Napolean once stated that “History is a fable agreed apon”
the losers get their records destroyed and the winners write down their interpretation of what happen.
Through out history genocides have occured. Wether in the form of the persecution of the jews by the German Nazi Party or the Destruction of 1.4 million armenians including 300 scholars and intellectuals under the ottoman turks.
How is it a country as a whole can denie the allegations broguth apon them of gneicide.
How is it to this day Turkey will not admit to the slaughter of over 1.4 million Amrneians in 1914.
Now i dare say that at some poit testimony has to over come physical evidence. this nbever happens thoguh.
As generations linger and die there is a lack of the survivors who lived soley to carry on the story. to be remeber as such a similar theme is seen th4roguh the holocaust and spanish civil war.
How can they do it…What is it that keeps developed coutries from coming to the aid of their 3rd world brothers to help gain recogniztion of these murders
The word justify is not being used correctly (to me at least). Excuse would be a better term. Again, at least to my mind. Justification connotes necessity. Excuse connotes sufficiency.
From the Euthyphro it has been argued that divine command does not necessitate an immoral act, it would seem to me that any God, or manifest destiny merely serves as an excuse. A truly justifiable act requires something more than a priest or a politician.
GCT… yes, we can quibble over the term justify because that is exactly what was done…
why kill the heathen indians? because they are heathens and god told us it was our manifest destiny… the god justification is no justification I agree, but that is the justification that was and is offered…
and why do liberals sue florida football teams to change their names? (aside from the fact that the liberals are ignorant assholes trying to ease their guilt) - because they want a godless secular society and the manifest destiny justification doesn’t fit in their utopia plans…
what is needed for justification? merely the power to act thusly…
why did he do it? because he could… how do we prevent it or avenge it? via another act of superior power, that’s all… no god, no justice, no right, no wrong… simply competing exersizes of power…
In an announcement today, Germany has changed its name to Deutschland. Since Deutschland has nothing to do with Germany, it denies that the people ever took part in the holocaust and that the world should stop accusing them of genocide.
He was wrong, History is an incomplete record of competing forces
Not always, and the winners don’t always agree on one interpretation of what happened, and the losers often fight back then rewrite everything once more…
Hence the reason why films and books exist…
Other priorities. A lack of feeling like dictating to others what sort of help we will give them…
To make a deed justifiable to the herd, is an art to convince. You don’t have to be a prime minister to justify. This is why Blair needs Campbell. The Pope in Rome used to be the judger. Nowadays people prefer to do the judging themselves. The Pope relied on the bible. The people rely on philosophy. To make deeds justifiable to the people, is philosophers’ business. Marx knew this potential power that he had, and he realised this potential. What an unsurpassed tragedy that was. So can we rely on philosophers to do the judging? People of this day are losing faith in philosophy rapidly. Nihilism of all kinds is preveiling like never before. However, can we rely on nihilism, in other words, can we do without public judgment? Obviously an impossibility, just imagine a lawless country. What is justice? It’s foolish to ask thus. It’s stupid to accept your loss thinking that everything has been justified. It’s base to accept your gain thinking that everything has been justified. You nevetheless want justice? Heading for the high court with a lawer, demanding what you call as justice? Count your green bucks and polish your hypocritical face, then may you stand a winning chance.
To those of you who already said farewell to justice and morality in general, desire having power and living on a natural earth, then the immediate thing that you can do is to open up The Dawn.
What is needed for justification? Merely the power to act justly.
Let’s say that holding on to illusions is naive. I agree. Power, no matter how seemingly transformative, is equally illusionary. Without a single regard to just action, every act becomes illegitimate. This isn’t because God X says so, or Politician Y, or Businessman Z, or Socialist…
It is because simply to survive as a human being requires a will, and a mind cognizant of the ramifications wrought from the choices the will makes. All choices are moral choices, as all choices are reflective of the will and the desire inherent in them. True power isn’t simply commiting an act, any animal can kill another animal if need be. True power is mastery of the will in furtherance of good choices. What are good choices? They are those choices which benefit everyone, or at least as many people as possible without causing undue harm to others.
The will acting in harmony with the individual to whom it belongs, in full recognition and inclusion with his or her surroundings, not only for that moment in time but for all moments preceeding it and following it. Yes, that is to say what is just is unchanging. So to is its opposite. What is unjust is unchanging. Genocide is wrong, has always been wrong and will always be wrong regardless of the excuse given for or the divinity that supposedly commands it.
Power is subservient to the will. What you call power is but a minor reflection of the will in action. What you say is power is not power but the result of the will. Survival does not require power, it requires will. For every choice humans face is the option to not act. Not acting is as much a choice of the will as acting is. The placement of power (that being the choice to act) above the will is a mistake. Power is the result of the will choosing.
That stated, few human beings, it seems, are fully aware of the many forces acting upon them. Power is illusionary then because the argument that power itself determines action ignores the will of others influencing the actor. Just as the will must choose to act, often, the will chooses to be acted upon by others. The view of one man as a power unto himself is myopic and false. Man has only his own will, of which power is but an extension that operates in his environment amongst other wills. No doubt the SS soldier, luger pistol in hand, felt quite powerful. However, he willed himself to only be subserviant to others.
Really, so you admit something else acts on the will? Excellent! What would you say is power over the will? An Uber Will?
I would say that the will is usually confronted with the immediacy of the environment in which it operates. These would be reflected in the minor, day to day choices we make. Even then, these choices have a moral import. Because survival requires harmony with one’s surroundings and with the other people and creatures one meets. Just action, as chosen by the will, extends harmony into this environment and helps insure survival of the will for that moment and afterwards. Surely you don’t think a species survives long enough to breed over six billion individuals because all of them are seeking power of each other. No, we have made it this far because we choose to survive. Despite people who would falsely argue that power is an end in itself, and despite those who think that this falsehood justifies immoral acts.
I am an agnostic hedonist who fancies himself a skeptic. That said, I have noticed the prevailing mood as of late as it deals with ethical matters at ILP, so I figure I might as well be skeptical about that also.
well there what political and moral justifications for actions.
…turks follows the political justification whihc was the fact that they and an unstable economy and we going to be “over thrown” by the “threatening” (all 2 million of us) armenians.
fine… in order to act in harmony with all moments, preceeding and following, one must have knowledge of them… except one cannot know all moments following… your demand for “justly” is impossible…
no, genocide is not always wrong… the elimination of all members of a species can be quite desired… think disease…
no, the will directs and focuses the power… nothing more…
just like oscar shindler?
I said nothing of the sort
an individual acting to ensure harmony for himself in his environment is a completely selfish act of will focusing power …
and a species that survives far longer than humans ever thought about existing with individual members in numbers trillions times trillions more numerous than humans must have chosen to survive as well…
then again, consider the life of a bacteria being as valued as a human…
Within the limits of our finite lives falls finite knowledge.
If that is what produces harmony and allows you to survive, I quite agree. However, I would think removing an entire species of anything might prove rather unharmonius ultimately.
I believe that that is what I said, in so many words. I would add that a strong will controls that which it directs. But then, even a weaker will chooses survival accordingly.
Sure, and by saving others I assume he saved himself, in will, and in harmony with the world around him. the SS guard, in acting to create an environment where murder is desired, wills his own destruction, or at least, increases the possibility of it occurring.
You said it takes power to master the will, then you said that the will focuses and directs the power. The only power, as you may call it, that gives the will its nature is life. The power that the will evokes is to live. Here I take my cue straight from Hobbes. The instinct to survive is supreme, and unites all men. However, Hobbes thought man an automaton, totally determined by the clockwork world around him. It would seem to me that the opposite is true. The instinct to survive grants man a will, as life supplies him the freedom at least to employ that will to survive.
I never said choosing harmony was selfless. It is, in fact, the choice which produces the most tangible and intangible ‘goods’ for everyone, including the individual making the choice.
Well here you want to go and get picky
Here I toss in my dab of Aristotle. As far as we know, bacteria lacks the capability for rational thought (the mind informing the will). Aristotle argues that the teleos for a rational creature is to make moral choices. Our capacity for rational thought, if even bounded, is greater than that of bacteria. We are capable of making better, more informed choices in terms of not just this moment, but past and future moments as well. If we are free to act in order to survive, and we have the will to do so, it would be unharmonious to ignore the import of our minds and pretend that we are merely bacteria. We are human beings, capable of making choices. Some choices are better than others. Some choices are so poor in terms of our own individual and group well being that the acts they produce can be considered bad just as some choices can produce such benefits as to deserve the title good.
