Yes, everything. We are formed by relationships. Our memories, personalities, emotional responses, sense of self. No man is an island and all that.
This is a key point and I beg to differ. We are certainly social animals yet we are also individuals. To ignore this fact comes over as avoiding reality. Yes we are created by our history but your view implies that we don't exist as an individual, meaning that we cannot be formed by relationships because the other person and ourselves don't exist.
You're not getting what I'm saying. The Liberal (economic right) conception of the individual is that we can be considered as abstracted from our social conditions - hence the emphasis on good choices and bad choices, absolute rights, individual reward etc. The socialist (economic left) conception is that we cannot be considered as seperate from our social conditions - we are formed by them, all endeavour is social, choice is contingent on circumstance etc.
So you are talking about two extremes which don't stand up to reality, both as bad as each other? I would suggest you introduce an example of where the 'left' view is evidently correct if you wish to continue this.
Are humans imbued with an innate ability to discern?
Yes, we have the capacity to react in the moment to anything, however if we are let down by someone then we have the freedom to choose who we surround ourselves with. There is no need to live in perpetual fear of what the people around us might do - it is necessary to trust them and relax or else what fun could possibly be had in such a state of fear?
I'm not interested in you telling me anything, teacher. I'm interested in you explaining.
Touchy! What is it that you wish explained? Were you unable to comment on what I said? IE the two types of people who want power - those who trust the population to find their own ways and laws, and those which decide that the people are too stupid to do so and who thus impose their laws on them.
Which bit of this do you disagree with? Or did you agree and not want to comment?
I have to ask too, why you expect people to waste the effort to debate with you when they know from numerous previous encounters that your mind is already made up, and that you're not actually prepared to listen to anything except to denigrate both the thoughts and the thinker?
I never start the insults. I am always open to constructive dialogue but here posters seem unable to simply watch a clip and relate their learning to it. All they seem able to do is to run off a list of books which they seem unable to apply.
The clip makes many good points and sadly hardly anyone has really addressed any of them. Name them if you think I am lying. The same has happened in many threads but i try because you all seem so keen to back each other up without critical thought that I hope that you will notice it! The Rand debate was classic because I wanted to debate the key points she made, yet the other posters were unable to take what she said and to relate their learning to it, and to thus critically evaluate. So it descended into name calling again.
I used to be much more in line with the common (left?) view given here, but it is in my view simplistic in relation to the world we have around us. Freedoms are all too easily dismissed as irrelevant - which is why I independently came to the same conclusion as the clip, ie that it is better to divide these people into those who respect personal rights and those who don't, and who thus wish to impose a dubious and simplistic view of how life 'should' be, often without an idea as to what to do with those who disagree.
It would of course be much easier to turn a blind eye to the issues which don't fit into my view and to just have a group of the like-minded, but that is what I am criticising here. If anyone here said anything thoughtful then I would comment on it and maybe learn. Unfortunately there is usually no content to comment on without getting derailed.
For example Blagsta talks (eventually) about the need to allocate resources, but he fails to really expand this to relate it to types of government and so I am forced into dismissing his points because they are just true statements with no relevance to the topic.
Of course it is about economics, but that statement is about as useful as saying that it's about 'feelings' - ie true but not specifically relevant.
The thing is that they take my refusal to talk about off topic issues as an indication that I have no learning of my own. Of course there is a debate to be had about the possibility of central control with the technological age (for example) but that is another debate and so (as ever) those who are interested in it could start their own thread, instead of derailing my thread.
