Probably the most sensible thing anyone has said here for ages Chris. Scary!
On Sunday, January 18, 2015 at 5:12:06 AM UTC, Chris Jenkins wrote: > > We humans have always had a terrible problem with calculating scale. We're > utterly irrational and hopelessly subjective. Even when we attempt to shape > our world view via humanism and logic, we fall prey to insidious prejudices > few of us are able to even detect well. We think we're much smarter than we > are, and it's only by growing older and expanding our time scope that we're > capable of beginning to understand how limited our view always was the > minute before. Most of us don't live long enough to ever really accomplish > anything remotely like an objective view point. > > And so, we fear plane crashes, and not car crashes, despite the latter > vastly outnumbering the former. We say "je suis charlie" for the 12, and > pass by the thousands dead. We only care when the PR machine snaps a > gorgeous tragedy and Buzzfeed includes it in "Top 5 Photos From World > Conflicts: You won't believe number 4!". > > When one person dies, it's a tragedy, but when a million people die it's a > statistic. Stalin said that. Remarkable bit of insight from someone who > created some notable statistics. > > We Americans are terrible with statistics. We're smart enough to know that > they're a weapon to bludgeon the less Google savvy, and we pick and choose > to suit our bigotry. Then once a year we pour ice water over our heads > while hash tagging #Kony2012. Verily Babylon has fallen. > > Hello, Minds Eye. I've missed you. Neil's been commenting on my G+ posts, > and it put me of a mind to come see how the group's been. > > On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 10:29:52 PM UTC-5, archytas wrote: >> >> Killing cartoonists clearly can't be allowed. There is no absolute >> authority for jihad, crusades or lacking a self-depreciating sense of >> humour prepared to rip loved ones from the lives of relatives and friends. >> The most common 'cause' of killing and war in primitive societies is >> revenge, generally pretty dumb. >> >> On the day Charlie Hebdo was struck, Boko Haram was doing much worse in >> Nigeria and 2000 died. Yemen was pasted again. 25 million or so have died >> in wars after WW2 and any number of people have had peaceful lives >> destroyed by various forms of imperialism. We understand revenge films >> where the child not slaughtered by Barbarians grows to destroy them. There >> are at least questions we should be asking on whether fundamentalist Islam >> is radicalising terrorists, or the various imperialisms and the conditions >> these create in countries kept poor and run by installed despots. >> >> Institutional religion is no use to me and I detest the hostility of >> those believers who would have me respect belief in superstition,clearly >> false history, varieties of justified sexism, racism, apartheid and selfish >> chosen-peopleism. This extends far beyond religion and to false ideas that >> the Greek Enlightenment was the zenith of civilisation. This was a sexist, >> racist, slave economy. Western democratic free trade liberalism is such a >> lie as to be merely another control fraud, not the end of history. >> >> There is little clarity. We stand as Charlie for free speech, yet do >> nothing against indecent Saudi floggings and beheadings. We have never >> produced democratic foreign policy, population control or sustained peace. >> Now we are arresting people protesting publicly against Charlie, somewhat >> contradictory to say the least. All that seems clear is that we are all >> Charleys, without much of a system to openly discuss what is wrong, leaving >> tyranny anywhere a threat to freedom everywhere. >> > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
