Re: [OT] Philosophical discussion

From: Roger Johansson (no-email_at_home.se)
Date: 11/11/03 

Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 16:37:46 +0100

gswork@mailcity.com (gswork) wrote:

>> I can safely say that Huxley would stand on my side if he was alive
>> today.
>
>It's always safe to say that about someone who cannot answer though,
>isn't it?

Yes, but I studied Huxley carefully, and read his book many times, and
learned about his life and views in general.

He was something like a hippie, although living a few decades before
beatniks and hippies were a well known phenomena.
We can think about Kerouc too, On the road, the beatniks, buddhism,
jazz music.

There were hippies before the 60-ies, and Huxley was one of them.
They did not accept the controlled society ruled by the old
traditions, like only making love after you have married, only being
allowe to be exstatically happy when you come to heaven, etc..

Mankind has tried to create a better society many times, with varying
results. The problem most have stumbled on is the idea of a ruling
elite which controls the other people.
That is what Huxley was against. He was against the controllers, the
class of people who manipulate the lives of the others.

We see the system with a controlling elite in many cultures.
In creationism we see how some rude and aggressive people take control
over the social environment, they arrange marriages, they teach people
to control ever higher levels of stress, and then let them love, so
they create the holy spirit, the mixture of stress and love, and the
holy matrimony, the eternal love.

We see a system with a controlling elite in capitalism. A few rich
guys control millions of people's lives with the help of money.
The russian communism developed into a control system under a party.

The churches are systems with a controlling elite which steer millions
of people through religion, often combined with violence.
If people did not go to church 200 years ago the police put them in
jail, etc..
Capitalism and communism also used violence if people refused to
follow the rules, so violence is a force behing most ruling elites.
The social elite punishes people by mobbing them, isolating them,
etc..

>Anyway, i agree that humans are not evil by nature, but.......

Most ruling elites need to justify their use of violence and force
with the idea that people would do evil things if they are not forced
to be good.

Few have tried creating such a good system that people could be
assumed to be good voluntarily.
 
>> Another big reason was the capitalism, the profit-driven system which
>> wanted more and faster business, higher and higher profits, no matter
>> how many people had to die or suffer to allow for those profits.
>
>And how many people did die and suffer when railroads and ships
>enabled global travel, new farm techs allowed huge portions to the
>population to completely avoid starvation, machines enabled mass
>production and the material wealth created by those factors were
>reinvested and reinvested by the presumably bad capitalists so that
>today, rather than virtually everyone except a tiny minority of the
>powerful suffering and dying, a billion people live in luxury, a few
>billion more live better than mankind had ever lived centuries ago,

You paint a very positive picture of capitalism.

Are you aware of how much suffering it has cost the people in the
third world who were robbed of their natural and forced to work to
supply the few rich countries with wealth?
Even in the rich countries themselves a lot of people suffer under
capitalism. And they are forced and pushed around by the rich people's
state and police, and military.

Some of the richest countries in the world are also very violent
places, where a big police force is needed, and a big proportion of
the people are put in jail.
It doesn't look like everybody are happy in such a country.

Even worse is it to live in a third world country which is ruled by a
puppet dictator who work for some rich country far away, and his task
is to opress the native population and make sure that the rich country
far away can get copper, gold, diamonds, zink, etc very cheaply.

>I'd say it's much better to be born human now than it has ever has
>been,

In your country, sure. And because of scientific and technical
development in the world as a whole. But that is not something
capitalism can take the honor for.
On the contrary, capitalism has hindered the development more than it
has helped it.
It has created many wars and has hindered development through patents
and copyright, capitalism has created evil puppet governments in many
countries in the third world and destroyed their possibilities to
develop, etc..

>with the exceptions we, of course, must not ignore or diminish -
>that even now in the 21st century people are dying of starvation and
>disease when infact, resources exist to help them.

There are medicines which could help millions of suffering people in
the third world, but they don't get any medicine, because the rich
people who own the patents and the pharmaceutical industries cannot
make enough profit on poor people. 

-- 
Roger J. 
(My email address is a spam trap, do not use it)

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