[quote]Headhunter wrote:
I must admit I’ve never seen humanity, though I HAVE seen individual humans. I also admit that the ‘common good’ has no meaning to me, since we don’t all have a common stomach or a common mind.
To me, these are phony concepts made up by evil people who use these trick words and phrases to shame people into compliance with THEIR agendas, usually to trick one person into serving/working for another. “How dare you want to keep your money, while Katrina victims are homeless?” or some other such stupidity.
(Please feel free to drive a Yugo or some other POS so Al Gore can fly around in his private plane.)
Its not your ‘conservation’ that I question but your moral premise: that individuals should work for the benefit of the community, there actually being no such thing. Its a made-up word.
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See, now we can be reasonable, intelligent debaters. I agree with you about the phoney notion of “the good of humanity” because it injects what I feel is good which you may not agree with–its a rhetorical, sentimental and dangerous argument. (After all, what atrocious actions haven’t been done in the name of the “goodness of humanity”). That is the debate people should be having–not you’re EVIL because…
So I guess now I have to define my perception of humanity to you and you can tell me whether you think there is any “goodness” in it.
Humanity–the sum total of what makes us human; our ability to create, have emotion, rationalize, and act on our rationalizations. It spans all things done in the name of “beauty” to all wars ever fought.
The “goodness”, worth defending to me, are what make life worth living. Yes I am a sentimental artsy “communist”. I don’t thin that you should have these same perceptions–but you are free to if you wish.
I also want to clear up what you think regarding my “communistic” tendencies. Forget for a moment all you “know” about Marxian Communism and history. We all have heard it before…communism doesn’t work, etc.
When I speak about communism it isn’t within the framework of government but merely from a communal economic living perspective. Under this premise you cannot say it doesn’t work because it is absolutely self-inflicted and people choose this lifestyle for themselves–it isn’t forced on them. It can be both democratic and “fair”.
I would never force someone into that lifestyle because that would just destroy what the entire point of that lifestyle is all about.