This is actually already a theory based on the 'many worlds' interpretation of a certain aspect of quantum mechanics if I'm not mistaken.Condor219 said:I am the only person that I know am 100% trustworthy, 100% controllable, and 100% true. Everyone, everything, that I encounter, could be an illusion. All others could be animals simply placed here to view my reaction by some higher being, or (in a more "government conspiracy" fashion) they could be robots or contolled devices meant to react in certain ways to each and every one of my statements. I only know of my sentience, because that is the only one I know is under my control. Everything I ever do could be meticulously planned out so I could experience it, and I'd never know it. Maybe my life is a gigantic simulation, and when I die I'll wake up out of the simulation booth as a completely different being. But regardless of all that, I accept everything around me to be real, because no truer sense of reality exists. And if some greater presence were controlling the events around me, I need to do my best to satisfy that control; what else can I do besides that if it was my purpose? Anyway, I hope whoever read this enjoyed it.
I have no idea if you're American (I am), but the American government never claims that it does the kind of Justice you're talking about. For instance, if we understood what it took to exact your kind of Justice, the right to a fair trial would not be necessary. The point in the Justice system is to prevent people from coming over and saying that they do in fact know what is needed to exact Justice (in the purest sense), and people believing.spartan231490 said:Which is exactly my point. "Government is just a body of people, usually notably, ungoverned." The government has no business telling me what to believe or what is right or wrong. That's God's job. Government should stop claiming to bring about justice and just be honest about what they're doing, because what they are doing is far more important and morally justifiable than imposing a morality on their people. What they are doing is maintaining order and safety for the populace, a necessary and worthy goal, that should not be hidden behind vain and useless attempts to mimic omnipotence. Perhaps I should modify it. Justice on Earth is a myth.zehydra said:ok, I get what you're saying. You're saying that Justice doesn't manifest itself in this reality, but that the concept of Justice as an absolute idea does in fact exist. We just don't (and perhaps can't) really know what executed Justice would look like, and therefore all justice systems that exist today are not really justice systems at all, but failed attempts.spartan231490 said:No, I meant what I said. Justice is a myth. It has been conceptualized, but it doesn't exist(at least not in this life. I have no authority to claim anything about what may or may not come after). Partial justice doesn't exist either.zehydra said:I think what you mean is that complete justice doesn't exist, not that justice doesn't exist. Some notion of justice has to exist, otherwise you wouldn't realize what was unjust. It's kind of like how Goodness can only exist if there is Evil/badness to differentiate from.spartan231490 said:Justice is a myth. Think about it, it works two ways. The idea that somehow, there is an equilibrium, 'Karma', so to speak, is ludicrous. Newborn babies, who have never done anything wrong die, unable to earn any kind of good luck in exchange. Murderers walk free, and innocent men die by lethal injection.
The second way it works, is that no government can pursue any kind of true justice. No matter what you do, guilty men will walk free, and innocent men will be punished, and even if that weren't the case. I seriously doubt that even going so far as killing a murderer is any kind of justice, the victim is dead, and nothing will bring them back, and the family will not get to see them again just because the person who did it is dead. The only justifiable purpose for law is to prevent actions which harm members of the populace, I.E. crime, so law's purpose should be deterrence, not justice. Justice is the realm of God, not Men, any man made justice is nothing but a myth.
Pretty sure that's original. You caught me at a good time with this thread, this is a rather recent thought of mine, in another month I will likely have forgotten it, if the past is any indication.
Justice is just a word thrown about to give moral authority to a punishment. However, punishment needs no moral authority beyond being a deterrent of similar undesirable actions from others. As for us knowing when something is unjust, we don't.
We can't know how any action will balance on the scales of universal 'justice.' A man kills a child, sounds unjust, but maybe that kid would one day grow to be a mass-murderer, or a child molester. We can't know that that action was unjust, or even evil. but we still have the moral authority, as a society, to punish that action, because killing a person is usually going to be a bad thing for society, and because if it is a common occurrence, panic and fear will endanger the lives of everyone.
'Unjust' is almost always used to describe something that was evil or cruel, not even things which our society considers to be 'unjust.' At least, that's what my experience tells me.
Your view differs from another view of justice: That justice is not necessarily a concrete idea, but something to work towards. Like you said, Unjust is used to describe something evil or cruel, and likewise, Just is used to describe something which would be the opposite or retribution for evil or cruelty. Think about all of the many different kinds of moralities out there, and how people's opinions on what is evil or cruel differ.
The Justice system doesn't exist to establish some kind of ultimate, pure justice, the kind you say doesn't exist, but rather is there to establish some kind of moral order in the lack of over-arching objective morality.
That's actually very interesting. I've never really thought about gender differences that way. I mean, I'm not sure that I agree with you, but I'm not sure that I disagree with you, either.will1182 said:Biologically, it's more difficult to be a girl. Socially, it's more difficult to be a guy. Think about it.
Girls have to deal with menstruation, pregnancy, child birth, more body maintenance (makeup, etc.) all while generally being shorter and weaker than men, on average.
Guys are expected to appear confident even if they're not, never cry or show emotion openly, are often responsible for initiating a relationship (as well as propagating it), compete with other males to be the "alpha male", and automatically lose any court case involving rape or child custody.
Disclaimer: This was all IMO. I realize I made generalizations and there are exceptions to everything I just said.
1. Escapists should stop using the term "trope," as it has been tainted by overuse and now appears very "look at the big word I'm using," regardless of its intent. I hope you don't see this as a dig on you. That's just a thought that occurred to me. Also, TL;DR needs to die as a conveyed sentiment and as a term.ChuQue37 said:snip
I think Descartes came to the same conclusion as well.intheweeds said:This is actually already a theory based on the 'many worlds' interpretation of a certain aspect of quantum mechanics if I'm not mistaken.Condor219 said:I am the only person that I know am 100% trustworthy, 100% controllable, and 100% true. Everyone, everything, that I encounter, could be an illusion. All others could be animals simply placed here to view my reaction by some higher being, or (in a more "government conspiracy" fashion) they could be robots or contolled devices meant to react in certain ways to each and every one of my statements. I only know of my sentience, because that is the only one I know is under my control. Everything I ever do could be meticulously planned out so I could experience it, and I'd never know it. Maybe my life is a gigantic simulation, and when I die I'll wake up out of the simulation booth as a completely different being. But regardless of all that, I accept everything around me to be real, because no truer sense of reality exists. And if some greater presence were controlling the events around me, I need to do my best to satisfy that control; what else can I do besides that if it was my purpose? Anyway, I hope whoever read this enjoyed it.
Though it's some nice philosophy, Rene Descartes beat you to it. "Cogito, ergo sum" and all that.Condor219 said:I am the only person that I know am 100% trustworthy, 100% controllable, and 100% true. Everyone, everything, that I encounter, could be an illusion. All others could be animals simply placed here to view my reaction by some higher being, or (in a more "government conspiracy" fashion) they could be robots or contolled devices meant to react in certain ways to each and every one of my statements. I only know of my sentience, because that is the only one I know is under my control. Everything I ever do could be meticulously planned out so I could experience it, and I'd never know it. Maybe my life is a gigantic simulation, and when I die I'll wake up out of the simulation booth as a completely different being. But regardless of all that, I accept everything around me to be real, because no truer sense of reality exists. And if some greater presence were controlling the events around me, I need to do my best to satisfy that control; what else can I do besides that if it was my purpose? Anyway, I hope whoever read this enjoyed it.
Seriously, I know that I'm not earning any love from the bronies of late, but this is your idea of originality? A pony pic and the above statement? I am almost certain you can do better than that.silversnake4133 said:You can never go wrong with a couple of ponies.![]()
Let's see:ChuQue37 said:Snip
You haven't had spaghetti until you have had spaghetti with parmesan and a nice amount of barbecue sauce instead of tomato sauce.ZeZZZZevy said:something that was never posted before
but seriously...
I once had spaghetti so good, even my eyeballs liked it!
But who watches the watchers? I agree with your philosophy for the most part, but I think if you work in McDonalds and live in a cardboard box because of decisions you willingly made(no matter how stupid or uninformed you were) is freedom. Freedom cannot exist without the responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions. If you don't have to accept that responsibility because the gov't saves you whenever something goes wrong, then you aren't free. Especially considering that means they have the power to interfere in your life at their discretion, which leads back to who watches the watchers.AvroLancaster said:I think that the word liberal is misused criminally in the United States. Meanwhile in the commonwealth it is usually only used as an alternative to "Social Democrat" and "Conservative."
This bothers me because I am a liberal, I believe that the only guiding principle behind any law is to increase the freedom of a citizen.
Classical Liberalism is a right wing philosophy that gets a hard on for the free market. Most American "conservatives" are either lunatics who believe that the "In God We Trust" on their money means that their country was actually secretly intended to be a theocracy, or are in fact classical liberals. Ronald Reagan was not a conservative, he was a classical liberal.
Reform Liberalism is an umbrella term for not the above. This is where I and most modern liberals (who are not mislabeled social democrats) fall in. We believe, like a classical liberal, that your freedom ends only where my freedom begins and that my freedom ends where your freedom begins. We also believe that if you are wage slaving at McDonald's and living in a cardboard box with no prospects that doesn't qualify as free. The goals of private enterprise are often counter to the well being (again, in a freedom-centric sense) of the population. The government needs to serve as a sentinel, a watchdog that with perfect vigilance and the tenacity of a hawk must guard the freedoms of its people from external threats as well as from both itself and from those that would erode the freedoms of its people from within.
Liberalism is the philosophy that protects the liberty of its people, reform liberalism is the philosophy that adds compassion into the equation and, in my belief, is the most rational choice for any society.
This is my original post, an appeal to Americans and commonwealthers alike, please do not misuse this word, because you are probably a liberal of some sorts deep down and you should look into Liberal parties as viable logical options that wish to see democracy function as it was meant to since its inception.
This is an amazing thought, I love it.TheLoneBeet said:There's no such thing as Road Rage. Everybody just has varying degrees of Road Intolerance for Stupidity. Those who don't; are the stupid ones. (Yes I did come up with that while driving)
I always thought that was more of a "Back-to-the-Future" Doc-draws-2-lines-on-a-chalkboard theory (the many-worlds interpretation, that is) though if some branch of quantum mechanics thought of this I can see it.intheweeds said:This is actually already a theory based on the 'many worlds' interpretation of a certain aspect of quantum mechanics if I'm not mistaken.Condor219 said:I am the only person that I know am 100% trustworthy, 100% controllable, and 100% true. Everyone, everything, that I encounter, could be an illusion. All others could be animals simply placed here to view my reaction by some higher being, or (in a more "government conspiracy" fashion) they could be robots or contolled devices meant to react in certain ways to each and every one of my statements. I only know of my sentience, because that is the only one I know is under my control. Everything I ever do could be meticulously planned out so I could experience it, and I'd never know it. Maybe my life is a gigantic simulation, and when I die I'll wake up out of the simulation booth as a completely different being. But regardless of all that, I accept everything around me to be real, because no truer sense of reality exists. And if some greater presence were controlling the events around me, I need to do my best to satisfy that control; what else can I do besides that if it was my purpose? Anyway, I hope whoever read this enjoyed it.
I actually believe the exact opposite of you. Being a dude is awesome socially (I get to hit on hot girls and don't have ugly people hit on me). I like the direct competition of the male sphere versus the mind games and bullshit girls go through.will1182 said:Biologically, it's more difficult to be a girl. Socially, it's more difficult to be a guy. Think about it.
Girls have to deal with menstruation, pregnancy, child birth, more body maintenance (makeup, etc.) all while generally being shorter and weaker than men, on average.
Guys are expected to appear confident even if they're not, never cry or show emotion openly, are often responsible for initiating a relationship (as well as propagating it), compete with other males to be the "alpha male", and automatically lose any court case involving rape or child custody.
Disclaimer: This was all IMO. I realize I made generalizations and there are exceptions to everything I just said.