I thought I laid them out pretty clearly.
I wanted to give my take of political divisiveness since it's a hot topic in the country right now, and remind people that the folk on the other side of the aisle think that what they believe in is every bit as good in their own eyes as your political positions are to you.
Your argument breaks down at step 1.
You assert that "that what they believe in is every bit as good in their own eyes as your political positions are to you",
but you have no evidence or logical proof of this. This is a sweeping statement like "All men are humans", which is not a light statement to make without either incontrovertible or overwhelming evidence, IF it is not self evident from the definitions of either word.
You have only inferred this through some sort of thought exercise, and anyone can basically prove this is to be logically unsound through any example of where a person proves to want "bad" or only "good" at a limited scope. The underlying problem with your argument is your use of "good" is likely not at all in agreement with the generally held definition of good. If you attempt to defend your definition of "good", then you have a lot more work ahead of you.
What I *think* your conclusion is trying to say is that the "Reasonable folk on the other side of the aisle think that what they believe in is every bit the best reasonably possible in their own eyes as your political positions are to you."
Only then can you actually defend that position because "best" has not only a broad enough definition in scope but that also allows a further subset of broad implications (such as best for oneself, best for society, best for oneself being best for society, vice-versa etc etc).
It is only when you attempt to equate "Goodness" to meanings that people do not generally hold true with that you are going to have problems. A bit like trying to argue that waffles are awesome while pointing to a pancake.
I think ultimately what you attempted to argue was that "Good and Evil" do not exist, in an logically unsound and probably invalid manner. If you wanted to argue that, that's great - but keep in mind people over thousands of years have discussed this is many ways, I would think to give pause and consider what has been said already argued the annals of time.
I said that because what happens if you don't take that fact into account you cease to argue the true validity of this or that position, and turn your attention to making a demon out of the other guy.
I agree, once you properly frame your argument with the correct definitions as discussed above.
I then tried to explain why we do this so that by understanding why, seeing the error therein, we could stop that game and return to rational dialog.
I agree, once you properly frame your argument with the correct definitions as discussed above.
I explained that in my opinion the source of the demonetization of others is self-hate, that it is a projection, the seeing in the other our own unconscious motivation.
For example, a liar expects you to lie to him, a thief that you will take what he has, and a person who wants to hurt people will live in constant fear of attack.
I will buy your argument that liars, thieves, and murderers will be distrustful of others because they project their own unconscious motivations. However, this does not translate to self-hate. Do liars hate other liars? Do thieves hate other thieves? Do Murderers hate other murderers?
This is a well known psychological phenomenon. Look it up. It creates paradox for folk who aren't aware that they do this. You don't want, for example, to walk up to a person full of terror of others and tell him what he really is feeling is hate, in the off chance that he sees it.
The issue here is that you made not only an indefensible assertion for self hate, but equivocated ALL men to be liars, thieves and murders for your sweeping generation of humanity to hold true.
Premise 1:
Liars, thieves or murderers, hate in others what they see as part of themselves.
Premise 2:
All men are liars, thieves or murders.
Your argument is that:
All men are liars, thieves and murderers and because all of the foregoing are based on hate, therefore everyone hates themselves and projects it unto the world.
An argument is logical and sound only if the form is valid and the premises are true.
1) The second premise you made is clearly untrue. Not all men are liars, thieves, or murders. Maybe in our society, most of us can fall into that category, but your viewpoint is narrow and limited. There are and have existed those who have either sworn religious vows of silence or truthfulness. The same who are neither thieves nor murderers. The fact that you believe in your premise shows that you have placed much faith in your own perceptiveness and knowledge of the world, a sign of pride and arrogance, which goes back to my previous comments.
2) The first premise must be defended with overwhelming evidence. Your statement that Liars hate other liars (and thus hate themselves as they projected it onto others) is not self-evident. Mistrust for others due to recognizing the misgivings in ourselves does not equate to immediately hate ourselves. To some people, they could even exhibit a show of respect, if they give acceptance or even respect to their own unconscious misgivings. Such are people we generally refer to as sociopaths.
The bigger part of the problem in your premises assumes that liars, thieves, or murders are inherently "bad" (which follows from the assumption that again, we do not hate "good"). This just gets further complicated because your premises themselves are so full of assumptions of the nature of humans derived only from your own understanding of our society.
In essence,
- Lies violate Truths.
- Thieves violate personal possession.
- Murderers violate a person's life itself.
Now, as it pertains to our natural world, we strive for life, so it is easy to accept Murder to be bad.
How about thieves? Is it inherently natural for humans to have possessions over products of nature? With the limited matter on our planet, we can not CREATE, we can only organize existing matter. Aside from mastery of our own body, have you questioned the belief of personal ownership of land, and stuff?
There are ways to justify possession of real property of course, but it becomes much more complicated than what I want to get into here. I only bring this up to give food for thought on basic assumptions we make about "hate" and "bad".
Finally, what about lies? Are all lies really "bad"? How important is the "truth"? These are complicated questions which are in themselves extensive, but suffice to say, I'm sure you can think of instances where lies do good, or at worst, are harmless.
In a nutshell, I do not accept your premises as true, thus your argument is unsound, without even considering validity.
The habit of seeing out in the world what we really feel within is deeply established and normal for most of the human race.
For the sake of argument, OK. However, this does not validly connect to the point you were making about self-hate. Just because we are able to see in the world the bad we see in ourselves, is only a tiny part of our impression of ourselves. Conversely, it MUST be true that we see in others the GOOD we see in ourselves, whatever you want to take that to mean. It is up to you to ultimately decide on whether you want to hate yourself wholly.
Again, for the sake argument only and IF I agreed with your argument about self-hate being evident because we project the negative, then logically building upon the projection argument with loving the positive, then I would infer that you, Moonbeam, hate yourself so much, that:
1) You do not possess enough Goodness for your heart to accept triumph over the bad. Conversely, you are just a bad person overall.
If I did not accept your argument about self-hatred, then I can conclude that your own intelligence and/or information was not sufficient to arrive a more logically sound conclusion. You are not necessarily a bad person over-all, just a confused one.
It creates violence to others because one justifies what one does. It is good to punish a thief,
We do not punish thieves with violence. We rarely even punish Murderers with violence.
harm a person who hates, etc.
Yes, some people do this. See everything above for reasons why this doesn't apply to everyone.
A thief who hates himself for a desire to steal is going to be very hard on thieves. A person who hates his own hate is going to be very hard on the violent. He will lack sympathy and understanding for the other because he hates the other that is in himself. These are just some minor examples.
This statement is logically valid, but the premises contained therein as I discussed above are not true.
The general principle, then, is that what we were taught to believe about ourselves that is negative, for which we were made to suffer via punishment, humiliation, put down, and the withdrawal of love etc. we hate about ourselves but were made to feel was true.
But it is impossible to survive as a child with constant self contempt. We would die if we didn't shut down, and that is what we did. We separated from who we really were, denied we feel those things we were made to feel are evil, but we feel them anyway so those feelings get projected out into the world.
This is our condition. There is nothing wrong with us really but that we were taught and made to believe lies.
We were put down with language. We were told we are bad. But there is no good or evil. These are only constructs that depend on language. This is why humans are mentally ill but animals aren't. Animals see no good or evil and can't apply that concept to themselves.
I can respond with another page of addressing your issue of good and evil but I'm getting a little winded at this point. You're being inconsistent while saying we project evil, and then saying that evil and good do not exist. It all does not jive with your own argument of self-hate. Reading this, it appears to me that you are going off on a different tangent, especially with animals.
But we are animals and we have a true animal nature. Naturally we think if we acted like the animals we are we would be monsters. That is wrong. If we acted out our feelings of self hate, then we would be monsters, and we do that every day, every time we project, for example.
Again, this is getting a bit incoherent. Why would we equate animals to monsters? I'm sorry but cats and dogs are not monsters. Cute furry bunnies are not monsters. Are you saying that we are all monsters because we project? What is going on here?
But the real animal, in my opinion, is God. It is what I think is meant when it's said we were created in Gods image. And whether we created God in our image or He created us, makes not the slightest difference really. It is just a perspective and one that shouldn't exist. If God is love then we are too. And if God is total love, then the lover and the beloved are one. In love there is no division, no unconscious, no other motivation.
Animal? God? Do you mean monster? This is again another tangent which could have its own thread with pages of discussion.
You cannot hate the other and love yourself. You cannot love yourself and hate the other. As you treat the least among you so will you treat yourself.
That makes no sense. If you treat street rats like crap, it has nothing to do with how you treat yourself. If you throw dirt in someone's face and drive around in a Mercedes eating fancy dinners, that doesn't mean you're treating yourself badly. Perhaps what you meant is how you value a human being, like the lowest among you, with actions and words, is how you truly value yourself as a human being. That, I do agree with, and that is how I live. Which, if you think about it, is kind of the opposite of how you are approaching with the arguments you are making.
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