tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post4343677751287815904..comments2024-03-28T14:16:42.371+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: What is the appropriate spiritual response to being-genocided?Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-45391636588792087242022-06-19T20:08:20.223+01:002022-06-19T20:08:20.223+01:00@NF - I don't have any particular axe to grind...@NF - I don't have any particular axe to grind with respect to defining and using the term genocide - except that the word is, in practice, used in a rhetorical and propagandistic fashion. I simply wished to indicate deliberate, intentional eradication of large populations (unselective as regards men, women and children): an attempt to annihilate. <br /><br />As I've written elsewhere, the plan is apparently to achieve this by war/ violence, disease and toxicity and starvation. Subfertility is also a factor, but I think it has other main objectives. <br /><br />"we have a fiduciary responsibility to generations that will follow us to not damage it irrevocably. " - I regard this as essentially untrue - it is a made-up and legalistic 'responsibility' - consequently nobody is motivated by it sufficiently to make any difference. And our 'instinctive drives' are Much feebler than at any point in human history - so they aren't much use either. <br /><br />It is the consequent generalized and extreme demotivation that renders us en masse so gullible and manipulate-able. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-5210363003349599112022-06-19T19:05:24.228+01:002022-06-19T19:05:24.228+01:00I am going to push back on your use of the word &q...I am going to push back on your use of the word "genocide". (I'll leave everything else pretty much alone since our worldviews are significantly different based upon our different metaphysics.)<br /><br />"Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people — usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group — in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944,[1][2] combining the Greek word γένος (genos, "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing").[3]<br /><br />In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.[4][5][6][7]" - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide<br /><br />If you were indicating that an overall decrease in human population is a goal to create a stable long term human population then I would agree that this is a long term goal. And I would agree if you are indicating that a decreasing birth rate is the least socially disruptive pattern to accomplish it. (I think human population would bounce back quickly from most extreme acute forms of increased death via war and/or pestilence that is short of an extinct level set of events.) Hence, the least disruptive path to a reduced human population that is ecologically sustainable is via reduced and voluntary/social infertility. And that is precisely what we see in the developed countries where sub-replacement birth rates are the norm today. <br /><br />What I don't see is genocide as per the generally accepted definition. You may see it as population reduction aimed at particular demographics - including your definition of Christian - but I am not seeing statistics that support that. If there is a bias I see it directed towards those countries that are still developing and hence still have high birth rates, and that by providing infrastructure to support sustainable development that population will necessarily decrease as their standard of living and quality of life increase. The caveat here is what happens when these developing countries are in places that are most susceptible to climate related famine and famine through food insecurity and inflation brought about by changes of supply chains and the current war between Ukraine and Russia. I also expect that Western citizens will start to grumble a lot about inflation as it affects their patterns of consumption and the means to sustain their lifestyles and the ability of their governments to service sovereign debt as the interest rates increase to make servicing that debt harder. Several risks exist here including the rise of right wing nationalist/populism and a more isolationist "country-name First" set of movements. <br /><br />I would prefer to see voluntary social infertility as the path towards a sustainable human population than an acute, chaotic, and violent struggle between cultures and countries. I would also prefer to see an end to the types of genocide that have been tolerated historically by the West when they occur in Africa or cultures and locations that are far enough away so as to be ignored. <br /><br />We do need to recognize that we live on one planet, that there is no planet "B", that we have a fiduciary responsibility to generations that will follow us to not damage it irrevocably. Unfortunately, the instinctive drives take hold in human behaviour far too easily, and that these are easily manipulated/elicited by well crafted disinformation spun by those with the will and the means to put that out into the public domain.Nicholas Fulfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02335736929533911612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-3320314992744536182022-06-19T15:37:34.265+01:002022-06-19T15:37:34.265+01:00@Mia - Thanks for that.
I suppose the opposite a...@Mia - Thanks for that. <br /><br />I suppose the opposite also happens - a lot - which is things happening that are officially-approved, and supposed to be just a part of modern life, but which can devastating in terms of suffering when experienced: being complained-against at work, being divorced - that sort of thing. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-81543313256516041982022-06-19T15:08:07.398+01:002022-06-19T15:08:07.398+01:00I experienced a classic "intolerable" si...I experienced a classic "intolerable" situation and to boot was an atheist going into it, and it was exactly as Bruce says. To this day I have to comfort other people about it because they imagine what it was like and so their "experience" of it is worse than mine. It's not that the experience was not that bad in reality. It was the worst. But it was counterbalanced in a way that made it beneficial. Probably the "best" experience of my life in some sense. Mianoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-88594041802428945732022-06-18T21:45:15.945+01:002022-06-18T21:45:15.945+01:00If, in the course of civilizational collapse, we e...If, in the course of civilizational collapse, we experience any form of the hunter-gatherer tribal closeness for which we were designed, the happiness will be revelatory. <br /><br />Being that the highest form of genocide is to get people to do it to themselves ie. a mass suicide event like M. Night Shamayalan's The Happening, a mass suicide-genocide might leave the survivors surrounded with infinite mounds of material resources. This is the one apocalypse no-one expects. Epimetheusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-35352811366782889512022-06-18T18:17:20.968+01:002022-06-18T18:17:20.968+01:00@Carol - The only 'answer' to our capacity...@Carol - The only 'answer' to our capacity to imagine and fear horrible deaths is trust in God and remembering that he is the creator. <br /><br />I am not making a generalization; but one thing I have realized over the years (from the reports of people who have experienced them) is that sometimes what seems to be an absolutely horrendous "intolerable" situation is not actually experienced as such - for many different reasons.<br /><br />This is sometimes observed in animals. WD Hamilton, the great biologist (and an atheist) said that he was struck that many prey animals did Not show signs of suffering when they were (for example) being devoured alive. He explained this (biologically) in terms that - once death was certain, there was no evolutionary advantage to pain - so it did not happen. <br /><br />My point is that we do not accurately know - and it is not pre-ordained - how we will respond to the sufferings we can imagine as preceding death. So faith in God is a perfectly rational attitude, as well as being a means to salvation. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-65866153381662180602022-06-18T17:50:49.005+01:002022-06-18T17:50:49.005+01:00I'm not worried about 'untimely' death...I'm not worried about 'untimely' death, for myself or my loved ones - my concern is 'means of death'...<br /><br />I've had about as much suffering in this world as I can take and have remained resolved in my Faith thru-out, so it is the thought of a long, slow, torturous death (for anyone) that keeps me praying daily for miraculous Heavenly intervention.<br />Carolcaehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05126263938544146422noreply@blogger.com