Hi Bilow,
I wonder what "Algeria's middle class" would have done if they had known in advance that canceling the elections would result in their being (slowly) slaughtered. A better solution would have been to let the Islamists win without violence.
knowing something like this in advance is completely counter-intuitive and hence an extremely low probability event, I’m surprised you found the speculation post worthy. If you’re going to make the argument for human nature you have to be careful not to misunderstand it.
Oppression and being slaughtered are not one and the same, thus you present a false, false dichotomy or should I say a false singularity. Your numbers theory tricks you into believing that it takes account of time, but it does not, because there is a difference between some numbers and actual experience. Oppression, which would have been the case under Islamism, is turned on 100% of the time and can be every bit as violent as slaughter because every second of every minute of every day of every year of your life, you are not free. The little bits tend to add up to a rather large pile, rather quickly if you are not careful. When the violence is slaughter it only means that a tipping point has been reached and this is a personal decision. The speed with which one approaches the tipping point is a function of both parties and your proposed solution does nothing to guarantee a better outcome.
The resulting regime would be easier to overturn than one that one that won at high cost The reason for this is that it is human nature to hold on tightly to things that are obtained only at great effort.
your equation of cost and effort is bollocks...If the boom we had represents easy money, then why do we keep on hearing that everybody has lost so much in the bust we are now experiencing. Effort has little to do with it, people have short memories in the light of new information. By the time human nature manifests as behaviour, it is too late. -g-
People hold onto things they believe in, not things that cost something - in a fire you don’t save your house, you save your child. This is human nature and this is why Germany and Japan turned after the war and why Russia continued on their way. Mandela was found guilty of crimes he did not commit, he had not expended much effort at all, he had just learnt how to shoot a gun for the very first time for gods sake, but he paid the price. This is the meaning of sacrifice, martyrdom is not about giving your life, but about saving your principles, and enduring that burden takes a huge effort although I’m not sure this is what you had in mind.
Instead, they chose the solution that gave them a few more years of, let's not mince words, power over the poor class, but created an environment where the middle class was slowly eliminated.....see first point about the difference between slaughter and oppression, please tell me I don’t get it.
“why they hate us” is a question so confounding to most Stateside Americans because most of our generations movers and shakers and public opinion makers have never seen the face of hate, never in themselves, and never in others, and when you see something writ large, like concerted fascist action in action, like it was on 911, and you’ve never seen anything like it before, like say the Himalaya for the very first time, your jaw drops and all you can manage to say is...“oh my god”, and think to yourself, why do they hate us.
This gets back to my frequent point that sometimes there are no solutions to political problems.
when there are no solutions and society breaks down, you hold onto what you believe in, if you can figure that out, it’s actually quite simple even though it’s not particularly easy. This is the essence of the moral crisis faced by so many in times such as these. |
