Are you trying to "win"?

With all of your respective ideologies flying around, I've had to ask myself if you're actually trying to "win". Do you have an understanding that we are one human race of people? Is competition really needed when we, as humans, have escaped such things as animalistic instnict with logic and justice?

Do you have ethics or morals that are absolute, or do they only apply to you and yours? I'm not talking about "Let's be one World"- I am merely questioning whether you all feel more fulfilled by treating others negatively for whatever reason or if you'd rather help everyone and anyone you can.

It's not a directive, but a question.

Aum Shantih Shantih Shantih

Everyone has their own ideas of what it means to "win".

It's not a competition because we're not all going after the same goal, and multiple people can get the same goal without interfering with one another doing so.

I don't know whether interacting with others is distracting them from achieving their goals or helping them get to their goals, so I generally do not help others unless I know I can help them reach their goals. But I certainly avoid interfering with them.

My personal goal is to leave the world in better shape than it would have been had I never lived.

My ethics and morals are absolute.

Your post was generally incoherent and I don't know exactly what point you were trying to make, but this is a response to my best guess.

>>2

there was nothing incoherant about the post.

to respond, yes, everyone seems to be trying to have their ideals "win" over others and the sad part is that alot of these ideas have no basis in the overall betterment of mankind. it's a stupid question...of course people feel more fulfilled by treating other negatively and it's most done out of fear.

doesn't shanti mean peace?

i don't think man will ever find peace as long as he remains so afraid

>>3

The betterment of mankind is the betterment of all individuals. If everyone is winning individually, mankind is winning overall. If nobody is winning individually, mankind is losing overall, even if  a small and powerful number tell the others that they are winning.

>>1
If good people and their good ideas never stood up and worked for a better future, then nothing good would ever happen. If that involves honing your reasonning skills in the most ridiculously ignorant medium in the whole internet then so be it.

I believe that morals and ethics are for weak people.
The only way to make the economy is to consume less resources
less people=more resources
less people=more jobs
less people=better economy
therefore, the best way to make the economy better is to get rid of people, No, I don't know how I'll do this, or anyone else without breaking any "ethics".  

I apply my ethics and morals to every being who is responsible for their own actions. If I didn't, they wouldn't be ethics and morals.

>>6

We could start by getting rid of every person who thought like you.

>>7

I second that.

Less people = more resources? I would have thought you'd rather just use people as resources.

>>8
Soylent Green?

>>6
less people = less people to produce resources
less people = less jobs being created, or just too many jobs created for too few people
less people = smaller economy


retard.

>>10
I'm a retard?
less people= more natural resources(your thinking of products fucktard)
less people, Think of post Black Plague, that should give you the idea
less people does equal smaller economy, but how is that bad?

>>11

less people = more resources per person, with less resources which can be devoted to making those natural resources good for anything.

less people = less demand for consumer goods = less jobs producing consumer goods.

smaller economy + economy of scale effect = lower efficiency = lower standard of living.

>>12
Your not considering the effects of overpopulation, but I can see where your coming from that big business needs a big economy.
Overpopulation=only good for the rich 

>>11
 yes, believe it or not, someone needs to harvest the grain, someone needs to mine the ore, melt the ore, shape the metal, bend the metal into machines etc. if you kill off half the population you may end up in situation where you do not have the necessary people to do this.

post-black-plague there was alot of resources available because alot of people died, that's right, but there was also alot of people needed to make use of those resources, so people had babies, and tons of them, everybody having more and more babies, untill a status quo was reached, and you can see the opposite effect today, where developed coutnries are having a birth rate which does not sustain the population.

and as #12 said, "smaller economy + economy of scale effect = lower efficiency = lower standard of living." of course there is a risk of overpopulation, but there is also no reason to have a unneccesary small population, since this will simply result lack of efficiency.

>>13

Overpopulation isn't good for the rich because it can only be sustained through taxation of the rich.

>>14
I'm not talking about a small population, I'm talking about 4 billion, I think we need to take an average population cycle

>>16

You can't say what "average" is without trial and error in a case like this. We're overpopulated when the world population levels off. That's how we'll know we're overpopulated. At present, anyone who says we're overpopulated is saying they know something that they actually don't.

>>17
but we all know the hike up to leveling off is full of starvation and pain

>>18
In places that can't support a population, yes. Parts of Africa and South America and Asia can't handle a higher population unless it becomes more industrialized. The North America and Australia and Europe can support a higher population.

I'm not denying that local overpopulation is a problem we really have today that has to be dealt with. Thing is, global overpopulation can't be judged by looking at the few worst local overpopulation examples.

I recently (a couple of days ago) came to the conclusion that, ultimately, it is impossible to make the world a better place for everyone.

There are two many conflicting thoughts, ideas, beliefs. There are too many opposing interests that overlap, too many situations where both people(s) are right and yet only one of them can ever truly get justice. Too many doctrines, too many ideas, too many old hands and young turks. Too many activists and too many who are indifferent.

At the end of my thoughts, I came to realise that the only thing  a man can truly do without shame is to find a life for himself and those he cares for; a place in this world which he can make his own and share with the ones he loves. To strive for anything else is an illusion; the world is greater than any one man, and every man must eventually succumb to it- it is simply better to do so in peace if one can.

>>20
This took you this long to figure out?
Thats why there will always be war, world peace will come when there is one man on the planet(and he will kill himself out of loneliness)

What do you mean 'this long'- you've no idea how long it tooke me, What, were you thinking this stuff aged 8?

>>22
it was a opener, chill out

NO, ANGER LEADS TO HATE, I AM THAT CANADIAN WUSS-VADER

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Anyway, yeah, I only 'just' figured it out. I'd never really had a belief, as none of them seemed to fit, and never really believed in the identities I'd been given by birth in one country and parents from another. I just realised why.

>>23
How can I chill out except by killing myself or giving myself hypothermia? My body temperature stays at around 37 degrees naturally. You are a very silly person.

>>20
For "everyone", yeah, but that doesn't mean you can't help many people. The founding fathers helped make America a good country, Abraham Lincoln helped keep America together, countless charities have helped countless people, Gandhi helped India and many others through his ideas, Martin Luther King helped African Americans. There are millions of examples of helping more than just yourself and your loved ones, so, that's kind of a dumb statement.

>>26

I'm glad Lincoln was killed. He seriously deserved it.

>>27

Yeah, he was only the greatest president in US history.

>>28

Being a fascist war criminal doesn't make a good president. 150 years of propaganda and demonization of opposition makes a good president.

>>27
>>29

This is apart of the fear I was talking about. I'm talking about the gut instincts of man. Fear is the core motavator. You fear someone so much that they have to KILLED? Really? If don't treasure life, then what outside of free will gives you the right to take lives? The southerns didn't want to free the slaves out economic fear, fear that their way of life would be changed. But slavery is wrong and it doesn't really matter if Lincoln's bottomline was keeping the union together. Who do you consider humans? Who do you consider worthy of life? And why can't you see that the very same estimation was probably made by Lincoln?

>>30

I'm not afraid of him. The man is dead. He deserved to be killed because of his actions to start a war with the CSA. I treasure life, unless that life is attempting to take others' lives (i.e. starting wars that kill 900,000 people, etc).

They seceded because Lincoln was going to use taxes exacted on the poor farmers of the south to subsidize big business in the north and it pissed them off. They weren't afraid of their way of life changing. Most southerners didn't even have slaves. It was only a few rich plantation owners that still had slaves. CSA generals freed their slaves at the beginning of the war, USA generals didn't free them until they were forced to, after the war ended. Slavery was NOT the issue in that war.

Human or not is irrelevant. Personhood is what's relevant. I consider anyone a person if they respect the rights of other people. People who can't do that are human animals. I consider all people worthy of life. Non-persons are unowned property, and killing nonpersons is like going out and shooting a buck in the woods. Lincoln was NOT a person. He started a war over his fucking political career. He does not respect the rights of others. He was not a person, he was a human animal.

>>31 here.

600,000. Damn numpad.

>>31

You think taking lives is alright in the circumstance of your choosing. You are no different than the people you detest. You don't have the right to divvy people up into animals or humans. And you only do so out of fear and self-hatred. If you think Personhood is what's relevant then you side with Lincoln and big business. If you care about basic human life; then there's no way you could say the things you do and mean them.

>>33

I think taking lives is alright in the circumstance of THE VICTIM'S choosing. If they think I ought to die, I merely imitate them in their attempts to kill me.

I don't fear anyone or hate myself. I don't side with Lincoln or big business.

I don't care about human life. I care about the lives of people. Coincidentally, most humans are people. But not all. You need to understand the difference between the two. Jack the Ripper is a human. But he's an animal, not a person.

>>31
Lincoln did not start the war. The South started the war. Lincoln wanted South Carolina to come back and he was not going to touch slavery in the south. At the end of the war he had a plan for Reconstruction that would completely forgive the south, and help it rebuild. Lincoln did absolutely everything in his power to keep the Union together and to prevent war. There were many factors in the causation of the Civil War, Lincoln, however, was not one of them, much less THE factor. It was about state rights, federal power, and the constitution primarily. I really have no clue where you filled your head with those nonsensical ideas.

It's funny how a topic about "winning" became a debate on the Civil War.

>>35

Lincoln tricked the South into firing the first shots. This is an often-overlooked fact of history. Here's a page that goes into it.

http://www.us-civilwar.com/sumter.htm

Paragraph 2:
"Attempts by the Confederate government to settle its differences with the Union were spurned by Lincoln, and the Confederacy felt it could no longer tolerate the presense of a foreign force in its territory. Believing a conflict to be inevitable, Lincoln ingeniously devised a plan that would cause the Confederates to fire the first shot and thus, he hoped, inspire the states that had not yet seceded to unite in the effort to restore the Union."

Lincoln was the factor that caused the Civil War. Lincoln and his platform. Lincoln's platform totally disreguraded states rights, expanded federal power, and largely ignored the Constitution. That's why they were issues.

>>36

OP here.

I think that is the point I'm trying to make. The fact that this thread turned out this way proves some the points I made in the first post. People say they don't want to "win" and yet...

>>37
That seems a bit biased. Do you have a unbiased source?

>>31
If i remember correctly the republican party was formed to counter threats to white anglosaxon protestants in mid 19th century. These threats were irish catolic immigrants and that the south would export slavery to the north, putting the white protestants out of work. But i think the south wanted to export slavery also, that the north should deregulate its slavemarket.
But i must ask, does all genocide make you angry? And do you believe that all presidents who have for base reasons gone to war have forfitted their life? Because that includes all US presidents since FDR.

>>1 Of course i debate to win. Otherwise it would be masterbation. The point of having an argument is to come to a conclusion, and if the debaters have opposite views then one must yield and one must prevail.

>>39

Of course i debate to win. Otherwise it would be masterbation. The point of having an argument is to come to a conclusion, and if the debaters have opposite views then one must yield and one must prevail.

Should we leave you to your yoga-exercises, Mr. "I can stick my penis in my own butt"? OP wasn't talking about 'debate', I don't know how you idiots are missing the obvious.

>>1
I don't have to try.  I just do.

Debate to win???  LOL

Debaters dont win; shooters win.

>>41
Fail for lack of proof. Fail for this instance of fail.

you only fail if you miss. try again.

>>26

Yeah, but you end up pissing someone else off. Give the Jews a homeland (which they deserve), and you make Palestinian Arabs refugees (which they do not deserve). Thats only a single example; there are too many overlaps- there are no winners without losers. If you hold that to be true, why place faith in ideals?

I'm not saying you can't do good things, just that trying to do so for ideological reasons is pointless, which is what the threads about.

>>37
So you put your faith in ONE website, a .com website (for profit), rather than an .edu (for knowledge), which is the usual ending for a credible historic site? Do you know who owns martinlutherking.org? White supremacists! So, I don't trust your source at all, until there is at least credible American Civil War historian or Lincoln historian who hypothesizes that President Lincoln was THE cause of the Civil War, your statement is completely bogus. And as it stands now, most Civil War historians put the cause on Constitutional issues, North/South differences, state rights, or some combination thereof.

>>39

This is >>37.

Do you have a source that can rebut the claims? Perhaps my source is incorrect but I've yet not seen evidence to the contrary, most seem silent on the issues brought up by the source I provided. Google "Lincoln Sumter" (don't use quotes in the search). The first relevant result is biased in the US's favor, and quite obviously so, as evidenced by the unnecessary negative adjectives in refrence to the south and unnecessary positive descriptions of the north. Wikipedia, silent on the issue, the third is the source provided, the fourth is a lesson plan for a History class which mentions the contention without rebutting it, the next discusses Lincoln influences in the decision. There's one about buying Lincoln cars in Sumter, that was excluded in the order.

Either way, at the time it was generally understood that the States could secede under the Constitution, and they did. Fort Sumter was a Federal fort in the CSA. It's similar to Iran having a military base in the US. It would not be tolerated today, and it was not tolerated in 1861. The Confederates gave those in Fort Sumter a chance to leave without violence, but they refused, and instead attempted to resupply it. If we told Iran to abandon a base in the US and Iran said "NO U" and tried to send ships to supply it's base, don't you think the US would fire upon the Irani base? Technically, it could be said that the US started the conflict because it fired the first shots at Iran, but it would be silly to believe it was not provoked by Iran. It was the same thing with the CSA and the USA back in 1861. History is written by the winner. The Union won, so obviously it's going to glorify it's victories and mask it's mistakes.

>>47
"Either way, at the time it was generally understood that the States could secede under the Constitution, and they did."

You're joking, right? Sorry, you've just lost all credibility, that statement is complete bullshit.

"It's similar to Iran having a military base in the US. It would not be tolerated today, and it was not tolerated in 1861."

No, it's not at all. Iran was never part of the US and never seceded from the US. That is a completely false analogy. It would be like part of Iran saying that it wasn't part of Iran anymore, including a strategic Iranian military base full of Iranian soldiers, and then the rebels expecting those soldiers to just hand it over because "Hey, they said it was theirs now!"

"I've yet not seen evidence to the contrary, most seem silent on the issues brought up by the source I provided. Google "Lincoln Sumter""

Yeah, everybody knows Google is the best source for historiographical interpretation. Pick up a book or two on the causes of the civil war. The causes of the Civil War is one of the most complicated topics in United States history. There have been books and books and essays and essays written about it. Just saying "Lincoln did it" is a gross oversimplification even if what you are saying is true, which I doubt it is.

>>47
Except thats an incongruent comparison, the Soldiers in the fort were loyal to the north, and they were actually there BEFORE south Carolina seceeded.  In a way, they had squatter sovereignty, and the south could fucking blow itself, the federal troops were there first.

And besides, you can bitch and moan about how unfair the north was to the south, and what a tyrant Lincoln was, but the facts stand, the south asserted itself too strongly against other states in the union, and upon leaving the union, they pretty much gave the north the go ahead to wage war on them, considering they were then a foreign nation.  Frankly, southerners were fucking stupid, they fought a war over the principle of slave ownership, when less than 10% of the population actually owned slaves, and they would bitch and moan about how much better off the north was compared to them.

>>48

If at the time nobody believed States could rightfully secede, why wasn't South Carolina promptly invaded upon secession? Why did South Carolina even attempt to secede, much less the rest of the States, if everybody knew they couldn't Consitutionally do so? If the people of the CSA thought the States couldn't rightfully secede, why did they go and fight for the CSA?

You didn't rebut the fact that it was a foreign fort in Confederate territory. The CSA was not part of the USA at the time. And IIRC most of the Federal money was coming from tariffs imposed on the south in the first place, the South effectively paid for their construction in the first place. You also misinterpeted the example. It's like Iran owning the US and the US seceding, and Iran trying to resupply an Irani fort in the US. I'd use an example like the UK in the revolutionary war, but the UK is friendly with the US now so the example seems rather absurd in that case. There was a lot of disagreement between the North and South, so an antagonistic other country seemed more fit for the example.

Have you seen a rebuttal to what I was saying about Lincoln starting it or not? I haven't yet, and admitted that my sources might be faulty. No need to be rude.

>>49

They weren't fighting over slavery. They were fighting over unfair taxation and redistribution and other things. They would have been stupid to fight over salve ownership. A constiutional amendment banning slave ownership would have to have 3/4 of the States to ratify it and half of the States would certainly not have ratified it.

>>50
"Have you seen a rebuttal to what I was saying about Lincoln starting it or not?"

No, which leads me to believe it is a crackpot theory that modern historians don't even bother with. I am not a scholar on this, but I did learn a lot about it in school, and Lincoln causing the war never came up in any of my reading, ever. Quite the opposite, most historians stated that Lincoln tried to avert war.

"If at the time nobody believed States could rightfully secede, why wasn't South Carolina promptly invaded upon secession? Why did South Carolina even attempt to secede, much less the rest of the States, if everybody knew they couldn't Consitutionally do so? If the people of the CSA thought the States couldn't rightfully secede, why did they go and fight for the CSA?"

South Carolina and the other states that seceded thought they could do so, the Union did not, they considered them rebels and never recognized their sovereignty. You said it was "generally understood" that they could secede, which is just not true. That was the whole basis of the constitutional crisis, whether or not states could secede. SC wasn't invaded because Lincoln didn't want war, he practically begged them to come back to avoid war in his inaugural address, also stating that he wouldn't touch existing slavery.

"The CSA was not part of the USA at the time."

The union didn't acknowledge the sovereignty of the CSA, as I just said, so it was not their territory in the opinion of the north.

>>51
After the emancipation proclamation it became a war over slavery, among other things.

>>52

Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent. This was not an oversight by any means. When New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia ratified the Constitution, they specifically stated that they reserved the right to resume the governmental powers granted to the United States. Their claim to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington.

If Lincoln wanted the States to stay in the Union, he could possibly have done so by solving the issues they had with him. In large part, the plan to use tariff money extracted from the south to subsidize industrial expansion in the north. Obviously he valued his will to use political power to meet his own personal desires over his will to prevent war. If one desires to involuntarily extract money from someone and still desires no violence, they must make a decision between them. Lincoln chose to extract money. In doing so, he chose not to stop a war.

That the Union didn't aknowledge the CSA means nothing, as the Union's perception of things does not change the actual state of things. I could ignorantly and arrogantly declare that I have a domesticated dingo, and release it into a flock of sheep to guard them like a domesticated sheepdog. That doesn't mean I have a domestic animal. But by your logic, if I simply don't acknowledge it, then it is a fact that I have a domesticated animal. After all, I said so. And I own that dingo.

The war was not started over slavery. From what I've heard, Lincoln only added the bit about ending slavery because the northerners were tired of the war and he needed something to motivate them.

>>53
"Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent."

And nowhere does it mention that states have the right to secession. Why would the government put in a provision for it's own destruction? There was no understanding that states had the right to secede, this ambiguity is what caused all the debate over the Constitution.

"If Lincoln wanted the States to stay in the Union, he could possibly have done so by solving the issues they had with him. In large part, the plan to use tariff money extracted from the south to subsidize industrial expansion in the north."

It was a law passed by Congress before Lincoln was president, Lincoln couldn't really do anything about it.

"That the Union didn't aknowledge the CSA means nothing, as the Union's perception of things does not change the actual state of things. I could ignorantly and arrogantly declare that I have a domesticated dingo, and release it into a flock of sheep to guard them like a domesticated sheepdog. That doesn't mean I have a domestic animal. But by your logic, if I simply don't acknowledge it, then it is a fact that I have a domesticated animal. After all, I said so. And I own that dingo."

That logic can just as easily be reversed to say that just because the South declared secession did not mean that they did. And doing so surely did not give them the right to take Fort Sumter. That is childish nonsense. If they truly wanted a peaceful secession they should have brought it to the supreme court instead of attacking Sumter.

"The war was not started over slavery. From what I've heard, Lincoln only added the bit about ending slavery because the northerners were tired of the war and he needed something to motivate them."

I know, I said that it became a war over slavery. Lincoln did want an eventual end to slavery, but not by forcing it out of the south. But, desperate times, the Emancipation Proclamation helped the Union army significantly and probably made the war end sooner.

>>54
Amendment 10 says that ALL powers not delegated to the feds are rights granted to the States or the People. So if it wasn't mentioned, it's covered by the 10th Amendment.

The government had a provision for it's own destruction because when the Constution was written, they had just a few years ago finished fighting a war against a bad government, and they understood that this new government could become as bad as the British. Would you change a dirty diaper and replace it with a new kevlar diaper and superglue it in place? No. They thought that was stupid in the 1780s when they wrote the Constitution.

If the Union wanted to prevent the firing on Fort Sumter they could have left. They didn't, because war was preferable.

If the Union wanted the South to stay, they could have repealed the tarriffs. They didn't, because war was preferable.

Maybe the Union did want the south to stay. But it certainly wasn't their highest goal.

WIN

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!