PC Gone Too Far

Cat's Eye writes: or "could consider evil".Reading lately that stands of trees communicate through their interconnected root structures, one might allow for the possibility of sentience. In fact I have read stories in Analog magazine of sentient trees.====> Therefore cutting down trees could be evil.Preposterous, some might say??? I think this gets at what Percy is arguing - the splitting of objective history from subjective history...?Yes, slavery is evil, but in order to understand how the Confederacy came into being, the evilness is a subjective distraction.Ivory hunting
Dolphin killing
Chimpanzee experiments
and on and on....The other direction is also pertinent. The LGBTQ movement is trying to get today's culture to remove the historical "evilness". So what used to be evil is no longer so.

Cat's Eye says: and even NoNukes, who he quoted, said: THIS IS what Percy has been saying from the get-go. It's all about the analysis, using the scientific methods we can bring to bear where appropriate, using historical preservation where we can.*facepalm*

I said: Rrhain asks: The LGBTQ sub-culture is still a minority culture, isn't it? The predominant culture of each of these different periods in history, including also the genocides of Indians and enslavements of Africans and all other oppressions of minorities, was sadly represented by the religious white man, whose 1% wealthiest controlled political offices, churches and schools. Perhaps today they will have finally been outnumbered. I should have said "today's predominant culture" rather than just "today's culture".Is a dirt-poor white 4-year old boy growing up in 1830's Alabama and being taught that slavery is "the way it is" and that blacks are inferior - is he evil? Is his family evil for bringing him up that way? No way. Is it wrong? Sure, by my standards today. Is a family evil for bringing up children in the Muslim faith? Certainly not. Are they wrong? Well, in my own personal case, all families who indoctrinate their children into some religion are wrong, but by today's standards, no they are not wrong. Are jihadists evil? Sure?Where does the evil actually occur? We can see from our vantage point in the context of today that it is all wrong, but is it all evil?Edited by xongsmith, : per Percy's perspectives

NoNukes writes: But wouldn't they have been thinking they were doing the best they possibly could for their child? And remember in those days even going to school took a 2nd seat to working for the family's agricultural income. Did his parents even go to school? There was this Bible that never said anything about slavery in a manner that would rule it out. Ah, but now we are talking about the 1%, the rulers of the lands. The bulk of any army is comprised of the other 99%, mostly the uneducated poor. Our 4-year old has grown up and is now in his 30's, working the land, possibly sharecropping and so on. He readily joins the Confederate Army, because his town is, his family is and his upbringing makes it easy to believe the evil Confederate leadership and their propaganda. So is he evil? See, I'm thinking no way.So is this particular Monument in Kentucky evil? I'm thinking no way. Stone Mountain? Yeah, blow that up, along with Mt. Rushmore. Or at least attach plaques that describe how wrong these things are.Aside: still a vivid scene from Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was his superb long shoot of the Irish arriving in NY and getting papers and being enlisted and armed with the regulation outfits and rifles and walking up the gang plank of another ship heading south to the Civil War fronts and the camera continues around to the other end of this same ship showing the cranes lifting the caskets of the dead, many the same Irish. See? The North could be very evil, too.Edited by xongsmith, : ClarityEdited by xongsmith, : fog

Percy writes: But what I wrote was : SORRY - i left out a "NO" just before "Is it wrong?"

NoNukes writes: I don't think Percy said that Lincoln agreed with him. He only allowed as to how Lincoln had said what Percy wanted to say in better words. For example, even Hitler could have used these same words and Percy could still use those particular words here. Percy has been arguing all night long for a different flagpole here.

continued *facepalm*You are still NOT getting it. oh, jeez.*sigh* - hardwood......

Forget all the reasons slavery was wrong or, of course, evil.It's all about what family you grew up in. Fortune. Luck of the birth state. Luck of your race - ya been born with white skin, yer better than them - they explain....You grow up in 1830 Alabama as an uneducated poor white: you are likely to believe that your world, as told to you by your mother and father from the cradle, is correct - slavery is the law of your land. You and I BOTH could or would be that way. Or most of us that had any say. Sure the blacks & a few dissenting whites didn't get on the bus - but most of them did. Were they evil?Are we evil for using fossil fuels? Chemicals in our agriculture? Etc.Sure - NOW, we can say that it was wrong.But what about them, stuck back in the history? All Percy is saying is that we have to analyze history through the lens of the time and place of the people that were actually living there at the time.It is no fair to come in now with this New Shit that says you were even evil. That will be after we gather the stories and the facts and the lay of the land in that time & place.

HUCK FINN.I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

Ringo correctly observes: But the kids growing up in this environment weren't evil themselves, right? Not until they grew up and took positions of power to perpetuate it.I have no argument that the people in power were perpetuating evil. But the majority of the whites were not in power and yet accepted this way of life taught to them by their parents, reinforced by their childhood peers.

Ringo writes: Evidence please that Percy ever said this.Heroes? Where?
Commemoration? Where?I call you "busted".

Ringo continues: From the OP, Percy writes: Note that he does not mention heroes or use term "commemoration". You will note that it is possible to mention such a monument without agreeing with what the Confederate powers were brainwashing their soldiers about.again from the OP: Your argument seems to be that there is no way the Southern soldiers could have died as honorably as the Northern soldiers - is it? Basically ALL soldiers are brainwashed into serving their military leaders. In fact even today it's brutal - basic training to dehumanize, the drill sergeant barking out humiliating putdowns, saying that his job is to turn his recruits into Weapons - and that's just here in 2016 USA.Weren't the leaders of the North military evil as well?Would it be any different for you if they put up a plaque on front saying things like "NEVER AGAIN!" and things like "NEVER FORGET THE CRIMES FROM THE CONFEDERATE POWERS THAT SENT THESE MEN TO THEIR DEATHS!".

Ringo posits: Tell that to Edward Snowden's lawyers. The USA apparently still thinks it is a crime.

NoNukes askes: Hero, along with Assange and the others.

too obscure for me...too many ways to read that wrong.sorry.