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GundarkHunter

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Join date
10-Mar-2003
Last activity
9-Apr-2017
Posts
4,720

Post History

Post
#50412
Topic
Man beheaded by al-qaeda and video published on internet
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/50412/action/topic#50412
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: Skipper
Nobody gets to be president of the US as a total and complete moron, which is what it would take to go to war over a false pretense.

Quote
Originally posted by: GundarkHunter
There are certain pressures within culture and society that work on us, leading us to either do good or evil

GundarkHunter, every action people make is a concious desicion to perform that action. Society may put pressures on us, but the action that we finally choose is in the end, our desicion.

edit: no names in quotes

The first comment was too good to resist responding to. Such a position presumes that intelligence, not popular opinion, rules the ballot box. The fact of the matter is that becoming President of the USA has much more to do with public perception (manufactured or otherwise) and one's connections within the political machine (not what you know but who you know). There are those who argue that you could have nominated a trained monkey as GOP and the race would have turned out the same.
On the second comment, you took me out of context, Go back and read it again. I would never assume that people make decisions based solely on political pressures; in fact, one of society's major ills is that people refuse to take responsibility for their actions, preferring to sue the pants off their preceived injurers. While social pressures may be strong, they are never so strong that we become slaves to societal pressure. If we do, it's our own fault.
Post
#50408
Topic
Evil Empire...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/50408/action/topic#50408
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: Skipper
If you don't believe me go google Hirohito and God, the majority of japanese citizens actually believed that he was God on earth.

This is largely because of how the Japanese constitution was written @ the time. It vested sovereignty in the Emperor and established Shintoism as the state religion. This, of course, was one of the first things to go when the Constitution was reformed following WWII.
Post
#50358
Topic
Man beheaded by al-qaeda and video published on internet
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/50358/action/topic#50358
Time
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think what ric is trying to get at is that an evil person has to begin somewhere; that there are certain pressures within culture and society that work on us, leading us to either do good or evil. Ultimately that is our choice, but we may feel so strongly that what we are doing is the right thing that we are blinded to the consequences of our actions; also, the pressure on us to go in a certain direction may be so strong that we never consider making any other possible decision. I think both the Bush Administration and Al-Qaeda are guilty of the former; they are simply different sides of the same coin.
Post
#50356
Topic
Censorship
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/50356/action/topic#50356
Time
I agree that this DVD player could be used for automated babysitting/censorship, but I also see it as a tool for people who want to limit niot only the content their children watch, but what they watch as well. Ultimately it comes down to what I call the Cameron Principle (as best exemplified by the themes running through T2): technology itself is benign, but what we do with it determines whether it winds up being good or evil. Consider the following non-censorship example: I have a game console, which is designed for recreation. If I use that console all day and neglect my family and my job, is that the machine's fault? NO! I should have the initiative to get off my lazy butt and do something. The same is true of this player.