It is the very act of absolute dedication, fanaticism in other words, that cause all the bad things, not the cause that they support.
Oh, don't be melodramatic. There are lots of things that cause bad things, not just absolutism. And this statement of yours is itself an absolute. Do remember the hypocrisy of Obi-Wan.
As people start to identify with an ideal, they automatically begin using it as a justification. This frees them from having to consider the moral implications of what they are doing.
What if the ideal is morality? You seem to be granting here that a moral good does exist. If it exists, surely someone can devote themselves to it.
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It is the very act of absolute dedication, fanaticism in other words, that cause all the bad things, not the cause that they support.
Oh, don't be melodramatic. There are lots of things that cause bad things, not just absolutism. And this statement of yours is itself an absolute. Do remember the hypocrisy of Obi-Wan.
Bleh.
Fine. I will reword appropriately, since I did miss that and it was poorly worded on my part.
"It is the very act of absolute dedication, fanaticism in other words, that cause the bad things associated with fanaticism, not the cause itself that they support".
Better. But if that's the case, shouldn't the absolute dedication of Martin Luther King, Jr. have caused the same sorts of bad things as all those fanatics you're thinking about? Instead of, y'know, good things?
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Better. But if that's the case, shouldn't the absolute dedication of Martin Luther King, Jr. have caused the same sorts of bad things as all those fanatics you're thinking about? Instead of, y'know, good things?
MLK Jr.'s dedication wouldn't be included in absolute dedication. He wasn't a fanatic for civil rights. He knew when to draw a line in order to ensure that people didn't get hurt, for example. There are numerous incidences where he greatly weakened the point of his marches and whatnot so that the government wouldn't be too pissed at him.
He self-identified as one. "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love... Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
He self-identified as one. "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label.... Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
His rule was "No violence, ever." That's an absolute.
Oh come on. You know what I mean when I say "absolute dedication". I don't want to engage in pointless wordplay with you.
The fact is MLK Jr. frequently bent his will and reduced his plans when Kennedy asked him to. His march on Washington was supposed to be much grander in scale, but upon Kennedy's request MLK Jr and his colleagues greatly reduced the planned number of marchers.
That is not fanaticism. That is not absolute dedication to his cause. If he was, then he would have said "**** you Mr. President" and gone on with what he wanted to do.
If the prerequisite for fanaticism is that the fanatic never ever change their plans, then no human being on the planet has ever been a fanatic. MLK changed his plans because he was persuaded that the new plans would better serve the cause he was dedicated to. To go ahead with the original plans even when they were counterproductive to the cause would have been the failure of dedication.
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My understanding of fanaticism is that a fanatic would never bend their will to appease others, especially those that said fanatic wants to convince to change their minds.
And, no, he changed his plans because he was faced with threats of violence and fear among the politicians that a truly great march that MLK Jr. and his colleagues had in mind would cause great social unrest.
Edit- Which, to be honest, is a fear that politicians had for just about everything that the civil rights folks did and thus is rather irrelevant.
Given that the entire point of MLK Jr's efforts WAS to create social unrest and raise awareness and reveal the brutality and hypocrisy within the actions of those he opposed, one can imagine that going with the original plan would have been more appropriate to his goals.
It's not like Kennedy would have suddenly changed his mind on civil rights even if MLK Jr. disagreed with him regarding the details of the march on Washington.
My understanding of fanaticism is that a fanatic would never bend their will to appease others, especially those that said fanatic wants to convince to change their minds.
Then, like I said, this fanatic of yours is a chimera. Do you think Osama bin Laden never compromised when building his organization or planning his attacks? He was first of all a businessman, for heaven's sake!
Given that the entire point of MLK Jr's efforts WAS to create social unrest and raise awareness and reveal the brutality and hypocrisy within the actions of those he opposed, one can imagine that going with the original plan would have been more appropriate to his goals.
King wanted to make a spectacle, but he emphatically did not want to provoke violence. If he realized that his original plan was more likely to result in the latter than the former, then no, it would not have been in his interest to proceed with it.
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Then, like I said, this fanatic of yours is a chimera. Do you think Osama bin Laden never compromised when building his organization or planning his attacks? He was first of all a businessman, for heaven's sake!
If you applied my understanding to Bin Laden, then it would be as if Bin Laden agreed with Bush and decided to pull out of Iraq instead of sending Al-Qaeda fighters there.
I do not mean compromising with those within your organization, I meant compromising with people that you are ostensibly against, at least in MLK JR's case.
King wanted to make a spectacle, but he emphatically did not want to provoke violence. If he realized that his original plan was more likely to result in the latter than the former, then no, it would not have been in his interest to proceed with it.
No. That is a severe misunderstanding of MLK JR's position. He WANTED to provoke violence against HIM. In fact, that is one of his great strategies. But he never wanted to incite or inflict violence upon others.
Look at the Birmingham campaign. That is arguably the greatest of all his marches and campaigns in terms of actual effect, and he deliberately set out to piss off the city's police and mayor to the point that they would attack him and his followers. He wanted the violence to occur so that the greater U.S. witnessed the savagery and recoiled and reacted.
Edit- Passivity was never his intention, and the march on Washington was not meant to be passive by any means. It was supposed to be an ENORMOUS march of unimaginable magnitude, upwards of a million people invading Washington and demanding their rights.
Instead, they got a quarter of a million people and virtually nothing done in the actual scheme of things.
The march on Washington was neutered by Kennedy and other politicians. The fact that MLK Jr. went along with it only speaks to me that he wasn't a fanatic by the way I define the word.
If you applied my understanding to Bin Laden, then it would be as if Bin Laden agreed with Bush and decided to pull out of Iraq instead of sending Al-Qaeda fighters there.
I do not mean compromising with those within your organization, I meant compromising with people that you are ostensibly against, at least in MLK JR's case.
King was not "against" Kennedy. Certainly not in the way that bin Laden was against Bush. King and Kennedy had differing opinions and priorities, to be sure, but were both broadly interested in the cause of civil rights.
No. That is a severe misunderstanding of MLK JR's position. He WANTED to provoke violence against HIM. In fact, that is one of his great strategies. But he never wanted to incite or inflict violence upon others.
Yes, "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored." Let me rephrase. He didn't want to provoke a race riot. If the March on Washington had gone bad, he was concerned, it wouldn't have been the one-sided police brutality that could have been turned to the cause of progress - it would have been a pitched battle.
(And for what it's worth, I maintain that he didn't want police brutality at any of his demonstrations. He saw it as regrettable but exploitable. I think he was far happier with the events where his demonstrators still made a scene, but nobody got hurt.)
The march on Washington was neutered by Kennedy and other politicians. The fact that MLK Jr. went along with it only speaks to me that he wasn't a fanatic by the way I define the word.
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "******," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
However you interpret King's planning for the March on Washington, you're missing the forest for the trees. King was passionate about his cause, fired up for it. He was willing to risk his life and limb - and, on a volunteer basis, the life and limb of others - to effect social change now. The difference between him and an al-Qaeda fighter or a kamikaze pilot was not a difference in devotion; it was that his devotion was to peace and common humanity while their devotion was to violent and dehumanizing codes of honor. The cause matters. The cause shapes the devotee's actions. "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
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King was not "against" Kennedy. Certainly not in the way that bin Laden was against Bush. King and Kennedy had differing opinions and priorities, to be sure, but were both broadly interested in the cause of civil rights.
Hence the reason I said "ostensibly".
King was against racism and prejudice. While Kennedy expressed interest in the idea and eventually took active part in civil rights, he was remarkably mum on the issue for a long time.
So long to the point that many wondered whether he was for the cause at all. One cannot read minds.
(And for what it's worth, I maintain that he didn't want police brutality at any of his demonstrations. He saw it as regrettable but exploitable. I think he was far happier with the events where his demonstrators still made a scene, but nobody got hurt.)
Regrettable? I'm not sure. As your quote shows, he and other blacks knew about the terrible violence that Southerners inflict on Black people. But they were hidden away from the views of the other parts of the country. He needed to show them that, and reveal the injustice that Black people live in.
It simply doesn't make sense to claim that he wouldn't want police brutality. He needs to show the violence.
I mean, that was the entire point of the Birmingham campaign. I unfortunately cannot find quotes and links as easily as you do, but just go and look it up. He knew that the people in power there were incredibly aggressive against civil rights, and he exploited that to full effect.
However you interpret King's planning for the March on Washington, you're missing the forest for the trees. King was passionate about his cause, fired up for it. He was willing to risk his life and limb - and, on a volunteer basis, the life and limb of others - to effect social change now. The difference between him and an al-Qaeda fighter or a kamikaze pilot was not a difference in devotion; it was that his devotion was to peace and common humanity while their devotion was to violent and dehumanizing codes of honor. The cause matters. The cause shapes the devotee's actions. "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
The way I see it, it is the difference between being devoted to a cause, and being fanatical to a cause.
I agree that the cause matters, but I'd argue that when you become fanatical to a cause, then it no longer matters what your cause is.
Fanatical animal rights folks bomb cars and attempt to kill people. That they fail is merely because they're incompetent.
But few would say that animal rights is a bad thing.
You're arguing for incredibly broad, general ideas like "love" and "peace" and "justice". But they're too broad to become a cause. You cannot simply say "I am for peace!". That's simply too broad of a statement.
What do you mean by " I am for love!"? Does that mean love everything and everyone? No conflict whatsoever? Everyone shares everything and whatnot?
But let us suppose that you are "for love!". How would you achieve such a thing? You obviously need to do something to achieve it. One would imagine a fanatic for "love" would think that the ends justifies the means (I mean, billions have already died to violence, if a couple million more die so that the remaining billion can live loving one another forever, then it's fine right?)
This is my point. When you become a fanatic for something, then the ends justifies the means, because you consider it more important than anything else. You no longer consider whatever ethical and moral ramifications of your actions may have, simply because you think that all those ethical and moral ramifications are secondary or will be overridden by whatever goal you achieve.
It needs to be noted that the Japanese Empire acted for peace and prosperity for their people. But at the expense of so many others. Islamist fanatics work because they think that their way is the true way to peace and harmony. And vice versa.
Fanatical animal rights folks bomb cars and attempt to kill people. That they fail is merely because they're incompetent.
What about the fanatical animal rights folks who don't bomb cars or attempt to kill people, because they don't want to harm any animals including humans? Or does their pacifism disqualify them from being fanatics? If that's the case, you've got a tautological argument: Fanaticism is bad because fanatics hurt people. How do we know fanatics hurt people? Because we've defined them that way.
This is my point. When you become a fanatic for something, then the ends justifies the means, because you consider it more important than anything else. You no longer consider whatever ethical and moral ramifications of your actions may have, simply because you think that all those ethical and moral ramifications are secondary or will be overridden by whatever goal you achieve.
Again: if you're just going to define a "fanatic" as someone who ignores morality, then of course all "fanatics" do immoral things. That's not an interesting observation. But fanaticism is usually defined more in terms of the level of emotional investment and effort put into a cause.
It needs to be noted that the Japanese Empire acted for peace and prosperity for their people. But at the expense of so many others. Islamist fanatics work because they think that their way is the true way to peace and harmony. And vice versa.
Peace and prosperity are secondary goals at best for these guys. The Japanese acted first and foremost for the glory of the Emperor, the Islamists for the glory of God. The worldviews share a similar pathology in that both devalue individual human life: people are merely instruments for the cause of this divine other, and live or die at his convenience. That's why both are so violent. Indeed, that's why both adopted suicide tactics. I've heard people try to rename suicide bombing as "homicide bombing", I guess to place the emphasis on the damage dealt to others, but - aside from my general distaste for linguistic revisionism - it strikes me that this reconceptualization is really missing the point. Suicide is not merely a means to an end for the bombers, or for the pilots of kamikaze aircraft. The willingness to kill oneself for God or the Emperor is itself meant as a powerful statement of this humans-as-instruments worldview. The fanatic is saying, "My life is worthless in its own right. I am willing and eager to spend it for my cause."
But suicidal violence and the exultation of death are symptoms of that particular worldview. They are antithetical to other worldviews that are more life-affirming, such as that of Martin Luther King, Jr. King spoke in his final speech of his 1958 stabbing, when a paranoid woman punctured his lungs and aorta with a letter opener.
...there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,
Dear Dr. King,
I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School."
And she said,
While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.
And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze.
It's a subtle difference, but it's the most important difference in the world: King was not afraid to die, but he did not want to. His entire cause was focused not on the devaluation of human life, but the elevation of human life. All people are brothers and sisters, everybody deserves to be treated with love and respect, everybody deserves to be happy and prosperous. "We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people." He too believed profoundly in God, but his is a very different God than the all-consuming despot of al-Qaeda: a compassionate father, whose commandment is not just to love him but to love thy neighbor as thyself. He was, in short, a humanist. And just as a terrorist's singleminded devotion to his anti-humanist cause leads him to commit atrocities, King's singleminded devotion to his humanist cause led him to perform wonders.
So call him a fanatic, or don't. The label doesn't matter. What matters is that idealism can be beautiful as well as hideous. It just depends on the ideal. The fashionable disdain of cynics for all such emotional commitments is misguided.
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What about the fanatical animal rights folks who don't bomb cars or attempt to kill people, because they don't want to harm any animals including humans? Or does their pacifism disqualify them from being fanatics? If that's the case, you've got a tautological argument: Fanaticism is bad because fanatics hurt people. How do we know fanatics hurt people? Because we've defined them that way.
I clearly defined fanaticism for my own purpose as such-
"Those who believe the ends justifies the means, and will do anything to achieve their ends."
Online dictionaries typically define fanatics as such-
"marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion" That one comes from Merriam-Webster.
I take "intense uncritical devotion" and take it to mean what I wrote above. They no longer care about the consequences of their actions, because they think their goal invalidates said consequences.
If you think that interpretation is not good, then we can talk about it.
As such, it is not tautological. I am not saying the application of "fanatic" to anyone makes them such. I am saying their actions make them such.
That is how labels work, right? You label someone according to their actions. A criminal is a criminal because he/she violated any number of laws.
Again: if you're just going to define a "fanatic" as someone who ignores morality, then of course all "fanatics" do immoral things. That's not an interesting observation. But fanaticism is usually defined more in terms of the level of emotional investment and effort put into a cause.
So call him a fanatic, or don't. The label doesn't matter. What matters is that idealism can be beautiful as well as hideous. It just depends on the ideal. The fashionable disdain of cynics for all such emotional commitments is misguided.
Good God. I am not not saying that you're wrong on this. I merely assert that when you become a fanatic for something, then that something can readily become perverse and dangerous.
Let's take it back to Batman since Zaphrasz brought it up in the first place. Batman became a fanatic to justice, and in doing so he breaks a million laws and violates the so-called unalienable rights of many many people. All in the name of justice.
If that is not a perversion of everything he claims to stand for, then I don't know what is.
This entire thing with MLK Jr. is silly. You keep coming at this in a direction that makes no sense to me at all. You're not even arguing that he's a fanatic (which I would agree with, he was not a fanatic for civil rights).
And this-
"The fashionable disdain of cynics for all such emotional commitments is misguided."
I'm not even sure where that comes out of. Did I ever show disdain or cynicism towards MLK Jr. and his commitment to civil rights?
I merely objected to you bringing him in as an example of a "fanatic". And that makes me showing disdain for his "emotional commitments"?
What?
Edit-
Having gone back and read what I wrote, I think it's once again me just using extreme language when it's not necessarily warranted.
So, just to get this onto a right track, this is what I meant-
"I merely assert that when you become a fanatic for something, then that something can readily become perverse and dangerous."
As people start to identify with an ideal, they automatically begin using it as a justification. This frees them from having to consider the moral implications of what they are doing.
What if the ideal is morality? You seem to be granting here that a moral good does exist. If it exists, surely someone can devote themselves to it.
Perhaps. I admit that my stance on this is a bit weird: I see morality as something that is achieved by trying to do informed, unbiased decisions for the best course of action. In a sense, I see the lack of ideologies that would cloud one's judgement as the desirable state. One could easily argue that this is an ideology in itself, like people argue that atheism is a religion. It is certainly debatable.
Either way, being a fanatic "moral-ist" to the point of identifying with the cause would still be very detrimental. If you successfully establish yourself as a moral person in your mind, you free yourself from actually considering the moral implications of your actions. Because you're a moral person, and you're therefore acting morally, by your own definition. Your judgement becomes clouded just like that of anyone else.
There is this difference between rational devotion and fanaticism. I believe in equal human rights for everyone, but I do not believe in them blindly. I hold them as a goal that is ultimately desirable to attain, but I wouldn't be willing to do major sacrifices in other areas to get there, or be willing to go to war over it, as that would likely cause more harm than good. By freeing myself up from considering the morality of all decisions on individual basis I would cross over to the extremism, and amorality.
It's key to understand that I do not think amorality is born from "evil, greedy, horrible people", although they would be an example. Most amorality is born out of ignorance, of not considering alternatives or seeking enough information to be able to do the decisions in an informed manner.
Better. But if that's the case, shouldn't the absolute dedication of Martin Luther King, Jr. have caused the same sorts of bad things as all those fanatics you're thinking about? Instead of, y'know, good things?
The way I see it, he fought fire with fire. The fanaticism and strong ideology were there to fight prejudice. I see it all as negative, but in this event they happened to cancel each other out. He also gets credit for establishing some limits, I.E: Non-violence, to what should be done in the name of the cause. It was still a dangerous game that could've easily backfired. Despite having achieved something great, it's possible he did some things that were amoral getting there. As far as I believe, it's even possible to do very amoral things that end up with good consequences, since I see the deciding factor to be the intention behind the actions and not the outcome. Likewise, it's possible to act in a moral fashion but have it horribly backfire, as while you do your best to achieve good judgement, your knowledge is nevertheless limited.
It's hard for outsiders to judge the morality of actions of others for this reason, since we have access to different sets of information.
For a hypothetical example: Imagine that King had to face a decision at some point of whether to continue the campaign or to quit it, where his educated guess meant that continuing led to a civil war and countless deaths in 85% of the cases, and better social equality in 15% of the cases. I'd claim that at that point the moral thing to do would be to quit the campaign, and that deciding to push forward because of the dedication to the cause nevertheless of the situation would be amoral. Likewise, not stopping to consider the possibility at all would be amoral, a decision born out of willful ignorance.
This post might be a bit incoherent, but I hope I managed to clear things up a bit.
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EDIT: Perhaps the better way to explain it would be that it's not as much ideals, but the ranking of some ideals as more desirable than others. Allowing oneself to make decisions that further one good thing at great cost to another due to believing the former to be more desirable, more important. This breeds conflict, as others stand in different camps on the subject, constantly undermining each other and causing overall damage. Or even together sacrificing a third ideal (Say, peace) to further their own (Say, taking care of the weak vs creating framework for the strong to succeed.) It's this part where ideals become worth more than the things that they represent that is overall detrimental.
Paraphrased this way it bears interesting parallels to prisoner's dilemma.
The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
[quote from="IcecreamMan80" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outside-magic/debate/546033-what-makes-the-authority-of-the-police-legitimate?comment=18"]Batman often violates the 4th and 5th Amendments.
Superman as well.
X-Ray vision?
"The Fourth Amendment only protects against searches and seizures conducted by the government or pursuant to governmental direction. Surveillance and investigatory actions taken by strictly private persons, such as private investigators, suspicious spouses, or nosey neighbors, are not governed by the Fourth Amendment. However, Fourth Amendment concerns do arise when those same actions are taken by a law enforcement official or a private person working in conjunction with law enforcement."
supreme court rules the police do not need a warrant to raid
Oh, don't be melodramatic. There are lots of things that cause bad things, not just absolutism. And this statement of yours is itself an absolute. Do remember the hypocrisy of Obi-Wan.
What if the ideal is morality? You seem to be granting here that a moral good does exist. If it exists, surely someone can devote themselves to it.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Bleh.
Fine. I will reword appropriately, since I did miss that and it was poorly worded on my part.
"It is the very act of absolute dedication, fanaticism in other words, that cause the bad things associated with fanaticism, not the cause itself that they support".
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
MLK Jr.'s dedication wouldn't be included in absolute dedication. He wasn't a fanatic for civil rights. He knew when to draw a line in order to ensure that people didn't get hurt, for example. There are numerous incidences where he greatly weakened the point of his marches and whatnot so that the government wouldn't be too pissed at him.
He self-identified as one. "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love... Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
Yes, because of his absolute devotion to peace. His rule was "No violence, ever." That's an absolute.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
And the North Koreans call themselves Democratic.
Oh come on. You know what I mean when I say "absolute dedication". I don't want to engage in pointless wordplay with you.
The fact is MLK Jr. frequently bent his will and reduced his plans when Kennedy asked him to. His march on Washington was supposed to be much grander in scale, but upon Kennedy's request MLK Jr and his colleagues greatly reduced the planned number of marchers.
That is not fanaticism. That is not absolute dedication to his cause. If he was, then he would have said "**** you Mr. President" and gone on with what he wanted to do.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
And, no, he changed his plans because he was faced with threats of violence and fear among the politicians that a truly great march that MLK Jr. and his colleagues had in mind would cause great social unrest.
Edit- Which, to be honest, is a fear that politicians had for just about everything that the civil rights folks did and thus is rather irrelevant.
Given that the entire point of MLK Jr's efforts WAS to create social unrest and raise awareness and reveal the brutality and hypocrisy within the actions of those he opposed, one can imagine that going with the original plan would have been more appropriate to his goals.
It's not like Kennedy would have suddenly changed his mind on civil rights even if MLK Jr. disagreed with him regarding the details of the march on Washington.
King wanted to make a spectacle, but he emphatically did not want to provoke violence. If he realized that his original plan was more likely to result in the latter than the former, then no, it would not have been in his interest to proceed with it.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
If you applied my understanding to Bin Laden, then it would be as if Bin Laden agreed with Bush and decided to pull out of Iraq instead of sending Al-Qaeda fighters there.
I do not mean compromising with those within your organization, I meant compromising with people that you are ostensibly against, at least in MLK JR's case.
No. That is a severe misunderstanding of MLK JR's position. He WANTED to provoke violence against HIM. In fact, that is one of his great strategies. But he never wanted to incite or inflict violence upon others.
Look at the Birmingham campaign. That is arguably the greatest of all his marches and campaigns in terms of actual effect, and he deliberately set out to piss off the city's police and mayor to the point that they would attack him and his followers. He wanted the violence to occur so that the greater U.S. witnessed the savagery and recoiled and reacted.
Edit- Passivity was never his intention, and the march on Washington was not meant to be passive by any means. It was supposed to be an ENORMOUS march of unimaginable magnitude, upwards of a million people invading Washington and demanding their rights.
Instead, they got a quarter of a million people and virtually nothing done in the actual scheme of things.
The march on Washington was neutered by Kennedy and other politicians. The fact that MLK Jr. went along with it only speaks to me that he wasn't a fanatic by the way I define the word.
Yes, "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored." Let me rephrase. He didn't want to provoke a race riot. If the March on Washington had gone bad, he was concerned, it wouldn't have been the one-sided police brutality that could have been turned to the cause of progress - it would have been a pitched battle.
(And for what it's worth, I maintain that he didn't want police brutality at any of his demonstrations. He saw it as regrettable but exploitable. I think he was far happier with the events where his demonstrators still made a scene, but nobody got hurt.)
However you interpret King's planning for the March on Washington, you're missing the forest for the trees. King was passionate about his cause, fired up for it. He was willing to risk his life and limb - and, on a volunteer basis, the life and limb of others - to effect social change now. The difference between him and an al-Qaeda fighter or a kamikaze pilot was not a difference in devotion; it was that his devotion was to peace and common humanity while their devotion was to violent and dehumanizing codes of honor. The cause matters. The cause shapes the devotee's actions. "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Hence the reason I said "ostensibly".
King was against racism and prejudice. While Kennedy expressed interest in the idea and eventually took active part in civil rights, he was remarkably mum on the issue for a long time.
So long to the point that many wondered whether he was for the cause at all. One cannot read minds.
Regrettable? I'm not sure. As your quote shows, he and other blacks knew about the terrible violence that Southerners inflict on Black people. But they were hidden away from the views of the other parts of the country. He needed to show them that, and reveal the injustice that Black people live in.
It simply doesn't make sense to claim that he wouldn't want police brutality. He needs to show the violence.
I mean, that was the entire point of the Birmingham campaign. I unfortunately cannot find quotes and links as easily as you do, but just go and look it up. He knew that the people in power there were incredibly aggressive against civil rights, and he exploited that to full effect.
The way I see it, it is the difference between being devoted to a cause, and being fanatical to a cause.
I agree that the cause matters, but I'd argue that when you become fanatical to a cause, then it no longer matters what your cause is.
Fanatical animal rights folks bomb cars and attempt to kill people. That they fail is merely because they're incompetent.
But few would say that animal rights is a bad thing.
You're arguing for incredibly broad, general ideas like "love" and "peace" and "justice". But they're too broad to become a cause. You cannot simply say "I am for peace!". That's simply too broad of a statement.
What do you mean by " I am for love!"? Does that mean love everything and everyone? No conflict whatsoever? Everyone shares everything and whatnot?
But let us suppose that you are "for love!". How would you achieve such a thing? You obviously need to do something to achieve it. One would imagine a fanatic for "love" would think that the ends justifies the means (I mean, billions have already died to violence, if a couple million more die so that the remaining billion can live loving one another forever, then it's fine right?)
This is my point. When you become a fanatic for something, then the ends justifies the means, because you consider it more important than anything else. You no longer consider whatever ethical and moral ramifications of your actions may have, simply because you think that all those ethical and moral ramifications are secondary or will be overridden by whatever goal you achieve.
It needs to be noted that the Japanese Empire acted for peace and prosperity for their people. But at the expense of so many others. Islamist fanatics work because they think that their way is the true way to peace and harmony. And vice versa.
Again: if you're just going to define a "fanatic" as someone who ignores morality, then of course all "fanatics" do immoral things. That's not an interesting observation. But fanaticism is usually defined more in terms of the level of emotional investment and effort put into a cause.
Peace and prosperity are secondary goals at best for these guys. The Japanese acted first and foremost for the glory of the Emperor, the Islamists for the glory of God. The worldviews share a similar pathology in that both devalue individual human life: people are merely instruments for the cause of this divine other, and live or die at his convenience. That's why both are so violent. Indeed, that's why both adopted suicide tactics. I've heard people try to rename suicide bombing as "homicide bombing", I guess to place the emphasis on the damage dealt to others, but - aside from my general distaste for linguistic revisionism - it strikes me that this reconceptualization is really missing the point. Suicide is not merely a means to an end for the bombers, or for the pilots of kamikaze aircraft. The willingness to kill oneself for God or the Emperor is itself meant as a powerful statement of this humans-as-instruments worldview. The fanatic is saying, "My life is worthless in its own right. I am willing and eager to spend it for my cause."
But suicidal violence and the exultation of death are symptoms of that particular worldview. They are antithetical to other worldviews that are more life-affirming, such as that of Martin Luther King, Jr. King spoke in his final speech of his 1958 stabbing, when a paranoid woman punctured his lungs and aorta with a letter opener.
It's a subtle difference, but it's the most important difference in the world: King was not afraid to die, but he did not want to. His entire cause was focused not on the devaluation of human life, but the elevation of human life. All people are brothers and sisters, everybody deserves to be treated with love and respect, everybody deserves to be happy and prosperous. "We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people." He too believed profoundly in God, but his is a very different God than the all-consuming despot of al-Qaeda: a compassionate father, whose commandment is not just to love him but to love thy neighbor as thyself. He was, in short, a humanist. And just as a terrorist's singleminded devotion to his anti-humanist cause leads him to commit atrocities, King's singleminded devotion to his humanist cause led him to perform wonders.
So call him a fanatic, or don't. The label doesn't matter. What matters is that idealism can be beautiful as well as hideous. It just depends on the ideal. The fashionable disdain of cynics for all such emotional commitments is misguided.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I clearly defined fanaticism for my own purpose as such-
"Those who believe the ends justifies the means, and will do anything to achieve their ends."
Online dictionaries typically define fanatics as such-
"marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion" That one comes from Merriam-Webster.
I take "intense uncritical devotion" and take it to mean what I wrote above. They no longer care about the consequences of their actions, because they think their goal invalidates said consequences.
If you think that interpretation is not good, then we can talk about it.
As such, it is not tautological. I am not saying the application of "fanatic" to anyone makes them such. I am saying their actions make them such.
That is how labels work, right? You label someone according to their actions. A criminal is a criminal because he/she violated any number of laws.
Read above and my interpretation of fanatics.
Good God. I am not not saying that you're wrong on this. I merely assert that when you become a fanatic for something, then that something can readily become perverse and dangerous.
Let's take it back to Batman since Zaphrasz brought it up in the first place. Batman became a fanatic to justice, and in doing so he breaks a million laws and violates the so-called unalienable rights of many many people. All in the name of justice.
If that is not a perversion of everything he claims to stand for, then I don't know what is.
This entire thing with MLK Jr. is silly. You keep coming at this in a direction that makes no sense to me at all. You're not even arguing that he's a fanatic (which I would agree with, he was not a fanatic for civil rights).
And this-
"The fashionable disdain of cynics for all such emotional commitments is misguided."
I'm not even sure where that comes out of. Did I ever show disdain or cynicism towards MLK Jr. and his commitment to civil rights?
I merely objected to you bringing him in as an example of a "fanatic". And that makes me showing disdain for his "emotional commitments"?
What?
Edit-
Having gone back and read what I wrote, I think it's once again me just using extreme language when it's not necessarily warranted.
So, just to get this onto a right track, this is what I meant-
"I merely assert that when you become a fanatic for something, then that something can readily become perverse and dangerous."
Perhaps. I admit that my stance on this is a bit weird: I see morality as something that is achieved by trying to do informed, unbiased decisions for the best course of action. In a sense, I see the lack of ideologies that would cloud one's judgement as the desirable state. One could easily argue that this is an ideology in itself, like people argue that atheism is a religion. It is certainly debatable.
Either way, being a fanatic "moral-ist" to the point of identifying with the cause would still be very detrimental. If you successfully establish yourself as a moral person in your mind, you free yourself from actually considering the moral implications of your actions. Because you're a moral person, and you're therefore acting morally, by your own definition. Your judgement becomes clouded just like that of anyone else.
There is this difference between rational devotion and fanaticism. I believe in equal human rights for everyone, but I do not believe in them blindly. I hold them as a goal that is ultimately desirable to attain, but I wouldn't be willing to do major sacrifices in other areas to get there, or be willing to go to war over it, as that would likely cause more harm than good. By freeing myself up from considering the morality of all decisions on individual basis I would cross over to the extremism, and amorality.
It's key to understand that I do not think amorality is born from "evil, greedy, horrible people", although they would be an example. Most amorality is born out of ignorance, of not considering alternatives or seeking enough information to be able to do the decisions in an informed manner.
The way I see it, he fought fire with fire. The fanaticism and strong ideology were there to fight prejudice. I see it all as negative, but in this event they happened to cancel each other out. He also gets credit for establishing some limits, I.E: Non-violence, to what should be done in the name of the cause. It was still a dangerous game that could've easily backfired. Despite having achieved something great, it's possible he did some things that were amoral getting there. As far as I believe, it's even possible to do very amoral things that end up with good consequences, since I see the deciding factor to be the intention behind the actions and not the outcome. Likewise, it's possible to act in a moral fashion but have it horribly backfire, as while you do your best to achieve good judgement, your knowledge is nevertheless limited.
It's hard for outsiders to judge the morality of actions of others for this reason, since we have access to different sets of information.
For a hypothetical example: Imagine that King had to face a decision at some point of whether to continue the campaign or to quit it, where his educated guess meant that continuing led to a civil war and countless deaths in 85% of the cases, and better social equality in 15% of the cases. I'd claim that at that point the moral thing to do would be to quit the campaign, and that deciding to push forward because of the dedication to the cause nevertheless of the situation would be amoral. Likewise, not stopping to consider the possibility at all would be amoral, a decision born out of willful ignorance.
This post might be a bit incoherent, but I hope I managed to clear things up a bit.
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EDIT: Perhaps the better way to explain it would be that it's not as much ideals, but the ranking of some ideals as more desirable than others. Allowing oneself to make decisions that further one good thing at great cost to another due to believing the former to be more desirable, more important. This breeds conflict, as others stand in different camps on the subject, constantly undermining each other and causing overall damage. Or even together sacrificing a third ideal (Say, peace) to further their own (Say, taking care of the weak vs creating framework for the strong to succeed.) It's this part where ideals become worth more than the things that they represent that is overall detrimental.
Paraphrased this way it bears interesting parallels to prisoner's dilemma.
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
supreme court rules the police do not need a warrant to raid
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/supreme-court-rules-cops-warrant-search-home/
Mage: Norin the wary I cast giant growth on you...Norin?
Norin: Nope.
Boldwyr Intimidator doesnt think he's a coward.