Posts by DCBCauchi
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Yes, obviously. You just made it sound a bit more deliberate than that, rather than the (highly disturbing, but inevitable) result of massive income inequalities and a total lack of state healthcare.
But it was deliberate. I don't think it was the impersonal forces of social inequality that determined whether someone was withheld treatment or not given a decent standard of care. I suspect it was more the individual attitudes of individual practitioners.
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to DexterX,
Cave painters would not have made your or anyone’s version of middle age
Middle-aged cave painters would be about 25 years old. The boy'd be about 13. The oldest cave painter, head of the school and enforcer of traditional values, would be about 40. His main physical problem would be his teeth, but even after he can't chew for himself someone else would do it for him.
He wouldn't need to be able to walk by himself either. His real main problem is being nobbled in a coup.
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EXTERIOR SCENE, NIGHT: Campfire, 40,000 years ago
Middle-aged cave painter 1: 'Bloody kids today.'
Middle-aged cave painter 2: 'I reckon. That boy we've got doesn't even want to chew the end of sticks to make his brushes like we've always done. He was talking some bollocks about sticking some animal hair on the end with glue and strips of hide.'
Middle-aged cave painter 1: 'Outrageous. Shall we kick the crap out of him when he gets back from screwing around? He'll be full of fermented berries and dull and slow.'
Middle-aged cave painter 2: 'I reckon. Bloody kids today.'
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Waaay back I met a person who had done this and had blacked out, leaving them with a lovely spiral shaped Eutron element burn on one side of their face…
In Christchurch around 1989, perhaps?
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There is an old saying that goes something like 'No matter how many generations it takes to build a civilisation, it only takes one to destroy it.'
I have a horrible feeling that that generation is now in its 20s (except grumpy middle-aged men have always said that about every generation in its 20s).
Who knows what will happen? Every historical attempt to seriously predict the future was a ludicrous failure. Why should our attempts be any different? I reckon the only safe thing you can say about the future is that it will be completely unlike what anyone expects.
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In the early 20th century, I would've been called a counter-revolutionary bourgeois moralist for saying that. Then burnt out of town.
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The only chance to avoid it and have a nicer outcome is if we can move beyond current capitalist/authoritarian models and construct an alternative cooperative order.
You see, I reckon that process has been under way for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The question is whether we go the way of the Mayans (and the various other over-reaching empires before us) before we get there properly.
It's not about ticking boxes and Acts of Parliament. It's, as Rich says, a co-operative order where people work things out between themselves without recourse to violence or authority.
We're mostly there (cf, in kind of a related way, Pinker on violence), especially the educated western middle classes, who have always been the most successful revolutionary class, the vanguard for all the rest.
We almost being there's why the western democratic state's getting so desperately violent (in its various forms, 'it' being both state and violence). We simply don't need them any more, the ridiculous dinosaurs, and they don't like it very much.
Boo hoo.
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Angus Robertson,
What you are talking about is targeted killing, which is perfectly legitimate exercise of democratic force and is practiced openly by many states. This cannot be confused with torture which is cruel and barbaric.
Angus,
What I take Rich to be talking about is the systematic use of targeted killing in combination with highly publicised torture as a deterrent – as an alternative to mass targeted killing.
As you say, this combination is a 'legitimate exercise of democratic force', one openly used by all Western societies against their own populations (i.e. the criminal justice system, particularly in the US). What I take Rich to be saying is that it also legitimate for those oppressed by the exercise of this force to exercise the same force against their oppressors.
Unfortunately, this seems to be what most revolutionaries think, which is why the successful ones end up as crude, more corrupt caricatures of those they replaced.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Sacha,
This is sounding like a climate change argument.
Indeed. It involves zealots.
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad, in reply to Rich Lock,
I know several people, including police, military and security guys, who have (informally) trained for those sort of scenarios at the armoury in Birkenhead.
Sounds exactly like it. Mostly rozzers. I've no idea whether they do use explosives, but, as I said, it wouldn't surprise or concern me. There are certainly correctly qualified people taking part.