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How to feed a dictator

theguardian.com

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Re: How to feed a dictator

#61

Post by oliculipolicula »

jdw64 wrote: post #40
harrall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think that is overly presumptuous though. Some people have a different moral framework. Some people think Saddam’s brutal dictatorship was for the better because it finally brought stability. When forced to choose between stability and freedom, they choose stability. There are also just simply amoral people too who just don’t care. So I wouldn’t automatically assume someone working in an “evil” regime as “trapp…

That is what makes the world interesting. You, unlike the unthinking people I was describing, are different. You are different from those who do not reflect on the final outcome of a subject and do not empathize with it, because you can empathize with a life trapped within a particular system or framework. I also do not think you are wrong. All context must ultimately be judged according to the situation. In some res…

Careful "bro", that way is "multiculturalism*", "moral relativism" & further, "nihilism".

In other words, I don't think either of yous' thoughts are incompatible with "universal morality", but indeed two small steps towards it

*Eg Cheese and kimchi (with enough pepper) are both tasty, or both disgusting, or one but not the other, and you should never/always consider feeding the dictator with either

Re: How to feed a dictator

#62

Post by mbmbn »

To spare the ones that still didn’t lose all their good sense to have to go through the all article. It ends with trying to put Trump in the same bucket as Pol Pot and Sadam Hussein (this is all so tiresome).

So, it seems clear this film does have a side to pick and will be of dubious accuracy.

“Neel did give some thought to including Donald Trump in his film – even though, “to be clear, he is not a dictator,” he says. “He wants to be one, but he’s not. I did find a chef who cooked for him before he got elected.”

Re: How to feed a dictator

#63

Post by watwut »

neya wrote: post #48
ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

Also I have to wonder why this made to the front page of a tech forum. One of the things I used to love about HN was that it was free of politics. These days it seems like there's just political propaganda everywhere in the guise of being relevant to tech. Hope HN doesn't become another political echo chamber like Reddit.

HN was never free of politics. Politics was present here literally whole time I know the site - which can be like 14 years.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#64

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

harrall wrote: post #38
jdw64 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil,' as I understand it, refers to human beings who are incapable of thinking. Within a massively bureaucratized and divided system, the immense guilt of killing someone is broken down into tiny, mundane tasks, like stamping a document. Because the system absorbs all individual moral friction, ordinary people can become cogs in a vast machinery of evil without ever questioning it. (In o…

But I think that is overly presumptuous though. Some people have a different moral framework. Some people think Saddam’s brutal dictatorship was for the better because it finally brought stability. When forced to choose between stability and freedom, they choose stability. There are also just simply amoral people too who just don’t care. So I wouldn’t automatically assume someone working in an “evil” regime as “trapp…

"When forced to choose between stability and freedom"

Who created the illusion of this binary decision? I'll bet it was the dictator.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#65

Post by antonymoose »

orochimaaru wrote: post #37
hyperhello wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn’t the chef literally serve the dictator, pushing moral concerns aside by dispassionately performing their assigned tasks?

It depends. If one is Iraqi and Saddam asks him to be his chef, they're not refusing. They're probably dead if they refuse. Chef's are also sourced from other countries without disclosing the actual client. Once they land their situation is precarious and getting out is next to impossible. One just shuts up, cooks and takes the money. It's like everyone else serving the dictator. They money may be good, but threat to…

In the Iraqi case Saddam was known for a similar strategy to North Korea. High-trust families, not persons, are identified and groomed for positions. Of course, if your son disgraced the regime with failure or betrayal both they and their family might be on the chopping block both literally and figuratively.

I happen to have known a former Iraqi ambassador under Saddam here in the US. He and his brother were selected at a young age of 10 or so, and provided the highest levels of education by the administration, for the administration. Their family was already high enough up but were rewarded further for providing their sons. However, after one of the Iraqi losses (Kuwait?) Saddam summoned his ambassadors back to Iraq. The brothers smelled blood in the water and fled to America for asylum. Unfortunately this caused their parents to be ostracized by the regime but luckily not killed.

This pattern existed across military, civil service, academia, and even to produce Olympic athletes.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#66

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

dinfinity wrote: post #59
zerobees wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting article backed by months of hard work. It offers perspectives we probably won't find anywhere else. The quote is pretty tangential. I see this over and over again on HN: pick the weakest sentence, attack it, proclaim the article is rubbish, and move on. Why? There are no internet points awarded for maximum drive-by cynicism.

> I see this over and over again on HN: pick the weakest sentence, attack it, proclaim the article is rubbish, and move on. Why? It's to heuristically filter content on quality to optimize information consumption, i.e. concluding early: "This is probably not going to be worth my time, because this author seems to make fairly trivial easily avoidable mistakes (or something similar)". I appreciate the signal from other…

What happens when the reader is wrong?

Re: How to feed a dictator

#67

Post by whartung »

nwatson wrote: post #56
whartung wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really want to cite Joe Franks "The Dictator" here, notably the scene where he's eating the vegetables that have grown on himself (if I'm remembering correctly), but...I really doubt anyone will get the reference.

Joe Frank ... some of the best audio out there. I wonder whether one had to grow up at a certain time for his shows to make sense, and whether they'd be lost on newer generations.

He was a singular talent as a storyteller to be sure.

I used to be a regular listener to his show, but I haven't heard it in over 30 years. I can't even say that he'd make sense to me now today.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#68

Post by RetroTechie »

oliculipolicula wrote: post #61
jdw64 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what makes the world interesting. You, unlike the unthinking people I was describing, are different. You are different from those who do not reflect on the final outcome of a subject and do not empathize with it, because you can empathize with a life trapped within a particular system or framework. I also do not think you are wrong. All context must ultimately be judged according to the situation. In some res…

Careful "bro", that way is "multiculturalism*", "moral relativism" & further, "nihilism". In other words, I don't think either of yous' thoughts are incompatible with "universal morality", but indeed two small steps towards it *Eg Cheese and kimchi (with enough pepper) are both tasty, or both disgusting, or one but not the other, and you should never/always consider feeding the dictator with either

Perhaps the world 'needs' a few dictators to remind those not living under their thumb how great that is.

So.. maybe not try too hard to have the very concept of dictatorship go extinct?

Re: How to feed a dictator

#69

Post by brettermeier »

mbmbn wrote: post #62

To spare the ones that still didn’t lose all their good sense to have to go through the all article. It ends with trying to put Trump in the same bucket as Pol Pot and Sadam Hussein (this is all so tiresome). So, it seems clear this film does have a side to pick and will be of dubious accuracy. “Neel did give some thought to including Donald Trump in his film – even though, “to be clear, he is not a dictator,” he say…

But maybe he belongs in this bucket, tiresome or not.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#70

Post by neya »

watwut wrote: post #63
neya wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I have to wonder why this made to the front page of a tech forum. One of the things I used to love about HN was that it was free of politics. These days it seems like there's just political propaganda everywhere in the guise of being relevant to tech. Hope HN doesn't become another political echo chamber like Reddit.

HN was never free of politics. Politics was present here literally whole time I know the site - which can be like 14 years.

I mean, you're right. But it was always subtle, not so in-your-face like it is today.
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