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Oppressor or Oppressed. You chose.

02:48 / 19.12.01

Which would you rather be?
There's no other option.

03:43 / 19.12.01

If everyone is offered a choice, both catagories become meaningless.

06:05 / 19.12.01

And why, anyway, would someone actually choose to be oppressed? What exactly do you perceive to be the benefits of that?

06:12 / 19.12.01

Some people have these funny ideas, called "ethics". It's weird, I know, but they might have this strange feeling it's bad to be an oppressor.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

06:12 / 19.12.01

If you're the oppressor, of course, you can choose the kind of oppression you go in for. So you could oppress someone and make them be democratic and humanitarian, or force them to stop beating their wives.

On the other hand, if someone oppresses you, you don't get the choice. And of course, you have no power to stop others from being oppressed.

Hence my response in the 'Come the Glorious revolution' thread: I said I'd be minister for genocide and political violence. That way I know there won't ever actually be any.

So, since I don't trust any of you lot to oppress me nicely, I'll take the oppressor slot.

And as for the ethics of the thing...which is the more ethical choice: to decide to be oppressed in order to have the moral high ground, or to sacrifice the moral high ground in order to impose absolute limits on the oppression?

11:01 / 19.12.01

Paging the Grand Inquisitor...Grand Inquisitor, please come to the conceierge desk...

11:06 / 19.12.01

Oppressor, but I'd want the Oppressed to like me too. Maybe if I tell 'em I know best and it's for their own good...

Hang on, that's what I do already!

11:21 / 19.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Dread Pirate Crunchy:
Some people have these funny ideas, called "ethics". It's weird, I know, but they might have this strange feeling it's bad to be an oppressor.

Sure, and in the normal run of events, I would absolutely hate to be an oppressor, either wilfully or unknowingly. But, given the scenario of only being able to choose between Oppressor or Oppressed, I'd have to say 'no thanks' to the idea of being oppressed.

If you'd still, within the dictates of the question, choose to be oppressed because your ethical beliefs impell you to, well, then, your ethics beat my ethics up.

And, again, I'm still wondering why, given the choice, someone would choose to be oppressed. Ethical compulsion? I'd be interested in hearing SMatthewStolte's reasoning behind presenting the choice.

11:30 / 19.12.01

Nietzsche on Christianity?

02:25 / 20.12.01

quote:Originally posted by sumo:

And, again, I'm still wondering why, given the choice, someone would choose to be oppressed. Ethical compulsion? I'd be interested in hearing SMatthewStolte's reasoning behind presenting the choice.

I've been on this idea, based mostly on personal experience, that certain things are bad for the soul. Love is better for me than hatred. Generosity is better for me than selfishness, and so on. In a way, the view is entirely selfish, because it's concerned primarily with MY soul, and not really anyone else's except by side effect. To be the oppressed, I would have the chance to forgive the oppressor, and even love hir, because I do not act toward his harm. I feel that if you act to harm another, it makes it more difficult for you to love hir, or care for hir, because you naturally feel the need to justify all your actions. To be oppressed, it may go either way. You might resent being oppressed, or you might realize that their actions only make it more difficult for them to love you, and thus harm them. If this is your view, then even resistance against the injustice inflicted upon you would not be harming anyone. It would actually be, from my view, an attempt to bring their eyes to see what they're doing wrong. The resistance would most likely have to be some form of Satyagraha for this to hold, of course.

I asked the question, because it had come up in a conversation with myself, and I just mentioned it as an obvious point, but then realized that it might not be the preference of everyone. I've been asking my physical friends as well as you folks, and, as yet, no one shares my preference of being the oppressed.

Oh, and the hypothetical situation is more that you and only you get to choose.

02:34 / 20.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Nick:
If you're the oppressor, of course, you can choose the kind of oppression you go in for. So you could oppress someone and make them be democratic and humanitarian, or force them to stop beating their wives.
...

See, despite my last post, I don't have nearly this much faith in myself. I'm thinking I'm the oppressor in this sense: I've grown up with this power, my parents had it and used it, and I've been using it as a matter of course all my life. If I decide to suddenly stop oppressing people, a lot of things would change in my life. It might be something as simple as having to eat in the same restaurants as people I've always thought of as inferior, or it might be substantial luxuries. And, I know I wasn't very specific, but in quite a few instances in history, no one oppressor could really control how bad it got. Just because you're part of the problem doesn't mean you're all of the problem. Which is another excuse I'd probably use to justify not doing anything about it.

02:35 / 20.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Ganesh v4.2:
Oppressor, but I'd want the Oppressed to like me too. Maybe if I tell 'em I know best and it's for their own good...

Hang on, that's what I do already!

elaborate?

12:18 / 20.12.01

Woolly liberal Authoritarian Tool of the State. C'est moi.

Whisky Priestess

14:19 / 21.12.01

As one of the nominally oppressed already, I'd like to put the stiletto on the other foot for a change.

My first act as oppressor would be to make hypocrisy punishable by death.

Fair?

14:21 / 21.12.01

Likely to result in a vast queue of people waiting for M. Guillotine. Almost no one is devoid of that little sin. Hypocrisy is often the hardest failing to identify in oneself.

Whisky Priestess

16:05 / 21.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Dao Jones:
Likely to result in a vast queue of people waiting for M. Guillotine.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

16:50 / 21.12.01

I'm of the opinion that hypocrisy is an under-used virtue, not a failing.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:28 / 21.12.01

I already am an oppressor. I just oppress on a strictly consensual basis.