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To: starbase
Nothing makes it impossible for a person to give, or sacrifice, with no feelings of personal gain whatsoever.

I can't agree. If they don't feel good about giving they don't give.

If they do it for a tax break with no good feeling, the selfish motive is to reduce their tax burden.

Inside anything anyone does there is a self serving motivation.

97 posted on 04/11/2006 9:38:39 PM PDT by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken.)
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To: higgmeister

Signing off for now.


98 posted on 04/11/2006 9:40:50 PM PDT by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken.)
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To: higgmeister; grey_whiskers
I can't agree. If they don't feel good about giving they don't give.

Unfortunately it is not a matter of agreement, but a matter of demonstration. You cannot demonstrate that the mechanism of your world view is operating.

You change your terms and redefine your logic systematically to end up with the preselected idea that all actions are selfish.

You say that actions which benefit a person are selfish actions, because of the benefit. But then you give an example of a man saving a baby because he selfishly "can't stand to hear the baby cry". That is an incredibly cynical example and a straw man at that. If this man, again who you claim to be unable to bear the crying of a baby, were, in fact, truly selfish, then he would just walk away and let the baby burn. But the fact that he selflessly grants value to the baby's well being causes you to declare him selfish!!


This sort of logic where "selfishness is selfishness", and "selflessness is selfishness", must be meant to establish that "no one can be blamed for anything", because everyone is equally guilty of being selfish. Add to that your claim that poverty is a mental disease (rather than the systematic inefficient use of resources, which it is), and you have the formula for an amoral world driven by an "onus on the victim" mentality.


Clearly this way of thinking is designed to convince its owner that indeed all people are selfish, which in turn implies no course of action is better than any other, since we're all selfish. And at last you find yourself with an attraction to the imagery of a nun taking a bowel movement in one hand and praying to a false god with the other empty hand, and that is definitely an unhealthy philosophical dead end in which to find oneself.
121 posted on 04/14/2006 9:16:46 AM PDT by starbase (Understanding Written Propaganda (click "starbase" to learn 22 manipulating tricks!!))
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