RE: Ethical ramifications of, The PRIME-DIRECTIVE
You speak of relativism, often associated with nihilism and postmodernism, in which everything seems somehow blurry and indifferent? Why do you deliberately misunderstand that? Quite valuable knowledge came from the fact that a person discovered his own bias and only when you can startle yourself at yourself and even see and allow such a thing to happen, that your fear of yourself is nothing other than the religiously formulated "splinter in the eye", you do not need to look at a moral relativism, because such reproach earns you nothing, except that someone says to you that you are mistaken in your assumption about his world view.
Why do you need an absolutely objective truth, if not as justification and crutch, to express some form of superiority?
Isn't it enough, instead of citing absolute objectivity, for you to communicate just as well with what potential you have? The desire to find a consensus, especially with difficult interlocutors? What people have said with absolute conviction and pure objectivity has not turned out very well in the history of mankind.
Have you ever succeeded in describing, convincing, pacifying when you talk about objective truth?
Can you admit that in times when you don't know what to do, you need refuge or guidance and leave it at that. It's not just you, it's everyone else. Better talk about what helped you personally.
May you be well.
Without absolutes, then everything is relative. Without truth, all is false. A world of relativism and consensus is nothing more than an illusion, or a delusion, that merely serves to satiate a man's ego. When two ideologies, or world views, collide, one dominates over the other. Some ideologies are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled. The modern liberal nonsense of moral relativism produces nothing but mongrel idiocy that serves no purpose.
Any reference that can be changed at a whim of a "consensus" is no reference at all. The OP complains about his desire to be left-alone, but does not hesitate to impose his "values" upon 6 billion souls on this planet. Quite similar to the value of the antifa mongrels that tolerate all ideas, except those that contradict theirs. Furthermore, the opinion of the 80% of any given population is worth less than useless. Men do not seek diagnosis and treatment of illness from a "consensus" of janitors, plumbers, and store clerks. Men do not hire a committee of bartenders, valets, and bloggers to operate a company. Thus, regarding moral principles and public policy, which are far more important, why would any sane man seek "consensus" of fools?
In dealing with people I can only try to meet them without violence. As far as you legitimize violence for yourself, you create suffering. You want dominance from one worldview over another? You can't do that without oppression. This has been going on for a long time. Both historically and currently. All you have to do then is to end up on the side of the dominant, no? To do that, you need the security of knowing you'll be right where a war is won. Plus material and government protection. I'm afraid to ask if you don't care about refugees and exiled people. I come from a family of expellees and I cannot tell you how much religious fundamentalism disturbs families over several generations.
You can rise up and make fun of consensus as if you yourself were exalted to be dependent on other people's consent, cooperation and a basic ethical attitude without any claim to absolutism. You are just as dependent on the goodwill and a non-entitled attitude of your fellow men as everyone else.
Violence, or rather the capacity to inflict death and destruction, lies at the basis of all sociopolitical arrangements, whether they be democracy, monarchy, or oligarchy. In our modern developed world of central monopoly on violence, men can afford the luxury of imagining that the world operates on goodwill and consensus alone. Much of the force and compulsion are hidden behind legal and financial procedures, but without the ever-present state violence, no law has legitimacy and no amount of shiny baubles can compel anyone.
It is quite puzzling that an exile believes that the world operates on consensus alone. Why didn't your faction arrive at some consensus with your enemies over tea and biscuit, rather than being thrown out? Isn't it due to the fact that your ideology is irreconcilable with that of your enemies? The central tenets of all sociocultural ideology are non-negotiable, and those who live within a sociocultural matrix must acquiesce to these tenets, or be removed from sociocultural consciousness, whether through ostracism, imprisonment, or death. Men have consensus over trivial matters, such as gardening, not over core belief systems.
Peace is sought because one is sane, because everything is better than killing and hurting. As long as there is no house-to-house fighting on your street and you can leave your home without being killed at the next corner, as long as there is no curfew, no grenades and no military rule, you don't have to pretend that it already is. Whenever your life is in danger, which you seem to be anticipating and aiming for, your instincts and other survival strategies will either prevent you from dying or not.
Obviously, people have always depended and still depend on peaceful understanding between themselves, on maintaining their dignity and on behaving humanely towards each other in times of peace as well as in times of extreme need. This is often the only thing that people suffering from war can offer each other. Of course, my family could not speak to their prison wardens, this much is clear even to a small child.
Consensus is not something you believe in, but what you experience. One tries to create it and does not expect it to be easy. When there is conflict, it is never easy, but difficult. You don't have to believe in peace, you have to practice it. In the end, everyone who is interested in peaceful and non-violent existence is a winner, even if he dies. The peacebringers are obviously in the minority. Well, if I were to turn away from them in resignation or anger every time a minority or a single person approaches a hopeless cause, there would never have been the strong examples of our history, bringing hope and compassion to their respective era. They have saved many a life, which you, being so convinced of omnipotence, seem to have long since given up?
I have thought a while further about how to be in dialogue...
If it was about the fact that you wanted to help a friend during the Nazi era who was to be court-martialed by them, and you knew one of the leading generals, then you would only be able to help your friend if you met the general with peace in your heart and there was something about him that you appreciated. Any flattery, any hypocrisy would be seen through immediately and only if one receives authentic kindness from the other will he want to give it back and grant a request for help. No bribery, no ingratiation, no threat will tempt someone to be kind, but on the contrary, will make him think that he is right in his view of people and that they are all weak and lying.
If you meet someone who is trying to oppress you and you use the same method and stand up to him, you are even better at oppression than he is, then the following will happen: He will submit to you and compensate for his frustration with your victory over him in other ways. He will hate you for this, but for this hatred he will seek weaker ones to take his imaginary loss out on.
Consensus in this context means finding a match that reflects the least of all possible inner resistance. Also called pain. Both parties then separate in the certainty of having found the best of all solutions. Instead of feeling powerless, a sense of self-efficacy is formed.
This is by no means one of the most difficult tasks a person can face. If it were easy to find consensus, we would do it all the time. It's easy to agree with Buddies, it's easy to pretend that we agree with each other.
For you to believe that I'm not up to anything against you, you can only rely on your past experiences. It requires trust that what I tell you and how I meet you can be perceived by you as peaceful. But if you think that a human being is not capable of this, that is, that every human being is to be distrusted per se, you deprive yourself of the possibility of having a contrary experience.
If I detect even a hint of hostility in your speech to me, and you receive such hostility from me, and we both stick to thinking like this, this dialogue will prove to be useless. Since I assume that you do not hold a leading political or economic office and I do not either, it is not relevant for this current exchange what we think of the external conditions and processes, but what we think of each other at the moment. To the extent that peace or war is perceived by us as only over our heads, but we ourselves are too insignificant to make a contribution, this too is without any helpful value on our part.
That is my view.
The NSDAP general is bound by the duty to his office, the duty to his state, and the duty to his sovereign. If such a man is swayed to ignore the clear procedures of his juridical system by mere conversation over tea, then the entire sociopolitical system is subverted. Such situation and behavior are the very definition of corruption. Men bound to duty do not discharge the obligations of their office based on mere whim and feelings, which you seem to suggest in the example above. Stable society cannot exist, if men in office are as unprincipled and whimsical as you suggest.
The peace, which you desire, does not arise from nebulous principles ineffectually enforced by corrupt government officers acting on mere whimsy. Peace exists only in stable sociopolitical systems, which arise from immutable and absolute principles that are implacably enforced by principled men. Much of modern societal problems arise from increasing penchant towards relativism and nihilism. Absolute principles and standards must guide men in their behaviors, if they are to live within a civil society, not nebulous and useless feelings and consensus that only corrupt and undermine civil order.
The NSDAP was the expression of a sick and delusional regime - since you apparently believe in the infallibility of political leadership and its laws, this results in unconditional obedience, which consequently can only be maintained if the absolute is behind it. There is no order in the absolute, only dictatorship. Since you have no idea about a different world view it'll remain nebulous to you.
Oh my, what an absolute, certain statement. Are you championing the concept that nothing ought to be absolute or certain regarding human affairs? By what standards (gasp!) would you judge the policies and philosophy of NSDAP to be "delusional"? As you write in your last sentence, NSDAP merely has a "different world view [that] remain nebulous to you."
There is no contradiction in saying that the Nazi regime was delusional, and yet not implying absolute evilness to individuals, but a misguided worldview. I gave you the example of a high-ranking soldier who, if you appealed to his humanity without flattering him, could have helped a man sentenced to death by the court martial. On the contrary, it would be an opportunity to question the hard principles of a misguided, arbitrary regime and not to accept its claim to absoluteness. To execute shootings on the basis of absolute obedience, do you not think that was an act of fear of the same fate?
Do you really believe that a person who kills another can live in peace with himself afterwards? The only justification lies in absolute belief in a higher objectivity, isn't it? To be reassured by the fact that you were acting on a command? People who have killed others often return from war and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because they cannot reconcile having killed or having seen their own killed comrades die, regardless of whether they were authorized to do so. Do you think they are helped by believing in the authorities who gave them permission to do so?
The Nuremberg Trials, which exposed the Nazi atrocities, don't you think they showed how irritating it can be when someone holds on absolutely to an identification that makes them believe they were right?
And do you think it brought peace to the people that the so-called liberators then had to be convinced of their goodness in order to seize those whom they could accuse of absolute wickedness? No one has won anything in this war. Neither the so-called victorious powers nor the defeated. After all, peace is not a fixed state, i.e. the end of an armed conflict. That is far from being order. It takes several generations to overcome the effects, people who are able to alleviate their suffering and to experience cooperation in times of non-combat.
Have you already killed someone because you were authorized to do so? How can you be sure that you will be okay with it? Where does this certainty come from? How do you feel about your own death?