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> I think the concept of "freedom of speech" is highly subjective. What utter nonsense.
Thanks for the opinion, care to expand on it to help educate?
It really feels like democracy is slowly dying all over the world.
> It really feels like democracy is slowly dying all over the world. If it seems that way, it's because we've stopped fighting for it. Any regime without some basic level of true democratic representation and civil liberties should be the subject of official embargoes and individual boycotts. Unfortunately, many have sold out democracy to please the all-important shareholders or just to take advantage of cheap stuff.
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You’d do more harm than good. Your “fighting for glory” is somebody else’s “insidious foreign intervention”. Let the people speak for themselves.
What about Chinese Communist Party, which has no problem performing "insidious foreign intervention" at scale in Hong Kong? What about the people who say they want support? Do their needs matter? N ational govements are convenient fictions, not natural laws. We are all kin on this planet Earth. Imagine if the US civil war was never fought, because it was up to the slaves to "speak for themselves" (by which you mean f…
If you view this conflict as only an opportunity to go out and "fight for glory" in a foreign country, to have some fun punching out foreigners, without understanding what precisely it is about, you're no better than a mercenary or a caveman with a club.
A basic test to see if you have this understanding is if you know what the other side would say to justify itself. And no, "they hate freedom" is not, and never has been, the right answer.
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> Recently, I’ve been thinking about the HK scenario and wondering what I can do, but I can’t shake a nagging feeling that I could simply go over there and fight alongside the protestors. I often deflect with observations like “I don’t speak the language,” or “I don’t know what I would do to help,” and yet the thought keeps coming back. I'd say do it, if you feel this way. This guy did it: https://idlewords.com/2019/…
Why not fight for your own country? The western world has its own share of issues, ranging from a steep increase in far right politics to corruption and poor administration. Not that i don’t support helping hk, but your plan sounds a bit rich.
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Please don't compare the Chinese government's actions to the Trump administration. They're not even remotely close.
They are absolutely leading toward the same path, outcome. If you're up for reading I've heard the book Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maps_of_Meaning - will be a deep dive or good introduction to referencing patterns and tyrannical governments through history.
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And what have we done about that? I'm technically Gen Y, and I'll be the first to admit that with regards to protesting my generation seems: - Uninformed - Undisciplined - Lazy - Uncoordinated People were self-organizing large civil society organizations and marching through clouds of tear gas and worse in the 1960-90s... and yet this current generation seems to think that posting a rant on Facebook is valuable? Inco…
Most of us just don't think we CAN do anything. It seems the world is run by the rich for the rich. We vote but we don't feel that anything we can do actually will effect any change.
But there's always been a major disparity between capital owners and everyone else. Even in the 60s. And certainly at the turn of the century (1850-1920), when US antitrust law was actually first created.
So maybe media centralization? But the 1960s featured a limited number of media channels controlled by a few owners (albeit with some paragons of objective, journalistic integrity). And the turn of the century was the heyday of centralized newspaper control.
I'm honestly casting about for an external why and am hard-pressed to enunciate a coherent narrative.
And in lieu of one, the only thing that's left are that people simply aren't actively protesting.
Whether they're making that choice because of hopelessness or laziness, I don't really care. Because ultimately, it's a choice.
Make the other one.
(And it seems we might finally be, with regards to climate)
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What about Chinese Communist Party, which has no problem performing "insidious foreign intervention" at scale in Hong Kong? What about the people who say they want support? Do their needs matter? N ational govements are convenient fictions, not natural laws. We are all kin on this planet Earth. Imagine if the US civil war was never fought, because it was up to the slaves to "speak for themselves" (by which you mean f…
See, the problem is that these slogans work for all sides. People want to group up and go out to "fight for glory" against the hated enemy. That natural instinct is what the commenter I was replying to was feeling. It's what we felt when we joined WWII, and it's also what the Axis citizens felt when they started WWII . It is what the Union soldiers felt and also what the Confederate soldiers felt . It is the same imp…
> People want to group up and go out to "fight for glory" against the hated enemy.
No. Speak for yourself. You simply and repeatedly omit the part about the moral dimension, and fighting against injustice, a person or nation becoming the enemy just because of what they did to others. Would you want to be put into a concentration camp just for the sadistic fancy of others? And if you were, would you say nobody should care about it? Unless the answers are yes and yes, you aren't practicing what you're preaching.
Yes, Hitler said he had to kill the Jews to save the world, and the world says Hitler was a mass murderer. You have to make up your own mind, you can't just shrug and say both sides think they're right, so it's neutral. I also wonder how much you actually know about the atmosphere under the Nazis, I would recommend a few books by Sebastian Haffner to start with. And do the people who fled the country to fight against the Nazis count, or the people who didn't dare to speak up, etc.?
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I think people of HK have tried other more peaceful approaches in the past and have received nothing in return from Beijing. Do you have any propositions of what citizens of HK, or China, can do to get more freedoms like freedom of speech or from random arrests on trumped up charges which is how the current situation started? I don't think anyone in HK want to be in this situation but for many they see it as a last c…
I think the concept of "freedom of speech" is highly subjective. If you go to China you would find very little consideration for a lack of freedom of speech aside from a few radicals whose mission is to cause turbulence to the existing regime. In Beijing, you can walk in many taxis and hear the driver blabber on to no end regarding the state of existence in China and state defamatory words regarding the Communist, th…
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I think people of HK have tried other more peaceful approaches in the past and have received nothing in return from Beijing. Do you have any propositions of what citizens of HK, or China, can do to get more freedoms like freedom of speech or from random arrests on trumped up charges which is how the current situation started? I don't think anyone in HK want to be in this situation but for many they see it as a last c…
Join the government and change it from within.
The game has been rigged specifically to benefit China alone. The system is slowly being corrupted by pro Chinese force. Out of the last 3 CE, one was indicted for corruption. One took 8mil USD in consulting fee and then through China having to save his face, had his investigation dismissed by firing the investigator. The current one even admits she solely takes orders from Beijing.
There is no good faith governance from the beginning.