281–290 of 325 posts
My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.
Slavery is de-facto legal in China and their justice system is rotten to the core. Is this really news to anyone? I would be surprised if this had ended differently.
One of these days I'm going to make the Internet prove to ME that IT's not a robot and see how it likes it
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might even say that ALL laws go against human nature. If it was in our nature to follow a certain law we probably wouldn't need it codified.
Other than basic needs is there "human nature" ? Some people will give you the last bite of food, others will lie to you to add to their hoard. I think laws are to make sure we all are on an even playing field (as much as possible) and to deter from the worst aspects of -some- humans who tend to be bad actors. Obviously that's ideally. A lot of times laws enacted by dictators/oppressive religions are there to keep pe…
Too bad we are not evolved enough to have left all of this inhumanity behind along with the extinct hominids, but you have to play the hand you are dealt.
When you think about it though, what most people usually call "human nature" is actually really inhuman nature which has not been fully surpassed.
They wouldn't say it if it wasn't false ;)
Also widely regarded as an excuse to begin with even if not fully recognized as such.
It's always been plain to see the world would be a better place the more inhumanity has been eradicated, but there have always been those who favor more inhumanity not less anyway.
Maybe some people have always been concentrating on their limitations rather than their possibilities, and that's been the limit of their horizon historically since the dawn of man. Others, not so much.
Full "human nature" would be the complete absence of inhumanity in thought & deed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if one wants to leave what happened in 1948 in the past, Israel is still doing plenty of damage to Palestinians today , for example: 1. Indefinitely blockading the Gaza Strip by sea and air thus not allowing it to trade normally with foreign countries. 2. In the West Bank, applying separate legal systems to Jews (who have Israeli citizenship due to their ethnicity) and Arabs (who have no way to become Israeli ci…
> Indefinitely blockading the Gaza Strip by sea and air thus not allowing it to trade normally with foreign countries It should be noted that this didn't just happen, it was in response to threat of violence. Israel wants gaza to stop shooting them with rockets, so they tried to prevent them from importing things that could be used as weapons. I mean, maybe you could argue the blockade is heavy handed and the militar…
Not exactly complete peace, but the closest thing ever, that's why they called it a world war. Just like World War I had been the "war to end all wars" since more people than ever were aware and truly wanted a future benefit from such an exercise, even though it didn't really work perfectly either.
You sometimes have to ask yourself how do you know what it was like in 1948?
Was your late father a World War II combat veteran and able to tell you all about it first-hand over a period of decades?
Or at the opposite end of the spectrum among the vast majority of backgrounds whose World War II veteran ancestors or even regular civilian ancestors are many generations removed by now and there was never as much chance for direct dissemination of first-hand recollections? I would estimate that most people today have not ever met a World War II veteran, much less a World War I veteran like so many grandfathers were when I was growing up.
I accept that type of legacy is informed more so from only one side of the conflict. So it has always made me interested in further understanding those having different perspectives over the decades. And more aware of the natural difficulty of grasping the feelings of those who were on the other side at the time.
One thing about World War II, it was big and it ended with a bang. Real big in both respects. Everybody knows that.
The War to End All Wars wasn't officially upgraded to full World War I status until after World War II got underway. Sequels call for that type of nomenclature.
But what most people worldwide fail to remember now, is that WWII was so big and so deadly that there were only three (3) kinds of people remaining after World War II was over.
1. Those that won World War II.
2. Those that lost World War II.
3. Those that were saved by the ones that won World War II.
That's it.
Everyone else was killed.
Even those at the time having no knowledge that WWII even took place, were still saved by the victors or they would have been cruelly overcome by the more-inherently-violent losing aggressors had they prevailed. More cruelly than anything seen since, although some things are coming closer as memories continue to fade. But on a much smaller scale for now.
In this respect it was the least diverse that humanity had ever been, kind of an unrepeatable bubble of world peace where all everyone can do is pick up the pieces of what's left afterward. So many things were completely destroyed never to be the same again. Everyone has been repressed in some way ever since, with different paths to resolve the devastation but no one could ever realistically expect to "recover" what has been lost forever. But after such a devastating four years of intense combat, huge majorities everywhere were enthusiastic about working together to rebuild rather than fight each other any more. Survivors were so damn lucky and peace was simply worth it so damn much.
Well naturally as time marched on we are all now mostly mixed decendants of those 3 surviving archetypes, nothing that came before really matters as much after WWII than it did before, but difficulty has always arisen among those who could not realize & accept this type of thing. With nuclear proliferation ever since increasing the probability that almost all past human accomplishment would be more fully destroyed if worldwide conflict were to get underway again.
This is how people, some of whose ancestors were not even directly involved in WWII, "lose" World War II in the 21st century.
You lose the memory of it.
Either way the only thing that could ever obliterate the relative world peace that existed from 1946 and beyond, regardless of how that imperfect peace has been forgotten and steadily faded, would be World War III.
And you have to ask yourself who is most likely to actually want to start World War III, should they be stopped, and how would that be accomplished?
Now applying these generic observations to the Palestinians & Israelis today, as well as the Arabs & Jews worldwide, these are peoples that were largely saved by the victors of WWII more so than participating as active combatants. They all should not forget this although I think a lack of appreciation here is basically what's happening when you look at it.
It's not much different than it was in the 1970's during the Arab-Israeli Peace negotiations, and even back before the 1967 conflicts.
The ongoing Cold War was much more ominous and threatening to the entire world, but it was because the governments of US & NATO countries, and the government of the Soviets truly hated each other. This was in contrast to the majority of regular American & Russian citizens who were both fundamentally very similar, having no historical record of animosity, just mostly possessing worthwhile national pride on both sides without prejudice.
OTOH it looks like the majority of Arabs & Jews have hated each other religiously, enough for it to be a source of strife since before anyone living was ever born, and at any one time during recent centuries that was the case and it had been true for centuries before that. It was the modern governments that wanted peace more than the regular citizens, they did the best they could but since then it has been up to the citizens on both sides to pick up the baton and carry it forward into the 21st century. Governments can do no more, it has been up to the citizens themselves to each fully halt all violent aggression & retaliation on their own initiative more & more through time if they desire any kind of peace.
They will have to settle for whatever they can accomplish for themselves, governments have not been able to solve this for centuries even when they try.
And it looks like the governments haven't even been trying for a number of years, those in power might even hate each other more than the opposing citizens do now or there would not have been nearly as many casualties on both sides.
My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.
With regulatory capture and the revolving door between .com and .gov, those who run the corporations and those who are supposed to respond to the whistle are often hanging out in the same back rooms.
The general response seems to be a slap on the wrist and a hardy “Don’t get caught doing that again!”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Patagonia? Chick-Fil-A? There is certainly a niche catering to the handful of customers who do care, have the money to care, have enough information to care and get the opportunity to show they care by selecting the right vendor. But very often I think the consumer is just unable to care because of lacking money, lacking information or outright deception by the vendors and lacking offers from ethical vendors. And t…
> the market unfortunately favors the non-ethical ones "The market favors" is just an corporate speak for "The customers favor", i.e. in this case "The customers unfortunately favor the non-ethical ones".
Therefore it is not really an informed decision of the customer that makes them successful. It rather is the lack of transparency of the market, due to the non-ethical sellers lying and regulation being too lax.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> simplifying: "laws and moral codes exist to restrict 'human nature'" I strongly disagree with that. Laws (and moral codes) exist to codify the general, agreed-upon human nature. They therefore "restrict," as you say, a subset of people whose internal moral compass is broken. To pick the most extreme example: most people don't need a law, or even a moral code, to not kill other people. We all (for some large and gro…
It is the reason I do not like the term "human nature". Is it a human nature to kill other humans? Are moral considerations a part of a human nature? > To pick the most extreme example: most people don't need a law, or even a moral code, to not kill other people. How it may be a "nature" if it is artificial? Some cultures routinely eat other people, we do not, how it can be a human nature, if different people coalesc…
every human has the potential to be a great person. and only education is needed to enable that greatness and allow humanity to benefit from it.
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Imagine hanging out with Snowden, you both have done a few rounds of pints. Suddenly you slip up about your music preferences. Next thing you know, tomorrow you see a tweet on Snowden's Twitter account and thousands of comments laughing at you.
That's not whistleblowing[1]. Whistleblowing is a legal term, not a "slipped up and told my mate's secret" event. 1. https://www.dni.gov/ICIG-Whistleblower/what-is.html