Quote (Neptunus @ Oct 3 2023 05:26pm)
Fair enough. Libertarian? We do have some common ground in believing that the West has been contributing to suffering, possibly the most, a lot of it indirectly. Excess consumption, colonial history, emissions, economic colonialism, WW2, nukes in Japan... up until modern history, Iraq etc. We probably just differ in our conclusions then, i personally believe in the curious paradox where the suffering weve created has also contributed to us being prosperous enough to actually care about the consequences of our lifestyles and policies.
Libertarian in some ways but my domestic and foreign policy opinions tend to differ. I am generally for a decentralized state with very little influence on its citizens day to day lives, with policy being directed more locally as much as possible. That said I think western civilization is dying or dead so we require radical change that libertarians would not be willing or capable of implementing. I don't think styles of governance are a one size fits all, it depends on the state of the world and the country itself.
I did used to think that the suffering caused by the west was worth the stability and prosperity it brought but since the war on terror that has been changing slowly and their involvement in Ukraine put an end to any faith I had left that what they do is for the greater good. I also think that the quality of life and opportunity for westerners has been dropping considerably for decades, not just in financial terms but there has also been a continuous erosion of communities, spirituality and morality and those are not things that can be fixed with a change in policy or a new government IMO.
Would highly recommend reading Oswald Spenglers "the decline of the west" or at least a summary of his views on why civilizations rise and fall.
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Until the other world factions reach that point, i just believe it to be our moral responsibility to ensure the world powers avoid repeating the damage at the same extent. The West is a global minority in terms of how free its people are, which imo further emphasizes the fact that our very ability to even consider the consequences of our actions takes precedence over the fact that we are also guilty. Dont you also think that in the (hypothetical) case of the West losing its hegemony to China or even Russia, the suffering would just be repeated by another superpower faction? I think you also overlook the fact that people who neighbour Russia will naturally have a very different outlook on this war. The US is hated overseas, but Russia (and the late USSR) is hated just behind its borders. Its just a geographical difference.
It is my view that the West is actively preventing other world factions from achieving parity with them, so that moral responsibility starts to look a bit twisted through that lens. The aid sent by western countries has so many strings attached that ultimately doom the country to becoming a welfare state, indebted to the world Bank and essentially just a resource hub for the West. There is a book called Superimperialism by Michael Hudson that goes into great detail describing how this all functions, can listen to the audiobook on YouTube and there is also a video of Hudson discussing it at length on there.
Freedom is a hard thing to quantify IMO, I think westerners have amazing advantages over many parts of the world, but I think it has unique problems as well and at the end of the day, nothing lasts forever, every empire in history has fallen, the current one won't break that cycle.
I'm sure countries near Russia do hate it for a variety of reasons, many of them legitimate but these tensions have been intentionally inflamed by US propaganda to create the current conflict IMO.
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Oh and Thor/Netflix-widow is fine. I believe hes just bored of PaRD so thats why he just focuses on picked out, individual points that dont take a lot of effort to respond to. You admitted youre doing it yourself, too. I do it in the form of shitposting every now and then, too. This forum has deteriorated into a degenerate club, the good old posters have flocked away, nobody cares about respecting opposing views, users are taking criticism of substance personally.. .etc.
There just isn't much to debate anymore, people have their opinions set by now, we might argue about details here and there but I doubt anyone in here will change their current view regarding the conflict. How I treat people is largely based on how they engage with myself or others in the thread, if I think they are being rude or arguing in bad faith/ignorance then I'm not very pleasant
This post was edited by DizzyBusiness on Oct 3 2023 07:10pm