Opression ? Consider socialism.
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2013-01-26, 12:28:01
Subject: Re: a system of oppression?
On 1/26/2013 12:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Saturday, January 26, 2013 11:55:22 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 1/26/2013 11:45 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Saturday, January 26, 2013 11:36:45 AM UTC-5, JohnM wrote:
Craig, I read many of your posts, none was so pessimistic so far.
Ah, maybe I was being more sarcastic than the internet allows. I was intending
to mock those ideas by quoting Scrooge, as I think that there is nothing
further from the truth than the idea that character is completely independent
from their circumstance - that people with no shoes can pull themselves up by
their bootstraps or who have been born into a system of oppression can free
themselves by belief in the free market or some such thing.
Craig
Hey!
What exactly is a system of oppression? Could you describe an actual
situation in Nature that is "oppression-free"?
Slavery, or apartheid are systems of intentional oppression, but poverty in a
land of plenty is oppressive also, even if oppression of the poor is an
unintentional effect. If it takes two million peasants to prop up one Imelda
Marcos, then being born into the system which does that is an oppressive one,
and not one which you can escape by adopting a positive attitude.
Just because life isn't free of oppression doesn't mean that if an Imelda
Marcos manages to tyrannize a country that it is the will of Nature. To the
contrary, the will of Nature is for the oppressed to kill and eat their
oppressors at the earliest opportunity.
Craig
Hi Craig,
Setting the drama of humanity aside, can you point to some actual cases of
this in Nature? Any deer "oppressed to kill and eat their oppressors [wolves]
at the earliest opportunity"? No! I dare say that you are building a flawed
argument on a flawed premise. I submit the entire idea of "oppression", as you
are using it, is a figment of human imagination. We humans have the unique
ability to behave in ways that do not actually solve problems but instead just
"make us feel better" about our crappy living conditions and the problem that
is causing us pain does unchecked. Every case in history where the "oppressed
to kill and eat their oppressors at the earliest opportunity" was one of chaos
and malice, nothing good ever came of it alone. It is only when we face our
situations factually and rationally and solve the problems that we improve our
situations.
Let's consider the case of Imelda. How was it that she was able to do what
she did? She had the force of government to implement her 'oppresion". I submit
to you that it is government that is unique in its ability to oppress, as it
has the monopoly on the *legal* use of force. Any line of reasoning that leads
to the implication that government (or a proxy thereof) can can alleviate or
otherwise assuage "oppresion" is only substituting one Imelda for another.
--
Onward!
Stephen
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