Freethought & Rationalism Archive

John Page · 04-08-2002, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gurdur:

You nicked the title from Vladimir Illich Ulanov.
Plagiarism ! Bouergeois opportunism !

Absolutely - I'm sure Laurentius spotted the irony and I'm happy you did!

Quote:

Originally posted by Gurdur:

The best defence against nihilism is an active, socially involved electorate with a long memory.

No disagreement here. I was trying to suggest how one might address this need for coherence in practice given the recent bad memories most Romanians likely have. Ideological BS won't be impressive and most won't know the difference.

Cheers!

P.S. The opening remark in my previous post was certainly not made with you in mind.

[ April 08, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]

Gurdur · 04-08-2002, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by John Page:
....
No disagreement here. I was trying to suggest how one might address this need for coherence in practice given the recent bad memories most Romanians likely have.

You've picked a hard job; Romanians, like the Russians, have their own special social and historical problems, and I personally see little progress in either country in a real way for about 2 generations more, unlike Poland, which is overcoming its problems quite fast.
But I'll write much more on this soon here, OK ?

Quote:

Ideological BS won't be impressive and most won't know the difference.

Tsk�, you don't and won't get intellectual BS from me; who are you referring to ?

John Page · 04-08-2002, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gurdur:
Tsk�, you don't and won't get intellectual BS from me; who are you referring to ?

The Komsomols, Orthodox Church, Western Investors, World Bank.......

Laurentius · 04-09-2002, 12:38 PM

John Page

Quote:

Isn't it interesting that as soon as you mentioned a real situation there was a deafening silence.

You're right, but I tend to think it's because of my shortcomings.

Quote:

Irrespective of whether god exists or not, the concept of god provides a basis for moral constructs.

I agree. That's another reason I don't always feel like fighting against religion.

My being a Humanist goes hand in hand with my being a universalist, and a globalist - religion gives metaphysical excuses for people to create factions and be intolerant.

Quote:

The Magyars of Hungary have a very definite sense of national identity, probably because they have been concentrated down from a regional power 300 years ago to a landlocked population of around 11 million.

If we had had the same strong nationalistic identity, there would have been another war for front in the Balkans, besides the one in Yugoslavia. The national identity in the Balkan is as delicate an issue as the ethnic one in the US. One has to put that aside in order for Humanism to take any form. (I feel kind of exhausted these days, I'm overwhelmed with earthly stuff...)

Laurentius · 04-09-2002, 01:12 PM

Gurdur

Quote:

You ignored completely - or did not understand my point whatsoever - that there is no way to derive consistant and definite prescriptiveness from descriptiveness.

You're right, if one were to build a sylogism, he/she could not start from descritptive premises and get a prescriptive conclusion. However, even you yourself decide on what you should respond like starting from what is posted by others.

Practically speaking, though, descriptiveness and prescriptiveness are almost inseparable. (e.g. Is the following sentence "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." prescriptive or descriptive?)

Quote:

You've picked a hard job; Romanians, like the Russians, have their own special social and historical problems, and I personally see little progress in either country in a real way for about 2 generations more, unlike Poland, which is overcoming its problems quite fast.

If you have to. I'm not looking forward to discussing the political&economical aspects of this country - they're wearing me out already.

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]

crocodile deathroll · 04-19-2002, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by John Page

Irrespective of whether god exists or not, the concept of god provides a basis for moral constructs. Different flavors of god provide different results. Thus, the concept of god can be useful and outlives any mortal example, to my mind it has distinct advantages over communistic atheism that became so terribly subverted. Non-god ethics fail to provide a rallying point.

Communism only replaced one dogma (eg the bible and the torah) with another like das capital which in effect they were just worshipping an ideology with the same reverence they worship some flavor of god. With this dogma they acquired all the inflexible intolerant attitudes as their theistic predecessors like Peter the Great. If I were a visitor from another planet I would view this reverence to Marxism and the communist ideology as just another flavor of God. I would make no distinction between a communist stating there is not god but Marxism and a Muslim stating there is no god but Allah

Laurentius · 04-21-2002, 02:57 AM

crocodile deathroll

Quote:

If I were a visitor from another planet I would view this reverence to Marxism and the communist ideology as just another flavor of God.

If you were a visitor from outter space even you would not know how you would think. Actually, you do not need to be an alien in order to notice the mass idealism and crave for utopia, on the one hand, and the official stand, on the other. Most of the people in the communist block remained religious - priests were even members of the Communist Party.

To everyone.
Sorry for my sudden fading out, I'm trapped in bussineses that will hinder me from actively taking part on this site. I'll see you in a month or so (wish me luck

).

[ April 21, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]

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