[quote]ephrem wrote:
SkyzykS wrote: Take a guy who has his own set of ideals and go against them. He will argue and fight (as you and Push are doing now, just in real life face to face) and may even lose land and life, but in the end will have held his ground and earned the respect and admiration of his fellows and adversaries.
Can or do people do the same in Holland or Sweden?
…i guess we could, but we wouldn’t. If it’s merely about a difference of opinion, i think it’s silly to fight over it to the extent of losing land or life…
…but especially in Holland, we don’t have excess land to spare. There isn’t any wilderness here, at all. As the population steadily increases, social restraints become tighter, and the quality of our living spaces stagnate. That means that we can’t fight our neighbours for a better spot, because it’ll be exactly the same…
…this also forces us to look for the consensus instead of polarisation, because a confined society cannot function if it’s constantly disrupted by conflict…
…this black or white thinking, either/or, not with me then against me mindset resulted in endless warfare and suffering in Europe. That is not something we could return too, not ideologically nor geographically. That’s why i called it juvenile bravado, because to me it feels like juvenile bravado: plenty of emotion with little to no reflection…
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But when that difference of opinion comes down to a difference of idealogical applications, like what you can or can not say, where you can or can not sit on a bus, what you can or can not be in life, basic human rights, it IS worth fighting over, and here, it WILL be fought over.
This IS our expression of popular consensus. It is in that conflict that our society is defined. It is in that conflict and free expression that our society is not disrupted, but thrives.
You see it as polarization. Thats fine. What a lot of Americans see it as is room to move(metaphoricaly). The flipside is that we see some other cultures as homoginized, bordering on decadent, and complacent, while they see themselves as (and I can only take a wild guess here) refined, stabized, or undisrupted.
It realy is a difference of perspective.
It comes down to this for me at least- I would rather die by my own ideals than live under someone elses.
You may not agree, and you don’t have to, but if you won’t make a stand for something that you believe in- an ideal, do you even have any beliefs or ideals worth having?
It’s not just an academic rhetorical exercise, either. Last year I was charged with disorderly conduct for saying “Fuck You” to a cop. Found guilty at the magistrate, I appealed it. The charges were withdrawn at the county level. If I had to, which someone previously had (Commonwealth of PA vs. Hock) I would have taken it as far as needed. Even if it had come down to bloody and fatal violence, I am willing to go there.
You know why? Because as a free man I will die before I have someone else dictate what I can or can not say, No matter how insignifigant those words may be. It’s not the actual words being protected here, it’s the ideal. If you can’t say something insignifigant, what happens when you need to say something important?
Had I not fought that, I would have set the precedent in this township for the successfull prosecution and punishment of a person for what they say. That might seem insignifigant considering the words used, but I don’t want to be responsible for the erosion of rights in this country in any way shape of form.
That might seem disruptive, non-compliant, or what ever else to somene from another country, but around here, it sounds like Freedom.
And believe me, there was plenty of reflection on that. I could have just taken the easy way and paid a small fine, but civil rights are worth a hell of a lot more than $25.00 plus court costs.
If you think that civil disobedience as a means of achieving freedom is juvenile bravado then the efforts of the likes of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King jr. are lost on someone like you, and that is why people are referring to your posts as “pseudo-enlightened whinney bullshit”.