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I hadn't realized not being able to carry around a grenade launcher was so oppressive to freedom that is essentially the same as living in a third world dictatorship with no freedom.

Comparing a little pepper spray to what happens to dissenters in other countries shows a serious lack of perspective.

CTGamer, your binary is false. The statements represented on either hand were not made by the same voice. But keep on fighting the power, man.

Ahtman wrote:I hadn't realized not being able to carry around a grenade launcher...

Since when is it illegal to carry around a grenade launcher?

So technology is Cultural, but Econonics isn't? Plus, Culture isn't only an abstract concept but what that concept produces?

Look Manchu, I'm really trying to udnerstand your rational for neo-colonialism. I defined what I thought culture was, help me out and define your version.

Huts vs. a housing block didn't define it for me.

Anyone British may remember a special on Panorama maybe a year ago. It showed the reckless tactics that they use. This includes clearing mines out of villages using mortars, without warning the people in the village. They managed to blow someone's house open, but all they did was give them a small amount of money in return.

The US never took part in an invasion. Although several tactics were reckless and foolish, we cannot rule out that they were actually trying to help the civilians in Iraq.

For your post, you seem to be trying to brainwash us. I think this post is simply you trying to force your ideas upon someone else. Forcing ideas upon people is edging towards fascism, and you are only going to get through to like minded people. Do yourself a favour and stop trying to make us see through your eyes, you're only going to receive hate posts and PMs in return.

BlapBlapBlap wrote:For your post, you seem to be trying to brainwash us. I think this post is simply you trying to force your ideas upon someone else. Forcing ideas upon people is edging towards fascism, and you are only going to get through to like minded people. Do yourself a favour and stop trying to make us see through your eyes, you're only going to receive hate posts and PMs in return.

Some people want to understand how other people see the world and think about the world.

Or maybe it is just me. I'm really curious about it.

Easy E wrote:So technology is Cultural, but Econonics isn't? Plus, Culture isn't only an abstract concept but what that concept produces?

Economics is certainly cultural.

I defined what I thought culture was, help me out and define your version.

I accept Albatross's attempt.

biccat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I hadn't realized not being able to carry around a grenade launcher...

Since when is it illegal to carry around a grenade launcher?

It has been illegal before, and some are still not legal now; I didn't think I had to say loaded grenade launcher, as the grenades are illegal, and without them, you are just carrying around a tube and looking like a douche.

Ahtman wrote:

biccat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I hadn't realized not being able to carry around a grenade launcher...

Since when is it illegal to carry around a grenade launcher?

It has been illegal before, and some are still not legal now; I didn't think I had to say loaded grenade launcher, as the grenades are illegal, and without them, you are just carrying around a tube and looking like a douche.

Grenades aren't illegal either.

Could you explain when carrying around a grenade launcher was illegal?

Easy E wrote:

BlapBlapBlap wrote:For your post, you seem to be trying to brainwash us. I think this post is simply you trying to force your ideas upon someone else. Forcing ideas upon people is edging towards fascism, and you are only going to get through to like minded people. Do yourself a favour and stop trying to make us see through your eyes, you're only going to receive hate posts and PMs in return.

Some people want to understand how other people see the world and think about the world.

Or maybe it is just me. I'm really curious about it.

I understand this, it's just the OP appears to be forcing ideas onto people who might not want to believe. It may have come across better if he said "This is what person x said" but he appears to be using bad articles to back up his point. Editing the title wouldn't hurt either.

Monster Rain wrote:Comparing a little pepper spray to what happens to dissenters in other countries shows a serious lack of perspective.

True, though that doesn't make it acceptable to pepper spray dissenters.

Culture is "the way we do things round here".

The difference is they aren't being sprayed for dissenting in the US, but for knowingly breaking the law.

Monster Rain wrote:The difference is they aren't being sprayed for dissenting in the US, but for knowingly breaking the law.

But in whose eyes is dissention and breaking the law decided?

Lets look at the 'Arab Spring', using Egypt. Western Govts looked at the occupation as a legitimate protest, however now look at taking that protest to the USA or the UK and that protest is now breaking the law as an illegal demonstration as so knowingly breaking the law.

There's a double standard there.

Cheers

Andrew

No one in the US has been machine-gunned or blown up with helicopters, nor even stripped and beaten in the street.

There have been many protests in the US, other than OWS, that haven't been nearly as unpleasant.

biccat wrote:Could you explain when carrying around a grenade launcher was illegal?

At least since the National Firearms Act listed some of them as Destructive Devices. Yes, not all grenade launchers are illegal to own, and not all types of grenades are illegal to own, and yet some are. I suppose I could have listed a very specific type of launcher and a very specific load-out for it, but that doesn't have a lot of poetry to it and I'm not writing legislation, so I don't think the vast majority of readers were wondering what kind of grenade launcher and whether it was loaded or not.

M79 and M203 have....actual...flechette and buckshot rounds for them......we don't use the M79 anymore...

The ecnomy is driving by technology so a standard of living developes over time.

edit

Indeed, Frazzled, if I remember correctly, was perfectly fine with brutalizing or even killing OWS protesters.

From another thread but some people already think we're "oppressing" dissenters

biccat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I hadn't realized not being able to carry around a grenade launcher...

Since when is it illegal to carry around a grenade launcher?

Don't think it is, exactly. I believe it's illegal to carry grenades though. The launcher is little more than a hammer, tube and trigger.

Sort of a similar thing to AR-15 Sears. The Sear is considered a machine gun in itself. You cannot own an AR-15 and an Unregistered Sear, or you can be arrested for possessing a machine gun. Although possessing the unregistered sear is perfectly legal.

Gun laws, lol

Manchu wrote:CTGamer, your binary is false. The statements represented on either hand were not made by the same voice. But keep on fighting the power, man.

Just as false as assuming anyone who disagreed with you is OWS?

I appreciate your dedication to white knighting the opinions of trolls though...

Why so presumptuous? Nothing I said defended the idea that disagreement with any poster aligned one with OWS.

biccat wrote:

Easy E wrote:

Albatross wrote:Aren't they though? In a cultural sense, I mean.

How do you define or measure Cultural Superiority?

You measure it by metrics that the culturally superior deem to be significant.

Premarital birth rates are not significant. Access to abortion is significant.

Church attendance is not an indicator of cultural superiority. Level of government participation is an indicator.

Fortunately, every country has people who label themselves culturally superior and meet these metrics, so when they get together and determine that these metrics are relevant, there's an international consensus.

Presumably you could get the same level of international consensus on entirely different metrics if you only asked subsistance farmers. But they're not culturally superior, so their opinions don't count.

Surely following this argument to its conclusion, the subsistence level farmers opinion is morally no more valid or objective than that of Manchu. Both views have equal moral weight.

In which case, Manchu's view is as good as any, and cannot be deemed immoral, or inferior to any other views on ways or standards of measuring cultural progress. Therefore it must be considered as good a compass as any to use for such measurements.

CT GAMER wrote:Just as false as assuming anyone who disagreed with you is OWS?

Or assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is a troll?

OWS came up in part due to your comments about how oppressed US citizens are, and some posturing about "real" freedom fighters and how they would react to pepper spraying in contrast with old ladies. Unless there's some other contemporary issue involving hysteria re: Police States and Pepper Spray that I'm unaware of, that is.

Albatross wrote:Aren't they though? In a cultural sense, I mean.

Yeah, they are. Thing is, exactly how that society is more primitive is really complex, and exactly why is even more complex.

I don't think we like to think of ourselves as products of systems that have been evolving for hundreds, even thousands of years before we got here. Instead, we instinctively think of ourselves as self contained, containing inherent qualities that are reflected in the systems around us. So it was natural and easy to see the weakness and poverty of the systems in Africa and think 'that's because the people there are simpler', and in turn it was natural to say 'therefore we are doing a good thing in going there and using our bigger white people brains to look after them'.

Except it became clear, eventually, that they are just as smart as us. It remained obvious their systems were dysfunctional compared to ours, but that's not a thing we like to think about. So instead we just kind of don't think about it all.

Monster Rain wrote:No one in the US has been machine-gunned or blown up with helicopters, nor even stripped and beaten in the street.

There have been many protests in the US, other than OWS, that haven't been nearly as unpleasant.

One time we had a fighter-bomber accidentally drop a training bomb(dud) on a storage facility around where I live, I'm sure that's on par with death squads rolling around in technicals and killing people without beards or gunning down women and children as they attempt to get foodstuffs that were airdropped for them.

Actually the really popular video of the cop leisurely pepper-spraying college students sitting on the ground is a good example of blatant video editing.

NSFW, strong language

BlapBlapBlap wrote:The US never took part in an invasion. Although several tactics were reckless and foolish, we cannot rule out that they were actually trying to help the civilians in Iraq.

Trying to help people doesn't rule out something being an invasion. If you go and land troops in someone's country when they weren't at war with you, it's an invasion.

For your post, you seem to be trying to brainwash us. I think this post is simply you trying to force your ideas upon someone else. Forcing ideas upon people is edging towards fascism, and you are only going to get through to like minded people. Do yourself a favour and stop trying to make us see through your eyes, you're only going to receive hate posts and PMs in return.

Arguing a political point, no matter how constantly, just cannot be considered forcing your ideas on someone. Because the rest of us have our own brains, and therefore have the ability to consider those arguments, and accept or reject them as we please.

You might call it boring, but it isn't facism.

Ketara wrote:Surely following this argument to its conclusion, the subsistence level farmers opinion is morally no more valid or objective than that of Manchu. Both views have equal moral weight.

In which case, Manchu's view is as good as any, and cannot be deemed immoral, or inferior to any other views on ways or standards of measuring cultural progress. Therefore it must be considered as good a compass as any to use for such measurements.

You seem to be missing the argument. By quite a lot, in fact.

Hint: I'm not suggesting that tyranny of the "culturally superior" should be replaced by a tyranny of the "culturally inferior." (to use Manchu's metric)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ahtman wrote:At least since the National Firearms Act listed some of them as Destructive Devices. Yes, not all grenade launchers are illegal to own, and not all types of grenades are illegal to own, and yet some are. I suppose I could have listed a very specific type of launcher and a very specific load-out for it, but that doesn't have a lot of poetry to it and I'm not writing legislation, so I don't think the vast majority of readers were wondering what kind of grenade launcher and whether it was loaded or not.

Destructive Devices are not illegal to own under the National Firearms Act.

Grenades and the like are classified as Title II weapons, which are legal to own, although highly regulated, and therefore expensive to obtain.

I would wager that there aren't a lot of grenades available on the market, but that doesn't mean they're illegal.

biccat wrote:

Ketara wrote:Surely following this argument to its conclusion, the subsistence level farmers opinion is morally no more valid or objective than that of Manchu. Both views have equal moral weight.

In which case, Manchu's view is as good as any, and cannot be deemed immoral, or inferior to any other views on ways or standards of measuring cultural progress. Therefore it must be considered as good a compass as any to use for such measurements.

You seem to be missing the argument. By quite a lot, in fact.

Hint: I'm not suggesting that tyranny of the "culturally superior" should be replaced by a tyranny of the "culturally inferior." (to use Manchu's metric)

I never claimed you were. Allow me to extrapolate further, as you seem to have missed what I was getting at.

Manchu deems Western culture to be 'superior' or more 'advanced' and less primitive.
When queried why, he can provide a list of things that he deems to be the hallmarks of an advanced civilisation or culture, eg. womens rights, technology, democracy, etc.
You respond that any list of traits that can be deemed to signify an advanced culture will be determined by that person, their culture and surroundings, so a subsistence level farmers view (or someone from an 'inferior culture''s view) is therefore equivalent and has equal weights to Manchu's.

To which I am essentially responding that in that case, if their view is equivalent, and any standard of measuring civilisation or advancement of culture is going to be irrevocably tainted by cultural bias, then Manchu's view is as good as any. And pointing out that his view is no better or worse than any, is at best, a non-argument. It doesn't lead anywhere. It's like walking up to someone compiling an encyclopedia, and telling them using a philosophical argument, we can't know anything. It doesn't advance the compilation of the encyclopedia, aid in determining a better set of facts to place in it, or even prove their chosen facts incorrect.

It is in short, a bit of a waste of time, and stating the obvious. And in no real way a counter-argument or productive to anything being advocated in here.

Ketara wrote:I never claimed you were. Allow me to extrapolate further, as you seem to have missed what I was getting at.

And you seem to have missed what I was getting at.

Yes, you're correct that Manchu's standard is no more valid than any other person's, at least from a moral standard. However, unlike the subsistance farmer in Laos, Manchu has the ability to impose his belief by virtue of being able to influence a powerful government and military. And note that the validity is only limited to perceptions of the subjective "culture," not to objective measurements like wealth, military power, and industry.

However, pointing out that his standard is no more valid than another's is not worthless, in fact it has great value in attacking the underlying premise - that cultural superiority lends itself to authority.

Turning to your Encyclopedia example: the philosopher's argument that we can't know anything is a criticism against compiling the work of an encyclopedia. It doesn't contribute anything to the enclopedia itself, but it does raise the question of whether compiling an encyclopedia is a worthwhile endeavor.

I'm not saying that Manchu's standards are poor, they're pretty good (in my opinion at least) if you're interested in promoting superior cultural values. I'm saying that the idea of promoting superior cultural values is itself the wrong goal.

You seem to have missed this.

Seems three lawyers now....

biccat wrote:

Ketara wrote:I never claimed you were. Allow me to extrapolate further, as you seem to have missed what I was getting at.

And you seem to have missed what I was getting at.

Yes, you're correct that Manchu's standard is no more valid than any other person's, at least from a moral standard. However, unlike the subsistance farmer in Laos, Manchu has the ability to impose his belief by virtue of being able to influence a powerful government and military. And note that the validity is only limited to perceptions of the subjective "culture," not to objective measurements like wealth, military power, and industry.

However, pointing out that his standard is no more valid than another's is not worthless, in fact it has great value in attacking the underlying premise - that cultural superiority lends itself to authority.

Turning to your Encyclopedia example: the philosopher's argument that we can't know anything is a criticism against compiling the work of an encyclopedia. It doesn't contribute anything to the enclopedia itself, but it does raise the question of whether compiling an encyclopedia is a worthwhile endeavor.

I'm not saying that Manchu's standards are poor, they're pretty good (in my opinion at least) if you're interested in promoting superior cultural values. I'm saying that the idea of promoting superior cultural values is itself the wrong goal.

You seem to have missed this.

You also still seem to be missing my point I'm afraid. To continue with the encyclopedia example, your questioning as to 'why bother compiling the encyclopedia at all?' leads to a position known as hapless relativism, whereby there's absolutely no point in doing anything at all. Ever. Because we can't know anything, and everybody's thoughts, views and opinion are entirely subjective, and absolutely nobody's views or concepts are ever superior to one anothers, because there is no objective standard to be measured against. Including curiously enough, your idea that 'promoting superior cultural values is itself the wrong goal', as all I have to simply do is proclaim the opposite, and under the tenet you're advocating, my view would have equivalent weight and validity to yours.

That's why I called it ' a bit of a waste of time, and stating the obvious. And in no real way a counter-argument or productive to anything being advocated in here. '

It's the intrusion into real life of abstract philosophical constructs that in no way contribute to anything. Every time I look at an apple, I don't wonder if its a hallucination, or if my desire to eat it is real or if I'm in someone's dream. I just eat the apple. In an equivalent sense, every time I have a discussion with someone over politics, I don't tell them that my viewpoint that chickens should be fired from bazookas is technically equivalent to their viewpoint that we should have animal rights, because all opinions are ultimately subjective, every time they disagree with me. It would be silly, and get no-one anywhere.

To carry it on, every time someone mentions ways of measuring cultural progress, I don't tell them that everyone else's viewpoints on the matter are all just as good as theirs, because its all ultimately subjective. Because that also gets no-one anywhere.