Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 14:18:13 -0700 From: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> To: <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: <paul@freebsd-services.com>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: helping victims of terror Message-ID: <20010927211814.AAA4770@shell.webmaster.com@whenever> In-Reply-To: <20010927213312.C69066@lpt.ens.fr>
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On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 21:33:12 +0200, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >David Schwartz said on Sep 27, 2001 at 12:25:16: >> But what I'm sensing from your other replies is that you hold the view >>that no ideology can be judged because in order to do so, you must hold >>some standard and obviously any ideology will pass its own standard and >>it's not fair to judge one ideology by the standards of another. >No I never said that and I don't think I implied that. Yes, you did. >If you want to know what I think of ideologies, I think they're Bad Things. >There is no such thing as a good ideology. A thinking person must always >question, and accept certain aspects of any ideology which appeals, but be >willing to reject other aspects of the same ideology (in particular >religion, but also communism and capitalism). >Everyone must have a personal philosophy, subject to change, and not >dictated by external authorities who can't be questioned. Right, but this is not consistent with: >If there was an ideology that said having blonde hair was a crime but that >violent actions were evil then it is not the fault of the ideology for >violence against people with blonde hair since those perpetrating the >violence are not believers in the ideology, they're just haters of people >with blonde hair who have picked out that one piece of someone elses >ideology to justify their actions. >You're now applying your own idealogy to pieces of someone elses, that's not >a valid course of debate. You can't have it both ways. Either I can judge by rational standards or I have to judge other people's ideology by those people's standards, whether they're rational or not. What you've done is equate the rational with the irrational. If I wish to judge communism, I must do so by communist standards, whether I find them rational or not. And the sole justification for the communist standards is that communists hold them. You can either argue: >A thinking person must always >question, and accept certain aspects of any ideology which appeals, but be >willing to reject other aspects of the same ideology (in particular >religion, but also communism and capitalism). Or you can argue: >You're now applying your own idealogy to pieces of someone elses, that's not >a valid course of debate. But you can't do both. One is right and the other is wrong. So pick one, hopefully the right one. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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