Let me spell this out clearly: you can love someone and still hold them to account, including sending them to prison or even executing them. You can refuse to rape and torture and still put criminals in prison. You can treat people well and know that doing so brings out the best in most people, and that most people rise to meet your expectations while noting that it doesn’t work on everyone.
People who are so lost to cynicism that can no longer see the good, can no longer feel compassion for those they consider evil, and who think the only way to defeat evil is to do evil, are lost, stupid and as dangerous as the evil they think they’re fighting.
People who think violence or coercion are never justified (as opposed to being rarely justified), are also stupid, and allow much evil to be born or persist.
There are positions between these two extremes. This is not a binary.
Stop being fools.
Feral Finster
Anything in particular?
“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” – George Carlin
Mark Level
A short and sweet (in a way, maybe not on the surface) post.
People who are intellectually lazy are an enemy to themselves, and to humanity. A downside to technology is that people live isolated from actual “meatspace” reality, thus blithely ignore horrible facts. I have to assume having studied history (which as I shared someone recently attacked me for) that when people worked outdoors, or smelled shit in the Streets (there are places you can do this now, San Francisco business district comes to mind) you couldn’t just ignore ugly things or pretend they don’t exist.
People who live in gated housing can be ignorant of the outside world, it’s a luxury. When I walk into a business carrying my glasses case (which I did just today) because I’m “white” no security guard is going to assume, as they might if I were a black man, that I’m carrying a gun and shoot me. Harper’s once ran a listicle of items people were shot for carrying by paranoid cops, wallet included– see Bruce Springsteen’s song American Skin (41 Shots) about Amadou Diallo.
Holding people to account means, 1st, You don’t have expectations of them that (a) you can’t and don’t meet, unless (b) there are extenuating circumstances. A person with Down’s syndrome can be charming and lead a decent life, but will never be academically top-tier, obviously. But it is just sensible to have certain standards. From time to time I come across utterly idiotic people with none, and they are angry when they see people who do!!
And let’s recall the literal meaning of Greek “Idios”, the source of Idiot, “Private.” Narcissists, the Rich, etc.
Having impunity like the Epstein class means you are capable of pretty much any insane and vicious act. And yes, the Files do suggest that “pizza” was code for cannibalistic acts, and “soda” perhaps for drinking blood. (Suggest, not prove. Something was being signaled, only the malefactors knew/know the truth.) When that nut with the gun entered the Pizza shop looking for captive children, he missed the mark. But it is true that one of the brothers of a top Hillary aid has sickening paintings of children being abused, raped, etc. He claims that these are “against” abuse, I don’t see how that could be the case, you don’t NEED a piece of art to know that rape and pedophilia are wrong.
After a bunch of my books got disappeared by the moving company last year, I started cataloging my massive remaining collection for insurance in case I move. I bought many transgressive books when younger, e.g. Jim Goad’s “Answer Me!!” (He later did prison time for domestic abuse.) Re/Search in the early 80s did a “Body Modification” issue with pics of horrible self-mutilations people did, for whatever personal reasons. Some was hard to look at, but Ugliness is part of reality just as much as Beauty, I prefer to see both.
One book I bought in the early 90’s was “The Exit Collection” by George Petros, about extreme culture, violence, it was positively blurbed by Charlie Manson from prison, as art about him was in it. Also Anarchist extremists, etc. I probably paid $50 for the oversize paperback, today it’s in pristine condition and worth $400 per Bezos’ machine. Sometimes being open-minded and curious leads to financial benefit, nothing wrong with that.
mago
Dualistic conceptual thinking drives the madness engulfing the world.
Purple Library Guy
I’m not a big fan of execution. I don’t think governments should do it at all. So if the person is so dangerous that I would actually say under the circumstances it is necessary to execute them, I’m not nice enough to be able to love that person. Probably I’d hate their guts, considering there’s plenty of people I don’t think they should be executed even though I hate their guts. E.g. Paul Bernardo–I hate the bastard, but he’s in jail, he should stay in jail, he WILL stay in jail, that’s the Canadian justice system doing something it should do, there’s no need to make the Canadian state a murderer for his sake.
Overall, though, I’m on board with the principles expressed in this piece.
bruce wilder
Several times recently I have found myself wanting to scream at someone, “have some self-awareness!”
Obliviousness interferes with being conscious of living interdependently in a society and maybe not always automatically being “the good guy” entitled to some privileged presumption of innocence.
bruce wilder
Dualistic conceptual thinking drives the madness engulfing the world.
Yes, but . . .
Oakchair
On the whole the problem has nothing to do with intellect or stupidity.
The problem is a habitual fleeing from discomfort combined with infinite addicting distractions and topped with conditioned cowardice.
When an addict (drugs, medications, screens etc) is withdrawing they experience irritability, fatigue, anxiety, intellectual and physical impairment.
Any attempt anyone makes to learn and understand a topic is impeded from the start because they experience all that. Is it a surprise so many give up and go back to the ever present, ever consuming addiction society?
Much easier to obey, follow the experts and do as told. Especially, since we’ve seen what is done to dissenters over and over since childhood. Especially since helplessness is so prevalent the ruling class doesn’t even feel the need to hide their depravity anymore.
mago
@Oakchair
Yeah, kick em while they’re down.
It’s a bully world.
Wooly bully wooly bully. . .
spud
wealth and power never concedes a thing, and they set about to divide, wage class warfare with bigotry, racism, hatred for the weak, the elderly, the disabled, the poor to conquer, and football and country western music was pushed heavily in the U.S.A. in the 1960’s to desensitize us to violence, and encourage militancy against others and drunken selfishness. all to over turn the new deal/fair deal, Gatt.
and americans lapped it up till now.
now a lot of them are paying attention because they found out that they to, need welfare, unemployment, and social security, and reining in the wealthy and powerful. many will not admit they were stupid, they will attempt to blame others, or say the were fooled, but its easy to fool the selfish.
so i think we are at that moment, where the fooled and selfish no longer fear the bullets. this will take time to unfold, but it seems to be moving along. and i think most of the divided, will put things aside and work together to end this one way or another.
its to late in my book, but you never know. the rich might get their way, but in the end, your wealth has to be true wealth that others want. and if the chinese and russians want them, they will be getting parasitical empty vessels with no true wealth but western paper assets that might be worthless.
but the powers that be have no empathy, remorse, ethics, morals, etc. driven by greed, hatreds and selfishness. they under cut themselves.
leaders like clinton, blair, shroeder are clever. cunning, and manipulative, but those personality traits are considered intelligence by many. but in reality, they are stupid morons that under cut their own system of wealth,