[PassedOut]

Although the murder was on a lesser scale, the subway bombings in Moscow today reminded of my feelings on September 11, 2001. The world must get beyond this kind of thing.

A big part of that, in my opinion, is working toward a world where men and women see enough value in living to make suicide bombing unthinkable.

[luke warm]

PassedOut, on Mar 29 2010, 02:07 PM, said:

Although the murder was on a lesser scale, the subway bombings in Moscow today reminded of my feelings on September 11, 2001. The world must get beyond this kind of thing.

A big part of that, in my opinion, is working toward a world where men and women see enough value in living to make suicide bombing unthinkable.

they do, as long as the 'worth living' part is 'worth living as i say you should live'

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on Mar 29 2010, 02:47 PM, said:

they do, as long as the 'worth living' part is 'worth living as i say you should live'

Why would they care about living the way you say they should live? Does that make any sense?

[jnichols]

PassedOut, on Mar 29 2010, 04:10 PM, said:

luke warm, on Mar 29 2010, 02:47 PM, said:

they do, as long as the 'worth living' part is 'worth living as i say you should live'

Why would they care about living the way you say they should live? Does that make any sense?

Of course "they" don't.
And that difference of opinion is precisely the source of the problem of getting "beyound that sort of thing."

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on Mar 29 2010, 02:07 PM, said:

A big part of that, in my opinion, is working toward a world where men and women see enough value in living to make suicide bombing unthinkable.

This will, in fact, never happen. It is easy to imagine the suicide bomber thinking of his action as noble. This has nothing whatsoever to do with agreeing with his views, it is rather that we must try to understand what possibly could deter, or at least slow down, future attacks. By far the best, I think, would be if they came to think of their action as pursuing a lost cause. As of the moment, there is little reason for them to see it that way. They give their life for the greater good of empowerment of their cause. Who would argue that they are failing? If a bearded airline passenger opens a copy of the Koran and starts moving his lips, everyone else pisses their pants. Quite an accomplishment for some little nobody blowing up a bomb somewhere.

[helene_t]

Agree with Ken.

It would be even be better if something could be done to reduce the hatred that some moslems have towards the West but that is easier said than done.

[luke warm]

PassedOut, on Mar 29 2010, 03:10 PM, said:

luke warm, on Mar 29 2010, 02:47 PM, said:

they do, as long as the 'worth living' part is 'worth living as i say you should live'

Why would they care about living the way you say they should live? Does that make any sense?

i think you may have misunderstood my post...

[Jlall]

PassedOut, on Mar 29 2010, 02:07 PM, said:

A big part of that, in my opinion, is working toward a world where men and women see enough value in living to make suicide bombing unthinkable.

You seriously think this will ever be achievable, or are you just talking in theory?

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on Mar 29 2010, 04:07 PM, said:

Quite an accomplishment for some little nobody blowing up a bomb somewhere.

I'm not sure who were the women who did this, possibly some of the "black widows." I'm sure many Russians agree that harsher treatment is the solution.

When I was a kid, we didn't worry much about suicide bombers. I doubt that muslims were treated more harshly then.

[PassedOut]

Jlall, on Mar 29 2010, 04:57 PM, said:

PassedOut, on Mar 29 2010, 02:07 PM, said:

A big part of that, in my opinion, is working toward a world where men and women see enough value in living to make suicide bombing unthinkable.

You seriously think this will ever be achievable, or are you just talking in theory?

By "working toward" I didn't mean to imply that better conditions could stamp out terrorism completely. However, terrorists are known to seek out people who see nothing to live for to carry out suicide operations. I think that reducing the size of that group is an important aspect of reducing terrorism.

I do agree that tough measures are also appropriate, but I don't really see any shortage of those. And I've seen little focus on the former, except possibly from General McChrystal in Afghanistan.

[Winstonm]

Quote

A big part of that, in my opinion, is working toward a world where men and women see enough value in living to make suicide bombing unthinkable.

The only reason people believe they have some right to modify the actions of others is based on a dogma of infallability of their beliefs. This means that the only method to defeat them is to destroy their beliefs - but to argue that we can destroy their fairy-tale beliefs by substituting our own better fairy-tale beliefs is simply dumb, magical thinking. To believe we can bring the American way of life to those who neither want it nor believe it to be right is another expression of the hubris of American Exceptionalism thinking.

The only way to overcome theist threats is to convert both sides to atheistic understanding that the infallible magic fairy in the sky isn't real.

Nothing to live or die for
Above us only blue.
Imagine.

[spotlight7]

Hi:

The Japanese used thousands of suicide bombers in world war II.

There has been at least one war on this planet
for at least the past couple of thousand years.

As long as a nation or group of people decides to wage
war or use terror attacks this problem will continue.

America used fire bomb attacks to burn out both Japanese and Germany cities.
I have little doubt that if America had lost WWII,
those attacks would have been labeled as terror attacks.

If you really believe that only the poor wage war,
consider Germany just prior to WWII.

Alexander the Great was not poor, he just wanted to conquer the known world.

The Russians might find out who unleased the attack in their subway.
I suspect what their reply might be 'if' they learn the ID of the mastermind.

Regards,
Robert

[Mbodell]

I think there is some chance that we'll eventually have world peace, in terms of no more wars, but think it would take far longer and be far less likely to have no violence.

Wars tend to be against organized "us" versus organized "them" and as communications and trade have helped to expand the size of the "us" we have less "them" to blame. Eventually we may have a world gov't and feel that everyone is as much a part of "us" as people feel their fellow patriotic citizens are today. I think you can see that slow transition at the 20,000 foot view in the sense that it used to be families fighting families, then it was cities fighting cities, then it was country fighting county, then it was groups of countries fighting groups of countries. So a natural progression suggests eventually we think globally enough that we are good for no more wars.

But crazy people with guns or bombs or what not committing violent acts of murder and/or terror? We have those inside countries for lots of different reasons and it is harder to imagine that going away.

[blackshoe]

You presume that we'll never get off this planet. One can only hope you're wrong about that.

[gwnn]

what's wrong with this planet? the designer of it even got an award for the Norwegian fjords...

[helene_t]

blackshoe, on Mar 30 2010, 08:39 AM, said:

You presume that we'll never get off this planet. One can only hope you're wrong about that.

Disagree. I think this is by far the best planet in the solar system. All the others are either too hot or too cold.

[shyams]

helene_t, on Mar 30 2010, 09:46 AM, said:

blackshoe, on Mar 30 2010, 08:39 AM, said:

You presume that we'll never get off this planet. One can only hope you're wrong about that.

Disagree. I think this is by far the best planet in the solar system. All the others are either too hot or too cold.

We could light up Jupiter and make it the 2nd sun and then live on Titan

[helene_t]

I think a more realistic option would be to store all our souls on a computer, program it to simulate some fairy planet like Pandora from Avatar, equip it with nuclear fuel enough to power it for a billion years, and then ship it to deep space so that the Iranian missiles can't reach it.

But Mikeh told me that that's impossible so I guess we are stuck with the Earth.

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Mar 30 2010, 04:55 AM, said:

I think a more realistic option would be to store all our souls on a computer, program it to simulate some fairy planet like Pandora from Avatar, equip it with nuclear fuel enough to power it for a billion years, and then ship it to deep space so that the Iranian missiles can't reach it.

But Mikeh told me that that's impossible so I guess we are stuck with the Earth.

did he happen to mention why it's impossible?

[helene_t]

luke warm, on Mar 30 2010, 01:26 PM, said:

helene_t, on Mar 30 2010, 04:55 AM, said:

I think a more realistic option would be to store all our souls on a computer, program it to simulate some fairy planet like Pandora from Avatar, equip it with nuclear fuel enough to power it for a billion years, and then ship it to deep space so that the Iranian missiles can't reach it.

But Mikeh told me that that's impossible so I guess we are stuck with the Earth.

did he happen to mention why it's impossible?

I think his case was the same as the one made by Jeff Hawkins: http://en.wikipedia....On_Intelligence