UK is going to try cutting its own losses. The Brexit would, in an ideal world, force some realism on EU leaders that their policies are not working; but I’m not holding out hope for this realism to kick in, since neither the EU exit sides nor the pro-EU sides seem interested in actually improving how the EU works. Compromise is effectively dead since blind inhuman capitalism has taken over policymaking within the US and EU top banking and financial powers, while “the people” are seeking to rebel in the same linear inhuman way by simply giving in to emotionalism and cowardice.
EU and US top banking and financial centers of power: “Our system is good and fine”.
The people: “Your system is dead and broken and needs to be scrapped.”
So where is the middle ground? Are isolationists and far-right nationalists such as PEGIDA actually proposing significant and useful ideas? Can we form a peaceful economic and social fabric within the complexities of first world technological societies based on essentially a simplistic emotional reaction and a hatred of immigrants? Doubtful.
Yes, doubtful, but as some view it as necessary from various conditional indexes as a foregone conclusion, having lots of historical precedent. According to this view, debt is a good thing as an agency motivation an engine of forward looking expanding horizons, which cut loose from the backward look toward a well predicted release from the fairy tailed castle of an insurmountable Kafkaesque landscape of Romantic revival.
Though be it a terrible scourge upon the aesthetic ideal, say some and right fully so, a loss of such magnitude that reacquisition would be neigh near impossible, yet is this force for change is unstoppable, regardless?
New worlds need to challenge the imagination as old ones decay? Not with excluding the older ones but,re-incorporating
them and transformimg them within reversals of logic and increased not decreased possibility. As manifest in an umcertain destiny, rather then through a suddem extinction per
again, irriversible and un avoidable consequences.
Britain is quite wise to see the build up of a bulwark necessary
Its.a new crusade, outside of faith based legions defending from unconqiarable bastions.
The economies mass warfare are simply unaffordable.
Wyld - as I see it the EU stood in the way of rational global markets and relationships.
In this day and age it makes no sense to chain nations together under an apparatus that is unverifiable, in a language that 80 percent of its constituents dont read beyond one liners and ‘yeah okay man!’ or ‘hey!’ or ‘dolla dolla!’.
There is no parallel between the EU and the US. The EU is no state. It has much of the burdens of a state but none of the powers.
If it werent for Germany, no one would have any worries about the Brits now and the destiny of global mankind, as far as this thing is concerned. It is only the Germans that are forcing every other member state to adapt to them, and only they are pushing to make it very hard and painful for the Brits. They will seek to exclude them from everything they can manage. The Germans are a sick people, when it comes to politics. They are both insatiable and have no purpose with that power, dont have the power to enjoy it. This is why they envy the French so much. In any case a EU with the absolute aggressor of four wars in one century at the center, is really just capitulation to Hitler and Bismarck, which was inevitable for a while as Bismarck is turning into the most influential and inevitable politician who ever lived.
We cant have Europe to be constrained in an unnatural order forever, seeking to include its oldest enemy, Turkey, and to exclude its second most important ally, Russia, and expecting the populations to be happy.
I would have voted for Brexit, Nexit, any exit, under any circumstances. I dont think that is because I am unphilosophical. Its just that I think the EU is an ontological contradiction in terms. Sometimes you have to clean up the rubble to begin working on a solution.
But the Brits will very possibly vote in again, it looks now.
On immigration, try to live in a city that prevents anything out of the ordinary from walking the streets. You get beat up here if you are openly something Allah doesnt like. Islam rules the what does and what doesnt go in the streets. Now the number of muslims is set to double in the next few years. Holland is already broken, it has already too much of this extremely powerful ideology in its weakened nihilist population. Sure, its alread too late, so why not let more in - but thats the only reason.
Islam is an ideology at least as violent and violently stupid as nazism. I dont understand why people from other continents insist that we absorb hundreds of thouands of fascists into our social fold. I dont understand why we ban one type of fascist and drown our culture in the other kind, meanwhile calling it fascist to oppose this fascism, or to even admit to pain when raped by it.
Everyone seems to still underestimate the power of ideology. The 50 million muslims here wil have turned into 100 million soon, and it has already been made absolutely impossible to turn the tide on this religion. Thats all on the EU, the continent has been ruined, worse than by two world wars. We’ll likely never get over this, at least the Brits are an island and have some pride left.
Remember that I spent years working intensively with muslims in social and professional capacity, and that I have been to several nations with Islamic legislation.
It was only after seeing what very liberal, westernized muslim friends did to their wives, that I could not keep up the pretense anymore. It is horrendous, absolutely sick.
These numbers are now climbing unhindered in Europe. Nearly a million of girls are reported to have suffered this there already. Legislation against it is designed to be an impotent formality, and bringing it up is very much frowned upon - what am I saying, in 99 percent of the cases you’ll be called a racist for mentioning it. A person in my social circle threatened to cut off her thumb if I ever mentioned it again.
Count yourself lucky. As an American you just have no clue how depraved humans get.
As you notice I get emotional when Islam comes up. I try to not mention the name, as it only engenders terrifying depravity, but it is at the core of why things happen in Europe.
Europeans took 500 bloody years to rid themselves of the worst of Christianity, the most horrifying wars imaginable. Look at the 30 year war.
Finally, we got rid of it somewhat. Then, 50 years into the age of freedom from religion, our unelected government (EU has no functional democratic agency) invites millions of people from the most backwards religious regions on the planet to come do all the low wage labor. Our lower classes out of work, our streets filled with religious garments.
Right now, in schools, you literally can not say that Jews were killed in WWII. You can not say it. Teachers get fired for saying it.
Can you imagine sitting there, listening to screaming about how the Jews are all devils and the holocaust both a myth and a justified punishment, and the teacher sullenly nodding?
I have friends that tried to teach. They had to quit, because they could not tell anything that the Koran doesnt endorse. Social repercussions would lead to political sanctions. Radical islam is and has been since the 70’s under the protection of the main socialist party, which relies on Islamic votes to persist. Salafistic prayer houses emerge in the middle of the city.
You probably think Im exaggerating. That is the point. You just cant imagine how sickening life has been under Brussels rule.
The brother of the guy I worked with has joined ISIS because his family would not allow him to be with a girl (his own age), saying its a shame on her parents, sending hm to radical imams to ‘heal his soul’. Now they blame the dutch society for estranging him. Stories like that are usual now.
didnt scan the whole thread but here is vital info. I think it is time to understand that imperialism has been the biggest deceiver throughout history.
The Brexit Vote. What Does it Mean? Hopefully, a Breakup of the EU and NATO, the Avoidance of World War III
‘The EU and NATO are evil institutions. These two institutions are mechanisms created by Washington in order to destroy the sovereignty of European peoples. These two institutions give Washington control over the Western world and serve both as cover and enabler of Washington’s aggression. Without the EU and NATO, Washington could not force Europe and the UK into conflict with Russia, and Washington could not have destroyed seven Muslim countries in 15 years without being isolated as a hated war criminal government, no member of whom could have travelled abroad without being arrested and put on trial.
(Edit: just read this recenr post you made Fixed, yes that is seriously fucked. In which European countries is it like this? I’ve seen stories on how denying the Holocaust or sporting pro-Nazi flags or statements in various European nations can get someone jailed for hate speech. )
Fixed Cross:
I definitely understand your points and I can’t disagree with them. If there is really this religious social pressure in European countries right now, where Islam is directly or indirectly dictating what regular citizens can and can’t do in public, that is quite troubling. Again I’m not from Europe so I don’t have the first hand on this. In what countries is this worse or not? Again I don’t have first hand experience but it is hard for me to not think of the possibility that your experiences of this could be limited circumstances or isolated outliers. Are you saying that as you describe it above is the norm across any whole countries or even across all of Europe? That’s a huge claim and I need to get my head straight on the facts.
Female genital mutillation is obviously a serious and horrible problem.
I can explain my reluctance to side with the overall view that Islam is bad and needs to be resisted. For instance that Muslim integration in the US is common and studies by Pew have shown that Muslims immigrating to non-Muslim countries tend to integrate extra-generationally in the same proportions as other groups, namely that you get an average of around 50% moderating of views toward the host country’s norms; people who rate as believing something X in their home country will move to around the middle between their X and the corresponding Y norm or belief in the new country into which they move. I know a few people in the US who are Muslim, they have regular jobs and are normally social and you wouldn’t really know they were Muslim at all. Plenty of non-middle eastern people in the US have converted to Islam also, and again don’t immediately become social deviants or terrorists from doing so. I also spoke with a historian recently about the idea that the Koran commands Muslims to slowly infiltrate other countries to take them over from the inside – he said this is basically a misunderstanding and that while the Koran does mention this tactic as an alternative to open conflict with one’s enemies it is just that, a reference to an alternate to open war. His point was that this isn’t some kind of secret Muslim conspiracy at all, but just something written in the old Koran text from back when Muslims were fighting heavy religious wars.
In a sense all religion is pretty stupid, some more then others, but people need to be free to believe what they believe; the best ideas and paradigms will triumph in the end. After all it isn’t like millions of Europeans are moving to the Middle East to live. There’s a reason Europe and the US are the choice destinations.
Christianity went through a rationalizing phase in European medievalism, tempered its irrationality somewhat; while Middle East countries haven’t done the same, the phenomenon of radical Islamic terrorism is a historically very recent thing, and largely a response to western aggressions into their region. Despite this I have to think, and based on what I’ve read and people I have known, that most Muslims are peaceful and not involved in the ISIS-style jihadism. Muslims and Islamic community groups in the US and UK for example are heavily involved in helping stop radicalization of their own youth, and trying to help integrate young Muslims and refugees into larger society. ISIS hates western Muslims as much as they hate western non-Muslims.
After 9/11 there were whole groups of Arab-Americans who had to basically go into hiding, peaceful normal US citizens who were essentially judged and affected by the actions of a tiny terrorist organization. I believe that people need to be given judgment as individuals first, and extended opportunities for equality and quality of life integration into larger western society because this is the best way to “rationalize” people who grow up in archaic religion. The same is true for Christians in the US, there are many young people who grow up in hyper-Christian places in the US and ultimately leave and become largely or totally secularized. If a person comes from a Christian or Muslim family or culture this isn’t an automatic reason to label them by tjat single factor and make sweeping assertations about their character, motives or intellect. Western societies can remain liberal pluralistic secular places and these rational values are the best way to enforce cultural integration; but of course when economic factors such as poverty and lack of opportunities becomes a factor we see increasing breakdown of integration. An example of this is also found in the UK, where young Muslim immigrants or first generation youth can be predicted to be successful in the general public and “westernized” based on if they are Turkish or not, because of already existing strong community supports in place for those immigrants vs. those from other places.
It really is a huge problem though, I agree with you on that. Many of the immigrants reportedly view Islam as above the law of their host European country, for example, and that is clearly a problem. I also understand that Islam’s lack of valuing of women is another massive issue. Rape is widespread in Saudi Arabia for example also also one of the most under-reported crimes there. I’m not denying any of this, but I also see the other side about how Western values can moderate and over time reverse such things. I don’t know if declaring war on 1 billion people based on their membership in an archaic religion is going to help, I can only see that as making things much worse, because we compromise our own values and fuel radical sentiment and incentives among young Muslims who may otherwise be motivated to westernize, especially from one generation to the next as has happened already.
I agree with you on the power of ideology. I also think that US and European national laws must be strictly enforced when it comes to crimes committed by Muslims, no matter if done in the name of their religion. I think the situation is very complex and a sweeping one size fits all solution isn’t going to work from either angle: the absolutely deferential to Islam angle is just as ineffective and harmful as the xenophobic nationalistic response. Yes ideology is bad, but a primary factor of all ideology is that it treats people first as members of a group and only second as individuals. Our modern liberal-rational values based in secular western philosophical tradition are superior to ideology. I don’t want to see western values and philosophy compromised into becoming ideological just because others happen to be largely ideological. It had been said that a society is judged based on how it treats minorities and disenfranchised groups, because dominant power will always naturally try to assert itself fascisticly (ideologically, irrationally, non-philosophically) and this is still relevant today. So in the end I’m not disagreeing with you on the problems Europe is faced with from massive Muslim immigration nor about Islam-specific problems such as lack of respect for women or lack of respect for western laws, but those general issues can’t be conflated with every individual person who happens to be an immigrant or happens to be Muslim. The solutions are much more complex and nuanced than simply building a huge wall and banning a billion people from potentially immigrating. I dot think that making primary distinctions of humans based solely on their professed religious belief is at all philosophically justifiable. Also many of the same problems also exist in mainstream non-Muslim western society as well, the problems of rape and sexual abuse of women for example, the problems of crime and violence… These aren’t uniquely Muslim issues.
Anyway I hope some kind of agreement can be reached between our respective views. I won’t advocate Islam by any means, but then again I won’t advocate any religion. And I think it must be remembered that most of these refugees are simply human beings and their families fleeing terrible war and devastation, we need to extend compassion and refuge to people in that situation. But of course it can get of hand too, I can accept that fact without refuting the basis premise. Addressing the causes of the war and displacement of millions of people is the primary thing that will help solve this problem.
We’re already seeing companies considering to relocate out of Britain now. The EU will be wanting to pressure large companies and investors to flee the UK for the EU, to create the self-fulfilling prophecy of economic damage to the UK from their decision, and to recoup some losses back into the EU.
It happens in France, Begium, Holland and Germany. These are all since WWII socialist regimes, who have, to win immigrant votes from the early 70’s onward, done everything to make sure no muslim could ever be addressed in terms of the law when it comes do domestic affairs. Inter muslim violence is not reported, period. There used to be some safehouses, but the naturalized Somalian politician Ayaan who got this in order was old-fashioned banished - her nationality was taken away - and now lives in Washington. Her allies were murdered.
Fixed : This oa exactly the kind of exclusionary method by which voices of the past try to disloge any attempts at heeding the famous dictum ’ ’ those who have not learned the the mistales of history are condemned to repeat them ’
In fact, such denial harbors it’s own epitath. But this is a different age, where mistakes are too costly to bear. Limits and borders realigens still smart, the empires of old still smoulder with resent as the the loosers of WW 1&2 abhor the Trianon and Versailles treaties. The empire of the Ottomans and other territorial dispites still echo with rage,as too many changes have occured in the last thirty years.
That said, there is a renewed discontent buried underground and change of regime does not equal with the standard uniform worn at the time
Its very easy to change garbs and parade righteously, seeming to obvious to all except those who see through the garb: those least suspected, those whose vision goes beyond their petty vested interest: the young hopeful,usually the future victim of usual miscalculation.
Bit admittedly the word is out, and will be for a time.
Energetically and intellectually the main proponents of Islam in Holland and Germany are the Turks. I dont know how much you know of the Turks. They are worth reading into. Anything you can read about their history since Ataturk. Incredible. What a radical will, it is admirable to be sure, but simply intimidating to have as a potential adversary within your borders. Many, many more immigrants possess firearms than indigenous dutch, other than the very wealthy. In fact outside criminal circles virtually no one has a gun. Only Dungeons and Dragon nerds. I would say at least 1 out of 2 Turks in these countries knows how to get their hands on a gun in a few hours. This is the advantage of being a minority group with two ideologies of global significance behind you in a small country that doesnt know what the hell it is doing except steal from poor people inside and out.
I like aggressive people and I like the Turks, get along with them instinctively. Their power is greater than Islam, they’ve been able to maintain a powerful secular regime for a century with a largely Islamic population, an act of drive-suppression that marks a truly willful people. If Turkey could be made to go through technocratic (thus secular) revolution - I suppose that would usher in an entirely new paradigm of wealth and purpose. They have a vitality that no one else in the hemisphere possesses. If it can be directed to a lofty purpose, then I think that Europe and Asia will be finally merged as a continuum of culture.
There should be a world referendum: do nations exist? People all across the world should simply make it a routine to talk about wanting a world referendum.
