ThePumpkins.net

Seeing City and Colour tonight. Then tomorrow night as well. I'm so excited.

Got to work at the park today but it looks like its gonna be rainy. That means a lot of sitting around for me. I'll probably start making some sort of list, maybe start my rough draft of my top 50 pumpkins songs or continute trying to finalize my top 25 albums, lol.

i wonder where the dreams we forget go. they were there, they were dreamt, but without a waking thought, are they left behind in the fabric of time? what was the purpose if we don't remember them? fricking subtle workings of the universe...

I'm just relaxing today studying, riding my bike, and cleaning my M1 Rifle (yes I have a real M1 Rifle)

kjrain12 wrote:
Oh good, my eyes are getting bad, I have to wear reading glasses now, but everyone says I look good in them.

"While communism can kill the idea of individual enterprise, which has led to most of the technological innovations we see today, capitalism has the seeds of exploitation, where too much wealth and therefore power, is concentrated in the hands of a few people."

Sigh... what to think, what to think. I am completely disillusioned with the state of democracy and capitalism in America in the current, but I also see communism as unrealistic and the destroyer of dissent, which may or may not be a bad thing. Should I give my allegiance to a system that thrives on crushing competitors and accruing collateral damage to society in pursuit of the almighty dollar? Or should I surrender my individuality to the state in return for promises of perfect equality and unity?

I wish I could pay a well informed communist and an equally informed capitalist to argue with each other for hours as I took notes. In the end I could chalk up which side had more hollow statements or impracticalities... but of course it isn't that easy. I want to ask pages upon pages of questions, but no one has adequate answers.

Is it just me, or does discussion in politics seem completely futile? There is no dead end. Each side always seems to have a counter to every point the other side makes, they are never trapped in a corner that they can't logically get out of - they always have a counterattack for every attack. This frustrates me to no end.

I guess it comes down to what is the more deeply ingrained instinct in us human mammals - which is stronger? Empathy or Self Preservation? Can empathy be included in self preservation? Can self preservation be tacked on to empathy? Can it naturally follow, depending on the circumstance?

Are both ideas constructs of society, or are societies constructed from these ideas?

Pug92 wrote:
It's just like us? Where do we go? We have a mind and a conscience right? I don't believe in religious bullshit but it's hard to imagine you do and everything is black and gone.

@Glass: Yeah, bad vision blows.

I'm tired. The park sucked yesterday, it was so cold and dreary. Did I mention I'm tired, cause I am. It's time for a day of listening to albums!

Sikamikanico999 wrote:
I love the deep philosophical thought going on here. Keep it coming sika!

Sikamikanico999 wrote:
Well, that applies to most things in life. Most of the time there isn't one right and one wrong. In fact, there aren't even just two sides. There are multiple angles to look at things and usually there can be different good and bad things seen from each angle.

epitome wrote: Yeah, the whole problem is thinking everything has to be "either/or". Strict communism isn't sensible, and neither is unbridled capitalism, and yet that's what political pundits reduce each other's positions to in the whole political-media-news-entertainment machine. Surely, policy-making is more nuanced than that but sadly today's politicians and news media have turned it into nothing more than a game. People don't want to critically examine facts and policies that work, they're just interested in blindly advancing their own ideology.

Sikamikanico999 wrote: Well ultimately speaking, biologists will probably say self-preservation is the stronger instinct. But empathy and its resultant altruism secondarily aid self-preservation by facilitating the survival of close kin (which share one's own genetic material) or by maintaining mutually-beneficial community bonds.

venison wrote:
Well said, sir.

On a related subject: one of the main problems with current democracies is that a leader is usually in for a short period of time (4 or 5 years or whatever). Not long enough to see the results of any long term planning, so each government's main aim is to provide quick "results" which often amount to little more than propaganda and in some cases mask a more critical negative implication.

Sadly, I can't see that changing, at least not in our lifetimes.

epitome wrote:
There is no objective right and wrong from the standpoint of justice and morals, you are correct. But within facts, within science, there is an intrinsic, human-independent right and wrong. If I say an oxygen nucleus has 100 protons, I would be objectively wrong. If I said 8, I would be objectively right.

In practice, there should be a system that objectively works better than the other. -Taking the tenet of each system and comparing it with measured efficacy in the real world, we could objectively find a set of politics that will lead to better condition for the person than the other. But as you said, those pesky angles. The subjectivity by which we define the systems. Religion and supernaturalism is easy because it's sides lie either in dominantly logical or illogical territory - politics seems to have both sides lie in both territories at once, in no measures for any, hence the frustration.
venison wrote:
But isn't it? I just very recently broke my American indoctrination and realized that communism isn't mutually exclusive from democracy. I still find that command economy and market economy are, however. In this case, I can't see how it could be both - the two propositions are directly contradictory - you cannot both have a private owner hold the means of production and the people own the means of production. I see it as being one or the other, and that isn't because I've been twisted by simplified sensationalist media (I hope. )

I can see where unbridled capitalism is objectionable, one only has to look at the Industrial Revolution and the current situation of outsourcing to Asia, and indeed, class inequality within much of the Western world to see that. Strict communism not being sensible, though, depends whether or not humans are taught competition or cooperation by society or whether they are inherent in us. If it is the former, strict communism may indeed be entirely feasible and the superior system. If the latter, then either system could work or fall based on the random participation of it's members.

I'm not entirely convinced that "today's" politicians are any different than the ones of the past. Power-hungry opportunists and people who want to make a difference, side by side. All eventually corrupted by power.

Don't you find it horribly ironic that people can have an ideology without understanding the other side and its nuances? This is why I am going through with this. I could not call myself a capitalist without throughly understanding the other systems and have a solid base by which I can advance capitalism as superior. I wish others thought like this, it could perhaps cut out a lot of the bullshit and hypocrisy.
venison wrote:
So if we accept this premise as true, which would be more practical for the individual and for the society? Should we work to our own ends in a free system with no safeguard, the guarantee of individualism and opportunity preceding what may or may not be beneficial for society as a whole? Or would it be more sensible to act in an altruistic society as a single unit, and self preservation would therefore naturally follow as a result?

It seems that both points are simultaneously correct, and little to no objective evidence within practicality or circumstance exists to distinguish superiority. Oh, the frustration...



This is a good discussion guys, thanks for the responses! Keep it coming.

Wow this is indeed, a good discussion.

There are multiple sides and extremes to anything that is going on, not only two.
I mostly can't see neither a right nor a wrong but many different oppinions - your communism/capitalism example hits the nail on the head.
The major problem with democracy these days seems to be that most things happen so far away from people in such abstract ways that most simply don't feel like getting involved rather than participating in something.
There's an overall tiredness and lazieness at least here in Germany.
The only two groups who keep beating up on each others are the right-winged and left-winged ones; and both fail by a mile because all they do is always disagreeing on the other side.
They only see their extrems which don't leave any space for working and reasonable solutions.

Yeah, Sik, with scientific fact there is a right and a wrong (well, infinite wrongs, in fact). I don't see how you can try and apply that to moral or political thinking though.

If you want things that make the majority happy (and therefore view that to be the best course of action) then any decision (or at least major decision) the government makes should be voted on. That would be a better system than our current democracy but still far from ideal.

If anything, the problem is that society has become too rigid. Western capitalism promotes greed and gaining at the expense of others. But it would be too simple to blame the politics of it. It stems from the fact that most people are greedy and selfish and as long as they can look after themselves and (maybe) those close to them, they don't care what happens to anyone else.

epitome wrote:
Gotta get to the top, doesn't matter who ya gotta step on to get there!

Most people are selfish though, that's why when you get people who are working for the good of a mass amount of people, (Ghandi, King Jr.) they're viewed as heroes. It's a rarity due to most people being selfish bastards. Like Epitome said, it doesn't help when capitalism promotes it.

off current topic, my own thought

i hate when teenagers overreact and think everythings the end of the world

Does anyone here use Instagram? If so, my user name is.......

Pug92 wrote:
(Me when Oceania got delayed)

WTF!?!? DELAYED!? NOOOOO!! MY LIFE IS OVER!!!!!11!1!!

I've read a few articles recently that believe that taste in music is directly reflective of your IQ. Do you guys believe any of that? It seems to make sense to me but at the same time it seems like bullshit.