Posted by sigismund on October 7, 2013, at 13:11:47
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Dr. Bob on October 7, 2013, at 2:20:12
>Well, killing someone is in a way sacrificing them.
S'pose
>Thinking more about sacrifice, wasn't it sometimes considered an honor to be the one sacrificed? To redeem the community?
Yes, even in Tenochtlitan (sp?) there was something of that, though it is an example at the edges. Is the American military an example?
>I guess some people might prefer being killed to interminable arguments. I guess at Babble I've chosen interminable arguments.
You have now. I don't know if it was the re-election of Bush when things went wild here (as I read once here) and you made a change before my time? But from around then people could be blocked for nothing.
>There's who we are and how we feel about each other. There's also how we treat each other. What would be the equivalent here of leaving someone alone?
Leaving someone alone is easy, being kind is easy too, being kind and good more difficult.
We don't have that much time left for stupid arguments, not me anyway. It would be hell with eternal life....they would simply never stop....which is why conversations toward the end of a person's life can acquire a new dimension, (along with the forgetfulness and repetition).
Sacrifice is a dangerous concept. Was WWI about anything? From inside, not much, from outside it looks like a struggle for supremacy among thieves. But once it starts going there has to be meaning made of the sacrifice, always at someone else's expense. I suppose you could turn it around and say that the US could have renounced imperial ambition and given its poorest health care and more instead. I can never forget HG Wells saying, when asked about the brown (not black) races, 'I assume they will just have to go'. There's a lot of those, there were 85M in the western hemisphere before Columbus, a drop in the bloody ocean, he was talking about India and China.
poster:sigismund
thread:1047296
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20130903/msgs/1051832.html