Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Why "Imagine" is just tyranny reborn

I'm begining to really like Frank Beckworth, if only because he is as depressed as I am about the baby boomer and hippie notion that nobody should ever question progress.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

"Lennon imagined a world in which nothing was worth dying for (and thus not worth living for), that the afterlife offered no hope (“above us only sky”),"

The keyword is "Imagine". We know we will probably never get there but it is worth striving for. It would be nice to have a world where international conflicts could be more on a par with soccer games instead of wars. It would be good if religious extremists did not assume that they will spend eternity in Paradise for conducting suicide attacks and flying planes into buildings. It would be good if people became less greedy and more generous. I don't see tyranny in any of those aspirations.

Theodore M. Seeber said...

Why is a world where nothing is worth striving for worth striving for? Seems rather redundant, don't you think? Plus, couldn't you get there by simply doing nothing?

I'd love for international conflicts to go entirely virtual. But "less greedy and more generous"? In a world where nothing is worth dying for, why would people be more generous? if anything, I'd see people being LESS generous- generosity is a virtue that takes training and self sacrifice, and if nothing is worth sacrificing for, there's no need to be generous.

Unknown said...

"Why is a world where nothing is worth striving for worth striving for?"

Who ever said in an ideal world, nothing would be worth striving for? Dying for. Not striving for. There is a big difference.

" In a world where nothing is worth dying for, why would people be more generous? "

Why wouldn't they? It happens all the time already. People can be generous to other people without dying for them. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself in an ideal world. It would just irk you seeing everyone happy and living in peace and harmony.

Theodore M. Seeber said...

If it isn't worth dying for, then how can you strive for it? Striving includes sticking your neck out far enough to be worth dying for.

In a world where nothing is worth dying for, then there is NO NEED to go out of your way to help anybody, for any reason.

I don't believe peace and harmony is possible anymore- the attitude of the left wing forcing conformity with their ideals has destroyed any hope of peace for me.

Unknown said...

"If it isn't worth dying for, then how can you strive for it? Striving includes sticking your neck out far enough to be worth dying for."

What? There is no striving for something that doesn't require one to die for it?

"In a world where nothing is worth dying for, then there is NO NEED to go out of your way to help anybody, for any reason."

Boy. Everything has to be one extreme or the other. Why can't I go out of my way for someone without dying for them?

"I don't believe peace and harmony is possible anymore- the attitude of the left wing forcing conformity with their ideals has destroyed any hope of peace for me."

That's silly. People can agree to disagree and still peacefully coexist. What kind of Christian are you?

Theodore M. Seeber said...

What part of "I have Asperger's" do you not understand? :-)


Yes, only the extremes make any sense to me at all. The grey stuff in the middle just seems like rationalization, rather than rationality "I want to do X and I don't want anybody to tell me I'm wrong".

The concept of self-sacrifice *requires* that you do something to harm yourself. The concept of true generosity requires self-sacrifice.

I don't believe in win-win scenarios either; most of the time, when somebody claims a scenario is win-win, it is because they are withholding some vital bit of information from the losing party.

Unknown said...

"The concept of self-sacrifice *requires* that you do something to harm yourself."

Is working two jobs to put your kids through school self-sacrifice? Do you do harm to yourself working two jobs? Not necessarily.

I don't know anything about Asperger's. But I see that you are extremely intelligent but also incapable of dealing with shades of gray. It is all or nothing with everything.

Theodore M. Seeber said...

Depends what the jobs are. I've had Japanese friends drop dead at their desks from heart attacks after working multiple jobs to support their families.

Extremely intelligent without being able to deal with the abstract is one of the more accurate stereotypes of people with my condition. Some of us think it may be the next stage in human evolution- but from my Catholic side, I sincerely hope not. Empathy is a myth to me completely outside of my experience, compassion mimicked only at a huge cost of brain thinking cycles. Agape? That's the hardest love of all, because it demands self-sacrifice and that is *extremely* hard for me to do.

Unknown said...

"Some of us think it may be the next stage in human evolution"

The only way that could happen through natural selection would be that those without the trait would be less likely to reproduce than those with it. That would require eugenics on a massive scale.

Theodore M. Seeber said...

Or just a need to understand technology to survive, which is *already occurring*.

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Oustside The Asylum by Ted Seeber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
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