Speaking of Israel...

[Husar]

The idea of the human automaton is a concept that I have heard several times in the last few years and it is a concept that causes both rage and despair in me. Despair because I find it a most horrible idea that would drive me to suicide if I bought into it completely, and it is at a level of complexity that I cannot refute with confidence. It causes Rage because I know that if and when it becomes mainstream there will be a influx of little shits who will see that idea as permission to ignore thier already weak conscience and cause misery because they now believe they have no real responsibility for thier actions.

Correction: further influx of little shits.

But nothing would change, responsibility would still exist because we still wouldn't want troublemakers to roam around freely. Even today responsibility of individuals only exists either in theory or if the rest of society actually holds people responsible through force. And none of that would change. If you hit me in the face, society will lock you up, whether you made a free decision or whether your brain was wired that way. What might change could be the ideas and efforts to reprogram the brains of troublemakers in order to rewire them into society-compliant individuals. I'm sure you like that idea.

It is the point where the word's influence ends and yours begins that is the question that overhangs the issue, you in that world may make similar decisions in his life, giving to the poor or tolerating a sibiling's antics (insert your actual life here) but he would not be you because he did not grow up in the surroundings of a united industrial Germany, he wouldnt bristle as you do if I called him a nazi or feel a glow if I compared him to Bismark, because neither would have been anywher near as prevelant in his understanding of the world(if they existed at all) if humanity never progressed from the semi feudalism of the 18th century.
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I choose to believe that the instinctual thought and past experience (experience observed not learnt through academia) is down to you surroundings but you who chooses what actions you take in response to those thoughts, the choice betwen punching or ignoring an offending person is what makes the soul.

But if there is a soul that is me, then even the Feudal Husar with my soul would be me, even though his body and mind may be different, he would be me, and there would be no alternative to prove otherwise. It's only when you take away the soul that a different development of body and mind would lead to a different me, because the mind is what basically makes me me then.
As for what you choose to believe, the way you phrase your post, it is not a choice in any way, more like a reaction you have for fear of the alternative. In other words, input -> existing wiring -> output. Fear would even be one of the most basic animalistic reactions where it is pretty much scientifically proven that that part of the brain where fear-induced decisions are made can hardly be said to make any logical decisions based on throrough deliberation. It's like saying the rabbit chose to run away from the wolf. You'd hardly take that as the prime example of free choice.

Oh and that part about me bristling is a lie, not sure where you got that from. I used to get angry when people called me gay, but nowadays I'm okay with both for the most part since what other people call me does not change who I am.

As for pride, a lot of my reactions are probably irrational, in the vein of a university rivalry. You might have only joined Oxford yesterday and you might not believe yourself better than camebridge students but when your institute is accused of nazi sympathies by a cambridge student because in the 1930's oxford might have included some nazis, (that Cambridge most likely did as well) rational thought isn't going stop you being hurt by it because through even the slightest association with the college's past you identify insults to the whole as an insult to you.

No, why? My current university is not very prominent, but I take neither pride nor shame from that and would rather rate it by the things I am taught. If I learn something useful and logical, then that's great, certainly better than basically buying your degree in some prestigious institution that gives grades based on how much money your daddy paid for the library.
A lot of the other things people learn at successful universities are about how to manipulate others into thinking you're great because that is what you mostly learned at your university.
And nazi insults are just a last resort that usually comes up when they have no actual argument anyway.

I like to believe I am not dumb enough to think being a part of what I see as the best whole makes me instantly better than the parts of other wholes. The hope is that through being the end product of the assumed best institute we call the british nation (harder and harder to assume these days, damn germany making the rest of us actually work for our laurels) I have been given an advantage over the others but I prefer to think it is what you do with that advantage that proves superiority between individuals. Sad to say, haven't been using my advantage to the fullest, yet. I'm still going to get defensive when the source of that advantage is degraded, rightly or no.

But what does that mean? Does it mean that you can rightfully feel superior to the Africans whose lives you ruined as a successful investment banker by gaining food subsidies that let your clients undermine the profit of local African farmers?
Is that making the best out of the advantage you were given? Or is it dismantling the superiority of your own nation over others in order to allow others to rise and have a better life as well? Or something in between?

Then Rory_20_UK comes along and not only kicks the idea that the superior institution has survived into the present to the curb, he also destroyed the defense mechanism of assuming jealosy of the detractor. A wake up call that kicked me into an existential panic and is still making me rethink a lot of things.

As I said before, panic and fear are bad advisors for rational thought because they completely circumvent it.