Atlantis wrote:@One Degree, you made an utterly indefensible statement, which I can only guess must be the expression of some sort of outlandish worldview. And now, instead of facing up to the enormity of what you said, you keep on pussy-footing around. Not only do you push some sort of reprehensible worldview, but you don’t even have the guts to face up to it.
You said “conflict is caused by good man”, which gets us into a world of absolute relativism where good is evil and evil is good, where words have lost their meaning and fake can be true - a world in which Hitler is good and Gandhi is evil, a world where human values and decency have given way to the arbitrariness of those who have power.
We are not talking about “righteousness”. Nobody who still accepts the conventional meaning of words would hold that the righteous are good.
We are not talking about the “do-gooders” either. Nor are we talking about those who pretend to be good by wanting to bomb Syria for “humanitarian” reasons. They are not good; they are the lowest vermin who pretend to do good in order to pursue an evil design aimed at destroying others for their own benefit.
In this world nothing is absolute. Somebody may have the best of intentions but still chose a path that leads to destruction. And nobody even knows his or her innermost intentions. But good must still mean good, whether or not it is accompanied by the wisdom to make the right choices is another matter. The truly good do not know that they are good.
You seem to start with saying my position is indefensible and then you go on to defend it. Your view seems to be based upon drawing distinctions at your convenience. You say righteous people are not good people. You say do gooders are not good people. You seem to overlook the fact THEY think they are good. Your worldview that everyone who disagrees with you is evil and knows it is the distorted one. Yes, we do live in a world where ‘good’ people thought Hitler was good and thought Gandhi was bad.
The only rational statement you made was they lacked wisdom. Well, NO ONE is all wise. We all have some wisdom. The best thing wisdom provides is the ability to know my wisdom is not your wisdom. Different people have different needs. BOTH can be right.
And yes, this is why I support local autonomy. What is right for me may not be right for you. That does not make you wrong.
Even the things we dislike about are parents are usually things they thought were right that we have decided aren’t. Does that make them evil?
In short, your post is a testament to someone who believes they have the inside track on what is right. That is self righteousness. Your refusal to believe others can be ‘good’ while disagreeing with you is the cause of conflict. How the hell can anyone believe all Germans, American Southerners, etc. were fighting unless they thought they were ‘good’ and ‘right’? To refuse to accept this is self righteousness.
We fight wars to force others to accept our ‘rightness’, and ‘goodness’.
I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.