RE: Ethical ramifications of, The PRIME-DIRECTIVE
Willful indifference is practiced by most modern men and nation-states. The core premise of measured indifference, which you advocate, is the non-belief of objective morality and objective truth. Recently, some rioters burned major sections of a significant city in China, demanding freedom, democracy, and other cock and bull nonsense. Majority of the nation-states of the world remainded indifferent to the event. 'Murica formally condemned the Hong Kong governemnt, and by extension the CCP, of its draconian and repressive intervention against the rioters.
For 'Murica, the 18th century humanist principles of freedom and democracy were objective truths worth risking further negative economic consequence. For the rest of the world, material well-being was more important over imagined, subjective preferences of morality. Is a society guided purely by material concerns superior to that of a society governed by certain core principles? Is a man who lives without objective morality superior to a man yoked to objective truth? Is moral relativism superior to the belief of objective morality?
Is it the responsibility of one nation or any number of allied nations to dictate what a SOVEREIGN NATION or its peoples do or do not do?
HERE'S THE MAIN POINT.
IF YOU WANT TO TELL SAUDI ARABIA, OR CHINA, OR PAKISTAN, OR IRAN WHAT THEY SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO...
THEN YOU SHOULD INVADE THEM.
PURE AND SIMPLE.
IF YOU KNOW YOU'RE MORALITY IS SUPERIOR, THEN IT IS YOUR DUTY TO DEFEAT ALL COMPETITORS.
Piecemeal bombings and funding rioters and insurgents is a VIOLATION OF SOVEREIGNTY.
Do you believe in personal privacy?
Do you believe in a person's right to their own body?
The same PRINCIPLE applies to SOVEREIGN NATIONS.
(IFF) you believe that you know better than everyone else (THEN) you SHOULD put cameras and microphones in everyone's homes and end child abuse and neglect forever by imprisoning all bad parents!
To have principles is to be under obligation and responsibility. The 18th century Westphalian philosophy of "sovereign" nation served a specific purpose within a context of ending the Thirty Year's War and limiting imperial power. The modern world has no emperors or singular superpower to dictate universal policies. The modern world lives by moral relativism, which you champion, under which all national actions are beyond reproach, even "violation of sovereignty."
The premise of "sovereignty" is based upon the assumption that nations have some "right" to exist. Nation-states are arbitrary creations of 19th and 20th century political convenience. Nations have no "right" to exist. If you believe in the "rights" of nations to exist, then why aren't you demanding the reconstitution of the USSR, the Ottoman Sultanate, or the Austro-Hungarian empire? Nations have "sovereignty" over the regions they can project authority. Syria is no more than areas around cities to which Assad can project power. Since the 'Muricans can project fair degree of power across large swaths of the globe, the areas under which 'Murica can project power are its "sovereign" territories.
It is the same with "personal" rights. From whence do men imagine they derive their "rights" to exist? In a world, in which there exists no principles, no man can claim any "rights" that which he can not personally wrest from the clutches another.
Have fun burning your own STRAW-MAN.
I believe in ONE SET OF RULES FOR EVERYONE.
I just put PERSONAL PRIVACY (sovereignty) at the very top of that list.
What's at the top of your list?
Do you have a list, or do you just make up your "objective morality" on-the-fly?
Let's compare notes, I'll bet you we probably agree on more than you think.
Here's the point.
We all agree that dead babies are compelling.
Dead babies caused the U.S.A. to invade Iraq.
Dead babies caused the U.S.A. to bomb Syria.
But what about the dead babies in Bhopal? *
What did anyone do about the dead babies in West Virginia? *
(IFF) your primary MORAL AXIOM is to save the babies, (and honestly, what monster wouldn't) (THEN) you should start by saving all the babies in your own country and then move to saving all the babies in your allied countries.
Because if you only try to save the babies in countries occupied by your enemies, you are in grave danger of appearing to cynically cherry-pick your outrage as a hypocritical pretext to Military Conquest.
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."