WHDD
Look, I know I have a tendancy to oversimplify things. But it seems to me that it’s not particularly difficult to determine if a action has at it’s root peace or war, love or hate, unity or disunity, respect or disrespect.
I say this because one of my basic, core beleifs is that peace and love are desirable attributes, not just as long term goals but as short-term, day to day goals. I realize that I don’t always achive forwarding these goals (Sorry, lux) but I do make a effort.
There are people out there – a suprisingly large number of them – who seem disinterested in peace and love. Some just on a personal level, and some on a national-politik level. These are the people who lovingly caress their guns, looking forward to the day that they can again stand up and pull the trigger. These are the people who start flamewars on mailing lists, just because they can.
What I don’t get, and I know I’m oversimplifying this, is what motivates these people?
Some people get personal satisfaction out of war, I know, in the same way that I get personal satisfaction out of strategy games. It’s bigger and more fun if it’s real, they say..
Some people delude themselves into thinking that every war is about ‘national security’. Some of the ways they do this are downright creative.
And, some people just get off on hate.
I just don’t get why.
Could someone please explain this to me? Explain wanting to direct your anger towards another person, so I can truly get it? I joke about axing dubya, but I could never pull the trigger and all my friends know it. I can’t actually make myself feel the emotions that would lead to the death of another person.
I wonder if that’s part of army training. ‘You’ve got to be carefully taught’, as the song goes. Can you teach people to hate? I bet you can.
September 21st, 2002 at 4:41 pm
but it seems to me that it’s not particularly difficult to determine if a action has at it’s root peace or war, love or hate, unity or disunity, respect or disrespect.
Your world-view assumes, without question, that one half of these dichotomies is good, and one half is bad. Determining what motivation an action may have does not mean that there’s one right, true judgement to have… which is to say, whether they’re ‘in the right’ or not, other people may not see violence, hate, et al as necessarily bad things. Remember there’s been a whole lot of generations of christians raised up on the whole ‘love thy neighbor, but hate that pagan’ thing.
And I don’t think that war, murder, and hating another person are all in the same class of actions. I think they’re three different things.. the first two involve taking physically brutal action, the latter can be emotionally instinctual, with no action taken at all. Perhaps they all come from the same causes, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing…
/
Anyway, lost all your brain cells, eh? that explains the lint I found under the fridge today 😉
September 21st, 2002 at 6:23 pm
Wheee.. LONG reply.. ahh yes… memories of Imagination is Power 😉
> Look, I know I have a tendancy to oversimplify things.
we all want an easy way to look at things… to find a simple core.. but life and people aren’t like that.. people study psychology all thier lives seeking an understanding of a human brian.. people studdy sociology all thier lives to try to understand interactions and social systems.. some will spend their whole lives trying to understand one social “group”…
> But it seems to me that it’s not particularly difficult to determine if a action has at it’s root peace >or war, love or hate, unity or disunity, respect or disrespect.
I belive most (if not all) actions (be they “good” or “bad” as you define them) center around some form of self intrest.. even if it’s to better the world.. the self intrest there is the desire for a better world.. so if your looking for any simple answers.. this is as close as I can get.. (now from this point you can get into what are people’s self intrests and why?, what intrest does a person have in doing action X?)
>I say this because one of my basic, core beleifs is that peace and love are desirable attributes
why are these desirable attributes to you? and why should they be valuable to others? a friend of mine once told something along the lines of “love can be dangerous, because if the other person doesn’t love you back that love can be used as power over the person”… though I think that it doesn’t realy matter if the other person loves or not.. love can be used as power regardless…
sometimes war might be desirable to acchive some result… even if it doesn’t lead to peace
> I realize that I don’t always achive forwarding these goals (Sorry, lux) but I do make a effort.
why are these your goals? Who is lux and why are you saying sorry for your actions or lack of actions? Why are you taking responsibility for his/her actions? (I’m not saying it’s wrong to do so.. I’m just curious)
>There are people […] who seem disinterested in peace and love.
and why aren’t they? well where are may reasons depending on the person/social system or whatever..
for example.. someone who has just had thier how buldozed… children killed probably aren’t going to love and feel peaceful towards the people who did so… neither are the people whos children have been killed by a suicide bomber… these are pretty extreme examples.. but hopefuly they will help you find your answer..
> … looking forward to the day that they can again stand up and pull the trigger.
ahh.. but why? one possiblity may be that their intrest is to serve thier country.. in the best way they can… some of that may be due to training (“kill or be killed” mentality… and the “kill, kill, kill” mentality)… whatever… to try to lump all non-peace and all non-love based actions into one group isn’t going to help answer your question.. (or at least I don’t think it is.. shrugs)
>These are the people who start flamewars on mailing lists, just because they can.
actualy I think most of these people just want the attention.. to watch people react.. and so forth..
or don’t know what they are doing..
> What I don’t get […] is what motivates these people?
ask them… read research by people who have studied them…
>I just don’t get why.
>Explain wanting to direct your anger towards another person, so I can truly get it?
I haven’t realy tried to figure that out.. but I’m sure most people have done it at some point in thier lives.. {thinks back… didn’t you tell me something about tailgating a guy to the point that it got noticed by the police? Was that action based on peace and love?}
> I can’t actually make myself feel the emotions that would lead to the death of another person.
just because you haven’t yet.. doesn’t mean that you couln’t at some point in time..
>Can you teach people to hate? I bet you can.
“Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate. Hate leads to Suffering.” -Yoda
though I would add “confusion/lack of understanding lead to fear”
if you can give someone an answer by point a finger… your most of the way there..