Hi Oisin:
Pardon my dimness, but I couldn't get what you were driving at in your
recent post. You seemed to jump from one point to another with no
continuing thread in between, at least one that I could discern. Was it a
general critique of logic and intellect? Or was it your point that you can
rationalize anything, depending upon what side you are on? (If the
latter, I agree. Like Ben Franklin said, "So convenient a thing it is to be
a rational creature, since it enables us to find or make a reason for
everything one has a mind to do.")
So permit me to leap over most of what you wrote until such time as
you may wish to patiently clarify further and address your last
paragraph:
> It would seem that there can't be a resolution Intellectually, until we
have
> a common Social template first... What do you think?
A possible template to use in the present conflict is:
democatic states vs. police states.
There's no doubt which has the higher value in the MOQ. What do you
think?
Platt
> Hello Platt, Jonathan, Horse and All,
>
> on 10/10/01 5:42 PM, Platt Holden at pholden@sc.rr.com wrote:
>
> > Crime is a biological value.
> > Terrorism is a crime. Ergo, terrorism is biological and should be
> > responded to as such.
>
> A Rectangle is a shape with 4 parallel sides, whose angles are each of 90
> degrees.
> A Square has 4 parallel sides, with angles of 90 degrees. Ergo, all
> rectangles are squares...
>
> Not being a wisacre, but that seems like faulty reasoning.
>
> It would be like saying:
> "Dynamic Quality disrupts static patterns.
> Terrorism disrupts static patterns. Ergo, terrorism is evidence of Dynamic
> Quality and should be treated as such."
>
> Also, Terrorism is only ever a crime until such time that it may succeed in
> overthrowing/expelling the opposing/interfering State. Then - in the new
> state - it officially becomes known as the War of Independence. I challenge
> anyone to present any physical-force-using national liberation movement from
> the last 100 years that wasn't considered terrorist by the original regime.
> Israel against Britain, for example. They also codenamed one of their
> operations "Mikael" (I believe) after "Michael Collins", the Irish freedom
> fighter - English people, insert "terrorist" here - who invented urban
> guerrilla warfare.
>
> Horse, with respect, I don't agree that violence has to be legal to be
> moral, and in fact, often enough through history the reverse has been true.
>
> But let's get something straight though. Once one abandons the principle of
> overarching legality (Social order trumping free-for-all physical-force
> Biological order, in either an individual or societal capacity), you are
> operating in the same arena/level as the criminals/terrorists. This does not
> mean that YOU are tainted with criminality or terrorism - good God no, none
> of the good guys ever are...
> This is a perfectly understandable viewpoint from the Social level, it's
> just that, well, it's not actually an Intellectual argument that you can
> ever prove until _after_ the Social/Biological event has proven itself
> empirically, and maybe not even then.
> As a general rule of thumb:
> "If you kill one man, it's murder, if you kill a million, it's a statistic"
> - Lenin, I think. It often seems that what makes terrorism so wrong in our
> world, isn't the fact that it kills innocent people, but the fact that it
> doesn't kill _enough_ of them. Almost as if what offends the world isn't the
> display of carnage, but the taint of weakness in the act. The Soviet state,
> for example, killed (not murdered! It was after all, acting legally) more of
> its own people than it did Germans during WWII. Of course Realpolitik
> demands that we only drop bombs on those violent regimes (Taliban) without
> the nukes than the ultra violent ones with the nukes (USSR).
> And this is fair enough, so long as we do this with open eyes, so long as
> we accept that this is just covering our a**es, and not an ethics class, not
> high civilisation.
> An honest whore is to be valued more than an upstanding hypocrite. If we
> choose to be whores, then fine, but let's not compound our errors with BS,
> let's be honest, _Quality_ whores.
>
> Crime is the devaluation of Social patterns, in pursuance of Biological
> motives, and by Biological methods (survival of the fittest). Crime can also
> be any opposition to Social patterns, by Biological methods.
> War is the reversion to Biological means, ostensibly in the pursuance of
> Social ends. Warfare is survival of the fittest; nature red in tooth and
> claw. A missile with jet engines is just a refinement of one of wood,
> sharpened at both ends. War and crime both have the use of biological means
> in common; what seperates them in our minds is usually whether our Social
> selves can rationalise it or not; whether our gang are Biologically giving
> it or taking it.
>
> "War is politics by other means" (Von Clauswitz), and so is Propaganda. That
> has such negative connotations nowadays, but it's etymological meaning is
> the propagation of ideas... in service of a social order. Are we all
> currently doing Propoganda, or Intellectual argument here?
>
> There seem to be two views/definitions of the Social level being propagated
> here: One is Global and inclusive of people in both high and low quality
> States, the other is Local and somewhat exclusive of low quality States and
> the people who happen to be born in them.
>
> In other words - for example only - does Jehova's
>
> "Thou shalt not kill"
>
> apply to just within your tribe, or to the heathen over the hill, too?
>
> It would seem that there can't be a resolution Intellectually, until we have
> a common Social template first... What do you think?
>
>
> Good luck,
>
> -Oisín.
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