Gorochu said: Learn something from Germany, Japan. Japan has apologized and financially compensated the surviving victims of their atrocities many many times. Why they've never received credit for this, however, I do not understand. One thing is that a lot of people keep saying "Japan wasn't sincere enough" but Japan has tried many times to apologize and has given money many times so I don't know what people want them to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_reparations#Japan |
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Ryuk9428 said: Gorochu said: Learn something from Germany, Japan. Japan has apologized and financially compensated the surviving victims of their atrocities many many times. Why they've never received credit for this, however, I do not understand. One thing is that a lot of people keep saying "Japan wasn't sincere enough" but Japan has tried many times to apologize and has given money many times so I don't know what people want them to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_reparations#Japan Because everytime Japan apologise they deny it making the previous apology null. |
Gorochu said: Ryuk9428 said: Japan has apologized and financially compensated the surviving victims of their atrocities many many times. Why they've never received credit for this, however, I do not understand. One thing is that a lot of people keep saying "Japan wasn't sincere enough" but Japan has tried many times to apologize and has given money many times so I don't know what people want them to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_reparations#Japan Because everytime Japan apologise they deny it making the previous apology null. They really don't, only a few politicians have actually done that. If you look through the list, they've apologized over and over again and people just come up with excuses to say their apology wasn't enough. |
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| i wonder when the holocaust is going to be put aside. as much as i understand as to why the payments are important, there was more than one group of people affected by the atrocities of ww2, and many of these other groups (the poles, jehovah's witnesses, romani gypsies, homosexuals, etc) are yet to receive any compensation. interesting time to make additional payments though, as anti-seminitism and groups of the far right rise in germany. might be time to start some introspection. |
AnimeFreak-San said: is this a male gender issure...human issue...mental illness perhaps? |
Ryuk9428 said: simonephone said: How can you possibly call it ancient history when there are literally people who survived it alive right now? Some very strange logic imo. Heres a problem that exists today: some people still have very traumatic memories of when them and all their loved ones were systematically murdered and tortured by the German government. That's their lives. Not history. Because the world is changing extremely rapidly these days. Its almost like we're passing through a completely different era every two decades now. Think about it this way. In 1999, there were no smartphones, the internet barely existed, robots and virtual reality were only a sci-fi concept, Dubai was basically a desert with a few buildings scattered around, China was technologically living in the 1960s, hardly anyone knew what Al-Qaeda was, marijuana (including medical marijuana) was illegal everywhere except the Netherlands, the issue of gay marriage was still very controversial and politicians considered it political suicide to support it whereas now its political suicide not to support it. The world has changed extremely dramatically from just twenty years ago. However, the world in 1945? It was like a completely different world. In 1945... Racism was prevalent all over the world, black people were still getting lynched in the south, there was no air conditioning or heating in most homes, many people all over the world still slept on dirt floors (including many in Europe and America), many homes had no electricity, many homes had no television, even in the US and Europe, many homes around the world had no running water or toilets inside and people still used outhouses to go to the bathroom, the life expectancy for US men in 1940 was 62 years old which is 14 years less than the life expectancy today and that's despite the US having one of the highest life expectancy of any country during the 1940s. Graduating high school in 1940 was better than graduating college today with a Bachelors degree and you could get almost any job you wanted with a high school diploma. You could actually drop out of school in third grade if you wanted to in the 1940s. In France, execution through getting beheaded in public by a guillotine was still possible. France actually had their last public beheading in 1939 (legit with a crowd of people standing around and watching) and the last person beheaded in general was in 1977. I'm a history major, I love studying history. One of the biggest things history has taught me, is that people who use the past to make arguments about things going on today simply have no idea what they are talking about. Most people can't even imagine the shocking amount of differences in lifestyle and values, including moral values, that people in the past had. What would particularly shock people is the level of disregard people in the past had for human life and just how recently we started actually valuing human life the way we do today. As I mentioned, the last public beheading in France was in 1939 and these days, the idea of chopping somebody's head off in front of a crowd of people in a developed, first world country would be absolutely outrageous. Not only was there a public execution but apparently the crowd was very rowdy, using handkerchiefs to take the guy's blood as souvenirs, and taking photos of the decapitated body. The officials considered the crowd's behavior so disgusting that they didn't have anymore public executions because they realized that they were doing nothing but appealing to people's sadism. That kind of thing only happens in extremely backward countries today. How on Earth can we still hold Germany accountable for their actions, during a time when European nations were literally still beheading people in public? We live in an entirely different world now, so there's no reason to continue holding Germany accountable for what a previous government did in a completely different world and society. Nice, great to talk to a fellow history lover. That's interesting tho, the more interested I become in history the stranger it is to me that people view the past as something disconnected of the present. Youll have to forgive me for the novel I've written here in response, tho I'm sure you wont mind considering you've clearly put a lot of thought into your reply as well. Things are indeed constantly changing. I think it's interesting you used public beheadings as an example since I have personally watched someone be executed through the death penalty in a documentary. Which of course is not the same as witnessing a public beheading. But is it really all that different? It could very well seem equally barbaric to future people. the present is entirely built upon the past. The ways society has progressed is not random, it was through the direct actions and thoughts of individuals with opinions, talent or an agenda. Let me reiterate, I do agree that is is astonishing how different things are now. But we are quite literally living in the same world, only a few generations later. Just because societal attitudes have shifted doesn't mean suddenly we live in a void where history doesn't effect us. As a fellow history fan, dont you notice that literally all throughout human history, people have always always marveled at how far they've come, how great the technology is, and how much smarter they are than people of the past? And dont you notice how like, kind of naive it is to think that way, since they dont really know anything beyond the society they were born into? Well, welcome to how people in the future will view us. And, the holocaust isnt the first time a huge amount of jews have been massacred in Europe. Many were massacred by the Roman's and even more were massacred in hysterical panic when they were blamed for poisoning the wells during the plague. The holocaust was not just some random catastrophe, it is a pattern that has repeated itself all over europe for thousands of years. The jews were massacred because they had been historically scapegoated and blamed by Europeans everytime they had some unsolvable problem. There isnt a question of should the German government be held responsible for the holocaust. The same german government that exists now was responsible for the holocaust. Germany is not a different planet now because of technology. Obviously I'm not saying the german people should all hate themselves because of things they had no control over. Like, no. But perhaps they should try to be conscious that their society has historically had some flaws, and to try to consciously distance themselves from the horrific mindset of their ancestors. And yeah, a country that still exista that conducted state sponsored genocide should probably try to at least do something for the survivors who are still around. For the record I wasnt trying to say that reparations are an unquestionable practice, just was kind of shocked by seiya, someone whom I like and respect would be so flippant about genocide. I cant help but find it reprehensible to call the stories of those who survived concentration camps whining, that's an abhorrent mindset in my opinion and I think he should really think about why he feels so unempathetic to these people. Personally, it's not an issue I'm hugely educated on. Actually if you're interested in an explanation on systemic racism in America, I could have a way more engaging conversation with you about that. As a history major its definitely something I'd recommend you look into anyways. But what can the german government do for the living survivors really, in the end just handing them money will in fact do nothing to improve society. That said it just seems like the obvious ethical thing to do to me. When your government decides to systematically kill millions of innocent, I mean yeah they could at least try to do something for the people that were tortured who are now elderly and almost certainly are having some health problems due to government sponsored torture. The unfortunate thing about being human is that were not particularly rational. At the end of the day were heavily influenced by things like insider outsider tribal mentality, stereotypes, and emotions like fear or anger, which can pretty commonly become wildly misdirected. Society is not built off some objective form of logic and reason and it did not magically spring into existence from nowhere. All society is is a bunch of people who used to exist who influenced a bunch of people who sti exist in extremely complex, minute ways. It's easy to point out the ways in which history is different, but perhaps it's even more interesting to point out the ways in which thing never seem to change. Did you know ancient Rome had billboards? And tabloids? And celebrities? Did you know the oldest surviving Greek comedic playwright loved fart jokes? And that the Greeks loved him so much one of the most popular Greek plays of the day featured the god dionysus getting diarrhea? Did you know they've found evidence of a prelanguage ancient human who was able to live for quite a while despite being cripplingly disabled, implying someone loved them enough to sacrifice precious food and time to care for them? It's easy to look back at the past and think look at those kooky barbarians, they didn't know shit, while completely ignoring the fact that that's exactly how future people will someday be viewing us. We can learn a lot from the past. I mean, diogenes is smarter than 99% of people alive today, and he is old as shit (RIP in peace my captain). And in my opinion the quickest way to repeat the mistakes of the past is to ignore it. People tend to behave in predictable patterns. We can use our connections and knowledge of the past to do away with the aspects we now know to be negative and attempt to make a better future. That's how progress happens. |
ChromephoneAug 19, 2019 8:32 AM
Lost_Viking said: I find this extremely disrespectful and insensitive to the plight of the Jewish people. I hope you're not insinuating that 6 million dead Jews is a fabrication or myth. I suggest you educate yourself on the rich and beautiful History of Judaism. Now please, get with the pogram.Pretty soon there will be Holocaust survivors born in 1946 who will be saying that 40 million Jews died. |
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| Well, as long as there still is money for that... Economic prospects don't look that well... Also as expected, no mention of possible reparations for the expulsion of the Germans or the British starvation of Germans or how Denmark let thousands of German children die after WWII (you might need to disable Javascript or Adblock on desktop version) Everyone who knows a bit of German history knows that Germany is still a split-up ethnicity, see Kingdom of Germany (Regnum Teutonicum). Railey2 said: It may include murder, but it doesn't have to be literal killing:I believe that the definition of genocide includes murder, not just discrimination. "Es war ein Völkermord, das lässt sich nicht leugnen; aber nachdem die Vernichtung vollendet war, ist er ein Segen geworden. Was hätten die Preußen [gemeint sind die Prußen] in der Geschichte leisten können? Die Überlegenheit über die Preußen war so groß, daß es ein Glück für diese wie für die Wenden war, wenn sie germanisiert wurden." "It was a genocide, that cannot be denied; but after the destruction was completed, it became a blessing. What could the Prussians [the Old Prussians are meant] have accomplished in history? The superiority over the Prussians was so great that it was fortunate for them as for the Wends that they were Germanized." - translated with DeepL from the German Wikipage of genocide |
| @GERXjakobson I get a lot of what you're complaining about. I don't live in Germany myself so I can't say I really get it but in the US, where I do live, the media constantly tries to make white Americans feel guilty about slavery and Jim Crow. It is frustrating to be constantly made to feel guilty for something you didn't do. If you consider yourself a German patriot, that's completely fine. Its good to love the country you live in and its sad when someone feels dissatisfied with where they were born. But you really don't want to dabble in Nazi ideology or making excuses for them. What they did was heinous, and evil. They didn't protect Germany, they opened Germany up to invasion through militaristic aggression towards other nations and an obsession with racial purity. Any good things they did for the German economy is utterly contaminated by what they did later. Ultimately, they ruined the economy they created, because they went to war with so many countries and because of what they did, Germany became a threat to the world and had to be invaded. Berlin was destroyed, millions of German women were raped by the Russians, and many millions of German people died as a result of the Nazis actions. Germany ultimately did a good thing by trying to distance itself from the Nazis. If you really consider yourself a German patriot, then you should avoid the Nazi ideology like the plague and should not want Germany to ever be associated with that ideology again. But I do agree with you that Germany should forgive itself for what happened. Yeah, Nazi ideology was evil, but that's all in the past now. Germany is a very different country now. Pretty much the complete opposite of Nazi Germany. The rest of the world has forgiven Germany but Germany won't forgive itself for what happened. I hope you see this before your account gets suspended or banned. Don't let your frustration with a bunch of self-hating clowns in your country take you down a dark path that you'll ultimately end up regretting. |
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Noboru said: confusing etymology with the current meaning. Also it's really obnoxious how you always switch to German. This is an English forum. German should be used VERY sparingly, if at all. I get that you also feel very strong feelings for your fatherland, but you're doing it way too much,Well, as long as there still is money for that... Economic prospects don't look that well... Also as expected, no mention of possible reparations for the expulsion of the Germans or the British starvation of Germans or how Denmark let thousands of German children die after WWII (you might need to disable Javascript or Adblock on desktop version) Everyone who knows a bit of German history knows that Germany is still a split-up ethnicity, see Kingdom of Germany (Regnum Teutonicum). Railey2 said: It may include murder, but it doesn't have to be literal killing:I believe that the definition of genocide includes murder, not just discrimination. "Es war ein Völkermord, das lässt sich nicht leugnen; aber nachdem die Vernichtung vollendet war, ist er ein Segen geworden. Was hätten die Preußen [gemeint sind die Prußen] in der Geschichte leisten können? Die Überlegenheit über die Preußen war so groß, daß es ein Glück für diese wie für die Wenden war, wenn sie germanisiert wurden." "It was a genocide, that cannot be denied; but after the destruction was completed, it became a blessing. What could the Prussians [the Old Prussians are meant] have accomplished in history? The superiority over the Prussians was so great that it was fortunate for them as for the Wends that they were Germanized." - translated with DeepL from the German Wikipage of genocide anyway, don't talk to me. |
BarnaldAug 24, 2019 1:14 AM
| "my life at this state could be transposed into a pretty massive biography" - Cneq, "the guy who was literally using BTC in 2012 to make deals in the first main instance of a digital itemized economy forming naturally in all human history (also the precursor of NFTs) and who had 20k+ total trades.", 23 years old MAL's most prolific antivaxxer, Noboru. |
| ^ (*talks to myself*) I was quoting the relevant part of the original text Knowing about the origin of a word helps people in understanding the intention behind it Confusing "meaning" with "usage". I can't recall the thread at all, but I'm sure that I've talked with Railey2 about how names have a "meaning" and a "function". The "meaning" is from where the name is originated, while the "function" is what the name is used for, e.g.: "Railey2" has the function of identifying the user "Railey2" as "Railey2", while the meaning of the name is, well, it would be interesting to know, but Railey2 doesn't want me to talk to them, so I won't ask them. |
| I may be against things like slavery reparations, but how can you be against this? Even the US pays you money for being wrongfully imprisoned, and that is after they seemingly/hopefully had a fair trial and it was understandable to have made the mistake..... compare that to a bunch of kids that knowingly did nothing wrong (and i'm assuming it was worse than prison, especially considering shit was just hard at that time in general). |
| @simonephone Sorry for the very late reply to this but I wanted to give a proper response. I know people in the future are going to judge people from our age quite harshly assuming the future goes well. The way I see it, our future is either going to be wonderful, or a nightmare. Assuming it becomes wonderful, people from the future are going to think our meat and fish industry is absolutely abhorrent. Eventually we're gonna be able to clone meat so the idea of killing animals for it is going to become an outrageous at some point in the future. Eventually, the rest of the world is gonna catch up to the first world and events like ISIS's rampage through Iraq and Syria is going to be shocking. If our descendants think of us as barbarians, then that means we succeeded in the era we live in because we created a better tomorrow than yesterday. As far as where history leads us. History is what built everything we stand on, its true. The world would look very different if WW2 had not happened, the world would look very different if the holocaust hadn't happened. All those events set things in motion to be where we are today. However, that does not mean that what happened in the past is still relevant. And what I mean by this is that what was true of the past really cannot be used as evidence regarding arguments in the present. People do this very frequently and it just doesn't hold up. An example of this would be people often try to explain that America is more strict about sex than European countries because we're the descendants of 17th century puritans. This doesn't actually make any sense though because the Puritans are long gone, they really have no influence on the America that exists today. Cultures can change dramatically from era to era and there's pretty much no saying whether a culture will keep traits from their past or discard them entirely. Victorian England, for example, was notoriously puritanical and people avoided vulgar language in public. Nowadays, England is pretty much addicted to drinking, sex, and profanity. Weimar era Germany in the 1920s may have been the most tolerant society I can think of towards homosexuality, androgyny, crossdressing, and gender bending behavior. Even compared to modern society, Weimar era Berlin was a super gay place lol. Ten years later, the Nazis were throwing them in concentration camps and gassing them. One could say that the Nazis were a strong over-correction of the libertine culture of Weimar era Germany. Essentially, the strictness and puritanical nature of Nazi rule resulted from the perceived lack of order and decadence of the Weimar era. However, its still amazing that Germany was able to go from this place in 1930 where Berlin was literally a sex tourism location for homosexual men, where homosexual men around the world praised Berlin for its tolerance towards homosexuality compared to everywhere else, to ten years later in 1940 where those same men were at risk of being killed by the ruling government if their sexual orientation was discovered. So can we really say that Nazi ideology has anything to do with how Germans historically were? The way I see it, these kind of things happen not because of something deep down in the people of a country but rather that its kind of random. Nazi ideology happened to crop up in Germany, but it could been France, it could've been Spain. The only thing that really influenced it showing up in Germany instead of another country was that Germany chose the wrong team to support in WW1 and lost the war and the resulting trauma of WW1 left many Germans bitter and angry. The way I see it, Nazi ideology has no higher chance of being resurrected in Germany than it would in say, Greece or France. If I was to give the country where it has the highest chance of getting resurrected, I'd actually say Iran is the most at risk. Nazism and anti-Semitic attitudes are glorified by the Iranian regime's propaganda. A lot of Islamist extremists think Hitler was a hero. The idea of a neo-nazi regime cropping up in Iran isn't completely out of the realm of possibility. But the chances of it happening in Iran are thankfully still pretty small. And it looks like the influence of Islamic extremism in general is waning in Middle-Eastern countries. Middle-Eastern countries are another good example of how history really cannot predict how a society will behave in the present. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Middle East was actually surprisingly secular. Hijabs were rare, a lot of women wore miniskirts, and countries like Iran, Egypt, and Iraq had a major nightlife scene. The Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s was basically like Europe except with Islam. Then, Islamic extremism started rising through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and peaked from 2001-2017. Now in the past two years, there's been a cultural backlash against Islamic extremism in the Middle East. A lot of young people have seen the damage that terrorism and sectarian tensions has done to the region and want no part of that anymore. Saudi Arabia has passed several reforms and many people think the reason why Iran is trying to provoke Trump into a war is because of growing rebelliousness from their citizens towards the regime. The regime thinks that the US attacking Iran will get people supporting the regime again. So ultimately, I feel that societies can change so rapidly and so dramatically, that in a lot of ways, previous societies and governments essentially did live on a different planet. For that reason, I don't believe that modern day Germany should feel even remotely guilty or responsible for what happened in WW2. |
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Bayek said: Lost_Viking said: I find this extremely disrespectful and insensitive to the plight of the Jewish people. I hope you're not insinuating that 6 million dead Jews is a fabrication or myth. I suggest you educate yourself on the rich and beautiful History of Judaism. Now please, get with the pogram.Pretty soon there will be Holocaust survivors born in 1946 who will be saying that 40 million Jews died. I guess he wanted to point out that in recent times a trend has reemerged in which people - especially those of the juste milieu - try to become part of a victimised group by any means necessary. Most recent example being the case of the Irish journalist Marie Sophie Hingst that had made up a Jewish family history with supposed 20 Holocaust victims. At first media bought all of her lies blindly proofing the profitability of striking certain moral veines. However, slowly the truth emerged, most of her journalistic career was not based on facts and make-believe and she committed suicide. |
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fulohe1 said: There are no Nazis no more, at most ex-Nazis and pseudo-Nazis.Don't worry, Germany still gives pensions to Nazis. btw.: the foreigners for whom I welcome the payments the most are the loyal Askari. When Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German general who successfully resisted a take-over with the Askari even after the main forces had been already defeated in the Great War, had been buried, some of the still living Askari from his troop traveled to Germany (the only video I've found with voice and the relevant part). |
| @Ryuk9428 I knew I was gonna end up writing something horrifically long, lol I know no one asked me for this shit, but you've asked me probably the most complicated philosophical question I've ever seen asked on this forum, and if you want a full explanation I don't have a simpler answer. Totally agree w you on the meat issue, that's something I think about all the time. The disconnect you're seeing is coming from a overly literal interpretation of what people mean when they say things like modern American sexuality is influenced by Puritanical beliefs. Nobody is literally studying the views of American Puritans and saying yea these guys are great, lets base our sexual beliefs off that. The reality is far more complex. I think also the entire way you're grouping all things together into the topic of history is causing some confusion. History is a broad word that encompasses every single thing that's ever happened. The history of technology is for instance something that influences yet still evolves in a way that's entirely separate to say, the history of art or philosophy. It doesn't make sense to group these categories together without any divisions and just call it all progress. Let's take for instance your example of vr in the last post. You say that vr is a recent technology, but lets not forget the wonderful Virtual Boy which came out in 1995. And you'll probably say well the virtual boy doesnt count because it was shitty and in no way actually simulated reality at all. But like all subcategories of history the history of modern technology is not one that springs out of nowhere. The history of vr technology is the history of computers, animation, image projecting technology, programming, and many other rich historical subcategories. If we go back through any of these individual subjects through all the different microcosmic iterations of it's technological evolution you wont see some shocking random changes that came out of nowhere. You'll see tiny microscopic improvements with every new make and model that when looked at collectively form a coherent picture of evolutionary progress. If you put every single computer that humans ever made in a row and lined them up you would see a clear, visual evolution. It's like when you line up all the bones of early men and it's just obvious how they build upon each other. When you look at these things all together you can near objectively call it positive progress. This is physical history. But if you look at the history of, say, art or philosophy, what you'll find is entirely different. Art is not something that evolves in a straight line. It's more like a giant interconnecting fractal. I mean, look at the state of the American film industry today compared. I certainly wouldn't call that positive progress. With technology when something better comes along, the past is replaced, but this isn't true with art. Some of the most important, emotionally resonant, and relevant works of art are older. Have you ever seen Citizen Kane? Known mostly for it's vague title of "best movie ever made" whatever that means, it's also one of the most ingenious depictions of the human condition ever captured to film. I mean there's not really anything that dates it as a piece of art that couldnt exist today besides the literal technologys of the time (obviously nobody is getting rich off newspapers these days). It also looks better than 99.9% of all movies that came after it, simple shots of people doing normal things like reading a newspaper or arguing are rich with emotion. However unllike the film equipment that it was shot on had Citizen Kane been made today it wouldn't be of objectively higher quality. In fact it would obviously be worse, no one wants a remake of Citizen Kane. No matter how great some movies that come out today are they will never replace Citizen Kane in the popular consciousness, partly because of it's quality and partly just because every single person working in the film industry today has seen it. It's more than something that people look to because it's great, it's something that has influenced our collective unconscious whether we realize it or not. A more extreme example is Don Quixote, what is often considered the most important work of fiction of all time. Every single work of fiction published in the last several hundred years was highly influenced by Don Quixote. Don Quixote was the first character arc ever written. The premise is that Don Quixote is a madman, and he famously attacks windmills which he thinks are giants. The reason it is so important is that over the course of the book there is an internal shift inside Don Quixote. By the end of the book, he is sane. This was the first time in the entire history of fiction that the perspective shifted internally. Now the focus was on an internal arc as opposed to just stories about things happening to people. Don Quixote essentially invented the character arc, and in doing so is considered to be the first work of modern fiction. So when people say all works of fiction are influenced by Don Quixote, this doesn't mean that writers are directly looking to Don Quixote for inspiration. They don't have to. Because all art is influenced by other art. And unless you go back to pre 1600s literature it's impossible to find anything at all that's disconnected from this chain of something that was influenced by something that was influenced by something that was influenced etc ad nasuem all throughout these hundreds of years directly back to Don Quixote. This can be thought of as a collective subconsious. Don Quixote is so tied to modern fiction that it's influences are almost never intentional anymore. Even though most people have not read it we still obtain information from subconsciously. When people say we as Americans are influenced to this day by Puritan values, this is what they mean. It in no way means that modern Americans are looking to crusty old Puritanical philosophy intentionally. It means that the Philosophies of these people are inextricably tied to our culture, because it influenced a philosopher, or work of art, that influenced someone else etc etc. The history of social change and the idea of having a social conscience is a revolutionary development as part of philosophy. Did you know that we don't have a single record of anyone at all criticizing the morality of slavery before the 1600s? And this is including slaves! We don't even have records of literate ex slaves, which there were many of in the ancient world, ever saying anything like hey guys this is kind of immoral. To put that in perspective, that's almost 5000 years of human existence and literacy and philosophy . And before the 18th century the critics were almost entirely black people. Philanthropy and the very idea of having a social consiounce, caring about what's happening to people who are different from you - this is such a new idea. It goes directly against human in group out group tribal instincts. In the grand scheme of things 200 years is a drop in the bucket. It's not some default state of being it's a new idea people are still attempting to adjust to. Things like xenophobia, racism, or bigotry are words we've created to describe our natural in group/out group tribal mentality. As social creatures we feel a need for group acceptance and belonging. We are also inherently suspicious of the unknown or change. Racism is the natural state for our society to be in and the only way to combat things like that is to actively think about it and put effort into recognizing and trying to combat these toxic beliefs that manifest in our culture. It's true that it's impossible to predict cultural developments completely because there is an aspect to humanity that is just creative and random. But it's funny that you bring up the middle east as an example. That's actually not hard to explain. The reason that Iran developed more western values for a while was because the US and UK staged a coup to overthrow the current ruler of Iran and implement a puppet ruler because the old ruler had nationalized the oil industry and the US/UK didn't want to stop suckling the teat of that sweet sweet oil money. That ruler was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi also known as the shah and while some of the effects of his rule were positive like the fact that the veil was no longer enforced he was still a puppet ruler who tortured political dissenters so naturally both leftists and religious fundamentalists started to really hate him. There was a revolution and in the following political instability religious extremists seized power and Iranian leftists either had to move or go into hiding. I would really really highly recommend you read the masterpiece comic Persepolis, the autobiography of a girl from a family of political leftist revolutionaries and her experience dealing with the societal shift into extreme conservatism. It's absolutely amazing, and not only will it explain to you why all of that stuff happened it will show you first hand what it was like. Works like that can really illustrate the broad, complex reasons for social change that are so complex when looking at them from an outsider perspective they can only seem completely random. Which is why understanding the complex reasons for things like antisemitism and Europe might seem entirely nonsensical when you don't look too hard at the facts. The beginnings of Jewish persecution in Europe goes all the way back to the Roman empire massacring the Jews for not acknowledging their gods. Then the Christians took over and they blamed the Jews for killing Jesus. However the hatred started to die down after the fall of Rome until we hit a period known as the medieval warm period. This is a really important part of Medieval history because it enabled rapid expansion since the warm weather was beneficial to crop growth. Before this period the medieval world was made up of many unowned spaces, but after this there was what is known as the land crunch. Land was starting to become less and less available and as such people were forced closer together. In what had previously been a pretty stagnant medieval Europe we start to see social change that is directly tied to this warm period, the population boom and land crunch all of which contribute to a more intense kind of intense antisemitism that would carry on for the next 1000 years. They were massacred in the 1000s during the Crusades for being heathens. Then during the black plague over 10,000 Jews were massacred by unorganzed, unrelated communities all over Europe because Christians thought that they were poisoning the wells. After that I guess you could say that things got a little better for the Jews in that it would be quite a while until they would have to endure yet another massacre but antisemitism was still quite intense up until the 20th century And unfortunately antisemitism has been on the rise in Europe again in just the last decade. Here's are the results of a survey conducted by the ADL in 2009 and 2012: -Austria: Experienced a slight decrease to 28 percent from 30 percent in 2009. -France: The overall level of antisemitism increased to 24 percent of the population, up from to 20 percent in 2009. -Germany: antisemitism increased by one percentage point, to 21 percent of the population. -Hungary: The level rose to 63 percent of the population, compared with 47 percent in 2009. -Poland: The number remained unchanged, with 48 percent of the population showing deep-seated antisemitic attitudes. -Spain: Fifty-three percent (53%) percent of the population, compared to 48 percent in 2009. -United Kingdom: antisemitic attitudes jumped to 17 percent of the population, compared to 10 percent in 2009. To me and probably most other non Europeans these results are pretty shocking. I mean 63% of people in Hungary? God damn. But what's not surprising to me is the results for Germany, which rose the least of any other country aside from Austria. There are two main reasons for this. For one the modern German government is the only one of these government bodies that actively puts effort into combating modern Nazis and antisemitism. Actually, I would think Germany would be the least likely of all European countries to have another Nazi takeover, largely because of this government effort. But there's something much much more important going on here that I feel you're overlooking when you talk about historical events as disconnected or random. The triggering of societal shifts towards more overtly racist attitudes is always, always tied towards periods of social discontentment, economic struggles or fears of rapid social change. Go look into any historical period like this and I guarantee that's what you'll find. Let's look at the world happiness report. Do you want to guess which of those countries on that earlier bulleted list scored as the happiest? It's Austria. Followed by Germany. Followed by the UK. Hungary is the lowest, it's about 20 countries lower than the second lowest, which is Poland. The statistical order of happiest to least happy countries correlates almost perfectly with the order of least to highest increases of antisemitism. The reason that the holocaust happened in Germany when it did was not random, nor was it the fault of only the Germans. It's intrinsically tied to both Europe's long history of antisemitism and the disenfranchised German social climate of the time. German's were broke, dissatisfied, and had basically been blamed for WWI, which was a pointless war that can't be blamed on any one specific country. Dissatisfaction with society is not a rational experience. It's a personal, emotional experience. Our natural biological emotional programming is not rational nor is it built for modern society. We evolved to deal with society as small groups and to react suspiciously to humans outside of our tribe cause they might kill us or take our food. It makes things quite complicated for our now intrinsically interconnected global society. When the chips are down, it's a lot harder to take a serious look at your own society and try to imagine how to change complex systemic problems than it is to say, hey, everything was fine until THOSE people showed up, tainted our society, and ruined everything. Everything could be good again if we could only just remove all THOSE people. We have to kill the other tribe to save ourselves. It's easy to say hey, the 1940s were pretty fucked up, we've progressed now so there's no reason to worry about Europe's antisemitic cultural heritage. But one of the key problems with your arguement is there's nothing you said that couldn't also be said by a European guy in 1930. Hey, it's been 700 years since the last big Jewish massacre. Besides look at all this crazy modern technology. Moving pictures have sound now can you believe it! No reason to think about that unsavory history nope none at all. I mean, think about the technology rift between the 1350s and the 1940s. Can you even imagine explaining electricity, or movies to a medieval person? Our modern existence would be completely unfathomable to them. Teleport someone from the 1940s to modern time and they'd be pretty shocked but would still be able to eventually understand society, have a job, like they'd figure shit out. And yet despite all this unfathomable change the people of 1350 and 1943 responded in the exact same way when confronted with a society they could not cope with. In fact, rapid technological change pretty much always results in a significant portion of society doubling down on extreme conservatism and regressive beliefs. To equate technological progress 1:1 as a narrative for all societal progress doesn't make any sense. History is not a hard science. It's not math. You can't look at historical events and "prove" some sort of connectedness, it just doesn't work that way. "History" as a whole is inherently the most complex possible subject there is, because history is everything, it's now and it's everything that ever happened, and it's the narrative we use to understand our existence. Society is just a series of microcosmic influences that interconnect us to the past and future. Clearly you have a curious mind since you're interested in history. So it's just baffling to me that someone like that could look at all this information, these repeating patterns that exist all throughout history and just say, yeah, no connection, nothing worth thinking about or considering here. It just seems naive. I mean what's even the point of studying the past if it's all random and none of it matters? So what the fuck do we do about the Germans now? Is the modern German government responsible for the holocaust? The reason this is such a complex question is that the German government is both simultaneously an organization of individuals who most certainly weren't even alive back then and a system that has existed over an extremely long period of time. This system is the system that was responsible, it is just not run by the same individuals. The current people in charge of the system have worked hard to let people know that the system is different. That is good. But the fact is a lot of people alive today look up to the nazis, whether they wanna admit it publically or not. There are lots of people who want to see the German government go backwards. It is the job of the modern German government to actively distance themselves from their recent past. That is the extent to which they are responsible. It is also good that they're taking care of victums of the holocaust. The reason that it is good is not that the modern German government needs to prove how responsible they are or something absurd like that. It's good because it is ethical in an obvious way and beyond that serves as a powerful statement. It says that this person matters. They are not someone who can be cast aside. We stand against the immoral beliefs of our ancestors and we will not brush our history under the rug. Guess that's all thanks for coming to my ted talk gu ys |
| @simonephone I suppose that "random" might've been the wrong word to use. There are certainly reasons for why things happen. I think using the word "random" sounded like a fairly intellectually nihilistic perspective to come from. I wasn't intending to come off that way. I understand that everything in life is a chain of events that lead to the big things that happen. What I meant by "random" was actually that there's nothing inherent about certain nations' cultures that cause them to be the way they are at this current moment in history. A country may deliberately choose to not change and be the same. In this case, you might be able to see aspects of their culture that go back fairly far. But in many cases, countries also choose to be the complete opposite of what they used to be. You can often see certain countries swinging wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other on various issues. Germany from 1930 to 1940 is a good example of this. In 1930, before the Nazis rose to power. Germany was literally the best place in the world to be homosexual. Berlin in 1930 was basically a libertine's paradise. There were no social codes against, pretty much any kind of behavior. You could do anything you wanted. In 1940, literally ten years later, Berlin was probably the worst place you could be in if you were homosexual. I'm not saying there weren't reasons for this. A major reason why Germans may have welcomed the Nazis authoritarian style and puritanical attitudes is because of the feeling of having lost all sense of order and security in Weimar era Germany. Basically people in the Weimar era went too far with the drugs, the alcohol, the gender bending behaviors and the sex. People don't like walking out of their apartment to see some guy overdosed on heroin at their doorstep. People who are afraid are much more likely to support a strict government that likes to control people. Where the "randomness" comes in is that I'm saying that life can effect countries in a random sense just like a natural disaster. Sometimes, things happen to the collective conscience of a country that nobody saw coming. WW1, for example, it kind of just happened to Germany. All of Europe really made a huge mistake getting involved in Austria and Serbia's mess even if their alliances dictated that they should. But there's no way anybody at the time could've known the colossal loss of life and damage to their infrastructure that WW1 would do. So from their perspective at the time, they had to honor their alliances and hopefully the war would be over in a few months. So even though it was a huge mistake, realistically, it would've been extremely difficult to predict that WW1 would turn out the way it did. So I'm not saying they were idiots for making that mistake, simply human. Technological process, to a certain extent, has coincided with an increase in human morality and empathy. Its not a perfect correlation. Often times, leaping forward in technology can, at first, have the opposite effect because the first technological advances are usually military advances and essentially, make it easier to kill more people faster. Increases in population can also result in very harsh living conditions. I would say, for example, that trying to live in London during the 18th century would've been a much rougher experience than trying to live in London during the 12th century. This is evidenced by the high levels of crime in 18th century London. Officials were so desperate to control crime in the 18th century they were hanging people for basically anything. The gin craze, partially a result of cheap liquor but also likely had roots in people's deep dissatisfaction with their lives, and the disgusting living conditions of London at the start of the industrial revolution. 12th century London would've still been rough by today's standards but the relatively small size of it would've made the issues much more manageable. However, while technological process can make things rougher in the beginning, usually it gets to a point where it makes things a lot better than before. Life today in first world countries is incredibly easy compared to two hundred years ago. The biggest problems people usually have is not being able to achieve their life purpose. But the biggest problems people 200 years ago had was that smallpox just killed all their children or they didn't produce enough food to survive the winter and their whole family could starve to death. Today, we produce food so easily that people starving to death isn't even a reality anymore in first world countries today. We're far more likely to die of the complete opposite situation, obesity as a result of over-eating. If you had told people 200 years ago, that we've pretty much eliminated famine in the majority of the world, they would be shocked. 200 years ago, even if there was no major famine going on, you could simply not produce enough food, not have enough money to buy any, and your family could die because of that. There was no welfare state to prevent that from happening. As a result of life getting a lot easier, people ultimately are happier and lead more fulfilling lives without having to worry about every illness killing them or worry about starving to death. There's also the fact that the modern world offers a huge plethora of entertainment options that people in the past just didn't have. People in the past were too worried about not dying to really have anywhere near the amount of fun people today have. It may sound silly to say this, but the fact that people can have much more fun today does matter. It matters because people value their own lives way more than people in the past did. It always strikes me as incredible that governments in the past had no trouble finding assassins willing to be tortured to death in the most horrific ways possible in countries with such low populations for what wasn't even a lot of money. Hitmen today charge much higher prices for much lower risk and I think its because people today simply value their life more. Because people value their life more, they feel much worse about taking somebody else's, and I think that's fundamentally why humans have become so much less violent than in the past. For that reason, positive technological progress does correlate with positive moral progress. However, you're right that progress isn't always positive. The future could be disastrous for us. As many novels have shown, we could end up living under dystopian governments that are terrifyingly powerful because of technology. We could pollute the landscape beyond recognition. We could have a nuclear war destroy everything. We could become so overpopulated that most people have to live in disgusting shanty towns. I hope that doesn't happen, and I don't actually believe that will happen. But it is a possibility and if that happened, it would be a good example of technological progress not necessarily being positive. |
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| But Germany already went through 1-2 "Ship of Thesus cycles" at this point. And if you want to be technical, the Federal Republic of Germany is a completely seperate "body" apart from the "(Third) German Reich". Like some nations still technically being at war with Hitler's nation and the Federal Republic of Germany never having declared war on another nation and never having another nation declared war against it. And the fact that the jews are the sole recipients of any "left-over guilt-based compensation" is quite discriminatory against all other victims of the Third Reich. Isn't it racist to give Jews privileges just for being Jews? (And ironically the Jews themselves aren't even at fault for this.) Generalizing doesn't become good just because the action attached to it happens to be positive. As an example, do you think someone who sells something at completely normal prices but gives white people a special discount (i.e. doesn't harm any non-whites, only reinforces whites) would NOT be considered racist? See, it's the discrimination itself is the action that's being frowned upon, and NOT the "damage based on discrimination" part of it like many seem delude themselves to think it goes. However even that's not quite it, as there seems to be some sort of "cherrypicking" involved, just on a different axis of the tuple, so to say. Did any of you notice? Discrimination is actually NOT in general being frowned upon, but rather only against specific groups. You know who that is. Think of the terms "anti-semitism", "racism", "xenophobia", "sexism", "homophobia", "transphobia", "islamophobia" - and that's it. These (those usually refered to with these terms) are the only groups that are publicly able to be "discriminated against". Have you ever seen discrimination being called upon for any other groups aside from those I mentioned? Do tell, because I am geniuninely, unironically curious who that might be. Think about it. Are people speaking up for Eastern Europeans being demeaned openly for the governments they chose in their elections? No, rather they they discriminated against as "dumb hicks" or whatever for electing people like Orban. I don't think I need to explain about Russians? Appearently generalizations are entirely OK, as long as they don't belong to one of the "protected groups", whatever the reasons for that may be. Same for Asians and the issue of Affirmative Actions. Talk about racial stereotypes in regards to black people? Racist. Talk about racism of low expectations in regards to black people being expected to score worse than white people and Asian people? Or expecting Asians to appearently score better "for not specified reasons"? Calling it racial quotas? All these objections will just either get ignored or cause you to be called a "conspiracy theorist". So really, as far as I am concerned, most people talking about "serious issues" in regards to anti-semitism more often than not fail to adhere to their own standards of treating people equally. Though to be fair, that isn't because people are evil. It's because they CAN'T do that to begin with if they treat individuals as collectives. So the real solution is to just treat people like individuals entirely. If not, then I don't see much different in terms of immorality compared to what many people seem to see in a "country hick racist". |
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Grey-Zone said: 1) The Federal Republic of Germany is officially not the legal successor of the German Empire, but identical with it (link only in German; DeepL usually translates things fine for the non-German speaking users), so Ship of Theseus fits it very well, but it's not a completely separate body, even if the constitution and the legal system is different.But Germany already went through 1-2 "Ship of Thesus cycles" at this point. And if you want to be technical, the Federal Republic of Germany is a completely seperate "body" apart from the "(Third) German Reich". Like some nations still technically being at war with Hitler's nation and the Federal Republic of Germany never having declared war on another nation and never having another nation declared war against it. 2) Yes, we're still enemies of the UN in legal terms, together with Japan. Not sure about Italy and other Axis countries, though. |
| Its good that Germany still does this Good news |
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| @Ryuk9428 I understood what you meant by random, that's what I was disagreeing with. Your perspective seems contradictory to me. There is something inherent about every nations culture that cause them to be the way they are at any given moment and that is the many interlocking chains of events you just acknowledged. That's all society is. Also people actually DID predict WWI, so saying it was impossible to predict isn't true. Frederich Engles for one. He predicted an incoming conflict between Germany and the rest of Europe that would be marked by violence on a scale “hitherto unimagined.”So did other people if you look into it. A lot of people saw the writing on the walls that shit was gonna go down. While I agree with you about how typically the conservative backlash that comes with new technologies eventually changes into positive societal progress I have to say I find your perspective about our own societal issues, well, naive. Lots of people still have to face systemic violence, for example black people in America are three times more likely to be murdered by the police . Less than a third of these people were allegedly armed at the time. They're also 30% more likely to be pulled over, 20% more likely to be sentenced to jail time for the same crime as white people, and typically see sentences 20% longer. Racial and LGBT hate crimes have risen dramatically in the US and Europe over the past few years. Also, one in five children in this country at some point in any given year are forced to go hungry because they don't have enough food. It sounds more like the biggest issue in YOUR life is whether or not you will be able to achieve your dreams, which granted is true for me as well because I'm just some white girl who doesn't have to deal with much systemic oppression. But systemic issues still exist whether they effect you or not. Your point that people value their lives more seems like a bit of an assumption. I mean, where are you getting that information from? People in the past didn't give a shit if they lived or died? When did they start to care more? When we all got TVs?I mean in America the suicide rated has skyrocketed in the past 20 years. I don't get what your point is or how this is relevant. I guess overall not really understanding your point anymore. I'm sorry if this is kind of blunt but the core of your argument seems to be just listing off a bunch of random historical events and saying see? I don't see any connection between these things so obviously there isn't one. My point was that these things only seem random to you because you're not putting in the effort to research the context of why these things happened, of which there is a unquanitfiable amount of for any historical event you could name. Everything is connected and everything has a reason, probably a huge amount of minute reasons that all build on each other, even if the results of the initial effect don't seem obvious at the time. I was trying to illustrate the ways in which everything is connected and the fact that studying and making meaning of historical patterns is one of our greatest abilities as a species. If you wanna keep naming things that seem random to you we can spend the rest of our lives here on this anime forum going over every single thing that's every happened in human history and the contextual reasons that brought us to those events, together we can sit here and deconstruct all of reality. I don't even know very much about history we can research this shit together. I mean I got time. And man we already did pollute the landscape beyond recognition. There is no if, that's done. Our current society is driving us towards an environmental apocalypse and our government is too busy trying to murder everyone in the middle east and jacking off to their money piles to care. So assuming we don't all die because of this I see more of the same. I see historical power structures that have existed for 100s of years continuing to exist. And moreso I see that some people will have power and material goods and be fine, and many many others will suffer horribly because these goods wont be properly distributed. That's how things always have been and how things will continue to be. I never said society was worse now, I was saying that progress wasn't some singular linear thing and that our modern reality is still far from ideal. I mean yeah man I'm right there with you, I love all this modern shit, I'd probably go jump off a building if I suddenly couldn't spend every single second of my free time getting stoned and playing video games. Absolutely would not want to go back into the past to be a herion addict in 1930s Germany. I'm not really sure what you're trying to convince me of at this point. EDIT: To ask more clearly, what is the validity of your political perspective? You've been very interesting to talk to so I am not being sarcastic or anything. You've got a perspective I've honestly never considered before so I am genuinely interested. I've explained the existence of these interlinking chains which you yourself have acknowledged. I explained how this related to visible, repeating historical patterns using antisemtism in Europe as an example and by explaining how these patterns are inextricably tied to the collective subconscious. So what is your point here? Why should we ignore the chains that bind us to the past? Why should we ignore patterns that demonstrably still effect our modern reality? How could this ever be a useful political perspective? I just don't get it. |
ChromephoneAug 24, 2019 10:59 AM
| I don't want to barge into your conversation like this, but I feel like I should address this despite that because I recently heard a perspective on this that I think fits quite well into this conversation. simonephone said: EDIT: To ask more clearly, what is the validity of your political perspective? You've been very interesting to talk to so I am not being sarcastic or anything. You've got a perspective I've honestly never considered before so I am genuinely interested. I've explained the existence of these interlinking chains which you yourself have acknowledged. I explained how this related to visible, repeating historical patterns using antisemtism in Europe as an example and by explaining how these patterns are inextricably tied to the collective subconscious. So what is your point here? Why should we ignore the chains that bind us to the past? Why should we ignore patterns that demonstrably still effect our modern reality? How could this ever be a useful political perspective? I just don't get it. I myself used to be fairly neutral/agnostic towards this issue, but I have recently heard an interesting perspective on this issue that holds quite the opposite view of yours, namely that "history repeating itself" is just an illusion, at least in the way it seems to be used currently. As for the reason, it's because supposedly you can only take history as a whole set and absolutely not as a sub-set due to interconnected factors mutually affecting each other, which could be dealt with if you had a complete grasp on the world at the time you are comparing the current times with, but you'd usually not - you'd usually not even truly grasp the current times, much less people you have opposing views with. Not knowing these, i.e. only "knowing a sub-set of history" creates a fatal flaw in anyone's view on history. Not to mention large-scale revisionism at the time the relevant parts of history were written, that cannot be detected today, due to lack of alternative evidence, are an even greater problem, though that's more on issues further into the past. So to give an example, while anti-semitism might exist both now and in the past, the ROOT CAUSE cannot simply be assumed to be the same, and the NATURE of the dislike/hatred also cannot be assumed to be the same. There is also a difference between those who dislike Jews in general, Jews who are rich and show a certain behaviour, or maybe just Jewish Isrealites. Contrary to popular believe irrational hatred towards groups of people can also be quite "diverse" like that. So if you just assume that the reasons, extent, and "type" of the dislike/hatred are all one and the same as in the past, you're most definitly wrong. In the first place, why were be "taught" to frawn upon "anti-semitism" specifically and not, say, "discrimination" in general? I already brought that up in my earlier post, so I won't go into detail on that, but speaking about Nazis and Jews specificially, why is Jew-hatred even linked to National Socialism by default? If you think about it makes no sense. National Socialism is just a system of government, a "framework" so to say. So why do we make specific assumptions about NS? For Monarchy, another system of governments, we make no specific assumptions. We know that during middle ages, the implementation of Monarchy in France came with hatred against English people. On the other hand, implementation of Monarchy in England meant hatred against French people. There is clearly a "spot" for a Monarchy to have an "enemy" sometimes that spot is filled with one enemy nation or group, sometimes it's filled with multiple ones, and sometimes there is none. The actual target of the hatred is ABSTRACTED away for Monarchy in general, because it depends on the actual implementation and circumstances of the country that adopts it. National Socialism, however, is, for appearently no good reason, assumed to always specifically come in a package with hatred of Jews. Why? Perhaps because there are no "alternatives" specified? If France was the only Monarchy in the world, perhaps we'd assume that Monarchy always runs on hatred towards Englishmen. And which view is the correct one? Obviously the abstracted version, of course. It is possibly for a nation to be National Socialist without having their targets be jews, but instead having an entirely different "scapegoat" for their problems or for being declared "unclean" by genes alone. So if you base anti-semitism based off National Socialism and the jews as some sort of generalized target for discrimination, then i'd disagree. The current day standards are completely different. I'd say making a historical comparison might even influence your view in a bad way and can lead you to thoughts about the situation regarding jew hatred and other issues, you'd otherwise think as absurd or not correct. The idea of "learning from history" is tempting and can cause one to be easily biased in favor of historical precedents repeating themselves. Why? Because it gives one the feeling of "having completely understood the problem and all possible solutions, leaving only the implementation of the solution(s) to do", but that might leave to a bad awakening once you'd realize that the issue is of a completely different nature compared to what you'd thought. Of course ignoring history alltogether would be foolish, but I think, to take the current case as an example, it'd be wiser to view the jewish genocide by the nazis and its reasons and methods as an example of discrimination justified with eugenics in general as a concept, rather than specifically "anti-semitism", since that is irrationally going too far into absolutes. Your version of events is taking the "pattern" to far and doesn't conceptualize the issue enough. |
Grey-ZoneAug 24, 2019 12:40 PM
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| @simonephone and @Grey-Zone I'll go ahead and reply to both of you, you're free to "barge in," I mean that's what a public forum is for after-all. I still don't feel like you quite get what I mean by "random." I never tried to claim that there aren't many reasons for why things happen. I know that little events occur which set off a chain reaction of events that lead to other events. I'm just saying that the way a national culture was in the past really cannot predict how it will be in the future because national cultures change so dramatically. Only 25 unarmed black people are shot per year. The fact that they're more likely to get shot than white people probably has to do with the fact that black neighborhoods are much higher crime areas than white neighborhoods are. Despite being more likely to though, the number of unarmed black people shot by police is a truly miniscule number. Approximately 95% of all people shot by the police were actively attacking an officer. Even then, a lot of the 5% that did result in someone being shot was an accident. We cannot expect the police to be absolutely perfect and never make mistakes. The fact that a few mistakes happen every year in a country of 330 million people is not evidence for systemic racism. Its not that people in the past didn't give a shit whether they lived or died, its that they didn't treasure their lives the way a lot of people today do. To a much greater extent, I'd say they accepted the possibility that they could die. I think people today are much more scared of death and care a lot more about whether they live or die. You can see this with the way warfare is fought nowadays. The casualties of modern battles are extremely low compared to the past. We don't even have real battles anymore, most "battles" are basically a series of skirmishes that last for months at a time. Each skirmish usually kills about 10-20 people and that's about it. If you watch modern day warfare videos, you can see why the casualties are very low. Its because the soldiers don't even seem to be trying. Don't look at the worst wars going on for a proper example. Iraq and Syria is a bad example because ISIS legitimately don't care if they live or die. But if you look at gun-battles in Ukraine for example. Its amazing how calm "war" looks. The soldiers are literally walking around like they are in the park, they will grab a gun, take a few shots into the woods, put their gun down, walk over and talk to somebody for a little bit, relax, pick up their gun again and fire a few shots. Some skirmishes do have a lot of gunfire going on, but usually the soldiers under heavy fire just stay in cover and don't move. There just doesn't seem to be a huge effort on either side to truly win the battle. Nobody is willing to risk their lives, its like they just want to get through it. Soldiers today would rather retreat and lose a battle than suffer too many casualties. In many wars in the past, it would take a very large percentage of the army dying to force a retreat. Armies today retreat if they think they'll lose more than 15 men. Obviously this is a good thing, but its amazing to see how much warfare has changed. My perspective is that a nation can change and become whatever nation it wants to be regardless of what it may have been in the past. I don't think we should connect things that happened way in the past as a part of the national culture anymore if that's not a part of the modern day country. As you mentioned, Germany is probably one the least likely places for Nazism to rise again. |
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| GOOD! One thing I can say about Germany is that they truly do seem to have learned their lesson and YES, they absolutely should NEVER forget what they did and apologizing and trying their hardest to make amends is always the correct course of action. I do like how SOME people here seem to have a legitimate gripe with one of the WEALTHIEST nation's in the world giving money to a group of people they literally tried to wipe out. I'd love for these people to give me their explanation, but I feel it would be a very twisted one Also...JAPAN....how about taking some fucking notes? |
--ALEX-- said: GOOD! One thing I can say about Germany is that they truly do seem to have learned their lesson and YES, they absolutely should NEVER forget what they did and apologizing and trying their hardest to make amends is always the correct course of action. I do like how SOME people here seem to have a legitimate gripe with one of the WEALTHIEST nation's in the world giving money to a group of people they literally tried to wipe out. I'd love for these people to give me their explanation, but I feel it would be a very twisted one Also...JAPAN....how about taking some fucking notes? Well I am looking forward to see the 90 year old nazis "make amends" in their remaining 2-3 years, sure. Meanwhile the "current" generation, among which are many Russian and Polish immigrants, are paying both the Jews AND the culprits (pensions). If you want to find something good from that, I guess you could say that the unrepentant 90+ year old nazis MIGHT feel humilated from being paid alongside the Jews. IF you stretch your logic like that, that is. And later we'll have to remind the French that the whole reign of terror thing with Robespierre is a no-no. Remind the Vatican/Italy and Greece that the Roman Republic/Empire and Athens permitting slavery is a big no-no. Remind Africans and Americans that selling their people and buying foreign people as slaves is a big no-no. Perhaps we should just remind all humans that doing bad things is a big no-no? You are, of course, free to come to Germany and tell random people on the street the same words you said in your post. If you want some sort of excuse or venue, you could just do it at an anime convention or the GamesCom, if you prefer. I'd be curious about the reactions. Of course since you feel no guilt and feel nothing is wrong with what you said, there shouldn't be a problem to say it to the peoples' faces, right? |
Grey-ZoneAug 24, 2019 5:22 PM
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| I mean at least it's better than paying money to refugees who want to destroy your country lmao |
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| So a generation that wasn't responsible for the holocaust or even alive during it, should pay for a generation that was subjected to it over 70 years ago? Or am I misunderstanding that? |
Cneq said: it's better than paying money to refugees who want to destroy your country Why want refugees to destroy Germany? |
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| @Ryuk9428 Yeah, so where exactly are you getting that information? 1,164 people were killed by the police in 2018. Black people were 25% of those people despite being 13% of the population. 69% of these people were nonviolent and had no weapon. You can actually look at every single one of those cases if you want they're meticulously documented on the website I'm getting these statistics from. So yeah, no on that. And you didn't even comment upon the other things I've mentioned. Black people receive 20% longer sentences and are more likely to be proven guilty for the SAME CRIME as white people. They're 30% more likely to be pulled over for doing the SAME THINGS are white people. People have done studies where the same job application is submitted with white sounding and black sounding names, and typically black names received on average 50% less call backs for the literal same application.It wasn't until the 1990s that 50% of Americans approved of inter racial marriage. And it wasn't until the 1965 until jim crow laws were overturned and black people officially stopped being literal second class citizens. White people own 90% of the wealth in this country despite being only 77% of the population while black people, who make up 13% of the population have 2% of the wealth. Explain how you know for sure that all of these things are unrelated. Because cell phones ain't gonna cute it. Explain how Citizen Kane and Don Quixote can still be relevant but the holocaust, one of the most significant events in all of human history is not, and how it's unrelated to the modern rise in antisemetic hate crime, which has risen quite dramatically since 2012. Maybe our army is not so enthusiastic about shooting middle eastern people because modern American warfare is completely, unjustifiably, horrifically unethical, and there's no reason for us to be doing this in the first place besides oil money. All modern middle eastern instability is because of historic US meddling and terrorism. We create an enemy so we can invade and be constantly at war to make money off weapons and oil because ware is extremely profitable for just a few people. Don't believe me? Where do you think Al Qeada got those weapons in the first place? Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan. That don't seem like valuing life to me. I mean, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna pretend those last couple paragraphs seem like anything more than a comforting progress narrative that you can use to delude yourself about how much of history is built upon horrific human suffering. I don't really see any reason to believe any of that other than that it's kind of comforting.I'm just not seeing any evidence at all to support this and I don't think it makes any sense. You know historic people fought long and hard just to survive, and in American suicide rates have gone up 24% in the last 20 years. I'm not saying people value life less today... I mean I don't know I don't think this is something that really even exists or changes over time? I mean America's economy relies on sweat shop workers making slave wages. I mean who do you think made that phone of yours? You think it was there dream to work in Apple's sweat shop? |
ChromephoneAug 25, 2019 1:22 PM
| @Grey-Zone Just because we can never hold a complete grasp of every single thing that ever effected anyone ever we should remain ignorant? Why is it all or nothing? This argument seems more like a way to technically never be wrong in a really pedantic way rather than a useful way to understand our society. Of course we can never know everything. We can still observe the way major events ingraine themselves in our culture. I used art as an example in an earlier post. You guys get the way Don Quixote has embedded itself in our culture right? Things like colonialism, jeudeo christian values and historical antisemetism effect the world at large in similar ways. Also, rich jews who behave a certain way? And what way would that be? Just because multiple stereotypes exist about the Jews doesn't mean that these antisementic views don't overlap. Do you really think people who hate Jewish Israelites are just totally fine with those "rich Jews that behave a certain way"? Why do you think these groups and belief systems are exclusive to each other? We're taught to frown upon both of those things. Did no one seriously ever tell you that discrimination is general is a bad thing? That's one of the most basic moral tenements of our society. We are taught that antisemitism is bad because antisemitism in Europe specifically has resulted in the deaths of millions of people who were massacred over thousands of years and it's important to try to prevent that from happening again. We can be taught that both of those things are bad, why is it one or the other?. You're not wrong in a super technical way. Like yeah, I guess there could, theoretically, be a NAZI movement that was unrelated to the jews at all. And sorry but I'm not calling NAZIs national socialists, I'm calling them NAZIs. In the same way that America could, theoretically, shift into a perfect classless communist society in the next couple months. But if we actually take a practical look at the world it becomes obvious why none of these things will be happening. The NAZI partys most major contribution to society was murdering millions of people in the very few years they even existed as the German political party that was in charge. Anyone willing to join a modern NAZI party condones that history, and typically idealizes it. The monarchy example is not comparable because the effects of the english and french monarchy was not that they massacred millions of people in less than a decade and then ceased to be an existing political system. We remember these institutions for the ways in which they actually existed, not the theoretical ways in which we want them to. What standards are different now? Jews are still stereotyped the way they have been for hundreds of years and still face the same hate crimes they did hundreds of years ago. So my issue with this take is that it gets so heavily abstract that it completely removes itself from society at all. It's an ivory tower philosophy with no real world application. |
simonephone said: @Ryuk9428 Yeah, so where exactly are you getting that information? 1,164 people were killed by the police in 2018. Black people were 25% of those people despite being 13% of the population. 69% of these people were nonviolent and had no weapon. You can actually look at every single one of those cases if you want they're meticulously documented on the website I'm getting these statistics from. So yeah, no on that. And you didn't even comment upon the other things I've mentioned. Black people receive 20% longer sentences and are more likely to be proven guilty for the SAME CRIME as white people. They're 30% more likely to be pulled over for doing the SAME THINGS are white people. People have done studies where the same job application is submitted with white sounding and black sounding names, and typically black names received on average 50% less call backs for the literal same application.It wasn't until the 1990s that 50% of Americans approved of inter racial marriage. And it wasn't until the 1965 until jim crow laws were overturned and black people officially stopped being literal second class citizens. White people own 90% of the wealth in this country despite being only 77% of the population while black people, who make up 13% of the population have 2% of the wealth. Explain how you know for sure that all of these things are unrelated. Because cell phones ain't gonna cute it. Explain how Citizen Kane and Don Quixote can still be relevant but the holocaust, one of the most significant events in all of human history is not, and how it's unrelated to the modern rise in antisemetic hate crime, which has risen quite dramatically since 2012. Maybe our army is not so enthusiastic about shooting middle eastern people because modern American warfare is completely, unjustifiably, horrifically unethical, and there's no reason for us to be doing this in the first place besides oil money. All modern middle eastern instability is because of historic US meddling and terrorism. We create an enemy so we can invade and be constantly at war to make money off weapons and oil because ware is extremely profitable for just a few people. Don't believe me? Where do you think Al Qeada got those weapons in the first place? Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan. That don't seem like valuing life to me. I mean, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna pretend those last couple paragraphs seem like anything more than a comforting progress narrative that you can use to delude yourself about how much of history is built upon horrific human suffering. I don't really see any reason to believe any of that other than that it's kind of comforting.I'm just not seeing any evidence at all to support this and I don't think it makes any sense. You know historic people fought long and hard just to survive, and in American suicide rates have gone up 24% in the last 20 years. I'm not saying people value life less today... I mean I don't know I don't think this is something that really even exists or changes over time? I mean America's economy relies on sweat shop workers making slave wages. I mean who do you think made that phone of yours? You think it was there dream to work in Apple's sweat shop? Blacks were 25% of the people shot by police yet commit 50% of the violent crime in the US indicating that they should be 50% of the criminals police encounter thus being 50% of the people shot. If anything, the police are being pretty restrained with them compared to white criminals. 90% of people shot by police were armed with a weapon and 90-95% of people were either attacking the officer or another citizen. Black cops were 67% more likely to accidentally shoot a black suspect than white cops were and Hispanic cops were 145% more likely to accidentally shoot a black suspect. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings/ 69% were originally pulled over for a nonviolent offense but that doesn't mean they were nonviolent at the time of being shot. A lot of criminals are really belligerent and start threatening the police. The police are worried for their lives, and for the most part, they do make the right call but every now and then, someone fucks up. Its literally impossible for, out of the 800,000 police officers out there, for nobody to ever fuck up in a dangerous, high stress situation. Black people go to prison for longer than white people do for the same sentence because black criminals have longer criminal records on average, black criminals also seem less likely to be rehabilitated into society. A lot of them have very poor employment records, have children with multiple different women, have a history of abusing intimate partners. There are white criminals with similar records, but there's more white criminals that have a squeaky clean record before getting charged with a crime. What kind of person you are plays a huge role in what kind of sentence a judge and jury will give you. More of the black criminals simply appear to be career criminals or generally have very low impulse control than white criminals. Thus, why we have higher prison sentences. Asians are not white yet are more successful than white people, they make more money, do better in school, have lower rates of poverty, and are less likely to go to prison than white people are. Are we going to start claiming that white people are being oppressed by Asians in America? In 1990, 81% of Americans thought marijuana should be illegal and only 16% thought it should be legal. Today that number has changed to 66% thinking it should be legal and 30% thinking it should be illegal. As I've mentioned before, public opinion on various issues can change very dramatically in a much shorter time period than people think. So I'm really not all that concerned over whether people in the 1980s thought inter-racial marriage was bad. I wasn't mentioning a conflict involving any US military members. I cited the Ukrainian conflict as my primary example. Quite frankly, this conspiracy theory that the US "created Al-Qaeda" simply because they naively gave weapons to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan is ridiculous. The Mujahadeen were already fighting the Soviets, we didn't realize they were evil, we knew the Russians had bad intentions, so we helped the people we thought were the good guys. Case closed. There was no intention of creating a terrorist organization. My last two paragraphs really had nothing to do with that. My last two paragraphs are saying that humans have changed a lot to become much less violent than we were in the past. Whether its evolution, culture, or whatever can be debated in a separate argument. But the facts remain that we are, by leaps and bounds, more peaceful than we were in the past. |
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| @simonephone See, you are proving my point right there. You are expecting "more" discrimination against groups that have been historically recently discriminated/persecuted against. But if you look back further into history, you'd see that the target of discrimination often changes or the type/method changes. If you want to use "historical precedents", then how about just using the example we have been using up until now? Say a Jewish family in the 1930s remains in Germany. When asked why they aren't afraid of the nazi take over and why they don't run away across the border, they'll answer: "Historically speaking, in the worst case, I'd just have to tell them that I'd convert. Just like how Jews in the Middle Ages that were persecuted could settle the manner simply by officially converting to Christianity. Now we'd just have to do it politically. It wouldn't hurt my conscience to pretend to do so for my own survival." But then they'd go to the gas chamber anyway, because they didn't take into account that the new Jew hatred then was based on eugenics, not faith nor factions. Hence they'd meet a tragic end. So yea, it's another flaw of being reliant too much on history. That is: History is "incomplete" and doesn't cover for all possibilities. You'd always get blindsided every time something sets a historical precend itself, i.e. "happens for the first time in recorded history". That's why I have been saying that history is just a sub-set. It's certainly a well of knowledge and examples for certain behavioural patterns, however it's limited and gets countered by modern creativity. I've just demonstrated how much of a difference the "motive" behind hatred against Jews can make. That's why you can't just speak of "anti-semitism" as if it was a constant that only changes superficially, but rather it's just "a single variable in a complex tuple of generalizations of humans". Yet you see people assuming irrationally that "anti-semitism" or "jew hatred" in general can only stem from the eugenics view, because that's the "image" that has been popularized currently. Blindly accepting that view leads to a chain reaction where differing version of that view are "filtered out automatically" in everyone's mind leading to that view being even more affirmed ad infinitum. "I convinced myself to see only one type of anti-semitism, therefore I only see that one type of anti-semitism, which is proof that it's the only prevelant type because I don't see any other type". One becomes prone to such biased reasoning that way. |
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| Threaed locked It's derailed into an offtopic discussion and will only continue to get derailed. |
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