4 ms·
While Standpoint is culturally conservative, the way you've worded it implies that because it is British it necessarily mean that it is culturally conservative.
by mprev 7y ago
While Standpoint is culturally conservative, the way you've worded it implies that because it is British it necessarily mean that it is culturally conservative. A version of this could equally have appeared in a publication from any English speaking nation.
However, the author -- Theodore Dalrymple (not his real name) -- is a particularly interesting character.
He is almost exclusively pessimistic about humanity, with a particular dislike of anyone less fortunate than himself. He seems to believe that everyone ends up in life where they deserve, taking to an extreme the idea of personal responsibility, and draws on his experience as a prison doctor to try to excuse his writing career of finding ever new ways to look down on others.
- thom 7y agoNot sure why you’re being downvoted, I see no misinformation here.
- InitialLastName 7y ago> He seems to believe that everyone ends up in life where they deserve This is posed as a bad thing, but there are lots of people on this site who tell themselves this very thing.
- thom 7y agoThen I very much hope they do indeed get what they deserve.
- badpun 7y agoA world where everybody gets what they deserve is a just world - is that so bad?
- InitialLastName 7y agoI'd say that depends very much on who decides who deserves what. Justice is inherently malleable and subjective. It's a thing we humans (as a society) decide to do to one another. As far as I can tell, it tends to lag the scales we're operating at.
- badpun 7y agoI'm assuming it would happen automatically - i.e. people would be judged by all-knowing and impartial external parties (angels, aliens etc.) - otherwise of course it cannot happen, i.e. of course people alone can never implement true justice. As for defining what is just - this is obviously a huge subject studied by philosophers - but I'm assuming that, if we had these all-knowing judges, they could just assess (by scanning thoughts of people) how hard everybody is trying to do good to others. And this way, we would be living in a just world. To repeat my question - would that be so bad?
- hprotagonist 7y agoYes.
- DanBC 7y agoTo support your point, here's the wikipedia article about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple > Regarding his pseudonym "Theodore Dalrymple", he wrote that he "chose a name that sounded suitably dyspeptic, that of a gouty old man looking out of the window of his London club, port in hand, lamenting the degenerating state of the world"