Talk-Polywell.org

"I deplore brutality", he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct. - WSB

The control addict is driven by fear. And people will do the most monstrous things to other humans as long as they can do it second or third hand (using intermediaries - government of course being a perennial favorite) when driven by fear.

http://classicalvalues.com/2012/07/expl ... the-devil/

http://classicalvalues.com/2012/07/gove ... est-trick/

What you have to watch out for is the time when the mistreated no longer feel guilty. Worse if they feel wronged. There will be hell to pay.

Sounds like organised religion.

Betruger wrote:Sounds like organised religion.

Pretty much.

MSimon wrote: Diogenes is an anachronism at worst or an aging fossil at best. And he still hasn't explained why opiates - freely available in America until 1914 caused minimal problems in the 1800s while in the same period China had quite a bit of trouble.

I've explained it many times, you just ignore it and act like I haven't written anything. I actually cannot understand why you keep making the misleading claim that it wasn't causing problems in America. It was, it just never got as bad as it did in China because we stopped tolerating it when it started getting worse.

Simon is also ignoring the recent study concluded in New Zealand about life time MJ use and loss of IQ.

Diogenes wrote:

MSimon wrote: Diogenes is an anachronism at worst or an aging fossil at best. And he still hasn't explained why opiates - freely available in America until 1914 caused minimal problems in the 1800s while in the same period China had quite a bit of trouble.

I've explained it many times, you just ignore it and act like I haven't written anything. I actually cannot understand why you keep making the misleading claim that it wasn't causing problems in America. It was, it just never got as bad as it did in China because we stopped tolerating it when it started getting worse.

Well alcohol was causing the main problem But we know how to fix that. Make the stuff illegal.

The main problem that caused so much opiate use in America was the Civil War and its aftermath. Opiate use had declined to its present minimum when it was outlawed. Clever those law makers.

And please tell me why opiate use hasn't changed in over 100 years in America. About 1.3% of the population before prohibition and about the same after. The one thing we have gotten out of prohibition is the funding of terrorists and criminals. So there is that advantage. BTW since Portugal legalized drug use has been going down. I suppose you are against that. Objectively.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... -portugal/

You anachronism is showing.

As I have been saying for quite some time: prohibition is a vector for spreading drug use. You objectively favor that. What would we do without you and your (now dying) cohort?

In fact that was what got things going in China. The Brits got the Emperor to make the stuff illegal. They made a fortune with that racket. Clever those Brits.

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html

"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us." -- Directors of Jardine-Matheson

I worry though. There are a lot of police and prison guards who don't know how to do anything else near as profitable as sucking off the public tit. Good to see you standing up for those guys.

303 wrote:pro-theist agnostic ? i agree that religion can play a useful function in society, but those same functions can equally be done without it, and can be argued is morally better to do it without the clutter

On this I think you are wrong. I have given much thought to the role religion has played in moderating the passions of the individual, and I can conceive of no stable society which can exist if people have only secular beliefs holding them back from committing offenses against others.

Religion is a diabolical plot which is so fiendishly clever that it obligates people to control their behavior for fear of punishment from a being which exists in their own mind. No greater guard could there be than that of a Person upon themselves.

A secular person recognizes no such threat of punishment, and is well aware that their actions can only be constrained by threat of mundane punishment from their peers. If they can only fool them, then they have no need to fear punishment at all.

303 wrote: i've no idea what history was like , im guessing fairly shit with basic healthcare/survival being more of an immediate concern than being sacrificed. Im also fairly certain these practises wouldve been phased out , after all we are no longer burning witches at the stake.

George Will pointed out years ago, that if you believe a "Witch" is someone possessing dark powers and is in league with a malevolent power intent on harming you and your family, then killing them is exactly the right thing to do. The people who burned Witches were not stupid, they were just operating under faulty premises.

It is a common practice nowadays to regard people in the past as foolish or stupid because they made decisions that seem ridiculous to us living in this current time, but in fact, many of the people in the past were not stupid, they were quite intelligent and often knowledgeable. They just sometimes happened to "know" some things which were not true. They certainly do not have a corner on that market. Every day, (and often on this website) I encounter all sorts of people who believe things which are not true.

As Reagan said: " The trouble with our opponents is not that they are ignorant.... It's that they know so much which isn't so. "

It is often the trouble with Humans throughout History.

MSimon wrote:

Diogenes wrote:

MSimon wrote: Diogenes is an anachronism at worst or an aging fossil at best. And he still hasn't explained why opiates - freely available in America until 1914 caused minimal problems in the 1800s while in the same period China had quite a bit of trouble.

I've explained it many times, you just ignore it and act like I haven't written anything. I actually cannot understand why you keep making the misleading claim that it wasn't causing problems in America. It was, it just never got as bad as it did in China because we stopped tolerating it when it started getting worse.

Well alcohol was causing the main problem But we know how to fix that. Make the stuff illegal.

The main problem that caused so much opiate use in America was the Civil War and its aftermath. Opiate use had declined to its present minimum when it was outlawed. Clever those law makers.

MSimon, You just previously argued that drug usage was never a problem throughout our entire history. How do you square that with your statement above that says the Opiate use from the Civil War was the source of the problem you refuse to admit was occurring?

MSimon wrote:
And please tell me why opiate use hasn't changed in over 100 years in America. About 1.3% of the population before prohibition and about the same after. The one thing we have gotten out of prohibition is the funding of terrorists and criminals. So there is that advantage.

MSimon, that is your theory, and I do mean T-H-E-O-R-Y. *MY* theory is that out of the drug war we get the benefit of not following China's ruinous road to destruction.

You dismiss the benefit of the drug war because you want to believe it accomplishes nothing. It has been successfully holding down addiction since the late 1890s. China didn't have one, (Well they did, but they lost it.) and so they went down the path to drug addiction ruin.

The Japanese Invasion and the rise of Mao was just the predictable consequences of the economic and social destruction wrought on China as a result of their massive and wide spread drug use. It was a real world test of your theory, and your theory failed utterly; Catastrophically.

MSimon wrote:
BTW since Portugal legalized drug use has been going down. I suppose you are against that. Objectively.

I will believe the reports out of Portugal when I've seen evidence that they have been successful for several decades. I have seen reports from Doctors *IN* Portugal who claim the government is lying it's ass off (Who would have thought that a Socialist Government might lie about the success of their programs?) and that Drug addiction is worse than ever.

It will take time to sort the truth, but I can see you are impatient to plant your flag in it and call it a Victory.

MSimon wrote:

You anachronism is showing.

Not an Insult from my perspective. What reasonable person would want to claim to be a Social peer from this part of History? I like to think of myself as a throwback to a more enlightened era.

MSimon wrote: As I have been saying for quite some time: prohibition is a vector for spreading drug use.

Indulgence is a vector for spreading massive death and slavery. (Like happened in China.)

MSimon wrote: You objectively favor that. What would we do without you and your (now dying) cohort?

Die faster. That's what you would do.

MSimon wrote: In fact that was what got things going in China. The Brits got the Emperor to make the stuff illegal. They made a fortune with that racket. Clever those Brits.

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html

You've said that before, and it completely conflicts with the historical facts as near as i've been able to ascertain them. That Boodleboy website you keep linking too would strike some as a kooky conspiracy site, what with all it's concerns about the Skull and Bone Society and the massive world wide money conspiracy. I shouldn't be surprised to discover it was a creation of the La Rouchies.

Opium was not illegal in China after the Opium Wars. English Gun boats forced the Chinese to legalize it. If they were making so much money from having it illegal, why force the legalization of it by blowing up cities with cannon fire?

It was AFTER it became legal that Usage skyrocketed, not during the time it was being smuggled illegally. Why you keep repeating your claims is unfathomable to me.

MSimon wrote:

"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us." -- Directors of Jardine-Matheson

Oh, well the Directors of Jardine-Matheson have spoken, so I suppose that settles it. I sort of think they were talking about their smuggling operation though. Yeah, I can see how legal products would sell a lot cheaper than smuggled products, but increasing the legal sales of a horribly addictive substance may hurt their bottom line, but it will certainly destroy that poor population upon whom that pestilence is released.

MSimon wrote: I worry though. There are a lot of police and prison guards who don't know how to do anything else near as profitable as sucking off the public tit. Good to see you standing up for those guys.

Only so much as is necessary, unlike you, who would pursue a course of action that increases their numbers by orders of magnitude, such as Mao did when he brought the dictatorship.

Collapse the economic and Social structure of a nation with drugs, and you WILL get a Dictatorship. I would think this was self evident, but apparently it is not to all.

Less returns please. I get a headache trying to parse the unncessary overuse of space. It's the same reason why pictures aren't effective in forum posts, they take up too much real estate while providing no benefit to the comment or argument.

Diogenes wrote:

MSimon wrote: Diogenes is an anachronism at worst or an aging fossil at best. And he still hasn't explained why opiates - freely available in America until 1914 caused minimal problems in the 1800s while in the same period China had quite a bit of trouble.

I've explained it many times, you just ignore it and act like I haven't written anything. I actually cannot understand why you keep making the misleading claim that it wasn't causing problems in America. It was, it just never got as bad as it did in China because we stopped tolerating it when it started getting worse.

Well alcohol was causing the main problem But we know how to fix that. Make the stuff illegal.

The main problem that caused so much opiate use in America was the Civil War and its aftermath. Opiate use had declined to its present minimum when it was outlawed. Clever those law makers.

And please tell me why opiate use hasn't changed in over 100 years in America. About 1.3% of the population before prohibition and about the same after. The one thing we have gotten out of prohibition is the funding of terrorists and criminals. So there is that advantage. BTW since Portugal legalized drug use has been going down. I suppose you are against that. Objectively.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... -portugal/

You anachronism is showing.

As I have been saying for quite some time: prohibition is a vector for spreading drug use. You objectively favor that. What would we do without you and your (now dying) cohort?

In fact that was what got things going in China. The Brits got the Emperor to make the stuff illegal. They made a fortune with that racket. Clever those Brits.

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html

"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us." -- Directors of Jardine-Matheson

I worry though. There are a lot of police and prison guards who don't know how to do anything else near as profitable as sucking off the public tit. Good to see you standing up for those guys.

Diogenes wrote: I have given much thought to the role religion has played in moderating the passions of the individual, and I can conceive of no stable society which can exist if people have only secular beliefs holding them back from committing offenses against others.

Religion is a diabolical plot which is so fiendishly clever that it obligates people to control their behavior for fear of punishment from a being which exists in their own mind. No greater guard could there be than that of a Person upon themselves.

A secular person recognizes no such threat of punishment, and is well aware that their actions can only be constrained by threat of mundane punishment from their peers. If they can only fool them, then they have no need to fear punishment at all.

Well as a secular person I can say categorically that is not true. Everyone, religious or secular, feels constraints based on internalised morality. True, most religion claims to demand a moral code kept. [How decent this code is depends on the religion]. Practically it is kept only in as far as the religious person is intrinsically moral. Such codes can be bent to the moon and back in the hands of immoral people, and regularly are.

You might properly argue that being a member of an active religious congregation, with frequent social interactions, can promote moral values common to the group. But that is a fcunction of social groups, not specifically religion.

I leave you with T.H. Huxley, who from an agnostic verging on atheist standpoint wrote:

• The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of his existence.

tomclarke wrote:

Diogenes wrote: I have given much thought to the role religion has played in moderating the passions of the individual, and I can conceive of no stable society which can exist if people have only secular beliefs holding them back from committing offenses against others.

Religion is a diabolical plot which is so fiendishly clever that it obligates people to control their behavior for fear of punishment from a being which exists in their own mind. No greater guard could there be than that of a Person upon themselves.

A secular person recognizes no such threat of punishment, and is well aware that their actions can only be constrained by threat of mundane punishment from their peers. If they can only fool them, then they have no need to fear punishment at all.

Well as a secular person I can say categorically that is not true. Everyone, religious or secular, feels constraints based on internalised morality. True, most religion claims to demand a moral code kept. [How decent this code is depends on the religion]. Practically it is kept only in as far as the religious person is intrinsically moral. Such codes can be bent to the moon and back in the hands of immoral people, and regularly are.

You are smart enough to understand the difference between a transient and a steady state condition? I argue that you are viewing things from the perspective of a temporary transient condition which is moving from the existing Ocean of Christian based culture to that of a Secular based culture, but has not gotten there yet.

You have never experienced a society which is totally secular from the beginning. You are experiencing the left overs of culture which Christianized society has bequeathed you. Can you truly argue that once all the religious adherents are gone, and once the entire society is made up of people raised without any notion of religion, that such a society will be as moral and stable as that of the Previous Christian society?

Again, *I* am arguing about steady state conditions, you are opining from a transient condition.

tomclarke wrote:
You might properly argue that being a member of an active religious congregation, with frequent social interactions, can promote moral values common to the group. But that is a fcunction of social groups, not specifically religion.

I leave you with T.H. Huxley, who from an agnostic verging on atheist standpoint wrote:

• The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of his existence.

I think most Atheist/Agnostics don't accurately consider the consequences to society were everyone to adopt their beliefs. Just as Simon cannot conceive that legalizing drugs might be a massive and far reaching disaster, (As Happened in China) So too can those opposed to religion not conceive of the notion that the made up invisible man everyone is taught to fear is actually a very effective negative feedback mechanism for social self control, without which many people will refuse to suppress their self serving impulses.

The consequences are not to be taken on their own in some causal vacuum. Everything else that's correlated needs to change too. Least of which is the realistic treatment of this thought experiment that demands a realistic scenario: people the world over (let's say a majority for realism/brevity's sake) come to understand and appreciate and adopt this state of mind on their own (meaning by their own will).

People would not instantaneously start crossing roads without looking nor drinking themselves comatose nor take up meth as pass time. Not if they had truly understood the agnostic universe- (not just world-) view.

the made up invisible man everyone is taught to fear is actually a very effective negative feedback mechanism for social self control, without which many people will refuse to suppress their self serving impulses

Maybe you fail to envision this hypothetical agnostic majority scenario because you first fail to envision Reason properly taught as all the self-control any normal human being needs.

And there will always be deviant freaks and other marginals.

---

You, now and as far as I can remember ever reading your writing, do not seem to give a rat's about helping people, IOW Man, move forward to their optimum mind & body but rather enslave them in some more or less - "but mostly less, I swear!" - restrictive political state for their own good.

You see Man starved because he's stupid. Or IOW, un-enlightened. You give him fish and a strict diet plan. Not a fishing pole and certainly not "education".

You repeatedly argue that natural is optimal, but fail to recognize free is most natural, bar none. That Reason is the ultimate state of liberty, not only in some myopic, claustrophobic sense of contemporary citizenship but in the true human sense that

The Universe is ours if only we make it "out there". Animal politics such as today's (e.g. pretending that Man is forever unconditionally incapable of taking care of himself without such authoritarian oversight) are only a transient crowd control solution. Sooner or later the true pains - the growing pains of true freedom (genetic, nano/femto tech, etc) - will come of age and the odds will be worse for Man if he hasn't done his best to rise to that challenge.

Stagnation in the politics you cling to is not the most effective training for this all-but-guaranteed future age of technological freedom. Or maybe MSimon & co have it right - it will be a passive extinction event. Those who cling to today and those who get past the hurdle, the paradigm shift.[/i]

Diogenes wrote:
You are smart enough to understand the difference between a transient and a steady state condition? I argue that you are viewing things from the perspective of a temporary transient condition which is moving from the existing Ocean of Christian based culture to that of a Secular based culture, but has not gotten there yet.

You have never experienced a society which is totally secular from the beginning. You are experiencing the left overs of culture which Christianized society has bequeathed you. Can you truly argue that once all the religious adherents are gone, and once the entire society is made up of people raised without any notion of religion, that such a society will be as moral and stable as that of the Previous Christian society?

Again, *I* am arguing about steady state conditions, you are opining from a transient condition.

Well no, I was stating observed facts about the personal correlation between an individual professing a Christian religion and having disciplined moral behaviour (none).

You are advancing a speculative theory about whether societies with no religion will be more or less moral than those with a Christian religion. You have no evidence.

I think most Atheist/Agnostics don't accurately consider the consequences to society were everyone to adopt their beliefs. Just as Simon cannot conceive that legalizing drugs might be a massive and far reaching disaster, (As Happened in China) So too can those opposed to religion not conceive of the notion that the made up invisible man everyone is taught to fear is actually a very effective negative feedback mechanism for social self control, without which many people will refuse to suppress their self serving impulses.

Were everyone to adopt my beliefs we would be highly law-abiding, truthful, and non-violent. I can't say for others, though of course T.H.Huxley, who coined the word agnostic was a person moral par excellence.

Perhaps it is just that, considering these matters, I don't see the loss of Christianity as a moral disaster?

On your specific arguments:
You think that people behave well for fear of a made up invisible man. Sounds like the worst type of fire and brim-stone religion which teaches fear, hatred and obedience to authority whether or not that is good. Thoroughly immoral.

In fact people behave well through being brought up with discipline and love and respect, learning gradually to accept more responsibility. I see no fear in this. It is a grave misunderstanding to think that discipline has anything to do with fear, except that those brought up without it tend to be afraid because of the lack of boundaries.