Jim North wrote:
yeahduff wrote:Well, now you've got me confused. Words and ideas aren't powerful because they couldn't do anything if we didn't have brains? Well, sharp objects, I suppose, wouldn't be dangerous if we didn't have soft flesh, but alas, we do, so they're dangerous. As words with brains.
The difference, however, is that words and ideas originate inside the brain itself. Words are not a sharp rock you find on the road.
We create words and ideas,
we give them power, and therefore
we are responsible. We and we alone. You can talk philosopy all day to a dog, but it's not going to get anything out of it except that you're talking to it. If you take that sharp rock to the dog, however, it gets cut just as easily as we would.
Not a matter of terrible relevence. You just described the difference between physical objects and thoughts. Not whether they're dangerous or not.
Jim North wrote:
I don't think I was talking about subliminals,
It was all the ad stuff by McDonald's you were talking about. That stuff works on a somewhat subliminal level . . . if you keep repeating something over and over again to someone in the background, it'll eventually slip past their defenses.
Oh, not in the background. It's an utter barrage. But I guess I see what you mean.
Jim North wrote:
but we're still talking about words, used in a certain way, causing a "tugging" in your brain. It doesn't matter whether you ignore that tugging or not, the fact that it tugs means power is being exerted. Some may be able to fight the tugging, but if a fight is necessary, something must be going on.
Bolded the important part of your sentence. Once again, it is not the ideas themselves, but the way in which they are being transmitted that is the problem. And the way they are transmitted is decided by humans. There is indeed something going on . . . but it's not the ideas themselves that's doing it.
Again, I don't see what the relevence is. Of course, yes, it's how they're used, much like how a gun is used, that is important.
Jim North wrote:
Well, yeah. Humans also give guns power. If they didn't they'd be useless piles of metal lying around. Even if you believe the old adage "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," you still have to admit that guns have an inherent danger because they can be used as tools (or accidently) to destroy another human.
I agree that guns have an inherent danger because if left in certain conditions they could go off on their own and hurt someone. Once again, the difference here is that words cannot do so without someone's consent. You can choose to disbelieve a Chick Tract you find abandoned on a table, but you can't choose to stop a bullet that's tearing through your insides.
Ah, but words can and do hurt people without the user's consent. Ever misspeak? Ever hurt someone's feelings you never meant to hurt? Ever stop talking to someone for decades because of a misunderstanding? Ever let something slip that ended up in a fight? Even if you didn't answer yes to most of those, many people out there can.
And again, with the Chick tract, you rarely choose to believe something, you believe it or you don't. You can fight believing it if you don't want to, or you can act like you're all gung ho about it for a while, but it's all a matter of either you do or you don't.
Jim North wrote:
Words are the same way. Whether you mean it or not, you can destroy someone with words, or you can lead someone to destroy another in a more literal sense using words.
But I have to create the idea in the first place. It doesn't create itself. The other person has to actively act on it. It doesn't act by itself. The person being harmed by the person acting on that idea has to deal with the person attacking them. They don't have to directly deal with the idea itself.
They have to deal with the dangerous consequences of the idea. If one is likely to lead to another, well....
And again, guns don't create themselves either.
Jim North wrote:
The Quran may not go door to door preaching on it's own, but it talks people into doing it on it's behalf.
No, it doesn't. People read it, and then make the change within themselves to conform to its system on their own. There is nothing about that book or any other book that
makes people do this. Once again, if it did, then everybody who read it, no matter what, would end up believing what it teaches without question.
Yes, the Quran does. The change happens independent of what the person wants. Or maybe it doesn't. You seem to be convinced that either words have all the power in the world or none. Words and ideas don't have to work every time to be dangerous or powerful. Nor do they have to work instantly and visibly and unmistakably. But they do work on a person, one way or another.
Jim North wrote:
Certainly there's a choice, but no one's devoting their entire life to a god they've never seen or heard from unless someone talked them into it using words.
Exactly.
Unless someone talked them into it, which includes them talking themselves into it. The words cannot make that decision for you.
They don't make the decision, but they create the environment where it becomes less a decision and more of a conclusion. I'll go to church every Sunday because I'm a dedicated Christian, and the idea I have in my head says that's what I'm supposed to do.
Jim North wrote:
And the real reason that people devote their entire lives to certain ideas? Because they often don't stop to think about what they're doing. They don't actually analyze many of the choices they make in life, they simple make them. This, even more than ignorance or stupidity (well, maybe not stupidity), is extremely dangerous. People make rash decisions based on faulty ideas, or even faulty decisions based on good ideas, and that's where things really begin to fall down.
Of course people think about what they are doing. But they're filled with certain ideas and have either shut out or have never been exposed to other ideas, so their thoughts have little chance of escaping the ideas they've inherited from their societies and their families. Don't look so far down upon those people. You're one of them.
Jim North wrote:
Ideas didn't start the Crusades. Ideas didn't bring down the WTC. Ideas didn't send soldiers to Vietnam. Ideas didn't invade Poland. Ideas are important and we need them if we are going to make progress as a species, but ideas did not do these things. People did, and then they all claimed it was in the name of their ideas.
But if it wasn't in the name of their ideas, what was it about, then? Without the ideas that "those people are heathens" and "that land is the holy land" and that "heathens shouldn't own the holy land," the crusades wouldn't have happened. But the idea started one place and spread across Europe like a virus until it was the only conclusion left to go invade.
Ideas are powerful, even if they need to use humans to get around. Consider a parasite that hangs out in the soil, in ant food. The ant eats the parasite, which hangs out in the ants body, working it's magic, until it convinces the ant that it wants to get a view of the sky. The ant, seemingly by it's own conscious choice, climbs to the top of a blade of grass, and sits there serenely, until a sheep comes by and munches on the grass, ingesting the ant and the parasite. The parasite is now where it wants to be. It's unlikely that the parasite consciously orchestrated this, but it is responsible nontheless. Words are like that, though they don't have survival aims to consider. They are much more nihilistic than parasites.
Jim North wrote:
But people need to wake the hell up and start taking responsibility for their own actions. If they don't, then they are out of control, and that's possibly the most dangerous thing of all.
I agree persons need to take responsibility for their own actions. Otherwise immoral people with soothing words and ideas are going to lead them all over the place.
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