Brugmansia a dit:
Forkbender a dit:
The Enlightenment led to Auschwitz.
Are you serious!?
There just wasn't enough knowledge by the average civillian what absolute might could do if given to a small group of people. There was no documentation they could look in and read about how earlier similar states turned out.
Nowadays, everyone can look up easily how our past went. This is one of the reasons that Wilders can't get that far to be dangerous. Because it's recognised in an early state where he is after at. The majority of the people have been educated with this at a young age at school, or looked it up themselve on the internet. This truly wasn't the case in 30's. People merely worked for low salary, came home, merely had each other and they had no options to brush up their knowledge.
This is abused by a regime who knew this and could get the might asnd let the population act on it while they had no idea where this activities were for. But they got a more assured life in return as a promise. That assurance was enough to let them act they way the NSDAP wanted. But they didn't even said how it would be better.
Now try this tactic nowadays with the average civillian knows. What if a minister says we all have to build highways because we'll get something in return? Would you be convinced to act on it?
Yes, I am serious. The so-called Enlightenment did not do shit for regular people, as you show above. It's ideas about clean rationality paving the way for just and effective action has shown what will happen if you suppress emotions like hate: the massive and clean disposal of groups of people that do not live by the general norm.
Just that a 70 year old tactic doesn't work today, doesn't mean there are no new tactics. The point of a tactic is that it is unnotaceble by the opponent. So you do not know if there is a tactic behind all this, but you can assume there is, because the video shows inhuman things. Propaganda can be very open, and it can seem ridiculous, but underneath the surface there are more subtle ways to influence us.
It works by the principle of divide and rule. Wilders has made the debate the following: either muslims are bad, as he says they are, or they are good, as he claims most other parties think. Then the debate goes on along this new line, while in fact there is nothing true about this line, it is a pseudo-distinction, based on contingent values and interpretations of what is True and Good.
Forkbender a dit:
The West is *very* traditional. The ideas that we hold dear (freedom, autonomy, justice) are firmly based in institutions such as the state, the market and so on, the same institutions that force us to comply with them. This force goes unnoticed within our own culture, but once we traverse boundaries, become suddenly apparent.
This nearly gave me the indication that any force is wrong. It is not the power that does wrong, but those who have control over that power. And we know that an enlighted and educated population tends to use force and might as efficient as possible.
I'm curious to hear your input on how the authority could be better in our country right now. Because both with Scandinavia, we're the most healthy structure that takes the most care of the individual within and outside our borders. Switserland also participates really well in this.
I'm not saying that power is wrong, I am saying that it is everywhere, enacted on us from every direction. Force in the sense of violence exists, I do not want to call it bad or good, because then you make a moral issue out of something painful, which makes it harder to straighten out. Efficiency doesn't mean that it's better. Auschwitz, to use the same example again, was very efficient. Horribly efficient.
Authority could be better in many ways, for example be letting people decide over their own lives for a change. Stop moral uniformism and trust that people will generally do good if given the chance. Give people the chance to really educate themselves instead of letting themselves be programmed by ideologies.
Those examples about health are really quite interesting, but even medicine is not a value-free body of knowledge. They are interwoven with structures of power and politics, which decide what methods are good and what are bad. These prejudices shape all 'scientific' inquiry into the subject.
We as people have power ourselves, but we rarely do something with it to influence the world for the better. We focus mostly on our own good instead of that of the whole.
