damn, 3 pages... ; )
timdiggerm said:
You're asking me if I think genocide is bad. I'll tell you, I think murder is bad, genocide is horrific. On what grounds? Well, I wouldn't kill anybody.
Not good enough. "I wouldn't do it" is hardly a firm ground for condemning the acts of others.
It seems to be good enough for homophobes.
The "Do unto others" rule, doesn't only exist in Christianity and probably 99% of other religions in the world (look it up). It's plain common sense, dictated by self preservation, killing people is "bad" because it would be detrimental to the survival of the species.
Unless you're killing people who would be detrimental to the survival of the species, of course.
Well, since we now live in a civilized society, we can afford not to kill them, and lock them up, say Charlie Manson, or Pol Pot who died under house arrest.
However, you can look at the good that came from the bad. If it weren't for Schicklgruber, Von Braun wouldn't have left Germany, and maybe a German or Russian cosmonaut would've walked on the Moon. I like to think that WWII, while a horrible scar in humanity's past, has brought life to endless material for comedians, whole generations of them. Some have based their entire career on it!
It's unknowable how much good could have happened without the war, the war could have happened without the holocaust and still led to the space race, and the death of millions is hardly a satisfactory justification for men on the moon.
Don't twist my words, there, buddy. I never said anything about it being a "satisfactory justification".
I'll make another example that will, no doubt, make every American cringe. We all know lots of people died on 11 Sept 2001. We all feel bad about it. But maybe (to quote comedian Louis C.K.) there were a couple of assholes that day, on the towers. We don't know for sure, but statistically we can assume at least one person saw the buildings collapse, and sighed with relief, because somebody they had a beef with, was in the middle of that disaster.
Yeah and some people sighed with relief because America had taken a blow and some people sighed with relief because the Jews were dead and... I don't see where you're going with this.
Don't bother reading a second time, then, you won't get it.
The usual idea is that, without some sort of ultimate authority, there's no way to absolutely say that something is bad.
Well, turns out there is no ultimate authority, in every sense. What was good once, may not fly today. In other words, humanity will make its own rules. If everybody agrees killing each other is good, well, guess what, it's good. But until further notice, it's bad.
And enough people agreed that the Final Solution was a good idea. That wouldn't fly today, but it sure did then.
You're forgetting a little detail: nobody outside of the culprits knew what was going on. So there was no way of stopping it.
I feel like I rambled. Did that answer your question?
Nope.
Too bad. I'm not as eloquent as most of you, so I just try my best to put into words what goes thru mah brains.