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There are very few countries in the world, maybe none, in which the general citizenry would take up arms against a neighboring country, without being whipped into a warlike state by their evil handlers. People left to themselves are pacifists, and have no wish to make war.
I do not buy the "people are swell, but some leaders are evil" thesis. If evil can rise to a position of supported leadership, it is because there is something corrupt enough about the human character to support it. The lynch mob leader needs the lynch mob every bit as much as the lynch mob needs the leader.
Further, sometimes it is an action by an outsider which whips up the war enthusiasm. The Japanese attack on Pearl harbor needed no evil handler propaganda to make most Americans fighting mad. Had there been a specific nation responsible for 9/11, I'm confident that there would have been overwhelming support for the US blasting it off the map.
Successful hate mongering requires finding an audience which is very much prepared to hate. Evil leaders are not misleading the good, they are exploiting the evil parts of people.
GS, your examples all involve a citizenry that is inspired to anger by events external to themselves or their basic nature.
Individuals who rise to positions of civil power are often those who are predisposed to suspend morality, in their thirst for power. When they reach that level of power, it is often discovered that fear quickly begets irrational anger, an effective avenue to social cohesion and near-universal support, which is clearly an asset to a tyrant.
Obviously, if a power-hungry figure arises in one country and makes warlike threats against another, the docile neighbors may, with that impelling external influence, rise up in ideological fear and seek to defend itself.
In a global population of 6-billion, it takes only a half a dozen people who display the deadly combination of charisma and evil to keep the entire planet in a state of war-readiness for decades, There is survival value in Fear which can easily be aroused in a populace that would otherwise prefer to remain in a charitable sociology, but Fear does not equate with Evil. Instead, it is a tool that Evil quickly learns to use to its own ends.
Your examples of Japan and the lynch mob just show the distinction between external and internal stimuli to fear-turned-to-anger. The triggers can range from an egomaniacal general to a white woman who alleges an offense, but there must be a trigger to raise otherwise meek and docile human beings to a murderous rage---typically with only one man's evil finger on the trigger.
The lynch mob deserves further study. Evil men in white sheets did not create a racial disharmony by themselves one night. The roots of slavery go back millennia. People who owned slaves were not "evil", they were the products of a sociological juggernaut, and had been taught that slavery is an acceptable form of human relationships, just as telemarketers have been taught that phoning me at supper time to sell time shares is an acceptable form, but does not by itself imply evil on the part of the telemarketer who disrupts my happy home. It is easy to teach non-evil people to behave in ways that would not be in conformity with a level and well-thought-out characterization of moral behavior.
Any idea that people will behave differently than they normally do, necessarily proposes that human thinking fundamentally evolve from what it always has been. That is: to let itself be governed by the most assertive people, most of whom are assertive because they lust for some form of power (political, financial, spiritual), and most of whom think they know better than the people (which most times, it's hard to imagine anyone knowing worse than the people, so that holds up), who then promptly turn around and abuse their power.
I call it the iron law of kleptocracy. No matter how noble the experiment is, humans will corrupt it. In fact, the nobler the experiment is the more vulnerable it might be, because noble experiments are concocted by idealists with good hearts and lofty ideals. The usual run of leaders sees idealists as naive cattle to feed upon and manipulate for their gain. Pretty soon, the idealists are making a deal with the kleptocrats, offering the excuse that the only other option is to get nothing at all, so they usually make an 80/20 deal or so: give the idealists enough of what they wanted to give them the illusion of having actually gotten somewhere, while making sure it doesn't interfere with the actual process of kleptocracy. Business is business.
And if the idealists get in the way too much, if they can't be placated, they simply get marginalized using the time-honored tactics of deceit and cruelty.
No, I don't think much of humanity. If I were a highly evolved alien race visiting this place, I'd quarantine it so it couldn't poison the civilized galaxy.
As always an interesting post! It sounds almost like our present political situation. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said, "If there are people on other planets, they must be using this one for their insane asylum."
In recent history, we saw a situation where the cudgel of "You are either for us or against us" was effectively used to stifle honest debate about our course of action following a terrorist act. The message was clear: no dissenting opinions need apply! A supine congress gave tacit approval to leaders who were already predisposed to an armed response against someone, even if happened to be the wrong country. The results have been a disaster in lives lost and our world reputation of cleaving to a rational foreign policy.
Lets look at todays standards...of just one example...Do you think for any second you could possibly go up to one of these evil muslim al quada groups, and have a cup of tea with them? They want us all dead...plain and simple. Look up one of the many beaheadings they have commited just out of plain evilness and really think to yourself...could we be passive with these people? I think we both know the answer. I dont want to get in a big debate about the war on terror, that is not my point. My point is the idea that the world can all get along...There are just too many evil groups that exist for that to happen.
I am really mystified, how many Americans pack their family in the van and take a 3-week vacation, wandering in unknown places, among strangers who are, by their very nature, evil. Going into a sports stadium among 50,000 fundamentally evil people, and perhaps angry and drunk as well. Sending their small defenseless children to school to sit in classroom with 30 incarnately-evil children and a naturally-evil teacher overseeing the room. All these people whose civility is hanging by a thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander
Had there been a specific nation responsible for 9/11, I'm confident that there would have been overwhelming support for the US blasting it off the map.
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So you would understand why there would be overwhelming support in the Middle East for blasting "a specific nation" off the map. I hope you were not surprised, then, by 9/11.
But there wasn't that overwhelming support for it. I don't know of any studies that showed that the Islamic world was overwhelming supportive of blasting the USA off the map, even after our decades of military support for Israel, our savagery on the road of death after the Gulf War, the imposition of the butcher Shah in Iran, and whatever slights, real or imagined, that they could be reminded of.
Why then do the peace-loving and gentle Americans harbor a propensity so sweeping that is visible to you in your neighborhood?
Quote:
Originally Posted by CelticViking
Lets look at todays standards...of just one example...Do you think for any second you could possibly go up to one of these evil muslim al quada groups, and have a cup of tea with them? They want us all dead...plain and simple. Look up one of the many beaheadings they have commited just out of plain evilness and really think to yourself...could we be passive with these people? I think we both know the answer. I dont want to get in a big debate about the war on terror, that is not my point. My point is the idea that the world can all get along...There are just too many evil groups that exist for that to happen.
Nobody doubts that there are "evil groups"---and Al Qaeda is one of several very, very tiny group within the context of Islamic or Mid East reality. And if Al Qaeda had actually been associated with Iraq somehow, and operated there, we'd have been supporting them as Freedom Fighters.
I invite you to produce some statistics reflecting the "many" beheadings in the Islamic world, and compare it with the number of judicial executions, "just out of plain evilness" in the USA.
How many American tourists are harmed in the Islamic countries, while walking the streets among all these people who "want us dead...plain and simple"? The risk is lower in the Mid East than in Jamaica or Thailand. Or Oakland.
The fact that I can teach a dog to ride a bicycle is not proof that bicycle-riding is natural to dogs.
So you would understand why there would be overwhelming support in the Middle East for blasting "a specific nation" off the map. I hope you were not surprised, then, by 9/11.
But there wasn't that overwhelming support for it. I don't know of any studies that showed that the Islamic world was overwhelming supportive of blasting the USA off the map, even after our decades of military support for Israel, our savagery on the road of death after the Gulf War, the imposition of the butcher Shah in Iran, and whatever slights, real or imagined, that they could be reminded of.
Why then do the peace-loving and gentle Americans harbor a propensity so sweeping that is visible to you in your neighborhood?
Why are you directing the above to me? I was employing a hypothetical, not submitting some moral arguments concerning Islamic justification.
You should find the proper grindstone for your agenda.
Why are you directing the above to me? I was employing a hypothetical, not submitting some moral arguments concerning Islamic justification.
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I think because you were the one that made the comment that I disagreed with and challenged on principle. It seemed to me that your hypothetical swept through the entirety of humanity, which you justified with one anecdotal example, and I chose a counter-example, using Islamists as one that is highly visible and well-known. If your generalization works for Americans, it should have been applicable elsewhere, as well. Not an invalid argumentative device.
In short, if what you said was true, then you'd have had equal confidence in the overwhelming support in the Middle East to blast the US off the face of the earth.
Last edited by jtur88; 01-07-2011 at 07:52 AM..
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