stan573 said:
ReiverCorrupter said:
Ugh. I'd agree with enlightenment values over liberal values any day. I'd place knowledge as a much higher priority than world peace or solving world hunger.
Why?
Because people are going to die. No matter what. Does it really matter all that much? Is the human struggle really just a struggle to prolong our own lives and fill them with pleasurable experiences? I spit on this hedonism that underlies liberal values.
If there is any nobility in human existence it is in our struggle to grow and learn more about the world. If we lose that just so everyone can have their +/-70 years of wretched contentment then I say humanity no longer deserves to exist.
That being said, who cares about space travel? WE CAN'T DO IT PROPERLY RIGHT NOW ANYWAY! WE DON'T HAVE ANTI-GRAVITY OR FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL. HELL WE'RE STILL USING FOSSIL FUELS.
I'm more excited about CERN, genetics, neuroscience, computers and robotics than I am about space travel. It's those things we should be worried about. When I think of all the romantic stuff about the human quest for knowledge I think of a microscope, not a space shuttle.
Oh my god, do you even know what you're saying? NASA is government-funded. Liberals are the ones who push to fund it!
And this is nothing to say of your callous disregard for your fellow human being. I think you're trying to equate 'basic necessities such as shelter' with 'let's all buy each other yachts'.
1) I wasn't talking about the political party. I was talking about the idea that all people should have an equal place in society and that people come first. The vast majority of human beings are completely insignificant. Billions of people have married, had children, worked some job, died and no one remembers their names, or that they even existed.
2) Yup. I do have very little regard for my fellow human being. Look at the potential of the human mind, and then look at what most people do with theirs. If that isn't reason enough to have contempt for them then I don't know what is. I don't care about Africa. I'm more of a social Darwinist (sans commitment to hard genetic determinism of course); if the people of Africa can't take care of themselves, then mother nature dictates that they die. I'd rather spend the resources on intellectual achievements than trying to stop starvation in a continent that is clearly doomed due to its own incompetence.
The rest of the world proved itself perfectly capable of overcoming oppression and at least of forming infrastructures stable enough to provide their populations with the basic necessities. Asia is doing quite well for itself, and they were horribly oppressed as well.
Though I am for helping the homeless in my own country, simply because I do not wish to live in a society that is overflowing with wealth and still allows its people to die in the streets. (No, I am not a hypocrite because I do not believe in a 'world' society or any such nonsense.) However, intellectual research is the LAST thing that should ever be cut in any circumstances, beside the military in a time of war of course (but even then, the A-bomb probably saved us around a million casualties in our war with Japan.)
Think about it. If everyone had always spent resources on improving people's lives and not on intellectual pursuits then we would still be in the stone age. People are always going to have to suffer. Knowledge comes first.
