When two worldviews collide.

[rjs330]

As I said, you seem confused about it. Why don't you read something authoratitive about it rather than assume, you think, it seems...

Do that and if there's something you don't understand then you can post about it. Here's a simple and explanation from the WHO: Gender and health

And another: What is gender? What is sex? - CIHR

What a load of garbage. Where is the evidence that any of that is true? There is no scientific evidence of any of it. A spectrum? Not that again.

What's on each end? What's in the middle?

 

[stevevw]

That's the only explanation you have for someone disagreeing with you?

How can something matter before it matters, precisely?

I explained this already. Its like with math. If we didn't have the capcity to understand maths to begin with then there would be no math. The concept of math would be non existent and anything related to maths would just be meaningless. We could not discover the theories we have like Relativity or Newtons gravity. Even if our basic understanding was simple math to begin with that allowed use to expand and apply that concept further.

The same with our moral sense. If we didn't start out with a basic sense of morality like justice and kindness then teaching this into people would not make any sense. We would not have any reason to uphold moral principles like justice or kindness and they would just be meaningless concepts. You can't teach justice into someone like you can't teach belief just like a moral sense because its an abstract knowing and abstractions have no logical or rational basis to be taught in the first place.

Steve, how much do you know about the neurobiology of our emotional states? I would put it to you that what you're arguing is a primitive sense of justice, is in fact the emotional responses linked to the brain chemistry of survival. "Justice" is far too abstract for an infant.

Thats silly in that evolution cannot itself explain morality. Its a logical fallacy (genetic fallacy) which tries to invalidate something by showing how someone came to believe it. Regardless of how someone came to believe about the truth you hold says nothing about the truth or falsity of that.
Evolution can only give us a description of something. It cannot be proscriptive.

Let me ask you, do you believe that Gods moral law or any moral law stands despite material and mechanical processes used to explain morality.

In saying this even if we do say that morality has been evolved into us there are still two issues that need to be addressed. Evolved morals means that a moral sense has been evolved into us by our ancestors and therefore is still innate. The second issue for Christians is the question did God allow this moral innateness to be evolved in us so that we know his laws to be accountable to sin.

Otherwise at what point is someone accountable for sin. As far as I know it began in the Garden and with Cain from the very beginning of humans being made in Gods image able to know right and wrong.

Yes, exactly. I had actually typed my above two sentences before reading this one, but here you see that you do actually understand something about how our very young brains work.

Its still a logical fallacy that explaining how something works somehow explains morality which is an abstract notion. You can't reduce justice and kindness and especially alturism down to chemcial reactions. Chemical reactions have no accountability and we could say that it wasn't me who did it but my chemicals and evolved brain which is all about survival even if its immoral. There is an explaination gap which mechanical and material processes can't get around.

Why is morality more than traits like empathy or altruism? Because it has to do with concepts we can only understand with higher-order thinking, like right and wrong. Empathy does not tell you what is right.

Of course not having empathy especially alturism in the first place is what gives us a moral sense. That sense is not morality itself but it is what causes us to be moral. You could say they go hand in hand and one without the other doesn't make sense. So empathy leads to being concerned for others and being concerned for others leaeds to morality.

Though they may be different in principle they seem to go hand in hand bercause even as babies we know other babies pain and that is also seen in how toddlers fight to stop pain in others in a moral sense by toddlers spontaneously siding with the good guy and wanting to punish the bad guy.

Let me point you back over here, where the distinction is made clearly, and it's pointed out that "empathy can become a source of immoral behavior."

This is a logical fallacy in that your equating bad behaviour as the result of a misaligned empathy with empathy not being useful for being the basis for moral behaviour. Your arguement fails on that alone.

Yes, it comes later. Which is why infants do not have a "moral sense."

A moral sense itself is not about right and wrong but rather it leads us to make right and wrong. Without that sense there would be no reason to make things right and wrong. But I means I can appeal to the replicated science which shows babies and infants have this moral sense. That alone stands up unless you want to dispute the science.

I can also argue the logic that this is something that cannot be taught as its abstract. That babies and infants moral sense is basically what we call moral intuition as adults. That this cannot be reasoned into reality.

In the sense that we don't even understand concepts like right and wrong, yes we are.

Understanding moral concepts doesn't make you moral.

I have news for you; people reason that something immoral is good all the time.

And people reason the same immoral good as being bad or immoral acts as good. Rationality alone cannot explain morality. Hume explains this well.

Hume has shown that moral distinctions are not the product of reason alone, moral distinctions cannot be made merely through comparison of ideas. Therefore, if moral distinctions are not made by comparing ideas, they must be based upon our impressions or feelings.

David Hume: Moral Philosophy | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

iep.utm.edu

No, I'm not talking about a mental disorder. I'm talking about basically healthy people who carry a sense of guilt for situations in which they are not objectively morally culpable. Which is an extremely common problem (I see it all the time in pastoral situations).

But they must have some feeling of inadequency or low self esteem or something like that. They are not confident enough in themselves to be sure about their guilt or not. I think a lot of the time its about unclear boundaries which have not been determined or a lack of ability in understanding and expressing your own beliefs and position.

In some ways I think guilt works like our moral sense in that it errs on the side of causing us to look at ourselves even when we know we are right. I think this is natural that sometimes we carry guilt in that we think we could have done better in some way even though it may have been beyond us.

But still I think this falls within a fallacy in that you are saying because some people feel guilty when they are not that guilt is not a sign of wrong doing.

No. You can't have a sense of right and wrong without rationality. Even being able to conceptualise "right" and "wrong" is a higher cognitive function, involving multiple areas of the brain in complex processes.

I think your confusing our sense or emotion with rationality. You can't rationalise feelings to begin with. they are just there. Its later thatb we rationalise them usually after we act on them.

That they are cognitively incapable is exactly why I'm rejecting the claim that babies have a "moral sense."

Thats because your equating rationality with a moral sense. A sense is not based on rational thought. Put it this way babies and infants moral sense causes them to spontaneouly align with the good guy and against the bad guy and is similar to what we adults call being naught and nice. That sense did not cause infants to be evil or like the bad guy and be antagonistic against the good guy.

It seems primarily this moral sense is closely aligned with what we call be good to others and not wanting bad stuff to happen to them. So if anything its later that we become influenced by society and culture that causes us to take on the rationalisation of those societies which can even be in conflict with that moral sense. Remembering that we are fallen beings who can also rebel against God.

Well, legally, we don't hold them fully accountable in the same way as adults.

The point is we do hold them accountable even if thats not fully. If morality was about rationality alone then why can't someone rationalise their way out of jail. If there is no sense of right and wrong then there would be no rationalising about right and wrong. It would be just arguing over differences which as far as morality goes would be a never ending circular rational.

In this case it means the fact that there are actual living breathing atheists disproves your claim that there are no atheists. I don't have any reason to believe they too stupid, deluded or dishonest for me to trust what they tell me about their own beliefs. I'm willing to believe that there's a fair degree of variation in our "natural" inclination to belief.

So your saying the truth to their atheism lies with what they tell us. The point of the article was that despite people saying they are atheists its impossible to be a true atheist as even atheism takes belief. To declare that ones doesn't believe in God is saying I believe there is no God.

 

[Paidiske]

I explained this already.

You said some stuff, but it didn't explain much.

Its like with math. If we didn't have the capcity to understand maths to begin with then there would be no math. The concept of math would be non existent and anything related to maths would just be meaningless. We could not discover the theories we have like Relativity or Newtons gravity. Even if our basic understanding was simple math to begin with that allowed use to expand and apply that concept further.

But we aren't born knowing maths. We have to learn the concept even that there are numbers. If it's "like with math," then it's something that we are taught, and that we build on as our cognitive capacity grows. It's not innate at all, any more than morality is.

The same with our moral sense. If we didn't start out with a basic sense of morality like justice and kindness then teaching this into people would not make any sense.

You don't believe we develop new capacities as we grow?

You can't teach justice into someone like you can't teach belief just like a moral sense because its an abstract knowing and abstractions have no logical or rational basis to be taught in the first place.

Well, first, you can teach justice. In fact, we do it all the time. Here are some lesson plans for doing so in primary school.

And of course we can teach abstractions. We teach people to love. We teach people to rejoice. We teach people patience. These are all things which we actively nurture in children (and adults). And we teach morality. It's all part of the process of character formation, and nurturing spirituality.

Thats silly in that evolution cannot itself explain morality.

Morality as a whole, perhaps not. But it can give a pretty strong accounting for the traits you're highlighting in infants, like empathy.

Evolution can only give us a description of something. It cannot be proscriptive.

I gather you mean prescriptive. But evolutions sets a whole bunch of parameters, like how our brains work.

Let me ask you, do you believe that Gods moral law or any moral law stands despite material and mechanical processes used to explain morality.

I believe we have the capacity to be moral (once we reach a certain stage in our development), and therefore yes, God's moral standards apply. It's questionable whether they apply for someone who (for whatever reason) doesn't have that cognitive capacity. (For example, I regard as completely silly St. Augustine's claims that he was sinful in the womb for selfishly depriving his mother of nutrients; a developing foetus does not have moral capacity).

Evolved morals means that a moral sense has been evolved into us by our ancestors and therefore is still innate.

Capacity for moral reasoning is not the same as a "moral sense."

The second issue for Christians is the question did God allow this moral innateness to be evolved in us so that we know his laws to be accountable to sin.

If we see evolution as an outworking of God's creation, and not entirely teleologically open, then I'd have to say that God allowed us to be what we are. Perhaps recognising sin is a necessary part of having the free will to sin in the first place.

Otherwise at what point is someone accountable for sin.

Always a tricky question. Historically the church has had the concept of the "age of reason," or the age at which someone is able to recognise right and wrong, and thought that that came at about 7 years old. Which lines up with what I'm arguing for, that morality requires a degree of cognitive development well beyond infancy.

Its still a logical fallacy that explaining how something works somehow explains morality which is an abstract notion.

What I am explaining to you, is that if we know that morality involves brain functions that infants don't have, then we know that morality is something we develop over time as we grow (and are taught and nurtured).

You can't reduce justice and kindness and especially alturism down to chemcial reactions.

I'm not suggesting you can. I am suggesting that justice and kindness, in particular, involve complex higher neurological functions which are not reducible to chemical reactions. You might think of them as emergent properties in cognitive functioning.

Of course not having empathy especially alturism in the first place is what gives us a moral sense.

The uniquely human traits which allow us a moral sense are actually:
- The ability to anticipate the consequences of our actions
- The ability to make value judgements
- The ability to choose between different courses of action.

But what value we place on different courses of action, and consequences, that's largely culturally conditioned.

This is a logical fallacy in that your equating bad behaviour as the result of a misaligned empathy with empathy not being useful for being the basis for moral behaviour.

I'm pointing out that empathy might be a motivating factor, but it can motivate us in directions which are either moral or immoral. Empathy in itself is not a moral function.

A moral sense itself is not about right and wrong but rather it leads us to make right and wrong.

By definition, a moral sense is the ability to discern between right and wrong. That is literally what it means.

That alone stands up unless you want to dispute the science.

I definitely dispute the "science" that claims babies can discern between right and wrong.

I can also argue the logic that this is something that cannot be taught as its abstract.

Again, we teach abstractions all the time... and we definitely teach morality.

Understanding moral concepts doesn't make you moral.

No, but I'd argue you can't be moral without a basic understanding of concepts like right and wrong.

But they must have some feeling of inadequency or low self esteem or something like that. They are not confident enough in themselves to be sure about their guilt or not.

Those are by no means the only reasons we see misplaced (neurotic) guilt.

But still I think this falls within a fallacy in that you are saying because some people feel guilty when they are not that guilt is not a sign of wrong doing.

You were arguing that our sense of morality "doesn't trick us." Neurotic guilt shows perfectly well that it can, indeed, "trick" us.

I think your confusing our sense or emotion with rationality. You can't rationalise feelings to begin with. they are just there. Its later thatb we rationalise them usually after we act on them.

Understanding right and wrong is not an emotion, or a "sense," or a feeling. It's a cognitive function which depends on a degree of rationality (although not necessarily without emotional invovlement).

Thats because your equating rationality with a moral sense. A sense is not based on rational thought.

A moral sense is (by definition) the ability to discern right and wrong , and requires a capacity for rational thought.

So your saying the truth to their atheism lies with what they tell us. The point of the article was that despite people saying they are atheists its impossible to be a true atheist as even atheism takes belief. To declare that ones doesn't believe in God is saying I believe there is no God.

I'm not saying that atheism isn't a faith position. I'm saying atheists exist. And therefore, your claim that atheists don't really exist is nonsense.

 

[stevevw]

As I said, you seem confused about it. Why don't you read something authoratitive about it rather than assume, you think, it seems...

Do that and if there's something you don't understand then you can post about it. Here's a simple and explanation from the WHO: Gender and health

And another: What is gender? What is sex? - CIHR

The WHO and it looks like the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have fallen for Woke. I notice a lot of the language is along the lines of gender ideology (based on belief). For example They both use language like sex assigned at birth, gender identity is fluid and on a spectrum and at least in the case of WHO have deleted the word Women as a unique sex and reality.

An example of this incoherent thinking is how gender can produce inequalities that intersect with ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, age, geographic location, gender identity and sexual orientation but neglect to mention sex. Which exposes their true belief that sex doesn't really matter when it comes to gender ideology.

The WHO is in bed with other Woke organisations and nations and therefore has taken sides on this issue rather than being open to all views. The ironic thing is WHO is suppose to be about inclusion and diversity and yet its position makes around half the world transphobic as many nations in the Middle East, Africa, India, Pakinstan, and the Holy See oppose Gender ideoloy.

They recently had to abandon their own policy on abortion due to aligning with Woke mobs pushing for abortion rights by trying to impose the right to abortion up until just before birth. Which shows how willing they are to go along with the idea that individual Rights trumps group rights including entire nations.

Being a progressive left leaning organisation I would have thought there was no single truth but all cultures have a right to their own moral truths. Now they are becoming the world moral police imposing Modern Western ideologies on the world. This just shows how far we have gone down the ideologies path in that not only is the State stepping into our bedrooms a World body which prides itself on freedoms is now doing the same.

 

[Bradskii]

The WHO and it looks like the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have fallen for Woke. I notice a lot of the language is along the lines of gender ideology (based on belief).

The WHO is in bed with other Woke organisations and nations...

Do you not understand what you are doing? You are putting your personal opinion, with zero evidence, up against every authorative medical and scientific organisation in almost every country on the planet.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The reason I think that they want to convince kids is because if they convince kids then they convince society. As a society we look to kids as the future of what our society will be and the more kids they convince the more they create the society they want. But I also think this relates to a fundemental difference in how we see nature and reality.

The adults who now fervently defend the idea that some women have a penis has caused me to reevaluate how effective indoctrination is even when considering adults and the methods by which adult indoctrination is possible.

From what I understand if you probe a little deeper into this idea and whats behind it it often goes back to Postmodernist thinking with a twist of Cultural Marxism. The idea that there are no realities but self referential relative/subjective ones and therefore everythings a social construction.

I don't know if saying that "everything is a social construct" is accurate to how they see it...but I think I understand what you mean.

The sad thing is....that belief alone is dangerous for an individual, absolutely catastrophic for a society. If you don't believe in an objective reality, and truth is a "personal/subjective" matter then identifying real problems and solutions can quickly become nearly impossible.

So the idea is to undermine and tear down the status quoe (gender and social norms) including the science behind it and replace this with a new Woke Utopia.

Here in the US we just call it "progressivism". It's the idea that something can always be done better in some way...and fails to understand that the "perfect is the enemy of the good".

So far I think you're 2 for 2 here. They reject objective truth in favor of subjective truth, often expressed as "my truth" or "speaking truth to power". This makes them terrible at identifying real problems and real solutions.

Then you combine that with a desire to "fix" the problems of society (which are based on people arguing about who is the biggest victim) and you have a truly awful, whiny group, that tries really hard to solve minor problems or non-problems and they're either incapable or actually make those problems worse.

But this is not just restricted to gender and sex. The same ideology is behind race (CRT), envioromentalism (extenction rebellion ect) and economics (tearing down capitalism). You will be surprised how most think this way behind their thinking when you probe further.

That's why referring to them all as "the woke"" is useful. I would say environmentalists have a slightly different problem but I don't really object to them being lumped in.

Can you think of any other common characteristics they have? I can think of a few...

1. Identity problems. Often or nearly always, the problems they focus on are relatively trivial and based upon Identity. It's a pretty gross thing to imagine these vast swaths of people as completely lacking agency and total victims of a brutally oppressive which must be solved by dramatic social change. It's never the victim group's fault, always society's fault. In fact, the mere ability to question the perspective of the victims becomes bigotry. A victim is above question.

2. Another facet is the importance of criticism....without any acknowledging of any good aspects. The very act of criticism itself is somehow seen as moral...as if it were a difficult thing to do. Entire marches, protests, and other action is justified by a complaint....no actual solutions need to be identified and this is why they're so bad at solutions, they believe it is enough to complain.

I could name more but perhaps it would be more useful to consider why an religion like this was ever successful at all. Why would college educated adults fall for something so intellectually shallow and emotionally childish?

 

[Ana the Ist]

It also should be noted that despite the majority saying that Trans people should have access to treatment that supports their subjective gender identity that the only real opinion that counts, the proferssional health carer opinion states that Trans Affirmative and Transitioning treatment is unscientific and harmful in the long run.

The problem began when these cross-bred academic subjects appeared. One could become a medical doctor and pretty easily minor in gender studies.

If they can't think critically though, they may not understand that they are possibly betraying their hippocratic oath.

This goes to show how many people just don't understand the issue and are willing to support in reality an unscientific and harmful ideology based on Trans Rights. Most people because they don't understand and because like most of us don't want to be seen denying Rights actually can cause more harm than good.

The research is scant and not the sort of quality that one would imagine justifying children having permanent medical treatments requires.

 

[stevevw]

Do you not understand what you are doing? You are putting your personal opinion, with zero evidence, up against every authorative medical and scientific organisation in almost every country on the planet.

Fury over new World Health Organization gender guidance which 'dismisses basic biology'
Health experts have slammed the move, saying it is 'unscientific' and 'worrying' Comes amid concerning rise in use of woke gender-neutral language in the NHS

Experts called the move a 'dismissal of basic biology' and could lead to medical advice being de-sexed and over-complicated. 'Not being clear about basic biology opens the door to a range of problems, including very poor health communication but also distorted data.'

The idea that there are more than two sexes, is a postmodern, unscientific understanding that should not be supported by the WHO.'

There have also been concerns about women losing access to single-sex spaces like bathrooms and hospital wards as a result of blurring the definition of a woman.

She is also concerned about the body's focus on gender identity rather than the health inequality women and girls suffer around the world. 'If this occurs, this will almost certainly dilute focus on the severe health disadvantage that women and girls face in many countries because they are female which can only be a bad thing,'
'Sex is NOT limited to male or female': Fury over WHO woke guidance

So do women and girls opinion count.

I don't say anything without researching it first. So its not my opinion but many professionals and experts as well as entire nations around the world who disagree with the WHO over their policy on abortion being allowed right up to just before a baby leaves the birth canal and on deleting biological women and the consequences for their health. Do they get the right to an opinion that disagrees.

WHO also had to back down and drop their woke policy change on abortion being allowed right up to full term birth to anyone who requests it due to the opposing opinions of nations who disagreed. So whose opinion counts here.

Authoritarian WHO is now the globalists’ nanny
The EU and ‘progressive’ Western countries’ (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada) push to foist the woke agenda on the rest of the world failed due to resistance from non-Western countries like Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria and the Holy See.

Last year WHO’s abortion-care guidance called for babies to ‘be killed up until the moment they emerge from the birth canal, without delay, whenever a pregnant woman requests it’. It recommends abortions be available on request and advises against ‘gestational age limits’. This is both a bureaucratic and a moral overreach. Only the governments concerned have the right and responsibility to make decisions on policy parameters between pro-choice and pro-life advocates. How can an organisation that spouts such anti-empirical rubbish as ‘women, girls or other pregnant persons’ be accepted as an authority on science, biology, medicine or public health?
The Woke Health Organisation? | The Spectator Australia

Surely you must agree that full term abortions at request is both unscientific and murder. This is just another example of how big corps, Woke Western States and now world organisations are crossing the line and enforcing ideology onto everyone.

Ironically WHO and other Woke corporations and countries are imposing their opinion on others and becoming the worlds language and moral police. Another example of how not only the State but now world organsations are crossing the line and denying the freedoms they claim we have Rights to.

I thought part of the progressive left was about inclusion and here we have the WHO which is part of the UN excluding many nations because they disagree with not killing full term babies or that sex is a reality and there is such a thing as women and girls who need protecting and those who disagree with WHO and other Woke nations are somehow the bad guys. Stop the world I wanna get off.

 

[stevevw]

The problem began when these cross-bred academic subjects appeared. One could become a medical doctor and pretty easily minor in gender studies.

If they can't think critically though, they may not understand that they are possibly betraying their hippocratic oath.

I am not sure even the hippocratic oath holds much sway nowadays. If they can deny the science they can deny their oaths. Its part of the Postmodernist thinking that there is no objective reality or truth keeping because there is no truth. Rather reality and truth are self referential and that usually means identity over all else.

The research is scant and not the sort of quality that one would imagine justifying children having permanent medical treatments requires.

I'm interested in why it has come to this. Well I sort of know why "the slow march through the institutions from the 60's revolutions which has now flooded into the public square. But I'm wondering what it represents. How can people fall for such thinking. I know its uncritical thinking which is a foundational idea of academia or use to be.

But this is like a new phenomena where even critical thinking itself is questioned as a paradigm. Is this a paradigm change but for the worse rather than better. If it is I don't think it will last. Like other fads they usually we return to reality. You can only push reality so far and then cracks begin to appear.

Whats strange in all this regarding Rights and protections is that we have two sides both claiming to be for Rights and reducing harm especially for children having opposite positions which lead to different approaches and outcomes and both believing they are right and if science and reality itself is discarded or reinterpreted to be relative then theres no way to dispute anything and it becomes a war of words.

I guess thats the aim of Postmodernist as Words are what makes reality.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I am not sure even the hippocratic oath holds much sway nowadays. If they can deny the science they can deny their oaths. Its part of the Postmodernist thinking that there is no objective reality or truth keeping because there is no truth. Rather reality and truth are self referential and that usually means identity over all else.

I'm interested in why it has come to this. Well I sort of know why "the slow march through the institutions from the 60's revolutions which has now flooded into the public square. But I'm wondering what it represents. How can people fall for such thinking. I know its uncritical thinking which is a foundational idea of academia or use to be.

But this is like a new phenomena where even critical thinking itself is questioned as a paradigm. Is this a paradigm change but for the worse rather than better. If it is I don't think it will last. Like other fads they usually we return to reality. You can only push reality so far and then cracks begin to appear.

Whats strange in all this regarding Rights and protections is that we have two sides both claiming to be for Rights and reducing harm especially for children having opposite positions which lead to different approaches and outcomes and both believing they are right and if science and reality itself is discarded or reinterpreted to be relative then theres no way to dispute anything and it becomes a war of words.

I guess thats the aim of Postmodernist as Words are what makes reality.

It think it has to do with the inroads which forms of Neo-Marxism and/or extreme socialism have made more than just "post-modernism."

 

[Ana the Ist]

No because emotional reaction to behaviour alone can be irratic and arbitrary. The moral sense that babies and toddlers show is qualified by their innate sense about justice, fairness and kindness which are moral principles and not emotions.

Principles, not emotions...ok.

You could say its more an intuition rather than emotion. Intuition is a gut feeling but a gut feeling is not just emotional.

I think we have instinctive feelings, but they're definitely emotional reactions to stimuli.

Justice is a moral principle.

Lynch mobs engage in justice as they see it. I doubt you'd agree though. Justice as an abstraction can be a righteous act to one person and an atrocity to another.

To say that both people work towards an abstract concept of justice is fine....but they are not applying the same principles of justice if they hold any at all.

I was using the marfia to show that they know about Justice but they warp how it should be applied.

Well from their perspective, your sense of justice is warped. Who is correct?

The fact they know about justice shows that even immoral people understand this though they may get it wrong.

How do we know they are wrong and you aren't?

I don't think anyone really knows what moral sense is or moral intution fior adults. Its something you can't rationalise yet it seems to be at the basis of morality. When we spontaneously react or respond to moral situations as though something is morally wrong we don't stop and analyse the situation before we react or respond. We sense something is wrong and it matters and needs attention.

Most of us don't engage in morality that way. In fact, I would imagine almost none do.

That we sometimes may get this wrong

The intuition or its rationalization?

and need to reason it later doesn't undermine this sense as being a good indicator that something is wrong.

Wrong in what sense? Factually or morally?

For the most part our sense is correct or pretty close to the mark even if the situation turns out to be something else. That something else can be a forerunner to a moral wrong down the track.

I would strongly disagree.

For example we may hear a couple arguing and this causes our moral sense to give attention. Now arguing itself is not necessarily immoral. But it can be a sign that something else is going on. Certainly its not good for relationships when its not constructive or leads to a resolution. When kids hear arguing they cannot tell whats going on. But they do sense something is wrong and its not good for them.

I would say it depends on how the are arguing. Are they sitting over dinner disagreeing in a normal conversational tone....or are they on the street screaming at one another?

Actually this is not what he's saying because he clearly says that babies and toddlers have no rational idea of why they sense moral wrongs.

The author also has no rational way to read the minds of babies.

They are cognitively empty but their sense is strong and judgemental about moral situations.

I find that unlikely.

They clearly know when the bad guy is denying justice or fairness.

Are you conflating justice and fairness?

I suspect this is because there is something in us whether thats by evolution or the hand of God that understands and relates to human pain and suffering.

Ok.

This is the same for adults. Intitally we react and respond. We don't rationalise things because there isn't time. We just sense something is wrong and later rationalise.

I would agree that we don't go around with a list of moral laws or principles in our heads. We have emotional reactions and intuitions for certain....but they are emotional and reactionary to stimuli.

I don't think thats the point. Regardless of which moral system it is any moral system has to have a starting point which already recognises moral situations and makes them matter. If there is no prior sense there is not moral system.

I disagree. Ever see the movie The Martian? Matt Damon gets stuck alone on Mars? Just asking for a short thought experiment.

Yes and that is why we can't say that early sense of morality is based on rationality or teaching morality as a rational enterprise. There has to be some sense that is not determined by rationality to begin witButm

You say "sense" but I'm still not sure what you mean.

But even Humans idea doesn't mean that our moral sense is completely irrational. We know we are moral beings by the reality of our lived experience ie moral norms and laws, Yet we cannot completely justify a scientific rational basis for it.

If you're asking why we have morals at all, I'd suggest it's because we're social animals.

You can't assign value if there is no sense of value in the first place.

Assigning value is a choice. If you had a list of tasks to do....but you couldn't possibly finish them in a day....you would choose which ones to do, based on whatever you personally value.

Value is assigned....not sensed.

Not exactly because they are qualified by moral principles and judgements. Emotions can mean anything, good bad and ugly.

Right. You haven't explained what you mean by a moral principle though. Justice can mean wildly different things to wildly different people because it's an abstraction....not a principle.

An example of a principle would be "I believe people should be free to express themselves in speech"

Now, that's not a moral principle, but it's a principle.

Yes they are abstractions in that they cannot be objective in the physical sense.

They are abstractions because they represent a wide range of possible things. Many of those things you wouldn't consider justice.

But they are non the less objective in that they have a real effect on reality.

If you mean to say, ideas are real, sure.

They hold objective status in that they represent truths we have come to know which are required to live together as humans

I don't know how you would begin to prove a "justice" as "true".

. Without them we cease to live to our potential and actually end up destroying society and objective reality itself because they are tied to each other.

Objective reality doesn't appear to be affected something that can be destroyed.

Not justice then chaos, chaos then breakdown of society. Break down of society then who knows, the struction of the world itself.

Plenty of societies have fallen and the earth still exists.

Except its more than a preference. If it was a preference then we would see a variety of preferred outcomes including rewarding the bad guy as some prefer this.

That's exactly what the mafia does.

There is a moral judgement that goes with this moral sense which is strong and seems not open to preference. Its like the bad guy is wrong fullstop and the good guy is good no matter what others prefer. As adults we do the same.

Never saw the end of Blade Runner?

Yes I think this is where morals come from, where the Golden rule comes from. Even babies can sense other babies pain so its starts from birth.

I don't know what you mean by this. You can't feel anyone else's feelings. You can read cues....like facial expressions...but again, you're just reacting emotionally to stimuli.

Yes I think this is the other side of feeling the pain of others in that we are also capable of inflicting pain. Feeling the pain of others would not mean anything of we didn't also have the potential to inflict pain or even indulge in misery of others. But I think if anything this is influenced by culture. The West is good at pushing this onto people and it seems its a morbid facination.

Well why wouldn't that be a "moral intuition" and not a cultural influence?

Its a principle despite context I think.

Which makes it an abstraction. I say justice, you say justice, but it's just a vague term that could mean a variety of things.

We are have the right to be innocent before the law and not presumed guilty.

Uh huh.

There is no context to this.

In a court of law. The officer arresting you does it because he believes you are guilty.

You are presumed innocent in a court of law. That's the context.

It can't be an adhoc rationalisation because there is no rationalisation for it.

In the example above, the rationalization is rather simple....but it's not post hoc, our founders were enlightenment educated and valued logic. You can't prove a negative. Think of those burning witches you mentioned before. If we assumed their guilt....as apparently was common...how would they possibly prove their innocence?

Pretty difficult to provide evidence of your every deed all the time. We assume innocence because you can't prove a negative.

Its just there to begin with. If anything we can say we just don't know why we have it.

Well....one of us doesn't know lol.

Lol

Not when its the motivator that leads to justice. I think your confusing Justice itself with our moral sense. Our moral sense causes us to make matters of Justice matter in the first place.

Again...no idea what you mean by sense.

How do you sense when you've "done a justice"?

I think intuition is more than emotion.

One of the most distinctive features of Ethical Intuitionism is its epistemology. All of the classic intuitionists maintained that basic moral propositions are self-evident—that is, evident in and of themselves—and so can be known without the need of any argument. Intuition is immediate apprehension by the understanding. It is the way that we apprehend self-evident truths, general and abstract ideas, “and anything else we may discover, without making any use of any process of reasoning” That is more akin to current accounts of intuitions as intellectual seemings or presentations (Bealer 1998; Chudnoff 2013). Intellectual seemings are the intellectual analogue of perceptual seemings. Just as certain things can seem perceptually to be a certain way, e.g., coloured, or straight, so certain propositions can seem to be true, or present themselves to the mind as true.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism-ethics/#Int

Intuitionism teaches three main things
There are real objective moral truths that are independent of human beings.
These are fundamental truths that can't be broken down into parts or defined by reference to anything except other moral truths.
Human beings can discover these truths by using their minds in a particular, intuitive way.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intuitionism_1.shtml

Unfortunately, when our moral choices differ, and we both believe we have done good and the other bad....we cannot intuit who is factually correct in truth.

Intuitions are Used as Evidence in Philosophy
Philosophers tend to believe propositions which they find intuitive. Second, philosophers offer error theories for intuitions that conflict with their theories. Finally, philosophers are more confident in rejecting theories to the extent that they have several (intuitive) counter examples involving diverse cases.

Intuitions are Used as Evidence in Philosophy

Abstract. In recent years a growing number of philosophers writing about the methodology of philosophy have defended the surprising claim that philosophers

academic.oup.com

That's why philosophers don't typically get paid much.

But the moral sense is there as babies before they are socialised. Plus they hold this moral sense about justice and kindness despite socialisation. If a baby is born and socialised into a moral relativist or even a moral or immoral group they will still display certain moral judgements about justice and kindness being good despite any social influence.

It's entirely dependent upon a group.

lol.

Yes and in some ways this supports our moral sense and intuition in that despite trying to teach kids and even young adults about atheistic and naturalistic ideas kids still believe in a creative agents and disembodied spirits.

It's a matter of perspective. He says I need to overcome it....I'd say I'm unburdened by it.

Atheists don't have teachers. Religious people do this a lot...because it makes sense to them. You have a preacher, he tells you what to think. I don't have any preachers....I never went to church. Both parents believed in God. My mom was catholic, my father Lutheran I think. I wasn't raised into any religious viewpoint....and frankly, it wasn't a topic of conversation. I knew that people were religious, I just knew I wasn't. There wasn't any frame of reference for God or other such ideas. I didn't know there was a word for people who didn't believe in God. I wasn't actually confronted by any religious beliefs until I was about 11.

In fact it suggests that belief is a natural disposition

Well pattern seeking is a natural disposition. If you see something that doesn't fit the pattern that you cannot explain....your subconscious can simply invent an explanation.

and if theres any indoctrination going on its people trying to teach belief out of people.

Indoctrination is dogmatic and not truth oriented. If you can question the teaching, and prove or reason your way to a different conclusion, then you're speaking about education and truth.

I think the point is we all have some sort of belief even if thats in naturalism or science itself. We find it hard to be totally without some sort of belief as its a natural disposition. That we can't rationalise belief into being as its counterintuitive.

I believe in sheet music...but it's not supernatural. It's not some kind of explanation I had to invent. I can't read sheet music, I don't play any instruments, and a beautiful concerto and absolute garbage look the same to me. However, since someone can write in this language I don't know, and play the music on their instrument....and someone else can come along and play the same song....it stands to reason it's a real language that people can communicate in. That's not the same as, for example, thinking that the first guy is a wizard, and he wrote a magic spell on the page, and anyone who reads it has to play that song.

Well luckily as good science would have it, these findings and interpretations have been repeated independently.

That's a book. It's not research. Furthermore, if any research were done....I'd be very surprised if it were replicated. The peer review process and lack of replication is actually one of the reasons why we have doctors willing to experiment on children with life altering drugs. The peer review process appears to have been broken for some time. We're learning that a lot of experts are simply frauds.

 

[Bradskii]

Experts called the move a 'dismissal of basic biology' and could lead to medical advice being de-sexed and over-complicated.

Please give me a link whenever you are quoting an article. I like to see the whole thing, not a convenient summary. Saves me searching for it.

The expert (or one of them) is Dr. Marlene Gribble, a professor of nursing. And she has a reasonable argument that in some instances a gender neutral approach in medicine could, and I'll repeat could be a problem if it's inaccurate. 'Sex is NOT limited to male or female': Fury over WHO woke guidance

What she isn't doing is questioning the concept of gender. How you could think that she was is beyond me. Perhaps you thought that a little cherry picking to an unlinked article would convince people that she was. But if you check the article it gives the same definition of gender as did the last two links I gave you.

Here's one:

'A person's sex is determined by their biological traits. Gender represents how someone feels about their identity, meaning there can be mismatch with a person's sex, as occurs in cases of gender dysphoria.'

And here's another, from the same article:

Sex, as defined by the Government, refers to the biological aspects of an individual as determined by their anatomy. This anatomy is produced by their chromosomes and hormones.

There are two universally accepted sexes, male and female. For example, males (XY chromosomes) are born with a penis and testes and females (XX chromosomes) are born with a vagina.

There are some cases where children are born with attributes of both sexes, such as being born with a womb and testicles. These are called differences in sex development or being intersex.

Gender, on the other hand, is defined by the Government as a social construct. This relates to the behaviours and features generally attributed to either men or to women.

A person's gender identity is how they perceive their own gender. For most people this aligns with their sex. However, some people do not feel their gender matches their sex, this is called gender dysphoria.'

So far from story being an example of someone rejecting the concept of gender, it actually confirms what it is. And this in a considerably conservative newspaper. So do you want us all to trust that article? To accept what it tells us?

Read the definitions again and tell me what exactly you don't understand.

 

[Bradskii]

Last year WHO’s abortion-care guidance called for babies to ‘be killed up until the moment they emerge from the birth canal, without delay, whenever a pregnant woman requests it’.

It said nothing of the sort. I know because I have read the guidance. I know you haven't because you'd know it as well if you had. So now it's up to you to find the guide, download it and read through it to discover that yourself. Let me know when you are ready to retract that statement.

And some advice. If you quote an article or quote what someone said in an article, then link to it so we can see the context. If someone makes a claim about something (such as that guide) but doesn't quote it, then the claim is worthless unless it can be shown that the guide actually says what the claim is. So if you want to repeat the claim then you're going to have to check it yourself. Let me know whèn you have done so.

 

[Bradskii]

It think it has to do with the inroads which forms of Neo-Marxism and/or extreme socialism have made more than just "post-modernism."

Well, I'll be...there's me suggesting a far right dictionary need to be printed so that new definitions can be penned for 'grooming' and which must also include Marxism and socialism as well and 5 minutes later...

 

[Ana the Ist]

What a load of garbage. Where is the evidence that any of that is true? There is no scientific evidence of any of it. A spectrum? Not that again.

What's on each end? What's in the middle?

I think we can safely dismiss it as a bad explanation because it's hard to imagine why anyone would require treatment, to alter their appearance, if they merely wanted to take on a certain role.

You don't have to be a woman to be a nurse for example....just go to nursing school.

 

[stevevw]

It think it has to do with the inroads which forms of Neo-Marxism and/or extreme socialism have made more than just "post-modernism."

Yes I agree. But I think its a perfect storm of ideology belief, political philosophy and intellectual movement. You hear the Marxist g in how many attack their own culture making out its evil and responsible for every problem we have ever had while forgetting that the very same Western culture allowed them to be free to express their views and protest.

Though I don't think its protesting in the way civil Rights did with peace and order and respecting the Institutions. Its often extreme like Instinction rebellion shutting down entire city streets affecting many or no platforming people with screams and foul language to shut down any opposing views. Disrespecting other peoples freedom of speech, movement and beliefs.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Well, I'll be...there's me suggesting a far right dictionary need to be printed so that new definitions can be penned for 'grooming' and which must also include Marxism and socialism as well and 5 minutes later...

Marxism is a political religion that blames everything wrong on those in power but credits them nothing of the good they've done. It sows discord by appealing to the poor and uneducated with visions of Utopia which can be easily achieved if they only remove those greedy few who horde power and wealth. A simple story for simple folk. Divide everything into simple opposite pairs. The bourgeois and the proletariat, the oppressors and the oppressed. Marxists promise the downtrodden they are all equal to the greatest of kings (Marxists say this but don't believe in it) most importantly, Marxists tell you it's alright if you don't really understand how all this economic stuff works....just take their word for it. You labor has been stolen from you!

Which is a goofy thing to say but actually could happen back then. "Getting shanghai'd' was a phrase similar to "Getting taken for a ride" or otherwise being duped into a situation you didn't want to be in. Sailors at Port who didn't want to sail home and preferred to spend money in opium dens and brothels could wake up after falling blackout drunk, on a ship back to Europe against his will, doing a job on a boat. That's stealing labor....as the only other option was to be chucked off the boat at sea.

Anyway Marxism is a drunk pseudo intellectual's critique of capitalism, fervent love of socialism, and the final stage of a perfect socialist nation is this weird society that never existed where we all use our talents and abilities to help each other all remain equals....a classless society. Once this perfection is attained....the government merely melts away....it's no longer needed.

How do we achieve this? Sadly Marx didn't include that. Instead, he told a fictional version of history that's provably false, demonstrated a poor understanding of economics, and criticized capitalism....and many of these critiques are valid, and most of them are ripped off of Adam Smith himself....father of modern economics and the coming age that would replace mercantilism and usher in capitalism. Most underrated and under-read philosopher of all time. Why?

Because most people find economics boring. Why try to understand supply and demand and the many ways we can chart their relationships when Marx is right over there with a much simpler explanation. You aren't dumber or lazier or more cautious than those wealthy guys....they're just greedy. An emotionally appealing explanation anyone can understand. Commodities, capital, potential value, real value, price....blah blah blah. Boring!

Marx promises everything if you just get rid of those capitalists. He also wrote some stuff about needing to alter human consciousness to achieve communism. Why? Because apparently humans aren't that compatible with communism. It's almost as if Marx knew he was full of it....a con artist.

Marxism maximizes resentment until it becomes violence and then revolution. Once power is attained....it's time to set up that socialist Utopia that will soon be full communism. Unfortunately, there's no plan for this part....so any successful revolutionary has to wing it. They don't understand economics so it goes bad....fast...and it's not pretty. When people realize they are starving and working to exhaustion at a job they don't want to do and aren't good at...you gotta find people to blame. So there's a lot of scapegoating those less committed communists and political opponents. Famous last words of many communists? "But I've been a faithful communist since the start, comrade."

A state of permanent fear ensues...the nation hides it's failures from foreign dignitaries, pretending socialism is working great. Communists point out that Stalin took Russia from a poor agrarian nation to an industrial superpower in 30 years. I tend to point out he did this by enslaving innocent men in gulags and reaping the profits of their labor. They didn't even get paid...and they were lucky to get fed.

Which is ironic because the big complaint that put those people in that position was someone was stealing their labor lol. Well...under communism, labor definitely gets stolen. The Meiji Restoration took a feudal Japan to a modern industrialized nation in about the same amount of time....and all they did was pay Americans to teach them business and economics. A lot less murder, secret police, genocide, starvation, cannibalism, and forced labor. Sounds way better.

So why has Marxism endured? Because it was very dishonest about it's failures and successes. From the outside, or during the carefully staged guided tour (still a thing in N Korea) it appears to be viable. In reality, it's a perpetual state of terror as no one knows who will be next to be accused and sent to hard labor. Still...with all the negatives hidden for years it spawned a whole group of fervent academics and wanna-be revolutionaries in western nations with human rights and educations and stuff. When you make a career as an academic in a economic/social/political religion that you've wrongly placed your faith in...and you eventually find out the truth, it's a way to speed run your nation into poverty....what do you do? Admit you bought into a bunch of hokum and try to undo the damage you've done? No sir, no....you get together with your communist buddies and revise the theory. Figure out what went wrong. Oddly....when this happens....the personal flaws of dictators tend to get blamed and they never seem to even consider that the problem was systemic....like they're all just of average intelligence and socialism tends to implode fast because if everyone is equal no one is striving for better. There's no incentive to work at all let alone work hard...not to mention you killed off everyone good at these jobs in the revolution. Stalin was actually far smarter than his peers understood....and much more ruthless. When he realized socialism fails, he purged all the old guard communists and stopped nearly all communist propaganda. Propaganda took a very nationalistic turn. Can't tell the people stealing labor is wrong when daddy has spent the last 5 years in a labor camp on some bogus charges.

A lot of people like to credit Ronald Reagan with toppling the USSR, but in reality it was a house of cards. TV was undermining the lies told about the hellish western nations (something the Chinese have been careful to avoid) and the failure of capitalism. People were growing increasingly discontented. N Korea solves this with starvation. Hard to organize a revolution when you've never had a full stomach. And before Stalin could do another purge to cool things down....his closest associates poisoned him. The speed and coordination of the coup that followed along with the execution of any loyalists who weren't in on the plan should convince anyone that Stalin was poisoned, he didn't fall ill, which was the official story. Unfortunately, what followed was a lot of uncertainty and lack of clear leadership. They didn't have what China had in Deng....an honest man who was smart enough to understand socialism doesn't work, and an closed debate about what economic models would work. They ultimately went this odd and short lived but capitalism/socialism hybrid developed by these weirdos known as national socialists where you can do capitalism but if you get too good at it or get too wealthy you find yourself coughing up a lot of money and running projects for the state for free. Glad to see Jack Ma isn't dead. Wonder what happened to him during those 9 years in a hole.

The most successful communist nations are the ones that abandoned communism fast. They may still call themselves communists....but they're just common dictators with far too much free trade to be communists.

Communism hates that labor isn't valued perfectly and is typically under paid. This is true. Every successful businessman has to correctly assess values and trade things of lower value to obtain things of higher value. If done the other way around....you will fail at business. Labor and wages are two of those things being traded. If you were paid what your work was exactly worth...there would be no profit. There's a lot of risk in any trade. Assess value wrong....and you're losing money...capital....wealth. To succeed in business, you must get more than you give...if every exchange were equivalent, it's not clear why you would trade at all.

Ever noticed that so called socialists and communists find bartering perfectly acceptable? Even when it involves haggling? Nothing wrong with trying to rip off a small business owner/vendor/service provider in a big marketplace by arguing with them over the price of their goods. You're absolutely free to rip them off or more likely, they'll rip you off...but agreeing to do a job for an hourly wage is something exploitative because you think your work is more valuable than whatever you agreed to when you were hired. Try to remember that job interview and every other job interview you've ever had. I'd describe all of mine as me casually lying about how great an employee I am. That employee will show up for maybe the first two months if you're lucky. After that...the real guy you hired is clocking in. You're lying about your value at those job interviews, and your employer is taking a risk in the time invested in training you. Very high stakes businesses (those who depend upon value assessment over long term durations) are always cutting dead weight. You may not recognize when you are negotiating value...but that's something you can at least learn some of the tricks to and how to recognize them so you aren't being taken for a sucker all the time. Believing that everyone should get exactly what they are worth in labor is nonsense. Your value as an employee is directly related to how easy you are to replace. If I can pull a bum off the street and show him how to do your job as well as you do it in an hour or two....you're probably not getting paid much.

 

[stevevw]

Please give me a link whenever you are quoting an article. I like to see the whole thing, not a convenient summary. Saves me searching for it.

I just gave it to you, the one you just used to say that Dr. Marlene Gribble was not referring to gender.

The expert (or one of them) is Dr. Marlene Gribble, a professor of nursing. And she has a reasonable argument that in some instances a gender neutral approach in medicine could, and I'll repeat could be a problem if it's inaccurate. 'Sex is NOT limited to male or female': Fury over WHO woke guidance

What she isn't doing is questioning the concept of gender. How you could think that she was is beyond me. Perhaps you thought that a little cherry picking to an unlinked article would convince people that she was. But if you check the article it gives the same definition of gender as did the last two links I gave you.

Here's one:

'A person's sex is determined by their biological traits. Gender represents how someone feels about their identity, meaning there can be mismatch with a person's sex, as occurs in cases of gender dysphoria.'

And here's another, from the same article:

Sex, as defined by the Government, refers to the biological aspects of an individual as determined by their anatomy. This anatomy is produced by their chromosomes and hormones.

There are two universally accepted sexes, male and female. For example, males (XY chromosomes) are born with a penis and testes and females (XX chromosomes) are born with a vagina.

There are some cases where children are born with attributes of both sexes, such as being born with a womb and testicles. These are called differences in sex development or being intersex.

Gender, on the other hand, is defined by the Government as a social construct. This relates to the behaviours and features generally attributed to either men or to women.

A person's gender identity is how they perceive their own gender. For most people this aligns with their sex. However, some people do not feel their gender matches their sex, this is called gender dysphoria.'

So far from story being an example of someone rejecting the concept of gender, it actually confirms what it is. And this in a considerably conservative newspaper. So do you want us all to trust that article? To accept what it tells us?

Read the definitions again and tell me what exactly you don't understand.

Marxism is a political religion that blames everything wrong on those in power but credits them nothing of the good they've done. It sows discord by appealing to the poor and uneducated with visions of Utopia which can be easily achieved if they only remove those greedy few who horde power and wealth. A simple story for simple folk. Divide everything into simple opposite pairs. The bourgeois and the proletariat, the oppressors and the oppressed. Marxists promise the downtrodden they are all equal to the greatest of kings (Marxists say this but don't believe in it) most importantly, Marxists tell you it's alright if you don't really understand how all this economic stuff works....just take their word for it. You labor has been stolen from you!

Which is a goofy thing to say but actually could happen back then. "Getting shanghai'd' was a phrase similar to "Getting taken for a ride" or otherwise being duped into a situation you didn't want to be in. Sailors at Port who didn't want to sail home and preferred to spend money in opium dens and brothels could wake up after falling blackout drunk, on a ship back to Europe against his will, doing a job on a boat. That's stealing labor....as the only other option was to be chucked off the boat at sea.

Anyway Marxism is a drunk pseudo intellectual's critique of capitalism, fervent love of socialism, and the final stage of a perfect socialist nation is this weird society that never existed where we all use our talents and abilities to help each other all remain equals....a classless society. Once this perfection is attained....the government merely melts away....it's no longer needed.

How do we achieve this? Sadly Marx didn't include that. Instead, he told a fictional version of history that's provably false, demonstrated a poor understanding of economics, and criticized capitalism....and many of these critiques are valid, and most of them are ripped off of Adam Smith himself....father of modern economics and the coming age that would replace mercantilism and usher in capitalism. Most underrated and under-read philosopher of all time. Why?

Because most people find economics boring. Why try to understand supply and demand and the many ways we can chart their relationships when Marx is right over there with a much simpler explanation. You aren't dumber or lazier or more cautious than those wealthy guys....they're just greedy. An emotionally appealing explanation anyone can understand. Commodities, capital, potential value, real value, price....blah blah blah. Boring!

Marx promises everything if you just get rid of those capitalists. He also wrote some stuff about needing to alter human consciousness to achieve communism. Why? Because apparently humans aren't that compatible with communism. It's almost as if Marx knew he was full of it....a con artist.

Marxism maximizes resentment until it becomes violence and then revolution. Once power is attained....it's time to set up that socialist Utopia that will soon be full communism. Unfortunately, there's no plan for this part....so any successful revolutionary has to wing it. They don't understand economics so it goes bad....fast...and it's not pretty. When people realize they are starving and working to exhaustion at a job they don't want to do and aren't good at...you gotta find people to blame. So there's a lot of scapegoating those less committed communists and political opponents. Famous last words of many communists? "But I've been a faithful communist since the start, comrade."

A state of permanent fear ensues...the nation hides it's failures from foreign dignitaries, pretending socialism is working great. Communists point out that Stalin took Russia from a poor agrarian nation to an industrial superpower in 30 years. I tend to point out he did this by enslaving innocent men in gulags and reaping the profits of their labor. They didn't even get paid...and they were lucky to get fed.

Which is ironic because the big complaint that put those people in that position was someone was stealing their labor lol. Well...under communism, labor definitely gets stolen. The Meiji Restoration took a feudal Japan to a modern industrialized nation in about the same amount of time....and all they did was pay Americans to teach them business and economics. A lot less murder, secret police, genocide, starvation, cannibalism, and forced labor. Sounds way better.

So why has Marxism endured? Because it was very dishonest about it's failures and successes. From the outside, or during the carefully staged guided tour (still a thing in N Korea) it appears to be viable. In reality, it's a perpetual state of terror as no one knows who will be next to be accused and sent to hard labor. Still...with all the negatives hidden for years it spawned a whole group of fervent academics and wanna-be revolutionaries in western nations with human rights and educations and stuff. When you make a career as an academic in a economic/social/political religion that you've wrongly placed your faith in...and you eventually find out the truth, it's a way to speed run your nation into poverty....what do you do? Admit you bought into a bunch of hokum and try to undo the damage you've done? No sir, no....you get together with your communist buddies and revise the theory. Figure out what went wrong. Oddly....when this happens....the personal flaws of dictators tend to get blamed and they never seem to even consider that the problem was systemic....like they're all just of average intelligence and socialism tends to implode fast because if everyone is equal no one is striving for better. There's no incentive to work at all let alone work hard...not to mention you killed off everyone good at these jobs in the revolution. Stalin was actually far smarter than his peers understood....and much more ruthless. When he realized socialism fails, he purged all the old guard communists and stopped nearly all communist propaganda. Propaganda took a very nationalistic turn. Can't tell the people stealing labor is wrong when daddy has spent the last 5 years in a labor camp on some bogus charges.

A lot of people like to credit Ronald Reagan with toppling the USSR, but in reality it was a house of cards. TV was undermining the lies told about the hellish western nations (something the Chinese have been careful to avoid) and the failure of capitalism. People were growing increasingly discontented. N Korea solves this with starvation. Hard to organize a revolution when you've never had a full stomach. And before Stalin could do another purge to cool things down....his closest associates poisoned him. The speed and coordination of the coup that followed along with the execution of any loyalists who weren't in on the plan should convince anyone that Stalin was poisoned, he didn't fall ill, which was the official story. Unfortunately, what followed was a lot of uncertainty and lack of clear leadership. They didn't have what China had in Deng....an honest man who was smart enough to understand socialism doesn't work, and an closed debate about what economic models would work. They ultimately went this odd and short lived but capitalism/socialism hybrid developed by these weirdos known as national socialists where you can do capitalism but if you get too good at it or get too wealthy you find yourself coughing up a lot of money and running projects for the state for free. Glad to see Jack Ma isn't dead. Wonder what happened to him during those 9 years in a hole.

The most successful communist nations are the ones that abandoned communism fast. They may still call themselves communists....but they're just common dictators with far too much free trade to be communists.

Communism hates that labor isn't valued perfectly and is typically under paid. This is true. Every successful businessman has to correctly assess values and trade things of lower value to obtain things of higher value. If done the other way around....you will fail at business. Labor and wages are two of those things being traded. If you were paid what your work was exactly worth...there would be no profit. There's a lot of risk in any trade. Assess value wrong....and you're losing money...capital....wealth. To succeed in business, you must get more than you give...if every exchange were equivalent, it's not clear why you would trade at all.

Ever noticed that so called socialists and communists find bartering perfectly acceptable? Even when it involves haggling? Nothing wrong with trying to rip off a small business owner/vendor/service provider in a big marketplace by arguing with them over the price of their goods. You're absolutely free to rip them off or more likely, they'll rip you off...but agreeing to do a job for an hourly wage is something exploitative because you think your work is more valuable than whatever you agreed to when you were hired. Try to remember that job interview and every other job interview you've ever had. I'd describe all of mine as me casually lying about how great an employee I am. That employee will show up for maybe the first two months if you're lucky. After that...the real guy you hired is clocking in. You're lying about your value at those job interviews, and your employer is taking a risk in the time invested in training you. Very high stakes businesses (those who depend upon value assessment over long term durations) are always cutting dead weight. You may not recognize when you are negotiating value...but that's something you can at least learn some of the tricks to and how to recognize them so you aren't being taken for a sucker all the time. Believing that everyone should get exactly what they are worth in labor is nonsense. Your value as an employee is directly related to how easy you are to replace. If I can pull a bum off the street and show him how to do your job as well as you do it in an hour or two....you're probably not getting paid much.

Great summary and I would just add that Marxism today takes the form of Cultural Marxism rather than economic Marxism though economics is still part of it. But the workers are replaced by the minorities (race, sex, gender mainly) and the oppressors are still the West but instead of capitalist oppression its oppression by culture through the oppressive hiearchies of systematic racism and gendernorms. In other words mainly white heterosexual males.

But when you add Postmodernism to the mix instead of the oppressed fighting in the trenches to overthrow the capitalists ideologues are doing it within the institutions taking them over through ideological theories such as Queer and Critical race theories, changing paradigms and narratives so they socially re-engineer society to their new Utopia. Thats why words, pronouns, language has become such a divisive and conflicting issue. Like words are weapons and can create reality.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Well, I'll be...there's me suggesting a far right dictionary need to be printed so that new definitions can be penned for 'grooming' and which must also include Marxism and socialism as well and 5 minutes later...

Oh? In which post above did you say something? Unfortunately, I likely missed it since I'm not prone to reading entire threads.

But yes, I was "groomed" myself.............................at the university. For Neo-Marxism. Marx (and some other Communists) came up quite often in my Sociology and Philosophy classes as "the reading for today." And we were 'trained' on how to promote and do social activism, for Left leaning agendas.

Although there are a few Marxists out there from whom I can take a pointer or two, I can imagine the chagrin my professors would feel if they were to fully realize that their Neo-Marxism (in the guise of "diversity teaching") didn't quite take.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Yes I agree. But I think its a perfect storm of ideology belief, political philosophy and intellectual movement. You hear the Marxist g in how many attack their own culture making out its evil and responsible for every problem we have ever had while forgetting that the very same Western culture allowed them to be free to express their views and protest.

Though I don't think its protesting in the way civil Rights did with peace and order and respecting the Institutions. Its often extreme like Instinction rebellion shutting down entire city streets affecting many or no platforming people with screams and foul language to shut down any opposing views. Disrespecting other peoples freedom of speech, movement and beliefs.

I don't really think Post-Modernism on the whole is the culprit since the term isn't monolithic and it houses a plethora of diverse viewpoints. It's not as if I simply say "I'm a post-modernist" and another guy says the same and then we exchange a very friendly handshake of comradery. No, it doesn't quite work like that because post-modernism isn't Marxism.

However, I do agree with you that there is a kind of "perfect storm" circulating that is catalyzing much of what we see happening where Christianity is concerned in the U.S. and part of what makes it so damaging is that some of the accusations that come from the Left.......... are true.