Values have already changed a lot. There was a link to a presentation by Pinker in the "government and happiness" thread which is worthwhile. He basically says that we've come a long way since the middle ages and before that, in terms of reduced cruelty anyway. I'm quite confident myself that sensibilities are going to develop even further in that direction.


To some extent it may be a construct, but then again it's not. You're right, it is difficult to tell. It can't be dismissed entirely as a construct, though. Wealth, class culture, different typical attitudes, all these exist and are transmitted to children from parents and peers. Certainly you can't define someone as, e.g. working-class to be the be-all and end-all of what they are. Upward mobility (downward is rarer) is possible to a degree, but very difficult for somebody with a really nasty background, in view of the possible factors which can hold him/her back, one of these being that he/she doesn't have the right - hell, there's a German word for it, "Stallgeruch" - "stable smell", the English escapes me right now - well, when he/she doesn't show the right airs and manners and upbringing, for example when applying for a job.


I am a convinced egalitarian, in several senses actually. Firstly, I believe that everyone should be equal before the law. I don't know if you agree here, but I sure hope you do. Then in a not so trivial sense, I recognize that every life is worth the same, be it the life of an asshole or of a saint. I'm sure many on this board cannot follow me there, still it's a conviction that I hold.

In an even less trivial sense, I think that everyone deserves a good shot at using their potential. Obviously we're not all gifted in the same degree, but I think that everyone should have the possibility to realize their potential, and that if extraneous factors stand in the way, society should mitigate them or, if possible, remove them. That is why I am for free tuition. Any move to get more people to access the university system is fine with me. Some people may indeed not be cut out for academia as regards the necessary intelligence or will to work - they'll drop out. But that they don't appear to harmonize with the environment, if I may paraphrase thus what I understood you to mean, and therefore don't belong there, is a really strong prejudice on your part, if that is what you wanted to express. A university is basically a facility, after all, and its primary purpose is not to supply a venue for a social gathering.

What is the problem with eroding the class system, or better, what is the point in keeping it? What is the point in keeping privilege by birthright? If the upper class appears to do better in the jobs they hold, in the money they make, in the behavior they display (apart from unwarranted arrogance), it is - in my belief - because they had better chances to start with, more money to go into their education, the right "stable smell", a surrounding that saw to it that they hold knife and fork in the correct hand and don't set fire to ambulances. It's not because they're inherently superior. And, more importantly, what's the point of keeping people underprivileged? I don't see one. It's a great waste of potential resources, societally speaking, and damn unfair, personally speaking.

As to how to combat the shitty behavior sometimes seen in the shitty parts of town, it's difficult. I don't know of a patent medicine. I point again to Pinker's talk, which leaves me mildly optimistic. I do believe, though, that there is a correlation between feeling frustrated and disenfranchised and "What the hell" behavior, in the sense that if the world doesn't care about me, I won't care about the world. This tends to get worse the stronger the feeling of being underprivileged and really having not much of good future ahead of you gets. (I know it can be used as an excuse too, but I don't think that does quite invalidate my point.) As I said, I believe that the level of uneducated barbarism was actually never lower than today.

Maybe education is the key. From the top of my head, maybe a scheme to pick out the quiet ones, the bullied ones from the shit schools and giving them the chance to go to a better school could be an idea. That, however would presuppose that they're not looked down on at their new school, something that I'm sure will happen quite a lot. A class border always has two sides - don't forget the ones who are prepared to look down on someone, they may do their share in perpetuating the system and its problems.

I'm sorry, that was a long-ass rant, and not all of it was concise debating or swaying arguments. Some questions, however, cannot be conclusively answered by earnest pondering of all contingent factors; it often comes down to taste and opinion in the end, and well, for what it's worth, there you have mine.

Nah you got a good point, it's just shit how these class differences have become ingrained into society for a good couple of generations. That takes a lot of effort to get out of.

Good point.
The "bottom layer" also usually has more human values and is more ethical.
Mostly because they don't understand the scientific bit.

What if "they" decide that "we" are the sub-humans, and need to be cleansed from the Earth? I highly doubt the supporters of genocide would feel the same way while standing in the execution line.

The reasoning behind the war on terror is precisely that they have already decided that, if you believe what the media and the government tells you, of course. The thing that is ironic is that Resident Hazard has prescribed a solution that was the policy of the Catholic Church and the Spanish Monarchy in South America under Cortes and Pizarro, as in turn it was the policy of the Aztecs in dealing with the Mayans (as I believe the former is credited with destroying the latter) and smaller tribal peoples.

Essentially what the view of the OP amounts to is an "out with the old, in with the new" cliché. Religion has run its course, according to the modernistic tyrant, and should be replaced with a more "up with the times" version of the same authoritarian caprices. Those who don't accept what is holy....oops, sorry for the obsolete term, I mean modern, need to go.

Personally, if I believed in the war on terror, the looming threat of Islamo-Fascism, Peak Oil, the Global Warming Armageddon prophecy, the world being unable to deal with an increasing population, I'd probably agree with some variant of all the final solutions being offered by some on here. But as I don't, I guess I'll just have to live and let live, deal with what comes, and hope that good old America finds its sense again and stops blowing up people to maintain its empire.

The thing is, "we" are not in that situation to be judged. Of course, it's very selfish (even if only on a collective level), but you can't expect everybody to do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.

That's a shame isn't it?

Personally, I don't think we need to worry about "final solutions".

Nature has one in stock already, be it Ebola, or the common Flu.

Who's to say that Resident Hazard's idea isn't in line with nature's plan? Lemmings committing mass suicide by throwing themselves into the ocean is natural, isn't it? I'm not sure I fully buy this notion that what man dreams up is somehow separate from the rest of nature, save in our own minds.

Hitler tried this. He ended up surrounded by pissed off Russians, French, Americans and Jews. And he shot himself.

Killing everyone is not contributing to the scientific and intellectual advancement to save ourselves is not only disgusting, but unwise path You're talking about killing about two thirds of 16 billion people. You're talking about killing handicapped, children, musicians, artists, eliminating all sports, destroying music, movies, and famous artwork, and basically killing everybody except for mad scientists of different fields, and politicians that spend days pushing shiny buttons, launching various, enormous instruments of death, and they'll end up dead anyway. Unfortunately, in addition to being a sick bastard, you're probably right. The entire US stockpile thrown against Africa and most of Asia on the "Nuclear War of Global Super-Terror" (or some crazy shit like that) will probably occur sometime this century.

I'm breaking up Resident Hazards remarks so I can properly address each thought he put forward.



Until someone can present me a standard for what amounts to collective human progress, let alone impurities in the human race, that makes any sense, I can't even begin to identify with what you are suggesting. Do you consider the USA, a place that deifies idiotic celebrities and pop culture icons, or the greatest powers in Europe which are essentially depopulating through voluntary abstinence from procreation, to be the standards of human progress?

I'll be the first to admit that I prefer living in a society where I can attend mass without having the shit beat out of me by British Intelligence or British Royal/Church of Ireland cronies or their equivalents in the various part of the world, and I like the idea of eating the vegetables I've grown myself without some brute warlord confiscating 80% of them for his own use. Nonetheless, I don't see my own advantages as a human being as cause for indiscriminately wiping out entire civilizations via mass genocide.

You mentioned in a previous post that the Conquistadors were within the right when they destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations. While I generally agree that destroying the priesthood/tyrants that plagued those peoples with their backward practices of slavery and human sacrifice was justified, destroying and rebuilding said society could and should have stopped at tyrannicide rather than the ridiculous torture methods visited upon tribal peoples and the general people of those civilizations, many of whom could have been convinced through other means than mass murder.



This analogy doesn't hold up, and if it did, no one is forcing us to force said slower kid in our classroom. We have resources within our own lands, we have our own people to attend to, we don't need to educate the entire globe on how to worship Hanna Montana or whoever the hell the new flavor of the month is.



If we don't buy the fossil fuels from said nations and continue to export the means to procure them, we achieve the same result. Granted, I'm not on board with the crowd that believes that Armageddon is around the corner, nor do I think that any kind of solution to this problem will come from the Oil Cartel Controlled Western Governments and their trivial debating society in New York.

Hell, we could have avoided this entire situation if England, France and the USA had minded their own damn business in the early 1900s and not expanded a small skirmish between Germany and Serbia into a century-long cycle of political and social unrest.

I'll take protectionism and isolationism, though I don't really believe in either, over what you are suggesting, even if it means I have to put up with fighting with irrational activists over the need for new refineries or State governments who don't want to change their laws to make another tax the principle source of road maintenance besides gas taxes, as they guarantee that no alternative fuel would come into the market.