Violence and Hatred and our acceptance of it...

@Ceili,

Quote:

but then again, who doesn't hate their own government.

People who feel that the government is working for them, rather than against them. Hard as this might be to believe, this has sometimes happened,,,,governments are not always corrupted by forces who are out to exploit the citizens for profit.

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@Fido,

Quote:

Even the right wing yahoos of the republican party are more reasonable than any foreigners I know of...

Oh really ? Those filthy foriegners....dont you just hate them ?

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@hawkeye10,

It was a meant to be taken as a broad statement. But then again, according to Fido, I'm an irrational foreigner. lol

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I don't have much to add to the discussion of what may be the norms for human behavior. My impression of history and life is that love, hate, self-sacrifice and oppression coexist everywhere and always in human affairs.

Separately I believe that Mr Hart's study of the IRA and the many generations of social, economic and political oppression and revolution attendant to the "Irish problem" is a well-chosen subject for many reasons. In the first place the Irish Republican movement was one of the earliest and certainly the most long-lived and successful revolutionary movements on the modern world. In several respects it created the template for others - including both the murderous aspects of revolution and those involving a dedication to non-violence. In the end the IRA, like all human organizations became the exemplar of the actions it took from the beginning with its high-minded revolutionary furvor: it finally degenerated to just a band of murderous criminals and thugs. However it was notably successful in a long term struggle between the powerful and the weak, and it created a model imitated in other anti-colonial struggles around the world.

I believe the political and historical lesson is that the seeds of long-term political and economic oppression can spawn violence and murder that will eventually corrupt both parties for a very long time.

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@georgeob1,

Well said.

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@Ceili,

Ceili wrote:

I don't think most people hate the residents, just the government. That's why I said both loved and hated, but then again, who doesn't hate their own government.

when it was more democratic, it was better, and delivered the goods... the right is mistaken ib the belief that only they are ill served by the goverment.. we are all mistaken in the belief that it is our neighbor's fault... we are okay... the form is broken...

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
but then again, who doesn't hate their own government.
People who feel that the government is working for them, rather than against them. Hard as this might be to believe, this has sometimes happened,,,,governments are not always corrupted by forces who are out to exploit the citizens for profit.

you deserve a gold star

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

Quote:
Even the right wing yahoos of the republican party are more reasonable than any foreigners I know of...
Oh really ? Those filthy foriegners....dont you just hate them ?

i have no room in my heart for hate, but i understand why the right hates them...

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I'll add that I didn't much like the condesension in the article by Joan Sullivan about Mr Hart at the opening of this thread. It is all too commonplace and superficial to observe the murderous and thuggish residue of the IRA at the end of a long and successful struggle, but much harder to recall and document the often very refined and polite, but nonetheeless brutal, oppression and intolerance of the British ruling class in Ireland before WWI. Given these prevailing attitudes within the academic and Anglo establishment, it only natural that the criminal residue of this long-lived but successful revolutionary movement would be suspicious of the academic who wished to study them.

Ireland is better off without British rule and the Northern counties better off without the Stormont government. Like all such movements in history the revolution involved its excesses and crimes, and its soldiers eventually degenerated to killers and thugs. One of the many ironies of life is that, notwithstanding our motives and rationalizations, we eventually become what we habitually do. It was also good that better political forces finally took over the country and rejected the debris of the revolution that saved them.

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@Ceili,

Ceili wrote:

It was a meant to be taken as a broad statement. But then again, according to Fido, I'm an irrational foreigner. lol

I understand the right and their anxiety about foreigners, their zenelasia...They see their white rights being diluted in a sea of brown, and every import seems to take more and more of opportunity and require more and more of support from the government...Because they are minorities, the government tries hard to guarantee and protect their rights, but no such guarantee is extended to long term residents....It could be that immigrants are reaching this land with 10 iq points on the average American, but the facts are that on any university campus the brown skinned are everywhere...The finer points of U.S. foreign policy may be lost on your average hillbilly, but the facts are obvious, that what ever we are doing is resulting in foreign people being here taking advantage of rights the whites fought for and won on many occasions...No one ever asked them if they wanted to throw open the doors and invite the whole world in....But it is wrong to fear and hate the immigrants... We share rights and so our rights are insufficient for any number, and more only makes the problem more obvious...

Civil, human rights are qualitative, based upon our quality of being living human beings...The privilages we extend to press and to religion, and especially to property are quantitative, based upon a certain property that all do not share, and they truly diminish our rights... The right majority confuses an effect with a cause... People come here because of the power of wealth in their lives, and what the whites are losing is the opportunity to have that wealth... The inequality of rights that people with property and wealth enjoy has spread injustice throughout the world... People come here looking for the rights they were robbed of, and find a people robbed of rights...

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@georgeob1,

And didn't the British always call them terrorists??? Even when they were taking the land and food from under their noses, it was the Irish who were the terrorists...

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@Fido,

Quote:

i have no room in my heart for hate

Isnt that rather unusual ? And by who's authority do you make that claim ?

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i understand why the right hates them...

You understand....I have trouble understanding hate unless it is something I also hate......why do they hate foriegners ?

1 Reply

@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

Quote:
i have no room in my heart for hate
Isnt that rather unusual ? And by who's authority do you make that claim ?

Quote:
i understand why the right hates them...
You understand....I have trouble understanding hate unless it is something I also hate......why do they hate foriegners ?

I do not fear; so I cannot hate... People are people, and my life could alread have ended many thousands of times... What I have to fear no one can help, and that is that I must live forever.. God forbid... Everything else I can handle...

The simple fact is that people from abroad have survived adversity for many generations, and this has acted as a great intelligence test whose passing grade was survival... We, on the other hand, know the stiffling effect of organized religion on all aspects of our rearing so few even feel free to exercise their imaginations let alone intelligence... They fear because they know they are at a serious disadvantage... They are like so many kittens in a pillow case tossed from the bridge of life, and they flail about with their little claws and mew, and mew until death drowns them...They are suffering the failure of their forms which have left them demoralized and unable to learn, act, and react... That is simply not my problem... For lack of a better word for it: I Know, what is going on... I have formal consciousness...

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@Fido,

Quote:

I do not fear

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I cannot hate

I dont think you are clever enough to fear, or you are lying, or you are mentally ill. Fear is an asset. You have been watching too many Bruce Willis movies.

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

Quote:
I do not fear

Quote:
I cannot hate

I dont think you are clever enough to fear, or you are lying, or you are mentally ill. Fear is an asset. You have been watching too many Bruce Willis movies.

No... I am not clever... That is true... But I have not ever failed to find something in common with a single person... I think I may share their faults, and I know I just do not care... This is the first year I road my motor cycle without leather jacket or boots... I don't care... I can be hurt by my wife, but I am otherwise beyond that hurt...Are you going to kill me??? See if I care... I love life, but I cannot find the handle, and I see no reason to try to hang onto it more than I have already...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Quote:

I love life, but I cannot find the handle, and I see no reason to try to hang onto it more than I have already...

Well said. I hope you understand my cynicism was directed at the type who says they are not afraid and are usually the most afraid. And I still reserve some doubts about you and fear. I think I could put a healthy dose of fear into you with some of the things that have happened to me.....they sure as hell frightened the crap out of me at the time.

As for being unable to hate, I think you just lack motivation.

Quote:

I see no reason to try to hang onto it

I have to quote that again. It is the closest I have seen to my attitude in someone else.

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@Ionus,

According to Dr. Johnson; Richard the Lion Hearted, on his way to the Crusades came across the grave of a man of whom it was said: Never knew fear... Richard said: He must never have snuffed out a candle with his fingers...
The point being, that fear is the natural reaction to all we know must hurt us...

I recognize the power of people to hurt, but to meet them individually, I find I have little to fear- from which I extrapolate that they are no more the problem than myself... I used to carry a hand gun everywhere I went out of a fear I no longer feel... If I were to condense all my feelings for humanity into its most dominant feature, it would not be fear, but disappointment... I want us to be better... I expect more from us: Nobility, or Godliness, honesty, intelligence, or courage... And I am disappointed... People are usually short sighted and cruel, parsimonious of their happiness and prodigal of their misery...

Talk to them individually, and you can find the common thread the binds all humanity in our common cause, but groups together spin that common thread into so much navel fuzz.. I am despondent, and not afraid... I just do what I can, and expect little more from life beside the possibity it gives for work, work, and more work...

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@Ceili,

Is senseless destruction not the most glorious of activities us humans can indulge in?

No seriously, war fuels technological advancement and keeps all those involved on edge and sharp.
War is pretty nasty, but also brings great technological advancements.

I live in a peaceful place of the world, but I honestly think I would thrive and be far more content in a place where violence is generally accepted.

Hatred can be an excellent form of motivation, but it can also be blinding.
This blinding effect of hatred must be avoided/compensated for, with rationality or common sense.

As with most things, balance is very important when it comes to violence. But when the balance is there I can see no reason why it could not be part of a succesful society.

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@Brinkman,

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I live in a peaceful place of the world, but I honestly think I would thrive and be far more content in a place where violence is generally accepted.

In a different thread, you wrote:

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I've never really fought anyone let alone kill anyone in case anyone might wonder, hehe.

If that is true, I must say that I doubt you would thrive in a place where violence is accepted; and what more, that - never having been in a fight yourself - you may not have the necessary perspective to know how ignorant some of the statements you made in the last post are.

My guess is that if a random guy were to kill your best friend and hit you in the head with a bat one day on the street, you wouldn't think that senseless destruction was, in fact, the most glorious of human activities. Not so much.

Cycloptichorn

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@Brinkman,

Quote:

As with most things, balance is very important when it comes to violence. But when the balance is there I can see no reason why it could not be part of a succesful society.

It has to be, as there can be no birth without death, old people and old ways and ways that dont work anymore need to die so that better can be born. Very few people or institutions or ideas want to die so they will fight their fate till their last breath. They need to be helped out often times.

Violence is a critical part of the human condition, dispense with violence and nothing will work, it will be the end for us.

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