Taken to extremes it is. And extreme nationalism is the only interpretation that can be given to the "notable event" of Abe visiting the shrine.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor
- Thread starter mathman
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Taken to extremes it is. And extreme nationalism is the only interpretation that can be given to the "notable event" of Abe visiting the shrine.
Well I don't think any nationalism is of value, all it brings is war and conflict, it is imaginary too.
Apologies if you are autistic or very young but you are wrong.
Arbor Day is a form of nationalism.
So is Habitat For Humanity.
Volunteer fire fighters, volunteer trail maintenance in National Parks.
Those signs you see on back roads that tell you what group picks up the litter. All good aspects of Nationalism.
Then there is the Manifest Destiny of Whites taking over a continent by killing non whites. And Japanese Gooks killing other Gooks using the same excuse.
Oh scathing.
Imagine if nations did not exit, how would that take away from humanitarianism and planting trees? technically witho7ut all that money waste in building military infrastructure even more humanitarianism could be done.
Again how nationalism required for such things, would we not have volunteer fire fighters and aaah "global" parks under a singular world goverment?
Again and again is nationalism the only source of such things?
... Oh but that isn't nationalism???
Nationalism is simply an evolved formed of tribalism, the belief that we a group and are special, and invariably need to fight and kill the other groups because they are inferior to us.
Hold on, I am getting an image of an old small man, hunched over a keyboard in one of those concrete Soviet apartment blocks in Prague. What you spent all your life believing has failed you and you are struggling to make sense of this new reality.
Hang in there. Try to live long enough to adjust.
Yeah you can listen to your erroneous imagination or you can read my profile.
Also my anti-nationalism has nothing to do with communism, I don't advocate communism... well accept for those with six legs and born for the sole purpose of working for the hive.
I and many others who have studied bees, consider the hive to be one organism, with individual bees having many highly specialized tasks to do for the hive. Much like your kidney, heart, liver etc. do for your organism. With this POV the hive is NOT a communistic society any more than your organs are.
Gathering nectar and pollen is the main task of most bees, but some have "guard duty" others "nursery duty" others "wax cell building" duty others with "ventilation" duty, "larva feeding" duty, etc. I kept a hive more for fun than honey on wooded lot I owned. Main reasons, however, was I then paid agriculture rate taxes on 16 acres along side of I-95 near Baltimore. I even paid tiny amount of sales taxes on honey I fictitiously "sold" but selling timber was much more a profit source, until I started, by myself, to sub-divide into lots I recorded and then sold. Soon after I finished, it became a legal requirement that subdivision could only be done by registered professionals of the field.
One fall day I arrived at lot to cut up fallen limbs for my fireplace. First thing I did after parking my pick-up truck, was to dust with tiny amount of flour two of the bees sitting on the landing ledge who were on "ventilation duty." More than an hour later, with truck loaded, I returned to the hive. - Yes those same two bees were still with feet hooked into wood at the same spot doing their ventilation duty. (Nectar has much higher water content than honey so humidity removal from hive interior is essential all summer - more for this than cooling causes the need for ventilation bees. I'm almost sure some bees have "repacking duty" to get honey only in cells and others "cell capping" duty but how bees get assigned their duty is a mystery.)
As further proof the hive is one organism: if you remove the queen, for several hours nothing happens then all hell panic breaks lose. The individual bees are constantly exchanging "body fluids" and when the "essence of queen" falls too low, they all know the hive is in serious trouble - start feeding more "royal jelly" to some of the larva to make some new queens. etc. - Just like the organs of your body exchange chemical information (hormones etc.).
SUMMARY: Bees are the mobile organs of one organism - the hive.
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Yes yes superorganism theory... what does that have to do with humans though?
Unfortunately all too much. We call our superorganism or "our hive" the USA nation. Like various bee hives, human nations try to steal the "honey" that other nations have. So again like bee hive organisms an expensive defense department is required and often these warriors are sent on raids to subdue other nations and steal their "honey" (black gold) etc.
Both bee warriors and human warriors are obligated to risk their lives for the good of the hive/nation or some invented cause like: "to spread democracy" / "insure freedom of the enslaved" (So it is perfectly OK to enslave / confiscate some of individuals and/or their wealth / strength for these "noble aims.")
From a distant view point, the main behavioral difference between bee & human superorganisms seems to be that bees don't torture other bees for the good of the superorganism.
I.e. no warrior bee ever said to another bee of a different hive meet in the field: "Tell me with tail wags, where you found that rich supply of pollen or I'll tear your other wing off too."
No this is a error of semantics, we are NOT parts of a superorganism, you can change words to make it appear that way but it not true. We are not infertile workers designed with specific purpose in a greater organism. Almost all of us are born fertile and with the adaptability to be and do almost anything, more so unlike other animals we have the ability to change and even completely redesign our societies by force of will, reasoning and foresight. Superorganism theory is ill adapted to our biological and social structure.
What dose fertile (or not) have to do with (or not with) being a part of the superorganism, called USA? Post menopause women cease to be part of the USA?
Are not many American's highly limited in what they can do in the modern high-tech society - mainly but the poor educational opportunities local funding of primary schools of poor neighborhoods can afford? True US no longer uses the draft to fill its needs for soldiers, the terrible economic conditions for so many make that their best employment chance.
Perhaps we have different concepts defining a "superorganism" For me it is an "economic structure"(in the broad sense with little directly concerned with money) where individual components do different jobs that need to be done for the net benefit of the superorganism. Is that your basic concept too? I.e. the bee hive and the USA are both "superorganisms."
Again a country is not a superorganism. My concept of a superorganism is from biology forth which is comes from! Superorganism theory only works when its drones are just that, drones, they do not breed the next generation nor physically can they, rather it is their genetic prerogative to work for the hive (the queen fundamentally) in order to breed (indirectly) through her, in short she is their reproductive organs and they the mouths and hands, hence a superorganism. Ants, termites and bees don't live like this because they decided to, they were genetically programed to live that way because being a superorganism is a evolutionarily stable strategy once the initial hurdles are evolved past. An economy is not a superorganism for it is not alive, it does not evolve Darwinian (but rather by pseudo-larmarkianism that technology and human society evolve by), and it components are far more abstract even virtual (like money). Calling an economy or a nations a superorganism might seem like nice poetry but they are two very different things that operate by very different mechanism and one can't be used to gleen understanding of the other. You can claim a planet and a water droplet are the same thing (spheres) but they are very different by just about every other measure.
Rule of the internet #25 & #26
The only interpretation?
I think not.
"To my dear Father and Mother:
I was so lucky ever since I was given my life life some twenty years ago that I was brought up ever deprived of anything. Under the love and affection of my loving parents, and younger sister, I was so fortunate to spend such happy days. I say this in face of the fact that at times I had a tendency to act in a spoiled and selfish manner. Throughout, of all of us siblings, I was the one who caused you, Father and Mother, the most worry. It pains my heart that my time will come before I can return, or try to return, any of these favors I received. But in Japan, where loyalty to the Emperor and filial piety are considered one and the same thing, and total royalty to the nation is a fulfillment of filial piety, I am confident of your forgiveness.
As a member of the flying staff, I spent each and every day with death as the premise. Every letter and each word I wrote consituted my last will and testament. In the sky so high above, death is never a focus of fear. Will in fact die when I hit the target? No, I cannot believe that I am going to die, and, there was even a time when I felt a sudden urge somehow to dive into a target. The fact of the matter is that I am never afraid of death, and, to the contrary, I even welcome it. The reason for this is my deep belief that, through death, I'll be able to get together again with my beloved older brother, Tatsu. To be reunited with him in heaven is what I desire the most. I did not have any specific attitude toward life and death. My reasoning was that the cultivation of a specific attitude toward life and death would amount to an attempt to give a meaning and value to death, something that would have to stem from a person's utter fear of an uncertain death. My belief is that death is a passage leading to reunion with my loved ones in heaven. I am not afraid to die. Death is nothing to be afraid of when you look at it as just a stage in the process of ascending to heaven.
Succinctly speaking, I have always admired liberalism, mainly because I felt that this politecal philosophy was the only one to follow were Japan really to survive eternally. Perhaps this sort of thinking seems foolish' but it is only because Japan is currently drowned in totalitariansim. Nevertheless, and this state of affairs notwithstanding, it will be clear to any human being who sees clearly and is willing to reflect on the very nature of his or her humanity that liberalism is the most logical ideology.
It seems to me that a nation's probable success in the prosecution of a war would, on the very basis of that nation's ideology, be clearly evident even before the war was fought. It would in fact be so obvious that eventual victory would clearly be seen to belong to the nation that holds a natural ideology,i.e., an ideology which in its way is constitutive of human nature itself.
My hope of making Japan like the British Empire of the past has been utterly defeated. At this point, therefore, I gladly give up my life for Japan's liberty and independence.
While the rise and fall of one's nation is indeed a matter of immense importance for any human being, the same shift dwindles to relative insignificance when and if that same human being places it within the context of the universe as a whole. Exactly as the saying has it, "Pride goeth before a fall (or, those who savor victory will soon find themselves in the camp of the defeated), "and, even if America and Great Britain turn out to be victorious against us, they will eventually learn that the day of their own defeat is imminent. It pleases me to think that, even if they are not to be defeated in the near future, they may be turned to dust anyway through an explosion of the globe itself. Not only that, but the people who are getting the most fun out of life now are most certainly doomed to die in the end. The only difference is whether it comes sooner or later.
In the drawer, right side of my bookcase, in the annex of the house, you will find the book I am leaving behind. If the drawer does not open, please open the left drawer and pull out a nail --- then try the right drawer again.
Well, then, I pray that you will take good care of yourselves.
My very best to my big brother [i.e., the older of the two elder brothers], sister Kiyoko, and to everyone.
Well, then, Good-bye. Gokigen-yo(Farewell). Good-bye forever."
- Captain Ryoji Uehara
There are more, ontheleft, if you care to look. Here, for example:
http://www.geocities.jp/kamikazes_site_e/isyo/isyobun/uehara-syoi-isyo.html
I'm sure there are many more, some along simliar lines, and some different.
I would like to read the book Uehara left in the right hand drawer of his bookcase, that he prevented his family from seeing before it was time for them to do so.
These were men. Boys, one might say. Humans, like all of us. But they believed in different things than you or I might.
There is nothing trite in saying that, despite whatever I might think of their beliefs, I can still retain respect for who they were... and their willingness to fight for their beliefs. Respect for the courage they showed in doing so.
You may well be quite correct in surmising that Abe's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine was made, at least partially, to show that he was not going to stay away simply because another country might find it offensive. Yet it would be naive to suggest he could have had no other motive. You need to remember that that shrine honours more than just those who died in WW2. It also honours those who died defending Japan against the Russians in 1905... every Japanese soldier, in any time. All of them.
If you read Captain Ryoji Uehara's letter carefully, it would seem he understood many things most of the Kamikaze probably did not. But, whatever mistakes he might have believed his nation had made, it also becomes obvious he was prepared to ensure nonetheless that his country did not go quietly into that good night.
If I were to visit Japan, someday, I would visit that shrine myself. Perhaps only because, having read his letter, I knew him... if only a little. And with respect to the fact that were I born in a different place, in a different time, he might well have been me.
Benedetto Croce
“When Uehara’s parents looked for the book that he mentioned at the end of his will, they found a copy of a study of the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. On the back page of that volume, Uehara had written another will. He had also circled some characters in the book, and together these constituted a message to a young woman with whom he had fallen in love, who was, however, happily engaged to marry another man. Uehara told her that, even though he had given up “the idea of whispering the words of love to you,” he would nonetheless always love her.”
Taken from "Voices of World War II: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life."
The Last Letter
To ElectricFetus As I suspected, you have a narrow definition of "superorganism." I.e. for you it must be living biology. I use the term to designated non-biological organizations like the AFL, nations, the UN, NRA, ARRPA etc. as they are definitely more than the sum of their components, as they have objectives, plans, "life support mechanisms" (typically funding sources), even "ethics" etc. and in this sense are quite like a biological organism.* They are both "born" and can "die." For example, is the woman's temperance league still "living"? or has it died?
Because non-biological "superorganism" have so many behaviors and characterizes in common with the biological ones, it is often instructive to make direct comparisons between them as I did.
* They can even have "children." For example, a man named Powell, (I think) created the Boy Scouts. The that superorganism created the Girl Scout supperorganism, which in turn created the Brownies super organism.
Because non-biological "superorganism" have so many behaviors and characterizes in common with the biological ones, it is often instructive to make direct comparisons between them as I did.
* They can even have "children." For example, a man named Powell, (I think) created the Boy Scouts. The that superorganism created the Girl Scout supperorganism, which in turn created the Brownies super organism.
Hey drops of water and planets have soo much in common, I think I'm going to call planets "rain drops" from now on, there is the Earth drop and the Mars drop and oh the Venus drop. Oh your definition of rain drops is so narrow for not accepting my redefining of the term. And now using my grand drop term I can surmise that the earth drop and the other great drops will either evaporate or splatter against some hard surface or combined into a titanic sea of drops... you know I'm right.
You're being silly or at least sarcastic. When two classes or groups or organisms have many similar behaviors, between their birth and death as I enumerated (including hopes, plans, purposeful activities, environmental impacts and require environmental inputs for their continued existence, energy and material budgets and associated utilization efficiencies, have specialized subcomponents doing various task for the good of the organism as a whole, which exchange information rich signals between these subcomponants, etc.) then comparisons are educational.
Except an economy is not a biological organism anymore then a planet is a drop of fluid. A nation or an economy does not evolve Darwinianly, does not consists of organic physical parts but instead consists of virtual, mimetic components. An ant colony can't die by the ants deciding they want to disband, change their name, redraw their borders, adjust their currency. An ant colony is a real thing, a nation is nothing more then lines drawn on a map and an imaginary concept in peoples heads! Biological theories are ill designed to apply to such constructs, one can't predict the "evolution" of a nation or an economy by looking to ants and bees!
[video=youtube;bhk2ao4Y538]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhk2ao4Y538[/video]
"You may laugh at me, but my intention was that a single painting could change the world, could actually change the people who saw it." -Nakamura Hiroshi
No one laughed, and no one wants war, but what alternatives do pacifists offer? Pacifism itself can be offensive when it misidentifies the morality of the individual with that of the state. Not only that, it wavers between just and unjust-war. It is not an absolute.
"There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances. -Leon Trotsky
Article 9:
What would happen to them if we didn't defend them? If they get into trouble with China or North Korea, what do they expect from the United States, protection, right? We are bound by a treaty to defend them. However, if a missile is launched at one of our ships they aren't obligated to intercept it, but we are obligated to protect theirs.
There will always be some uncertainty as to whether you’re a perpetrator or a victim but …"real life has a way of eventually rubbing even the most altruistic nose in a steaming pile of "F**k that."
-Anthony Beal
"You may laugh at me, but my intention was that a single painting could change the world, could actually change the people who saw it." -Nakamura Hiroshi
No one laughed, and no one wants war, but what alternatives do pacifists offer? Pacifism itself can be offensive when it misidentifies the morality of the individual with that of the state. Not only that, it wavers between just and unjust-war. It is not an absolute.
"There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances. -Leon Trotsky
Article 9:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
The Constitution of Japan
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
The Constitution of Japan
What would happen to them if we didn't defend them? If they get into trouble with China or North Korea, what do they expect from the United States, protection, right? We are bound by a treaty to defend them. However, if a missile is launched at one of our ships they aren't obligated to intercept it, but we are obligated to protect theirs.
There will always be some uncertainty as to whether you’re a perpetrator or a victim but …"real life has a way of eventually rubbing even the most altruistic nose in a steaming pile of "F**k that."
-Anthony Beal