111–120 of 126 posts
There are a number of beautiful places in the United States where it is possible for a person to subsist quite luxuriously on $1200/mo and preserve the ability to throw parties for friends, buy books and tools, etc. As of January a person with such income will have free Medicare in Oregon. "Fuck You" money is an illusion that keeps you working. The mind loves to believe that having enough of some external thing will…
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For a very approachable view of Russel's thoughts and work, you can try reading his own writing: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/355 My personal favourite so far has been 'Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays' with 'Analysis of Mind' currently at the top of my reading queue. Not everything he did was like reading 'Principia Mathematica' and his writing is very open, readable and eloquent.
I liked a bunch of the essays I read by him, and loved "A History of Western Philosophy". I'm well aware (and felt his writing made it obvious enough) that it is not necessarily a 'accurate' history of philosophy, but it was a great book with a great approach.
The method of a leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of the class had to be taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. I'm down. We…
Well, apart from that last fictional character who has arguably brought more harm than good through his ideas (and arguably through them being misinterpreted), I'm all down with that.
It's the details of his activities in the New Testament and various Gospels that are hotly debated.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus (use this as a starting point for further citations..)
/pedant mode off.
There are a number of beautiful places in the United States where it is possible for a person to subsist quite luxuriously on $1200/mo and preserve the ability to throw parties for friends, buy books and tools, etc. As of January a person with such income will have free Medicare in Oregon. "Fuck You" money is an illusion that keeps you working. The mind loves to believe that having enough of some external thing will…
yea, but you still need $360k or so to be able to withdraw $1200/month forever without worry. That's still a decent chunk of change. I guess you can save it in 5 years, but if you don't like working those 5 years will be hellaciously long
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Meh. The world has suffered enough from "the classic intellectual type with strong affections for humanity in the abstract and the people around him not so much". I'd much rather listen to someone who's attached to others and behaves decently towards them. (I've got a particular bias against Gandhi for what that so-called "moral paragon" famously said about the Holocaust.)
For others who are curious about the Gandhi reference, here's what I dug up: "“Hitler,” Gandhi solemnly affirmed, “killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. I believe in hara-kiri. I do not believe in its militaristic connotations, but it is a heroic method.” “You thin…
Edit: It's questionable whether this was something specific he had against Jews or not. Frankly, I'm not even sure whether an anti-Semite or an anti-humanist is morally superior.
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Something happened to me yesterday that I haven't quite had the time to figure out. I'm normally the introverted "stay at home and relax" type, at least during the week. I frequently want to get home from work as early as possible to play video games, play music, or read. The only problem I've had lately is I've had little motivation to do the creative parts (e.g. creating music or programming something). But last ni…
I think momentum plays a big part. That goes both ways in creative pursuits of getting things "done" or at least moving forward on projects, as well as stagnating. The more time you "I'll do it later" on something, the easier it becomes, etc. The book "Art of War" while some "hippie'esque"'ness breaks down "resistance" to getting to creative pursuits.
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For others who are curious about the Gandhi reference, here's what I dug up: "“Hitler,” Gandhi solemnly affirmed, “killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. I believe in hara-kiri. I do not believe in its militaristic connotations, but it is a heroic method.” “You thin…
Yes, basically, that. It kind of indicates that he believed Jewish lives are worth so little that we should have pointlessly thrown away millions of them for publicity . Edit: It's questionable whether this was something specific he had against Jews or not. Frankly, I'm not even sure whether an anti-Semite or an anti-humanist is morally superior.
There is a big difference between "It would be a noble and also an effective thing for group X to sacrifice themselves" and "Other people should sacrifice group X", and it seems very clear that Gandhi was saying the first of those and not the second, and that he was advocating that they should do the same kind of thing as he did himself.
Now, for the avoidance of doubt, I think (1) he was wrong about this and (2) there's still something a bit indecent about saying "those people should have sacrificed themselves". But I don't see anything anti-Semitic, or anti-humanistic, in this, nor do I think he was saying that Jewish lives were worth little in absolute terms or relative to others. He was saying that in the face of a powerful oppressor self-sacrifice is both an effective tool and a noble thing to do.
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Yes, basically, that. It kind of indicates that he believed Jewish lives are worth so little that we should have pointlessly thrown away millions of them for publicity . Edit: It's questionable whether this was something specific he had against Jews or not. Frankly, I'm not even sure whether an anti-Semite or an anti-humanist is morally superior.
No, he wasn't saying that "we should have pointlessly thrown away" any of them. He was saying that the Jews should have sacrificed themselves to make a point, in something like the same way as many of Gandhi's followers put themselves in danger to make a point, and Gandhi himself went on (life-threatening) hunger strike to make a point. And he was saying that the end result would likely have been the loss of fewer Je…
I mean, for that matter, compare how many Holocaust victims did fight back versus those who didn't. Since the vast majority didn't fight back, what could they have done to make their deaths into an effective "martyrdom"?
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so he proposed a nuclear first strike against russia? what an amazing person :D
Yes, Russell definitely did that and was evasive about it afterward. In the late 1940s this insanity was widespread: an entire movement of politically influential players dedicated itself to nuking the Soviet Union before it achieved the bomb and (so the argument went) inevitably used it on us. Von Neumann was another prominent advocate ("If you say bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say do it at five o'…
After that he went on found the Pugwash conferences, be the first president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, etc., so he can hardly be painted as a nuclear warmonger generally. As you say, "everyone makes mistakes and everyone is subject to social climate".
Could you be more explicit about how he "refused to own up to it"? I mean, did he deny saying the actual words he's documented as having said, or did he disagree with someone else's interpretation of them, or what?
There are a number of beautiful places in the United States where it is possible for a person to subsist quite luxuriously on $1200/mo and preserve the ability to throw parties for friends, buy books and tools, etc. As of January a person with such income will have free Medicare in Oregon. "Fuck You" money is an illusion that keeps you working. The mind loves to believe that having enough of some external thing will…