Originally Posted by WilliamB
OK. Gotchya. Would you mind venturing an opinion on this quite well-known quote from Delgado? I've put it up before in another thread. Does this sound like a healthy, rational vision of the future of humanity?
If anyone thinks this is off-topic, I would only wonder how anyone could possibly fail to see how such statements relate to the Freewill debate.
I also wonder how any rational adult person could fail to see how malignant those statements are.
D*: I agree, the statement is malignant. But what has that to do with free will?
What it has to do with the freewill debate is that a lot of nasty political ideas have as a priority the abolition of the concept of human freedom. If you can get rid of these pesky notions of freewill you are a giant leap closer to getting rid of the concept of political freedom. A society divested of the concept of human freedom will be one made up of sheep and sheep-herders, with no in-between. It would be a tragic, dystopian nightmare.
What I am saying is that there is a lot riding on the things we are discussing here. I only mean to suggest that people take a measure of caution, that they continue to think for themselves and refuse to be swayed by what the intellectuals seem to think is so obvious, that they remind themselves of their ability to reason and to identify stupid ideas when they hear them. That there is no freewill, no autonomy, no self, no "I", that these are outmoded and obsolete terms, is a stupid idea, and I have no reluctance whatsoever in naming it so.
Nothing bothers a tyrant more than the idea of a free-thinking, free-acting people. It bothered the imaginary God of the Bible (and the authors who made him up), and it bothered all of the real butchers and tyrants who have plagued mankind from the beginning. What tyrants hate the most is not that people are self-deluded into believing that they are free-thinking and self-determining, what they hate is the fact that they are. This is exactly why Delgado, and no doubt many others of his stripe, believes that a mind-controlled society would be preferable to a free society: he knows that the only way to rid the human consciousness of self-identity, ego, determination, volition, and all those other good things, is to physically manipulate the brain. He knows that no amount of intellectual posturing, scientific theorizing, or pseudo-philosophical bullshit will alter the reality of nature.
In other words, Delgado believes in freewill. Try that on for size. Notice he says, "Man does not have the right to develop his own mind"; he does not say that man cannot develop his own mind. His own words betray him.
OK. Gotchya. Would you mind venturing an opinion on this quite well-known quote from Delgado? I've put it up before in another thread. Does this sound like a healthy, rational vision of the future of humanity?
If anyone thinks this is off-topic, I would only wonder how anyone could possibly fail to see how such statements relate to the Freewill debate.
I also wonder how any rational adult person could fail to see how malignant those statements are.
D*: I agree, the statement is malignant. But what has that to do with free will?
What it has to do with the freewill debate is that a lot of nasty political ideas have as a priority the abolition of the concept of human freedom. If you can get rid of these pesky notions of freewill you are a giant leap closer to getting rid of the concept of political freedom. A society divested of the concept of human freedom will be one made up of sheep and sheep-herders, with no in-between. It would be a tragic, dystopian nightmare.
What I am saying is that there is a lot riding on the things we are discussing here. I only mean to suggest that people take a measure of caution, that they continue to think for themselves and refuse to be swayed by what the intellectuals seem to think is so obvious, that they remind themselves of their ability to reason and to identify stupid ideas when they hear them. That there is no freewill, no autonomy, no self, no "I", that these are outmoded and obsolete terms, is a stupid idea, and I have no reluctance whatsoever in naming it so.
Nothing bothers a tyrant more than the idea of a free-thinking, free-acting people. It bothered the imaginary God of the Bible (and the authors who made him up), and it bothered all of the real butchers and tyrants who have plagued mankind from the beginning. What tyrants hate the most is not that people are self-deluded into believing that they are free-thinking and self-determining, what they hate is the fact that they are. This is exactly why Delgado, and no doubt many others of his stripe, believes that a mind-controlled society would be preferable to a free society: he knows that the only way to rid the human consciousness of self-identity, ego, determination, volition, and all those other good things, is to physically manipulate the brain. He knows that no amount of intellectual posturing, scientific theorizing, or pseudo-philosophical bullshit will alter the reality of nature.
In other words, Delgado believes in freewill. Try that on for size. Notice he says, "Man does not have the right to develop his own mind"; he does not say that man cannot develop his own mind. His own words betray him.
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