This seems a bit extreme

[belamyi]

If you're correct, then there could never be any revolutions, never be any labor strikes, never be even so much as a mild political protest.

If what I say makes sense, then all the revolutions, labor strikes or even the mildest political unrest do not ever make any real change at all for the masses involved. The changes are always fought on the top levels, and whatever improvements are won by those below are not derived from what they do themselves, but as a consequence of those changes in the top levels. The Top gives it to us and The Top takes it from us, irrespective of all hurly-burly.

Law is an artificial construct, almost always something rigged by the people with power to keep the rest in line. There is no connection at all between self-ownership and "ownership" of physical property.

Thoughts and writings are an artificial construct, almost always something rigged by the people with a strong conviction to keep the rest in line. There is no connection at all between them and the facts outside and around them.

You complain about "unfair contractual agreement", but your argument, that there is no self-ownership, is what makes those possible. The lie that people only own the freedom the law gives them is what makes unfair contracts possible.

I am not "complaining", I am just pointing out: do not assume overtones and attitudes. I am not claiming that it is not possible, I merely state that it is almost never, if ever, actually done, and at any rate not generally even where it is supposed to be a matter of course, namely, the Free World.

Law is only a public form of awareness, the signified and significant embodiment that what several individuals have realized is agreed upon as a group, and stated as achievable and maintainable indefinitely. Law is not something that is just there, that is given for some, the fair, to enjoy, and for others, the bad, to be crushed by it.

People think they believe they own themselves, but they don't really. People who really understand that they own themselves are the ones who stand up to tyranny. If Americans actually understood that they own themselves, neither the current authoritarian president nor his fascist predecessor could ever have come to power.

People think that everything, reason, law, morality, "self-ownership" with is the term that fired this blabbing together, is something that is perceived as out of them, that they must reach to, conquer or be given, not as something that is born and developed from their every single act. If everybody was aware of that, Americans like the rest, there would not even be needed a form of authority from above because people would not be calling for it, like those who stand for a benevolent dictator as the perfect standard of ruling, or even unawarely, clumsily, like yourself, from below.
But that will never happen because nature, the world is not about an Edenic equilibrium of perfect awareness and wisdom.

 

[bankside]

The great thing about culture is we don't have to care about it now that we have human rights.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Articles 12, 18, and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would suggest that a kissing couple is entitled to privacy and expression and protection from the law in so doing. Fuck culture. These are their rights.

 

[xbuzzerx]

The great thing about culture is we don't have to care about it now that we have human rights.






Articles 12, 18, and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would suggest that a kissing couple is entitled to privacy and expression and protection from the law in so doing. Fuck culture. These are their rights.

I'm not allowed to walk around naked.

Where are my rights?

 

[Kulindahr]

If what I say makes sense, then all the revolutions, labor strikes or even the mildest political unrest do not ever make any real change at all for the masses involved. The changes are always fought on the top levels, and whatever improvements are won by those below are not derived from what they do themselves, but as a consequence of those changes in the top levels. The Top gives it to us and The Top takes it from us, irrespective of all hurly-burly.

History contradicts your position. The fact that those masses act at all proves their self-ownership: it they did not own themselves, they wouldn't be able to act; their mouths wouldn't obey them when they wanted to protest, and their limbs wouldn't engage in any actions directed against the powerful.

But even your version above is false. If it were true, labor unions would never have achieved anything at all, and Poland would still be chugging along as a Soviet client state.

 

[Kulindahr]

The great thing about culture is we don't have to care about it now that we have human rights.






Articles 12, 18, and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would suggest that a kissing couple is entitled to privacy and expression and protection from the law in so doing. Fuck culture. These are their rights.

Yes.

And any nation violating any of those rights as a matter of policy should be stripped of its vote in the UN General Assembly.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm not allowed to walk around naked.

Where are my rights?

Oregon is honest enough to recognize that walking around naked comes under freedom of expression. Sorry about L.A.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Oregon is honest enough to recognize that walking around naked comes under freedom of expression. Sorry about L.A.

I am oppressed then, yes? Fuck the culture that informs common notions of public decency.

 

[belamyi]

History contradicts your position. The fact that those masses act at all proves their self-ownership: it they did not own themselves, they wouldn't be able to act; their mouths wouldn't obey them when they wanted to protest, and their limbs wouldn't engage in any actions directed against the powerful.

But even your version above is false. If it were true, labor unions would never have achieved anything at all, and Poland would still be chugging along as a Soviet client state.

Your understanding of history, not the facts of history, is what may contradict my position: I was talking about the effective power of their "act" to change things in their benefit, which beyond the theatrical strutting and fretting amounts to NOTHING. Both history and the recent news prove my point, from the Storming of the Bastille to the "Arab Spring". People (individuals) have minds, masses don't. By definition. Their "acting" is a blind force that can be easily manipulated with a play of mirrors and trinkets to divert and misguide their protests.
But if you think of referring the Civil Rights movement to prove your point, you are mixing, mistaking the cases in which, like in Europe, the evil is the norm and foundation, while in the US it is the anomaly which goes against the very foundation of the nation, even if both seem to come from the same place, from above, the prowerful.

What destroyed Soviet states was the Soviet nonsense, accelerated by certain mindlessness politics like the Afghanistan war.

 

[Kulindahr]

Your understanding of history, not the facts of history, is what may contradict my position: I was talking about the effective power of their "act" to change things in their benefit, which beyond the theatrical strutting and fretting amounts to NOTHING. Both history and the recent news prove my point, from the Storming of the Bastille to the "Arab Spring". People (individuals) have minds, masses don't. By definition. Their "acting" is a blind force that can be easily manipulated with a play of mirrors and trinkets to divert and misguide their protests.
But if you think of referring the Civil Rights movement to prove your point, you are mixing, mistaking the cases in which, like in Europe, the evil is the norm and foundation, while in the US it is the anomaly which goes against the very foundation of the nation, even if both seem to come from the same place, from above, the prowerful.

What destroyed Soviet states was the Soviet nonsense, accelerated by certain mindlessness politics like the Afghanistan war.

If that is true, then there are no United States independent of Great Britain.

See, masses are made up of individuals. If those individuals didn't own themselves, they never would have moved, so there wouldn't be any masses, by whomever they may or may not be manipulated.

 

[LeicsDom]

If they don't have self-ownership, then anything that's done to them is perfectly moral.

Not from an outsiders' point of view

 

[belamyi]

If that is true, then there are no United States independent of Great Britain.

See, masses are made up of individuals. If those individuals didn't own themselves, they never would have moved, so there wouldn't be any masses, by whomever they may or may not be manipulated.

If the US had relied merely on fervent masses with a strong will to oppose a government, if they had had only their own stubornness and animosity against the British, which is what these thought they had, and not the compound of the resources of the new land and the new frame of mind, new definite conception of law and a a definite direction of a future independent from the British, they would have been like Canada during the whole XIXth century, or even worse... You are belittling the process of the foundation of America... are you sure you are not British or Canadian?

The case you refer to is in fact very much like the case of Soviet Russia mentioned above, and in fact is the case of the average independence process: it was not merely not mostly the masses revolting that led South America to independence from Spain, like it is not the Catalan masses which would achieve independe from the same.

 

[belamyi]

If the US had relied merely on fervent masses with a strong will to oppose a government, if they had had only their own stubornness and animosity against the British, which is what these thought they had, and not the compound of the resources of the new land and the new frame of mind, new definite conception of law and a a definite direction of a future independent from the British, *they would have been like Canada during the whole XIXth century, or even worse... You are belittling the process of the foundation of America... are you sure you are not British or Canadian?

The case you refer to is in fact very much like the case of Soviet Russia mentioned above, and in fact is the case of the average independence process: it was not merely not mostly the masses revolting that led South America to independence from Spain, like it is not the Catalan masses which would achieve independe from the same.

This part is missing there: *; if they had not been already in 1773 more a state than a province, a more powerful, actually assertive and not just wilful, more effective and cohesive organization as a state, even embrionary and without a constitution and a proclamation of independece, and even with the internal struggles, than they had as a mere territory of the crown,


I know it flows like crap and is articulated like a turd, beyond hopefully you will discern the diamond shining through

Revolts and revolutions are only a seed, and people, like yourself, always seem to take for granted that seeds need the right soil and the right conditions to bloom and bear fruit.

Likewise, if you take pains to make a seed bloom against those condtions and soil, you must face failure in the longer or, rather, shorter term. For example, democratic, "free" Afghanistan in the 1960s and the like... not to speak of the position of Israel as it is now sorrounded by lions, but that is another story ,and there may be too many people getting paid for doing the very serious job of reading anything being said about Israel on message boards on the net LOL.

 

[Kulindahr]

Not from an outsiders' point of view

Why? If they don't own themselves, they're just property.

 

[Kulindahr]

If the US had relied merely on fervent masses with a strong will to oppose a government, if they had had only their own stubornness and animosity against the British, which is what these thought they had, and not the compound of the resources of the new land and the new frame of mind, new definite conception of law and a a definite direction of a future independent from the British, they would have been like Canada during the whole XIXth century, or even worse... You are belittling the process of the foundation of America... are you sure you are not British or Canadian?

The case you refer to is in fact very much like the case of Soviet Russia mentioned above, and in fact is the case of the average independence process: it was not merely not mostly the masses revolting that led South America to independence from Spain, like it is not the Catalan masses which would achieve independe from the same.

I belittle nothing. You continue to avoid the fact that if the colonists had not been aware of their self-ownership, they would have all stayed home and never so much as spoken in complaint.

 

[belamyi]

I belittle nothing. You continue to avoid the fact that if the colonists had not been aware of their self-ownership, they would have all stayed home and never so much as spoken in complaint.

But their "self-ownership" is not the God-given, inner feeling and sacred fire that you are trying to prove it is, which is what I am refuting: I am not saying it does not exists, ever, or didn't exist in the case of America: what I am saying is that it is much more, it is more complex and even more material than the abstract moral and sentimental vague entity that it is usually reduced to, which is what you are doing in your posts: it is part of a process of development of awareness, strengthening and maintenance.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Why? If they don't own themselves, they're just property.

What I think is questionable is you simplistically placing all citizens of Morocco and their entire culture on one binary side or the other of this "self ownership" argument.

When plenty of societies think we're backwards were they to judge us solely on one or two things picked out of a vaccuum-- like our public decency laws, the fact that we see pedophiles or sexual assault in any visage of nudity, or our regulations against sex and nudity on television.

 

[Kulindahr]

But their "self-ownership" is not the God-given, inner feeling and sacred fire that you are trying to prove it is, which is what I am refuting: I am not saying it does not exists, ever, or didn't exist in the case of America: what I am saying is that it is much more, it is more complex and even more material than the abstract moral and sentimental vague entity that it is usually reduced to, which is what you are doing in your posts: it is part of a process of development of awareness, strengthening and maintenance.

You're confusing the existence of a thing with awareness of its existence. If there's a gas leak in my house, it's real whether I'm aware of it or not. Self-ownership is a fact, true of every person, whether they know it or not. It isn't bestowed, and it can't be taken away.

Making people aware of their self-ownership is another matter. Those who buy the lie that they don't own themselves will never reach for anything better. The complexity lies not in self-ownership, which is a very simple thing; any complexity comes in making people aware of it and understand it.

 

[medic1]

Just why do you refuse to see and understand that many off us are rather adverse to the prolific use of guns and what seems to many that the ease in some of your states that makes no distinction in granting licenses?
I am not that daft,i realise that in some countries having a firearm is De-Rigour ,for many reasons.Your unbending and sometimes very dismissive posts only go to show your bias.

 

[medic1]

^Sorry dude,wrong thread my apologies.

 

[cgymike]

^hahha.yeah right!