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To sparhawk -

Quote

"I'm always here, like god."

 

It seems you are always on the forum but never in this topic. You answered in the "Burricks" thread even though the offtopic in it is laughable compared to the offtopic here... This looks pretty strange to me, and rude too.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Yes, there are absolutes.

The net effect of alcohol consumption on society is bad, that's an absolute and undeniable fact.

 

Oh, but Oddity, who defines "bad" or "fact"?

Certainly this definition is subjective, even to those who follow a creed such as the moral codes of religion or law. Your interpretation of the world is as unique and individual as anyone else's, so there simply is no definitive definition of "bad" and "good" acts that applies to everyone's world view.

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Oh, but Oddity, who defines "bad" or "fact"?

Certainly this definition is subjective, even to those who follow a creed such as the moral codes of religion or law. Your interpretation of the world is as unique and individual as anyone else's, so there simply is no definitive definition of "bad" and "good" acts that applies to everyone's world view.

 

I think you'll find that every living human would desribe a 4 year old girl being killed by a drunk driver as

'bad'. THere is not a single person in the world who'd say it was a good thing. That makes it an absolute.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Well, there are two types of majorities, actually... The stupid one, and the one in control... The stupid one drinks, the one in control creates alcohol or prohibits it... IMHO, just something I thought up.

 

To oDDity - well, not every human being. Every human being that has some brains.

 

To Fingernail - who is to say? The majority in control. Those who pass laws. There were anti-alcohol laws before, but they failed because of the level of "society", and in the end, people had to resign them, though they still agreed alcohol is a bad thing.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Why is individual freedom of choice automatically a good thing, and a better situation that having decisions mde by society as a whole, for the benefit of society as a whole?

 

Individual choice is what makes life worth living. I see very little point in being alive if you are just a servant to some higher authority that you did not choose and does not speak for you.

 

Also, who is "society as a whole"? There is no group of people that can be said to speak for everybody - even elected governments are not necessarily representative and have their own agendas. When you talk about "society" making decisions, in reality this is just a certain group of powerful individuals making their own decisions which other people have to adhere to.

 

The interesting thing is that people who hold the view that the "will of society" should overrule individual choice, only hold this view as long as "society" holds the same views they do. What if society decided that it would be better served if people did not waste their time making 3D models and cooking, and instead should be made to go out and do charity work (which is clearly a greater net benefit to society)?

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To Fingernail - who is to say? The majority in control. Those who pass laws. There were anti-alcohol laws before, but they failed because of the level of "society", and in the end, people had to resign them, though they still agreed alcohol is a bad thing.

 

Oh wait, so the majority in control have access to an objective view of the universe then, do they?

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You'd be surprised. And who's to say they're right anyway? You're always trying to argue against majority rule - many times in the course of the mod you've argued that the majority don't know best, and that we should change stuff that most people want, etc.

 

Try putting a coherent and relevant argument together, or don't bother at all.

Of course the majority aren't always right, but this has nothing to do with the current subject.

Whether 1+1=2 doesn't depend on a majortiy deciding if it does or not, it's an absolute fact.

Likewise the total removal of alcohol from society, if done properly, would have a huge net gain - that is also an absolute fact., there is no argument to be had.

Of course alcohol, and the idea of mind altering chemical consumption as amusment and recreation has eaten its cancerous way so far into society that it would take some very delicate and well planned microsurgery to remove it sucessfully at this late stage.

A correct onjective is still correct regardless of the difficulty entailed in reaching it.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Oh wait, so the majority in control have access to an objective view of the universe then, do they?

 

*deleted*

Edited by Forsaken

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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You can declare no absolute, objective facts because your view of the world is based solely upon your subjective perception of it, therefore you can never know any objective truth.

 

Cut the metaphysical crap you read in some philosophy book, it's not impressing anyone, this is the real world we're taking about.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Hrrrph... Funny you can discuss such things on this forum... You need a topic named Flood and Off-topic especially for dragging stuff in there...

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Cut the metaphysical crap you read in some philosophy book, it's not impressing anyone, this is the real world we're taking about.

 

Right. And the "real" world is based upon myriads of subjective experiences. Finger is right. There is no scuh thing as objective truth.

Gerhard

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oDDity sounds like the worst puritanical veggie tree-hugging Christian I’ve ever met in this thread (just not so polite).

 

He probably knows as a Gym junkie, that exercise releases endorphins? Yup, exercise gives you much the same fuzzy feeling and – GASP! – ‘modifies your brain’ as a pint does, just that you don’t have to gyrate on some contraption for half and hour looking like a twit when drinking a pint. It’s also more social – what’s best for society, people talking and making merry down the pub or everyone in the gym trying to make the rest of humanity look weak?

 

People have been getting pissed or high for thousands of years one way or the other and civilization has not collapsed yet. Well it has a few times, but that’s because of countries trying to show which has the biggest muscles – like oDDity is in this thread -not because the leaders had been drinking.

 

Banning drink is probably the stupidest idea ever. Prohibition = organised crime. Humanity can always find something to get high on. If anything they should make more drugs legal and regulate them, so that the few who have addictive personalities feel they can get help from a society that understands them better.

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Right. And the "real" world is based upon myriads of subjective experiences. Finger is right. There is no scuh thing as objective truth.

 

Stop trying to lead the argument down a sidetrack of worthless metaphisical philosophy. Contrary to popular belief, quoting philosopers doesn't make you sound cool or intelligent, it makes you sound like someone who can't think of a decent argment for himself, and so resorts to quoting what some tosspot philosopher said, in a transparent attempt to stall the argment with pointless semantics.

In the real world, where we actually exist, we do have to make these decisions, people ar employed to make them, laws are passed, and we have to obey those laws. That's the reality, and this metaphsical philosophy is meaningless fantasy. It's words for the sake of words.

 

Prohibition didn't work becasue it was badly implemented, not because the idea behind it was wrong. You first need to change attitudes towards alcohol before you can remove it. That's what's currenty happening with tobacco. ANd the biggest casue of wars over the years has been religion, and we all know that could only have been dreamt up by a bunch of whackos high on drugs of some sort.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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If you want it both ways then there has to be much harsher punishments for abusers of drugs/alcohol who cause harm to others, because as it stands with current judicial systems they "get away with murder" far too often.

 

A Big Brother approach (Orwell's 1984) doesn't work because of the ingrained attitudes towards those substances. A better approach would be modifying the attitudes towards them, which would take some generations to do. I found Huxley's Brave New World to be more in line with how to deal with the beast of society.

 

With enough time and social engineering, you could make, for example, killing for social advancement a "good thing"

Edited by Vadrosaul
Loose BOWELS are the first sign of THE CHOLERA MORBUS!
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Yes, we need to change attitudes towards alcohol to get rid of binge drinkers. The problem is, doesn't telling young people not to do something make them do it? What we may need is a huge drive towards alcohol conusmption so that sobriety will become the big thing amongst our youth.

 

I'd like to see attitudes towards exercise changed as well. Women today are so thin and bony I feel like I'm getting into bed with a radiator. We need to get rid of the media that glamourise looking like an anorexic scarecrow. Truly a cancer on society. Maybe if they drank some booze they'd develop half-decent beer bellies so that I have something to hold onto.

 

The United Kingdom should also be phased out. Not only do they tend to start wars, but it's cold as heck there - poor weather leads to depression and sickness. The UK is a cancer on this planet that needs to be surgically removed, I don't care if people enjoy living there. The bad of the UK outweighs the good IMO, because a few old biddies with the flu aren't enjoying themselves.

 

And what about the human race? We may enjoy existing, but we're hurting mother earth, dammit. Mass suicide is the key.

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The problem is, doesn't telling young people not to do something make them do it?

 

Where did you get that idea?

 

But most of what you say makes sense. We really are spoiling more Earth than we need.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Likewise the total removal of alcohol from society, if done properly, would have a huge net gain - that is also an absolute fact., there is no argument to be had.

 

 

Not necessarily, and anyone who talks in terms of absolutes like that is being a puerile twat. The only absolute is that there are no absolutes, certainly not when it comes to human society.

 

Personally, I am happy for people to abuse alcohol to their hearts content, provided that they do it in a time and place where they are only hurting themselves. Such people are actually doing humanity a favour by increasing the chances that their defective genes will be removed from the genepool. Same goes for any other drug.

 

But prohibiting alcohol will only make these addiction/self abuse prone people look for another substance or activity to abuse.

 

A healthy, mentally functioning, genetically sound adult should be able to enjoy a glass of wine every few days or so (it has been medically demonstrated time and time again that MODERATE alcohol consumption is actually quite good for you). If someone lacks the self control to know when they've had enough, that is their problem, although if they do something that makes it someone else's problem, then they should be punished very harshly.

 

That being said, while I enjoy the occaisional glass of wine at dinner, or a few beers at the odd BBQ, I wouldn't miss it if I could never drink it again.

 

 

Prohibition has been demonstrated to be worse for society than letting a few fools abuse themselves - heroin is illegal in most places, and far from stopping people use it, it just means that those that do use it are forced to commit crimes to pay for a habit that would not be anywhere near as expensive were it legal. Making alcohol illegal wouldn't stop people from drinking at all, it will just push it underground where the government could no longer regulate and control it, or tax it to gather revenue to make up for the cost to society.

 

You can't legislate against stupidity, you just have to accept that some people want to drink themselves into a coma, and all you can do is to try to prevent them from harming others in the process. If it isn't alcohol, they will find something else...

 

 

If you want to stop people from drink-driving, how about trying this:

 

Make drink driving an offence equivalent to attempeted murder. so if someone gets pulled over and they are over the limit (which should be set to zero), they are automatically charged with attempted murder and locked away for 10 years or so. The prisons will fill up rpetty quickly at first, but people will get the hint that driving under the influence in socially unnaceptable.

 

And that is the key - changing peoples attitudes to what is socially acceptable, not banning things or prohibiting things that are perfectly safe if used correctly. Limiting people's freedom too much has far worse consequences for society than letting people do things that can be sometimes dangerous or destructive - otherwise cars would have been banned decades ago.

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Well, when people drive while drunk they may think that they won't be caught at all. So it may have no influence. It may even backfire. Overhigh laws end up badly too. I would leave it as it is. What should improve is how many drunk-drivers are caught. In Russia, every now and then someone get's killed by a drunk driver, because all those drivers need to do to get away with something is pay the police. But in America, you'll really get in trouble. And there aren't a lot of those drivers anymore... So catch more, that is what will scare them.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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The problem isn't alcohol per se, it is cars. Giving someone a licence to drive a car is giving them a licence to pilot a one tonne steel weapon. And people go for easy targets like speeding - it is very cheap to set up speed cameras everywhere, rather than investing in police to patrol roads and highways. Here in Austrlaia, governments have become so obsessed with speeding that they are blind to all of the other problems on the road. Drivers now spend so much time looking at the speedometer to make sure they aren't a few kph over the speed limit, that they forget to look up to see what is on the road in fromnt of them.

 

The road death toll has actually gone up since the introduction of speed cameras, yet governments are still mindlessly repeating the mantra of "speed kills" in spite of the evidence.

 

A competent, properly trained driver can drive at a safe speed for the road conditions without ever once checking the speedometer. They might be several kph over the posted limit, and yet still be driving very safely. conversely, someone could be driving along at the speed limit, but if they are intoxicated or talking on their mobile phone, or spending an inordinate amount of time examining their instrument panel, they are much more of a hazard to other road users.

 

Cars are inherently dangerous, and governments should be paying more attention to getting people out of cars and onto alternative transportation (preferably walking to work, as that would also solve a huge range of social obesity problems at the same time as reducing the road toll and cutting greenhouse gas emmisions), rather than trying to ban a recreational drug, which is quite futile and pointless.

Edited by obscurus
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There is nothing wrong with cars. I hate buses, subways, trilleys - I had enough of that. Walking to work? Phrrh. We walk to schools in Russia, isn't good at all. Especially with all the dangerous people around. The thing that is more or less wrong is control of all this. We have half of our problems solved by a car. Speaking of greenhouse effect - well, we can as well disable all machienes and factories, or go over to electrical cars...

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Personally, I am happy for people to abuse alcohol to their hearts content, provided that they do it in a time and place where they are only hurting themselves. Such people are actually doing humanity a favour by increasing the chances that their defective genes will be removed from the genepool. Same goes for any other drug...

...or "Blah, blah, blah, blah, bollocks"

 

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

...that doesn't happen, and never will happen. That's what you may want to happen, but it simply doesn't, so let's stick to taking about what actually happens in the real world when humans get hold of alcohol and drugs, and not what would happen in an ideal society when humans get hold of them - and what happens here, right now, on Earth, is that innocent poeple, and lots of them, get hurt and killed.

I don't know why you're focusing so much on drunk drving, that's just a drop in the ocean of the problems casued by alcohol.

And that is the key - changing peoples attitudes to what is socially acceptable, not banning things or prohibiting things that are perfectly safe if used correctly.

That's whay I already said, however I don't want to change their attitude to one that says 'taking mind altering chemicals for amusment is a good thing as long as you do it in moderation',

I want to change it to one that says it's a bad thing, period, so let's not do it at all, lets leave that primeval craving in the past along with religion, and anyone who wants to continue to do it will be treated like the worthless, animals they are.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Make drink driving an offence equivalent to attempeted murder. so if someone gets pulled over and they are over the limit (which should be set to zero), they are automatically charged with attempted murder and locked away for 10 years or so. The prisons will fill up rpetty quickly at first, but people will get the hint that driving under the influence in socially unnaceptable.

 

That sounds initially appealing, but it is very dangerous. The problem is that if you make the punishment for an offence equivalent to murder, then there is no rational reason for a person caught committing that offence not to murder in order to avoid conviction.

 

For example, some people may consider rape to be such a heinous crime that it should be punished with life imprisonment. However, if you do this, what will happen is that rapists will simply kill their victims after raping them in order to remove the witness - and they will be no worse off for it because the punishment is the same in both cases.

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