Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Thanks for that David. I'm not a student of the Roman Empire, or its rise and fall, so I couldn't comment on its correctness or vice versa, just found the angle interesting and wondered as to its source. If you're the source, well that's all good.
An interesting theory David. I had never thought previously about people as a form of energy - it felt wrong.
Che, as David noted I was meaning 'wrong' in a moral sense. From a purely clinical analysis, I'm sure it's probably correct. Another reason that I hate quantitative analysis of history!
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An interesting theory David. I had never thought previously about people as a form of energy - it felt wrong.
You jumped very quickly from 'running out of slaves' to 'empire had to contract to sustainable levels'. I know you did this a while ago, but where's the evidence that 'slave energy limits' was a prime factor? Is this something that anyone else has theorised on? I note no footnotes in that crucial point.
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Point to Robyn.
Doesn't rule number 1 "Don't. Be. A dick." apply equally to Politician Dad, and Teenage Son?
Hopeful of me I know.
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Ben,
The factors to be considered in answering it should naturally draw from many viewpoints. But there is not a 'viewpoint we should be most interested in', although I'm sure there is a 'viewpoint you are most interested in'. On this question my viewpoint probably is quite uninteresting because it's so damned common.
Well I disagree.
You (as far as I know) and I, aren't ever going to take up arms against other people or the state. Some other people may/were. If we're interested in why people take up arms, and in particular want to prevent it in the future, then we need to understand those people and their story, not your story or my story.
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Excuse my computer programmer mind for noticing the two unmentioned cases: (3) Failing to prevent Vietnam violently and (4) Preventing Vietnam non-violently.
The greatest evil would be 3, and the ideal outcome would be 4. The other two are possibilities, but not the only ones. It's a false dichotomy.
Well in the case of the Weather Underground, 3 wasn't really considered to be a possibility, and 4 was considered to have failed. What the Weather Underground were saying was that, given the millions of people that had opposed the war nonviolently (and they also would have said, opposed the oppression of black people nonviolently, yet America continued to be racist and oppress black people), option 4 had failed. They had come to the conclusion that nonviolence, democratic processes etc were faulty methods. It was bourgeois, it was white, and it was Western first world learnings, not appropriate for the revolution many of them were working towards.
3 wasn't considered to be an option by them, because if it's only non-violence that failed, then violence will succeed. They believed that if tens of thousands of people followed them into 'bringing the war home', it would succeed. Interestingly enough, they were taking non-violence theory (if we fill up the jail cells with enough protesters, the system will collapse and they'll have to stop arresting us and let us march over the bridge, vote etc) and applying it to violence (if thousands of people commit violent acts, the war in Vietnam will cost too much domestically to continue). It's not an unreasonable proposition, it's used by terrorist organisations everywhere - I'm sure it's part of the thinking in Iraq at the moment.
They also had justified domestic violence in their minds. Violence was necessary to bring down the industrial military complex. And they believed absolutely your A above - a small amount of violence is justifiable if it prevents a larger amount of violence elsewhere.
That's not an unreasonable proposition for us. If a person was going crazy with a gun shooting innocent people, and you had the ability to stop them by killing that person, would you do it? Probably most of us would. Does it become a different answer if the person was seriously mentally ill, or under the influence of some drug, and therefore not making a conscious choice to kill innocents? Probably not - you'd still be saving a bunch of lives by killing one.
And they really believed it would work. Once you're in their heads it becomes a different equation to one where you say "well it's only 10% likely to work" etc. That wasn't really part of their thinking.
Does the story apply to NZ? No, at least not as far as I know. But I note Ben, you're applying your viewpoint to what other people should be doing and the choices that they should be making. They'll be applying their view of the world and given that they're the ones that are/have/could be making those choices, it's really their view that we should be most interested in.
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And, um, not all southerners are rednecks, nor are all rednecks southerners. I need a Venn diagram here or something.
Nor is everyone in the south a southerner. Sorry Danielle, I've messed up your diagram there.
I don't know what happened in Ruatoki, but I have just learned about two aquaintances of mine who had their house raided with dogs and all their computer equipment seized. (Think about that for a moment if you depend on computers for your living or your household management). As far as I can tell they have done nothing worse than be environmentalists with the wrong friends and family.
I heard the news story about this on national radio. It didn't exactly bring up images of high terrorism, executing a search warrant on an organic farming meeting.
I can see the cops now, breaking in with their black uniforms and MP5s. "PUT THE MUTATED CARROT DOWN OR WE WILL FIRE." Not that it involved cops all blacked up with guns I understand, but it's more amusing to visualise it that way.
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But we have incredibly strong institutions to effect change in this country, without having to resort to running around with guns. So if the police are right, and that's still very much up in the air, then what we have is a group of people who have rejected any attempt to keep on talking, to find peaceable ways of making changes, and who think that using violence to achieve their ends is acceptable.
...Just being seriously pissed off doesn't justify violence.
I should preface this by saying that I am a pacifist, and an occasional non-violence trainer. When all the names of the arrested people come out, I'm going to be checking them to see if any of them have been through a workshop that I've run on non-violence and political change.
But I should also note that I'm white, middle class, and living in a Western society reasonably comfortably. Living a non-violent life works fine for me, but it there are people in the world where I would admit that it's not an realistic option. Does that apply to any people in New Zealand?
I watched a video a couple of years ago of interviews with activists from both sides of the divide of violence. They were interviews with former members of the Weather Underground, who split from the mainstream anti-Vietnam War movement in the States in 1969 and adopted violence as a tool to 'bring the war home', and bring down capitalism. There were also interviews with people who had gone right to that line, and decided not to cross it - to stay non-violent.
The most interesting comment was from one of the latter. He had stayed in mainstream opposition, and had not joined the Weather Underground. His comment though was that he understood why others had. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) "We did everything legal, everything democratic, every protest tactic, we put our voices and bodies on the line, we pushed all those boundaries as far as they would go, and still Americans were murdering people in Vietnam. How long do you let something as wrong as Vietnam happen, before you cross that line and try to prevent it by violence? What is the greater evil - failing to prevent Vietnam non-violently, or preventing Vietnam violently?"
As a student of the Weather Underground, and the reasons that political activists cross over into violence, that has always struck me. The Weather Underground were a product of two things - one, their own states of mind. I won't call it insanity, but they completely misjudged the movement who was not willing to join them in their fringe campaign. Rightly or wrongly, it was terrible politics. But secondly, it was a product of a political system which did not adapt to the massive mood swing against Vietnam and absorb that discontent.
What was also clear if you study the Weather Underground, was that the people who went underground and started using violence, were not insane. They were intelligent, middle-class white activists, of a particularly radical bent. Rightly or wrongly, they were applying moral standards to the activities of their country, and felt driven to do what they did. If you want to understand why people consider violence as a political tool, then you need to look at it from their point of view. I can't imagine how anyone in the world can take up a gun and shoot someone else, but I don't go through things that happen in other parts of the world.
There's a conclusion here somewhere! I doubt very much that you could say that anything in New Zealand has reached that stage where anything but a tiny minority would say that violence is an acceptable tool. I would have said NZ was a long way from being at any point where violence was OK. I would guess that most Tuhoe activists would also say that NZ was a long way from that point. But I also bet some can imagine a situation where NZ got to that point, and really if you're looking to prevent violence in society, it's the point of view of the potentially violent that you have to keep in mind.
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I think you're confusing me with someone who cares.
5 points for Danyl. He's dragged you out on the www, and left you with your pants around your ankles.
But good to see you admit it and withdraw your comments! The "oh I didn't care anyway" retreat looks great.
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Oh, so that's my fault too, is it?
I think it's more a case of "if you build it, they will come."
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There's a reason cops, soldiers, terrorists, activists, and revolutionaries tend to be young men. All you need to do is wind them up and point them in the right direction.
They don't question things. They see things in black and white terms. They think they know it all. They are not overly burdened with scruples.
Ideologues (of whatever ilk) are dangerous. Everything is sacrificed to the cause, even their humanity.
Hullo Mr Stereotype, how are you today?
For every activist like that, I could find ten who are intelligent, responsible, non-violent people with strong principles and a drive to make a difference in the world.
And they all question things. That's at the heart of the work.