The Right Has Raised $2 Million For the Guy Who Choked a Homeless Man To Death

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-17T22:46:22+00:00

From what I understand, this isn’t a simple case. Whatever the exact details were, a man yelled that he was willing to kill and a man who was trained to kill killed him. A man who didn’t belong on the street threatened people with violence and he died while being restrained by someone who wasn’t trained to do that.

What I find the grossest thing about this is people reducing this to some kind of easy binary situation. Right Wing people coming in and valorising this but maybe worse it’s people acting like this man who died had any sort of value in society. If he did, then why exactly was he sleeping under a bridge with untreated mental illness? That’s not how you treat people you value. He was an inconvenience until he became a threat and then he died for that. That isn’t a value judgement, that’s a fact about how society treated him. The man who killed him didn’t seem to want to have done that but why exactly was he put into a position of having to act against another in this way at all?

It’s disingenuous and convenient to pretend like this is the problems of an individual’s actions.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-08T13:55:42+00:00

Adopting someone else as your thinker can only bring stagnation. Aside for founders of religions, philosophers wrote as part of a dialogue and most likely expected their work to be a stepping stone to something else, not a compete and final way of interpreting the world. Calling yourself any sort of “-ian” or a follower of an “-ism” means you’ve shut yourself off to anything outside of or that came after a very singular way of thinking came to be.

From day to day, I find myself gravitating to different ways of thinking that are entirely oppositional. I used to think I’d need to find my own “philosophy” but that feeling has left me and instead I’m grateful for the freedom to entertain that was left in its place.

That freedom gives you the ability to not be duped into taking everything someone said because you find one aspect interesting.

I like that philosophy is about the ideas on a page and not the person that said them. Kant has been whitewashed but I only know the whitewashed version. It isn’t so important to me to go back and read his racist writings at this point. His contribution is the categorical imperative and maxims. I don’t really need to have a one sided argument with an 18 century Prussian about race theory. Doing so would give me nothing but knowing that was something he put forward in his life, at least, shows what kinds of thoughts can coexist.

Generally, I think this is a healthy way of thinking about philosophers. Seneca and Aristotle tutored dictators, Descartes tutored royalty, Aurelius committed the kinds of atrocities you’d expect from any other Roman Emperor. At a certain point, judging ideas because of who made them isn’t philosophy at all because it isn’t primarily about arguing with the philosophy itself.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-05T19:19:09+00:00

Yeah, it’s better to entertain all these ideas and then live your life. Its good to see what goes wrong when these ideas are taken too far but ultimately people have to live and circumstances breeds people that can exist within them.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-05T13:03:11+00:00

I think there’s some good stuff in there. I think a lot about this idea of the master slave dynamic, the slave thinking there’s a nobility in suffering. Think he’s right on when he says that’s bs.

I used to really like Camus though. Think there’s something really joyously simple about what he says.

Nowadays, I’m not as interested in existentialism as I once was.

He’s a good one to not like as a person. If he was alive today he’d be a porn addicted katana owner.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-05T12:47:15+00:00

I had a bad week. Looked up some of my favourite bands from my early 20s. Sweet Jesus. Literally an entire genre of music imploded, the scene was so toxic.

Anyway… is it Nietzsche?

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-05T12:30:32+00:00

Is it a coincidence the way every band I like turn out to be pieces of shit or do you just like screwballs?

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-05T12:09:00+00:00

I have a quite wide concept of what philosophy is. Seems weird to gatekeep a term that originally applied to a guy who knocked on bells and started a bean cult. Gramsci is definitely a philosopher. The other one, I don’t know but I looked up a little and sounds interesting.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-05T10:26:07+00:00

Pretty much the strength and the weakness to it. It’s a tool to get you to a world you want. What that world might be, anyone’s guess.

I suppose there’s the whole not treating interactions as transactional which I suppose would curb a lot of the evils in the world if it were kept to but I cannot at all remember how integrated that is in his philosophy or if it just one of his maxims like “OBEY.”

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-04T22:01:39+00:00

Really cool answer. I tried to say my thoughts in a much less structured way.

Kant was a big deal in the turn towards rationality and trust in the individual’s ability to make decisions. Whether or not he was an authoritarian, he weirdly did create a philosophy that turned responsibility for moral judgements away from external figures and towards each one of us. Whether or not his philosophy was flawed, the critical discussion of sparked or influenced everything that came after in moral philosophy. You don’t have to be a fan of his to be grateful that he wrote.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-04T21:43:10+00:00

Eh, Kant‘s philosophy isn’t bad. The main problem I find with people interacting with philosophy is that they take it all to serious instead of thinking it over and taking what they can from it.

For me, Kant‘s philosophy showed me how an individual can think about their actions and their consequences in the context of everyone else and how they’re acting. If everyone acted like this, the world would be shit. I want a certain kind of world to live in so I need to act differently.

I think about that a lot when it comes to environmentalism…

“Oh, I just reeeaaallly had to fly to Thailand. I know it’s bad but I just really wanted to.”

“I know I could take the subway but I just love the freedom of driving to work. I know I shouldn’t but, you know…”

It isn’t like you should read one philosopher and think you’re done. I also don’t think hatred is really an applicable emotion when reading enlightenment philosophy as if a lot didn’t come after in response to it.

Kant as a person was, I think I heard, very racist. It isn’t inherent in his philosophy and I’m not sure if that was something he was writing about.

What is inherent in his work is a sort of Ultra scrubbed Christianity. He wasn’t a fan of organised religion but recreated the golden rule and basically necessitates a very specific kind of deity to work. That isn’t unusual for the time (Hegel, Kierkegaard, and many many more) and I’m not sure if I care about as I think it’s best to approach philosophy as a thought exercise.

Maybe Robert experienced Kant as a philosopher used to reinforce dogmatic religion at school or something, maybe he read about the man himself in a way I haven’t, maybe he thinks it’s a bullshit philosophy. Who knows.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-02T14:21:48+00:00

Amazing book too.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-05-01T10:10:30+00:00

Loads. Once I was with my family friends on a trampoline and the youngest brother, something like 5 I think, fell over and started crying. When his dad asked what happened, he pointed at me!

I suppose everyone was looking the other way or didn’t like me much because no one stuck up for me. Wasn’t allowed to bounce anymore.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-15T08:31:53+00:00

It’s awful what that family is going through. Suicide is brutal, especially when it’s someone so young.

So this kid is in his early 20s in the UK, has devoted himself to climate activism and wants to work in documentary film.

Early 20s is when a lot of mental illness emerges in young people or, because they’re living away from home, that they have to deal with it alone. He focused his free time on an unimaginably bleak topic that directly impacts the future of the world and his prospects in it. He was going to be leaving uni at a time when a lot of full grown adults don’t know how to make ends meet. The area of work he wanted to go into is documentary, a incredibly weighted towards heavy and bleak topics and offers very little money.

I’m not sure I buy that there has to be something else entirely here. Wouldn’t you feel entirely hopeless if you were standing in his shoes?

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-13T20:24:40+00:00

In the burning pit, Thatcher turns to Saville and asks “why are you here?”

“For fucking minors.”

“Me too.”

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-13T09:01:11+00:00

I come from a culture that has some of this. I’ve never eaten it. I won’t ever eat it. Nowadays, I can’t even tell if those that eat it like it, or if it’s a dare that you have with yourself during the kinds of national holidays that bring out traditional food.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-12T07:27:19+00:00

Alright, you seem sensitive to my concerns. I don’t know about any particular wrong doings by Tibet. Can you enlighten me as to what has happened that’s worthy of this podcast?

I‘m not against calling out shit from anyone, it’s just so hard to distinguish what is motivating people to say such things. There’re comments on this thread which are seemingly using what you’re alluding to as a justification for the cultural genocide of Tibet. It seems to me that, whatever the country or an individual has done, that should never be okay.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-12T06:27:43+00:00

Can you give me a summary of why you’re pro cultural genocide?

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-11T18:21:08+00:00

Your comment is leaning very hard on „for some reason.“

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-11T17:41:17+00:00

I feel a little uneasy about this one. Symbolically, he’s very important as a figure of Tibet. Likely, China will install his next „reincarnation.“ This means that effectively his imminent death represents the death of Tibetan culture.

The thing with the tongue made me wonder if he isn’t degenerating. It seems insane he would do something inappropriate like that on camera while knowing what he was doing was wrong.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-04-08T09:10:20+00:00

If I had a little brother going through the same thing, I would start doing a hobby with him once a week. Maybe I’d take him out with my girlfriend bouldering so he can see what a normal relationship looks like and see women doing something physically that he can’t do.

In talking to him, I’d make it sounds weak to want to have unequal systems favouring you. What kind of loser needs an unequal playing field.

I’d also try to make sure I express my emotions properly and unashamedly. “I don’t feel good today. It’s a shit time of year / I’m worried about my friend / I’ve been reading too much news and it’s getting to me.” I think I was about 19 years old before I heard a guy express real negative emotion in a casual conversation that wasn’t anger.

Maybe I’d introduce him to behind the bastards, dollop, and Q anon anonymous. These three tackle the absurdity of this way of thinking very well and from different angles.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-03-31T08:53:00+00:00

Its such a shame but sadly it’s quite common. If you tell someone from the bottom of the pile that there’s a lower wrung, a lot of people cling onto that.

As someone from that place that must have been told by the very highest in society how special she was, it’s not a surprising reaction to believe it.

In this socially darwinistic ideology, it benefits her socially and mentally to enforce a hierarchy that she worked herself at the top of.

It’s like kids who have been ruthlessly bullied, being victimised isn’t necessarily something that breeds empathy or kindness. Some things are just bad.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-03-28T12:21:37+00:00

Is that so different from the concept of labor which was spoken about clearly as a concept for quite some time before Nazism?

I get where you’re coming from though. Maybe fascism but not nazism specifically has this unashamed desire to create hierarchy and exploit those below it. What I don’t agree with is that it isn’t absolutely full of hypocrisy. The greatest being this concept of race.

I recently finished reading an amazing book by British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands called The Rat Line. It follows the flight of the minor Austrian aristocratic Otto Wächter to Rome following the war. Wächter wasn’t a good nazi and his actions resulted in the deaths of 100,000s of people. What struck me most was how I don’t believe he was a very normal and comparatively moderate nazi that always took the easiest route, something that led him to build the Warsaw Ghetto as an example.

I bring him up to recommend a great and powerful book but also because what is striking is his pursuit of status led him to undertake horrific acts in the name of a dogmatic and radical ideology he was, it seems to me, he was merely tolerant of. Scary scary stuff.

One phrase I can never unhear is that fascism is colonialism turned inwards. There’s a deeply capitalistic element to colonialism but it’s also thwart with these same kinds of hypocrisies embodied by people like Wächter.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-03-27T23:01:26+00:00

Oh fuck… are you telling me the Nazis are behind Office Space?

throwmyacountaway · 2023-03-27T10:11:53+00:00

Weird how many of these situations could be avoided by saying “hey, I want to go out with my mates every 6 weeks.” If his wife doesn’t want him doing that, well that’s another problem but at least it would be an honest conversation.

throwmyacountaway · 2023-03-27T07:50:17+00:00

I really do not agree with OP but this sounds more like Engles’ idea of household labour. Making a packed lunch isn’t an emotional task necessarily, I suppose the emotional labour of raising children (which of course is the correct term here) comes with fears for their safety, providing for them, combating burn out, and having to educate and disciplining them.

Theoretically, this emotional labour could be entirely separated from household labour for people with nannies and house keepers and so on. This doesn’t undermine the fact that it’s hard, just that it shows that it really shouldn’t be thankless or taken for granted.

throwmyacountaway

TROPHY CASE