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Aswad -> RE: Ayn Rand and altruism (4/18/2012 7:18:03 PM)
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
But I think that it's a Norwegian folk tale, anyway.
I'm familiar with it.
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I'm just suggesting that it might not be a major problem to put up with, say, having to apply to some bureaucrat to change your doorknob, so long as that you're living pretty comfortably and are fairly certain you're not going to get shot and killed (OK, leave Breitvic out of this, for the sake of argument).
How about I include him explicitly instead, by pointing out that what he did was motivated by a less realistic perception of a set of issues I have been pointing at for over a decade? Or that his attacks were successful due to other issues I have been alerting people, including politicians, to for about as long? Or that the people he targetted were the virtually hereditary successors to the entrenched power "aristocracy" class here, several of which assumed they were the only other target in Norway one might attack than the houses of government simply because they are the legitimate heirs to power?
I get what you're saying, and if all one cares about is food and shelter, then Norway is perfect. Period.
I just happen to think that more or less the only thing legitimizing our existence as a species is that we're capable of more. Because everything else about us as a whole is pathological to the only biosphere we know of in this universe, which science and religion both claim to be pretty unique as universes go in supporting the possibility of even a single biosphere occuring. That one in an ultrillion glimmer of life in a vast void of nothing, we're wiping our asses with it. I'm inclined to say that can only stand if we either discard morality, or truly adopt it. Meaning that we put it ahead of those things that do not make us unique, and which thus cannot serve to- in part or in whole- justify being this plague on the world.
Norway is no good at that.
So long as the wheels are turning for a majority of the population, we're good little rats, and live like it.
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Norwegian society is as strange to me as is American society, only at polar opposites to each other. It's quite hard for me to get to grips with either, to be honest, at times.
They're not exactly polar opposites, but there are significant differences, yes.
For instance, the American system is built on distrust of the consequences of putting too much power in too few hands, whereas the Norwegian system is built on an implicit trust of any entity above person level that has power and behaves like a disinterested but dutiful parent. Indeed, as a sometimes teacher of self defense classes at one point, I quickly lost interest because people were almost universally of the opinion that it was borderline criminal to be prepared to defend oneself, seeing as only the police are supposed to wield power, not victims of crimes, etc. (We hate any individual with power or wealth, unless they hide it. Sociopaths are okay, though.)
I seem to recall you're one of those that had an idea of the Gorean ethos. I once tried to explain it to some Norwegian kinksters. They were fine with the parts that usually raise eyebrows. But a majority had a meltdown over the parts that most usually like, such as individual accountability, responsibility, meritocracy, and so forth. After all, the state gives you the playpen and makes sure there's nothing in it you shouldn't play with, and then you play until they tell you to go to bed. The State forbid you even think about bringing power dynamics into your life, unless it's your sex life (we like sex, another difference, lol).
There's about a third of the population here that feel the other way around, and the use of a sort of winner takes all parliamentary system makes sure they have remained an essentially oppressed minority since the Nazis put the current government into power. One of those, and not the only one out there I know of with such violent sentiments, was ABB. He killed about 70 people and seriously injured 500 on the 22th of July, most of them teenagers. And according to his defense speech at the trial, he did it to start polarizing our society in the hopes of making it impossible for the two majority groups of our population to coexist.
When I read his defense statements, I thought he had swiped my posts analyzing him, but the wiki article indicates he doesn't have Internet access, so apparently I just guessed essentially everything about the guy before I knew who he was, most of it while the authorities were still operating under the assumption of an Islamic terrorist cell attacking. Which is disturbing, as I actually thought for a while that I had given him too much credit. Instead, as far as I can tell, there's a good chance he's already won, while we're patting ourselves on the back for making him lose a battle he wasn't fighting in the first place.
Oh, to have been in range with a decently scoped rifle that day, eh?
Anyway, long story long, we have material comfort. And most people here aren't getting shot, aren't getting raped, and aren't living. The former two are changing with a demographic shift, of course, particularly the raping part, but in general the country has made a decent pass at the whole "shoving oil into every crevice to keep the wheels turning" thing. And we're a slow, docile and complacent bunch, so it's all fine to "all" of us so long as the wheels are turning.
We do not, however, have anything but oil.
I mean, c'mon... what country with anything resembling a single good intention between the lot of them can fail to provide livable conditions for its citizens when there's literally millions of dollars per capita surplus from the oil, four homogenous populations that don't hate each other, no disputes near the home soil, good international relations, and no domestic or foreign debt?
Health,
al-Aswad.
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