Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

[alice wellintown]

>> Wherever man is, there is war, slavery, genocide.
> Is there war, slavery and genocide in your neighborhood? None where I am . Most humans for most of history have not killed or made slaves of other humans. This is accomplished by coercion and criminal plots to steal others wealth. There will always be a minority of criminally inclined people, but they don't need to be the organizing force of our human existence.

Glad to here you live in a safe world free of war and crimes against
humanity. I don't live in such a world and I don't buy your view of
human nature. There is not an elite who are criminally inclined and
the rest of us poor and powerless who are subjected to their power
struggles.


>> Those who study the primate we call man and the violence he/she is
>> prone to, do better when they contrast these horrific events.
>>
>> Because the devil, we might say, the human, is in the details / differences.
> what you are saying seems pretty silly considering the inherent nature of human discourse. Are you really saying that meaning can only be derived from differences, never similarities?

No, that is not what I said. What I said is that it is better to
contrast them and that those who compare them often do so by ignoring
the specifics, the details, the particulars,  and thus fail to gain
understanding of these unique, though all evil and horrific,  events.

>> Those who lump them together,
>> with absurd comparison,
> How do we learn from evil patterns if we refuse to compare what we do to  such patterns?  I think it would be better to show the exact location of the absurdity of what I said than to merely label it.

Well, it is absurd to equate Nazi Germany and the US. This was, though
it now appears you've back off from this claim, the thrust of your
argument.