here's_a_lovely_thought ferret i was sitting in history last year, and we were talking about some war, and the teacher was saying how inhuman it was to kill people like that, when i raised my hand (of course, it took her like, half an hour to see, but i cared so much about what i had to say that i kept it up) and commented on how human it WAS. She responded by saying that we had moved on and i should have asked my question earlier o.0 but that got me thinking, that is SO human! when we say something is inhuman, we usually refer to something that is sub-human. war and fighting is SO human. What is the difference between a murderer and the president? a murderer takes time to think about how he's going to kill a person, (and he kills them because he feels it is justified) and does it. The law catches up with him and puts him away. the president takes time to think about how he's going to kill a bunch of people, (and he kills them because he feels it is justified) and he's praised for winning a war or whatnot. What makes us think we can decide who "needs" to die or not? take this current "war" for example. there was no real war. Americans only really started dying AFTER the "war" was "over". we still haven't found any "weapons of mass destruction" either. so the war is not "justified" nor is it justified. 031005 ... once again You Go!!! 031005 ... pipedream that IS a good point, your teacher is a nitwit for not taking it up. *clap clap*, nonetheless. 031005 ... niska there's a lot your president doesn't know, and can't find... the unfortunate truth is that no one needs to die, just as there was no cause for the sacrifice of thousands of people in both hiroshima AND nagasaki. (or korea... vietnam... kossovo... and let's not forget the Saudis in the 'original' gulf 'war'...) you know, the problem with america (and thank god i 'switched'... ) is that we have been raised on lies, and bred on pride. we have no concept of the reality people actually face in this world. we've been told the whole time we were heroes, when we were tyrants, breaking the world. it's no one individual's fault, but realize that your government is full of shit, people are not stupid, just lied to, and everyone else in the world is laughing at you while they bleed to death on your tax dollars. 031005 ... karl the weed i agree whole heartedly. who was your english teacher...? 031005 ... oldephebe niska..i forgot to thank you as well for your distinctive voice, for your detractions, for your validations..and ah..yeah nice point you've raised on this page.. ferret - like i said a few months or weeks back..under all the frivolity and humor there is a considerable heart and mind being wrought..its glimmers are just now beggining to be felt pd - strawberry quick probably should be drank quickly..it efinately has it hooks into to me.. be well blather 031006 ... misstree "we have been raised on lies, and bred on pride. we have no concept of the reality people actually face in this world." -niska and that is what i tell people when they ask why foreigners hate us so. i consider myself very lucky to have had, because of the university, a handful of foreign brains to pick at, to gain some perspective in this consumeristic, isolationist vortex. consider that we are both culturally and geographically isolated, that this country is exceedingly young (200 years is nothing to most places in europe, not to mention middle east and far east cultures) (and i blame that for our obsession with sex), and that our culture hit the ground running and it's been a sociological land grab ever since. perspective is not in the interests of those who could provide it (the media owners, quickly becoming the media monopoly owners), so we continue to suckle at the mighty breast of blind self-interest. perspective brings pain, because we are human, and to see suffering elsewhere, or beautiful sights that did not originate in the good ol' u.s. of a., or to think that we, as a people, are not King Shit of Steamingturd Hill, is unpleasent, denies our "right" to happiness (we have the right to pursue it, but most people settle for the variety that mc donald's serves pre-digested). also, perspective takes work, it requires mental effort, and lots of money is made from placating the people so that no one raises a voice to stop our leaders when they put *their* best interest before the best interest of u.s. citizens or the world. 031006 ... minnesota_chris our country isn't young... there were Americans 10,000 years ago oh you meant our culture is young? We got ours from Britain, with a zest from other world regions. Niels Bohr said that "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." Killing is inhuman. Killing is quite human. Both are very profound. I got a lot of thoughts, but no real point, so um never mind. Misstree, rawr! You predator! 031006 ... oldephebe opnes... niska, ferret, mtree mchris..everyone very nicely done!! 031006 ... stork daddy niska. while the sacrifice at hiroshima perhaps wasn't necessary, as there is some controversy over whether or not peace was on the table at the time the bombs were dropped, it is a controversy. we did not start that war. how can you say deaths were not necessary. you're only right if you take a quite inhuman view of neccessity. no they were not necessary, but then nothing is. there is plenty of evidence and argumentation that even after the first bomb many high commanding japanese officers were considering staying in the war. do i think the nuclear bomb a "necessary evil"? no. i think it is a sickening use of human technology. but i do think that that technology is once again just magnifying our tendencies. if it hadn't been for someone willing to draw a line somewhere, the brutal invasion of manchuria could've become even worse. deaths are only necessary when someone else's point of view is so in the way of yours, that for your point of view to exist peacefully, theirs must not. this does not limit itself to america, japan, ireland, the middle east. this is a human tendency. i myself feel, however, that it is best contained and dealt with through peaceful metaphors of force best in a democratic country where the rule of law is established. america, though never realizing its ideal anymore than most christians realize christianity, is the best approximation of this encouraging of "the better angels of our nature." it is ironic, but sometimes it is only through implied force that a forceless law of voluntary cooperation can be established. in america, people's voices (are supposed) to count equally, and force is only used to protect that equality. all other competitions take place under the assumption that though successes and priviledges are not assured, certain rights cannot be violated this is the best that can be hoped for, and while it should be looked at as a starting point and not a finish, it in no means should be reguarded as an antithesis to all that is good and holy in the "noble savage" within all of us. that no one needs to die is a hard statement to evaluate. certainly, we cannot keep living at the cost to the envoirment that we are, certainly if we keep overpopulating the earth, even the minimum requirement of all those lives will add up to too much. so when you say no one "needs" to die, define need. need is a human term. and there are a variety of human needs. as long as there are conflicting human needs, there may be strife, and there may even be some human beings somewhere, who individually or collectively, feel the need for someone else to die. now there's a lovely thought. i do not dismiss the problem as intractable, i merely ask that any attempt at understanding humanity not ignore the nasties or oversimplify the villains. 031006 ... stork daddy and yes, i agree that america jumped the missle with this last war. and i question the rhetoric that says just because an end is desireable, its original justification doesn't have to hold. that said, i also would like to point out that it is a valid point that we are not an anomaly. other cultures all had their violence. and perhaps they came to realizations at a time when technology wasn't so developed as to be damning and final, and perhaps they see all too clearly now in us, what in their pasts were mistakes and what were sucesses, but to completely demonize one culture isn't usually an accurate assesment. every culture that had an empire, attempted to create their PAX. i only hope that modern technology doesn't make any decline which may be experienced a final one. in terms of other nations as well, and i think they are doing this in the way the UN nations are pretty consolidated, it is the combined powers of others that has always held off superpowers from blindly and forcefully asserting its own will as best. 031006 ... stork daddy separation of powers is how things stay balanced. if you want something guarded, hire opposing thieves etc. etc. 031006 ... oldephebe the human heart is innately corrupt..statutorial amelioration against that primordial defect will continue to be an issue(s)far beyond the narrow space our lives will upon the continuum..really am finding the discourse simply scintillating.. 031006 ... once again I think it was said best in Good Omens... (nothing like a good quote to keep your thoughts in line) "...he rather liked people. That was a major failing in a demon. Oh he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millenium, when he'd felt like sending a message back Below saying, "Look, we may as well give up right now, we may as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there's nothing we can do to them that they don't do themselves and they do things we never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They've got what we lack. They've got imagination. And electricity of course." One of them had written it hadn't he... "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here." Crowley had gotten a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition. He HAD been in Spain then, mainly hanging around cantinas in the nicer parts, and hadn't even known about it until the comendation arrived. He'd gone to have a look, and had come back and got drunk for a week. That Heironymous Bosch. What a wierdo. And just when you think they were more malignant then ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace then Heavan ever dreamed of. Oftent eh same individual was involved. It was this free_will thing, of course. It was a bugger." Humans are not good. Humans are not evil. Humans are merely human. And that, of course, is the whole point. 031006 ... ferre no, killing is inhumane, it's quite human tho 031006 ... oldephebe humanity..ah the epiphanies i have gleaned through my failings..the things i have learned from my limitations, from my abject failures of decency..those things that i watched my self become when i abdicated every decent impulse within me..i am desolations daffodil.. let us end this apotheosis of oldephebe really..now that is a lovely thought..the squalor of self pity..not exactly an enobling thing..even for creative poetic types..you know that darkness i was standing chest deep in?..its starting crush the old interstitial chamber..how much dead light can I hold behind my eyes? hmm the strawberry quick has lost its allure..and yet..I want no ameliorating agent.. ... 031006 ... Death of a Rose oldphebe I'm sacrificing a breath of air for you, I don't want to use an animal for that's just gross. Keep the shine through and thru. 031009 ... oldephebe well i seem to shimmer when i have something to reflect off of.. i want to say something more than just a perfunctory thanx..but well..you know..last dregs of being and all that.. later, ... 031009 ... celestias shadow good omens is a freakin' great book. now, on to the subject at hand.... killing is inhuman, inhumane, and yet oh so very human. it is perhaps what makes us most human, next to hope, for hope is what makes us human and keeps us alive. death takes away that vitality, and killing takes it away before its time. we as living beings have the unique ability to both create and destroy, and both are beautiful and terrible things. they echo each other in this vicious and amazing cycle we call life. killing is as natural as breathing, and it is something that will be done for as long as we are individual beings with feelings all our own. the ability and the will to take another's life is as innate a part of us as the will to love. we are told to love our enemy, but never to kill our friend. "we must do what we can with the time that is given us..." 031025 ... minnesota_chris here's a lovely thought: they've done a poll and found out that the biggest frustrations of single people is being single. And the biggest frustration of married people is being married. 031118 ... oldephebe the grass being greener and all that.. 031118 ... oldephebe someone once blathed oldephebe knows the truth - while i was flattered, i gotta say somedays i am closer to this Truth than others where i feel like an O.T. prophet who after hiding himself in Jehova's mantle of faith was able to defeat the false gods of Bael(?) hope that's the correct nominative ascription..and then the said prohet went and hid himslef in a cleft of rock and wished for death simply because he changed his perceptual vantage point..from the peak of power to the precipice..just like that we can step out of glory into the abyss..we are finite, we are frail we are inconstant, so no oldephebe may not know The Truth in his head but I've got a this handful of little truths wreathed in eldridge flame in my heart pocket. Here's another, and one that i have consciously not acknowledged on occassion. We here in blather especially the more voluble among us, are often given to pounding the gavel and dictating, or rather making imperative utterances to poeple. Adorning ones self with the unearned imprimature of authoriy. For example: "Shut the hell up" or in my case something like "I'm opaque but not fake.. blah blah.. Overt polysyllabic syntax is superior even if you have to go on an etymological expedition to wrest meaning from my brick house of the voluble and vague, pretentious or earnest and yet more virtuous blather. So dammit read it and be enlightened don't stay stuck in your prosaic linguistic constructs!" Here's the thing statements like that or even terse commands constitute what everyone knows or hears as an authoritative performative. It's purpose is to clarify or delineat an authoritative relationship between the speaker and his interlocutor. One that does not neccessarily exist. It peremptorily assumes the interlocutor, or the other is subject to said imperative(s) We are all sensitive to someone assuming an unearned posture of authority and delusionally demanding our respect or submission to the tersely spoken imperative. In the future, I am going to strive to ameliorate my tendency to that. Prefering the other before oneself does not mean one should abdicate personal authority, it just means regarding the other with respect, stepping into his/her sandles. Of course the seismically unstable tyrant or the megalomaniacle who demonstrates even after your appeals to equanimity that you have no rights or virtues worthy of respect should feel the full scalding force of your ire. Perhaps, perhaps if one can be committed to ameliorating or tempering the serrated blade of his/her reflexive tongue and try to imagine a space wherein you are the recipient of an unqualified, unprovoked authoritative performatives pawned off as reasoned argumentation. Maybe it just might begin to shape empathy within us. A subtle distinction in syntax can reach your advesary without disemboweling your argument of its clarity and authority. Just a little something to think about. alere flamman = to feed the flame..usually used to stir or rekindle the romantic hearth fires..but it can be used to say further discussion on this will only serve to feed the flames...to broker the bitterness between us. There it is my crudely rendered remedial latin. peace... 031118 ... Death of a Rose cheers for good omens. Pratchett and Gaimon made a good pairing. on the subject though. heres a twisted thought. Canada signs the Kyoto accord, triumphantly heralded by our prime minister as being the only solution to the worlds woes, meanwhile he and his political backers (certain ceo's of energy corporations) are investing huge amounts of money into coal fired electrical generation plants in China. Hypocrisy you say, death by firing squad i say. 031118 ... niska karl: my engish teacher's name was gene markson. why? 031205 ... niska mistree: yes... i heard the words 'post 9-11 world' on TV last night and had to look. there was nothing though. it was just some bullshit person with a 'be-prepared-for-the-next-attack' warning. followed by a commercial for a 'be-prepared' kit. how can this nation claim it lives in any kind of post-anything world? i can only think of that tragedy, as that - a tragedy. American's don't know a post-anythign world because nothing realy that bad has happened, if comparing it to the destruction left behind in the nations we've claimed to have 'kept peace'. and considering a lot has been caused at our hands, i feel reluctant in so many cases to admit my heritage - it's almost embarrassing here. this population competes economically to feel as self-important as if they were jet-setters in New York. While i'm sure those REAL people who make society work and run in NY, don't notice their standing as 'jet-setters'. they live, they work, they die. like the rest of us. the almighty 'America' has so much influence. Canada is experiencing a high dollar price, and the majority of ill-informed citizens LOVE the discount in the US for their dollar, but it's actually a detriment to the economy - not a lot of people are aware how it affects these circumstances. our child will be born in Canada. consequently, we have applied for citizenship of this nation, and it's a given we'll receive it before this baby is born. and, instead of 17,000$ in helth care bills, it will cost 0$ to have this baby. our child will vote someday. we will never vote again though, in either the USA or Canada, as it's a condition of this circumstance - you can't be allowed to vote, if it's possible to return to your country of origin during an election, and be granted a vote for 2 world leaders... believe me, it's something we cherished and never used. don't ever take the rights you have for granted. vote wisely when bush's term is up. and keep in mind that his advisor goons are the cause of this nation's discontent. make sure they remain out of office for good. it's time for a change that is positive. I'm glad that our child will be 'Canadian'. 031205 ... minnesota_chris the air seems a little fresher up there 040203 ... i was idealistic once Here is a lesson about history. The Nazi's are known as evil, evil murderers, but how would history portray them if they won... If murder is such a bad thing, then why is it inhuman sometimes but justified othertimes. 040204 ... oldephebe Is it a lesson of history or simply an ardent and unfortunately incomplete rumination leading to this what i am sure is a sincere if not somewhat naive postulation? I am in no way attempting to suggest that the west, or the allies should be comensurately exulpated for thier abysmal moral lapses, or the diabolic enterprises in the excersise and propogation of our foriegn policy all under the so called rubric of National Security. No not in any certain terms that is not what I am tring to inelegantly imply. And yes I am aware of the moral dissonance of good ol' US of A and Great Britian allying with Stalin who ordered the deaths of approximately 22million of his own citizens. But think of a world under the black banner of a so called Third Reich! How many more of the worlds so called impure would Hitler have had industrially exterminated (murdered)? All things being relative, I'll take the world we have today, and yes I am speaking from a comfy living room in a middle class area and using technology that most americans just take for granted..but still, a world shaped out of the insane imagination of Adolph Hitler? No thankyou. 040307 what's it to you? who go blather from