Speaking of Israel...

[Greyblades]

You mean I'm not already a proud, stubborn asshole?

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.

As politics have shown us time and again there are plenty of ways for the budding psychopath to cause mysery to his fellow man without incurring a corrective response from society. The way I see it the entire concept is nhilistic, "the soul is the deulsion of the brain, nothing really matters" which would be fine if it couldnt easily turn into: "so lets get rich off the misery of others".

Each benefit you predict coming from I see as easily coming without it, boiled down it looks like yet another hollow, yet pervasive, justification for the selfish to rationalise being selfish. I loath everything about it and yet I cant dismiss it completely because I don't have the confidence in my own capacity to disprove it.

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.

I fear I am getting to the limits of ability to remember the twists and turns this conversation have taken over the last week, one more post and I might end up forgetting how we ended up talking about alternate universes.

The soul being a point of contention that 2000 years have yet to solve, lets forget the certainty of him being you and instead look at him as a potential doppleganger. This man of his era is a sexist, racist, homophobic bigot, he has not been touched by the aftermath of two world wars and thus is ignorant to the potential harm his views could cause his fellow man.

Less philisophical: he lives in dirt and defecates into his main source of drinking water, his family has likely lost most of it's children at birth and by his 20th birthday his bilogical mother likely died in childbirth.

If I remember correctly this started out as a wish that the industrial revolution never happened, so you, the 21st century man with the consequences of predjudice fully etched on your psyche and a penchant for hygene utterly alien to this man, do you A) want this man to be considered you and B) do you really believe you would want to trade places with him?

I might be remembering it wrong, and instead of a wish for the industrial revolution to never have happened you merely wish that someone else achieved industrialisation first, in which case I wonder what I was thinking when I replied to it.

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.

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.

Everything good germany did and everything it has done since cannot be counted as beneficial because between 1936 and 1945 men who you do not know and are only marginally related to committed atrocities that had been done many times in history by many people including the ones now condemning you. Anything any german ever did or will do deserves to be dismissed with a callous wave towards a 9 year period. Why you and not everyone else who comitted atrocities? Because you are german and you are monsters.

The twinge of guilt and shame I felt while writing that blatantly wrong paragraph is likely miniscule to the amount of rage and indignation that you felt and that anyone would feel if I had replaced German with British/American/French/Dutch/Ukranian/Norwegian/Turkish/whatever group the reader considers him/herself. In my understanding of the world there is no human alive or dead who would not feel anything when thier nation, state, county, villiage or tribe is insulted. It might be dulled through repetition, ignored through logic or brushed off, and being able to resist showing it affected you and not retaliating is be something to congratulate. To claim you felt nothing at any level however is frankly impossible for me to comprehend, especially because in the 6 years I have observed your veneer of unflappability crumble on occasion.

And nazi insults are just a last resort that usually comes up when they have no actual argument anyway.

That's because it's overused, it's easy to ignore, though when there is a element of truth even that overused insult can sting, and the embarrassing prevelance of nazi sympathies in 1930's britain might actually hit that insecurity in an oxfordian.

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.

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?

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

As you might have noticed my last post was half reply half introspection; the concept of pride in the thing that raised me being one of the things I was rethinking. I mean it's obviously founded in emotion, but that doesnt exactly detract from it's prelevance. I feel, like fear, it should be controled but to ignore it completely would be detrimental.
I'll get back to you, but dont expect me to shed it completely.