"...these are the times that we live in, when opportunity knocks only to be notified of eviction..."

[despair57]

A few days ago, there was an assembly for seniors in which, among other things, Mr. Tabbish talked about suicide. He said that suicide happens because we don't tell the adults around us. He said that school shootings like Columbine happen because no one tells someone when they think it's going to happen. But I noticed that he never talked about

Comments

[syrax]

Joaquin, always the noble warrior. I'm too much of a sadistic nihilistic bastard to really agree with you a lot of the time, but you are thinking in a good direction

[syrax]

Statistically speaking, it's a huge mistake to have a one-race or a two-race school because then people do divide up almost with assurance. The interesting thing is that a three-race school leads to racial mixing and tolerance. Crazy, eh?

As for the latter part of your critique, no, I never said anything racist at all. In fact, that really supports my point. Since they come from the same background (which account for 90% of racial distinctions), they once again have more of a reason to feel different and form their own society to fight against their evil environment.

[despair57]

Concerning the two students

[syrax]

First thing, the rather uncomforting statement: "Can tolerance really be forced? I think so."

How exactly can elitism be overcome? The majority of people (the majority is assured, though I'm tempted to say almost everyone) would still be totally intolerant. What exactly is the evil of intolerance? How would you handle the inevitable amazing repression that follows? Etc.

[despair57]

Note that I didn't say forcing tolerance is a good thing

[syrax]

Intolerance of cheese, intolerance of other people, intolerance of races, the question still stands. Intolerance that hurts other people is not innately evil. Is society neccesarry? It seems to have failed pretty bad, but we still have about a half century to find out if it really has failed miserably.

Decreasing suffering by a noticeable percent is a start, but then you're going to have to figure out how to decrease it more. The problem with improvement is that you don't do it for the sake of the journey, you do it because perfection is a practical goal. Utopia is a possibility.

But, nonetheless, why does it have to be through society? Why do we need to preserve this world? What does a population of 6 billion do for us that a population of 6 million can't achieve the same essence?

[despair57]

It's a good question, but how do we stop the population? Do people volunteer to kill themselves, or do we do mass exterminations? Unless there's some good way to do it, we need to just deal with the increasing population that we have. That's where tolerance comes in.

If society is not necessary, then you're right, intolerance isn't evil. But I disagree that decreasing suffering is only a start. I think that a perfect world is impossible, but that a better one is not. What's wrong with a world that still sucks but is better than the one we have now?

[syrax]

I do believe in a perfect world, though. I think utopia not only can exist, but it's very practical and even stupid to say that we shouldn't demand it.

The justification against society is that you can't save it or destroy it. It simply will collapse on its own and destroy itself without your help.

Really, there's not even that much evil in the world. People will be natural and they will be living creatures and they use logic and they don't use fictional emotions. We generally can prevent any bad thing that happens to us, though. In that, we deserve it. No one said you had to participate in society or life nor did anyone say you had a right to either. Since people fear death, they have an exploitable weakness that is a corruption of logic.