#monday_queue

[mitigatedchaos]

There are three important questions when it comes to war (and political violence in general):

Can this problem be solved without a war?

Can a war actually solve this problem?

If this problem is solved with a war, will it stay solved?

People who openly support political violence are often wrong about at least one of these three, sometimes more than one.

[mitigatedchaos]

For this test, please zoom in to view the image at a larger size and have a look at it before answering.

My personal feeling is that something about AI-generated images makes them uncomfortable to look at when observing the details, but I'm not sure if I'm just imagining it. I usually try to make the "AI Generated" stamp large enough so that it's always within the field of view while looking at an AI-generated image, but for this test, I have deliberately made it much smaller.

How comfortable is this image to look at?

5 - very comfortable

4 - comfortable

3 - somewhere in-between

2 - uncomfortable

1 - very uncomfortable

show results

Voting ended on3h

Replies, reblogs, and comments are welcome.

[mitigatedchaos]

Reading through George Washington's Farewell Address (for the 250th, as one does)...

The unity of government which constitutes you [as] one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. ...you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to [your national Union]... Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism...

There is an implicit distinction, here: the individual and the country (his society) are of different kinds.

An individual is quite limited in what he can do to secure his own liberty. If he has to fight an enemy dictator and all of that enemy's men alone, then he is likely to lose. Human beings depend on the knowledge and resources of others, including the knowledge and resources of the past, which are passed on to them; without those, a lone man can do very little.

A country can fight an enemy army successfully. Likewise, a society can create an environment within which liberty can be exercised. However, a country cannot exercise or enjoy liberty, because a country is not a person.

Washington, it would seem, believes in a relationship between citizen and country which is reciprocal and non-totalizing. The country does what a country is good at, and the citizen does what a citizen is good at, and the two support each other. Thus, a man can owe something to his society without owing everything to his society; the work of a man's hands is his own work, while society provides positioning and leverage that make that work go farther.

Society, hierarchy, and laws are always shifting; they cannot be made or kept good through mindless loyalty. Thus, true patriotism requires "affection" – genuine cooperation.