7 ms·

Revising it to "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my existing system of values to get what I want" makes it less pithy.

neumann_alfred 14y ago
I mean this tongue-in-cheek, but.. that is still compatible with Mao: I am everything. Everything exists for me. I have only an obligation towards myself, not towards others. I am only responsible for my own reality, not for past or future. I am only responsible for that which I know. I have my needs and I follow them. This is the way great heroes live. -- Mao Tse Tung in an essay he wrote as student (describing his system of values I guess) I don't mean to say everybody who wants something is evil. But I think by definition we always think what we want is justified, that the wanting itself is justification enough. Therefore I want to know why I want things, and what to want, if anything.. I am willing to think 24/7 to achieve that. Beyond that, it depends.. Some of the things in life I wanted the most I'm now really really glad I didn't get. Growth is a slow process that never ends, and even at age 90 I might want things that might seem bad 20 years later. So yeah, go for it, but take it with a grain of salt as you do.. winners never quit; but only a rock never changes or expands goals, and that ain't quitting. Sometimes you can achieve 100% success by not wanting something anymore and actually be better off for it.
- Volpe 14y ago
  Wait... Are you saying Mao is evil? Are you summing up all his actions, and written works with one quote from one essay... He wrote when he was young? And some how it's evil?
  - neumann_alfred 14y ago
    Evil being subjective, my answer is "fuck yeah". Stalin and him were full of it.
    - pretoriusB 14y ago
      Evil is a BS theological notion. I wish people would stop perpetuating it. People act. Sometimes they do things that hurt other people. But they are not "evil". Including serial killers: they can be mentally ill (physiologically), or have severe psychological problems because of childhood abuse and such. Hitler, for example, was the elected leader of a huge country, with a grassroots following for years. Millions of people agreed with his actions, and thousands in upper echelons helped him execute his ideas. From the persecution of the Jews to the invasion to other countries, all of those ideas were quite popular in German thinking and public dialogue for decades before Hitler. It's not as if he was some evil creature emerged from nowhere and fooled everybody. More to the point, nobody calls the leaders of the allies evil, despite they having done equally abominable actions, like killing 250.000 civillians (men, women, elderly, children, babies, kittens et al) with two nuclear bombs, or bombing hundreds of thousands of civillians in Dresden to shreds. But they are not called "evil", because they were on "our" side, and because they won and so official history (never far away from state sponsoring) accepted their justifications. How about the bloodshed that was the colonial era? European powers killed, enslaved and exploited a BILLION people, in their countries that they invaded and conquerer. Were they "evil"? That would make every leader of those countries at the time to be equal to Hitler * 10. Not to mention socially established wrong-doing, like people in the South having millions of blacks as slaves, abducted from their villages in Africa. Were the thousands of South slave owners "evil"? Stalin and Mao are another kind of thing. Their rule led to millions of deaths, but it's not like they enjoyed killing people (as is probably the understanding of naive people calling them 'evil'). Part of the massacres were result of the inevitable power plays in huge countries with hundreds of millions population under a revolution (or regime change) -- the same way that 50.000 people were executed in the French Revolution.
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
        So you can be objectively 'ill' but not 'evil'? Sounds like you're handling your own pile of BS. 'severe psychological problems' that cause people to deeply hurt others for their own happiness is within spitting distance of a definition of evil. Also I'm not going to get deep into your halfassed retelling of history but (per capita) genocide is worse than murder is worse than bombing cities is worse than bombing armies is worse than enslaving people is worse than exploiting people. So stop trying to fucking godwin with incomparable numbers. Some of those people were evil but I am not going to go point-by-point with that mess.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Mao killed millions of people. That's evil. Period.
    - tatsuke95 14y ago
      No, the bad policies of a government, with Mao at the helm, led to the deaths of millions of people. Ted Bundy killed people. There's a difference.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > Are you saying Mao is evil? Mao is evil to roughly the same extent Hitler is evil.
    - tatsuke95 14y ago
      Where do you slot the various members of the American or British political administrations into that line-up? Does it go by how many people they killed? Or is killing one person enough?
      - derleth 14y ago
        > Does it go by how many people they killed? A combination of number and method. Death camps, for example, count very heavily, as do things like deliberate starvation. The intent to exterminate should also be factored in, but that's frequently difficult to determine after the fact. Of course, none of this matters to people who simply want to make a moral equivalence between every leader of every country through history; my rule of thumb is, when you're feeling morally conflicted about who 'should have' won the Normandy invasion in 1944, your morality is a bit off-kilter.
        tatsuke95 14y ago
        >"do things like deliberate starvation." So putting pressure on international bodies to enforce crippling sanctions should count, right? >my rule of thumb is, when you're feeling morally conflicted about who 'should have' won the Normandy invasion in 1944, your morality is a bit off-kilter. My rule of thumb is: when you assume that all "our" killing is for "good" and "their's" is for "evil" your morality (as well as your knowledge of history) is off-kilter.
        derleth 14y ago
        > So putting pressure on international bodies to enforce crippling sanctions should count, right? You really want that moral equivalence, don't you? OK, OK, Bill Clinton is Literally Stalin. Next, we equate Gandhi and Pol Pot. Happy?
- shantanubala 14y ago
  Agreed. My main point was just that "doing whatever it takes" in this context does not mean sacrificing your values, because your values are definitely part of your original goals to begin with. If you value being flexible or adaptable, then you will certainly expand your goals and change things along the way. But the one thing that should never change is the vigor with which you pursue your goals (you should take breaks, rest, etc., but breaks and rest are arguably also just ways to optimize the pursuit of a goal). And I agree with you, Mao was quite evil, and it would require a very twisted set of goals to lead to the death toll of his regime.
- dullcrisp 14y ago
  "I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want" sounds more like a slogan for cultivating motivation. It doesn't say "I am unwilling to reflect on or revise what it is that I want," just that one is willing to work as hard as it takes to achieve one's goals.
pretoriusB 14y ago
"within my existing system of values"? Yes, that would also work well for Charles Manson... I'd rather hear it like: "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my society's system of values to live a good life, help people, and get some of the things I want".

neumann_alfred 14y ago

I mean this tongue-in-cheek, but.. that is still compatible with Mao: I am everything. Everything exists for me. I have only an obligation towards myself, not towards others. I am only responsible for my own reality, not for past or future. I am only responsible for that which I know. I have my needs and I follow them. This is the way great heroes live. -- Mao Tse Tung in an essay he wrote as student (describing his system of values I guess) I don't mean to say everybody who wants something is evil. But I think by definition we always think what we want is justified, that the wanting itself is justification enough. Therefore I want to know why I want things, and what to want, if anything.. I am willing to think 24/7 to achieve that. Beyond that, it depends.. Some of the things in life I wanted the most I'm now really really glad I didn't get. Growth is a slow process that never ends, and even at age 90 I might want things that might seem bad 20 years later. So yeah, go for it, but take it with a grain of salt as you do.. winners never quit; but only a rock never changes or expands goals, and that ain't quitting. Sometimes you can achieve 100% success by not wanting something anymore and actually be better off for it.

Volpe 14y ago
Wait... Are you saying Mao is evil? Are you summing up all his actions, and written works with one quote from one essay... He wrote when he was young? And some how it's evil?
- neumann_alfred 14y ago
  Evil being subjective, my answer is "fuck yeah". Stalin and him were full of it.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    Evil is a BS theological notion. I wish people would stop perpetuating it. People act. Sometimes they do things that hurt other people. But they are not "evil". Including serial killers: they can be mentally ill (physiologically), or have severe psychological problems because of childhood abuse and such. Hitler, for example, was the elected leader of a huge country, with a grassroots following for years. Millions of people agreed with his actions, and thousands in upper echelons helped him execute his ideas. From the persecution of the Jews to the invasion to other countries, all of those ideas were quite popular in German thinking and public dialogue for decades before Hitler. It's not as if he was some evil creature emerged from nowhere and fooled everybody. More to the point, nobody calls the leaders of the allies evil, despite they having done equally abominable actions, like killing 250.000 civillians (men, women, elderly, children, babies, kittens et al) with two nuclear bombs, or bombing hundreds of thousands of civillians in Dresden to shreds. But they are not called "evil", because they were on "our" side, and because they won and so official history (never far away from state sponsoring) accepted their justifications. How about the bloodshed that was the colonial era? European powers killed, enslaved and exploited a BILLION people, in their countries that they invaded and conquerer. Were they "evil"? That would make every leader of those countries at the time to be equal to Hitler * 10. Not to mention socially established wrong-doing, like people in the South having millions of blacks as slaves, abducted from their villages in Africa. Were the thousands of South slave owners "evil"? Stalin and Mao are another kind of thing. Their rule led to millions of deaths, but it's not like they enjoyed killing people (as is probably the understanding of naive people calling them 'evil'). Part of the massacres were result of the inevitable power plays in huge countries with hundreds of millions population under a revolution (or regime change) -- the same way that 50.000 people were executed in the French Revolution.
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      So you can be objectively 'ill' but not 'evil'? Sounds like you're handling your own pile of BS. 'severe psychological problems' that cause people to deeply hurt others for their own happiness is within spitting distance of a definition of evil. Also I'm not going to get deep into your halfassed retelling of history but (per capita) genocide is worse than murder is worse than bombing cities is worse than bombing armies is worse than enslaving people is worse than exploiting people. So stop trying to fucking godwin with incomparable numbers. Some of those people were evil but I am not going to go point-by-point with that mess.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Mao killed millions of people. That's evil. Period.
  - tatsuke95 14y ago
    No, the bad policies of a government, with Mao at the helm, led to the deaths of millions of people. Ted Bundy killed people. There's a difference.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Are you saying Mao is evil? Mao is evil to roughly the same extent Hitler is evil.
  - tatsuke95 14y ago
    Where do you slot the various members of the American or British political administrations into that line-up? Does it go by how many people they killed? Or is killing one person enough?
    - derleth 14y ago
      > Does it go by how many people they killed? A combination of number and method. Death camps, for example, count very heavily, as do things like deliberate starvation. The intent to exterminate should also be factored in, but that's frequently difficult to determine after the fact. Of course, none of this matters to people who simply want to make a moral equivalence between every leader of every country through history; my rule of thumb is, when you're feeling morally conflicted about who 'should have' won the Normandy invasion in 1944, your morality is a bit off-kilter.
      - tatsuke95 14y ago
        >"do things like deliberate starvation." So putting pressure on international bodies to enforce crippling sanctions should count, right? >my rule of thumb is, when you're feeling morally conflicted about who 'should have' won the Normandy invasion in 1944, your morality is a bit off-kilter. My rule of thumb is: when you assume that all "our" killing is for "good" and "their's" is for "evil" your morality (as well as your knowledge of history) is off-kilter.
        derleth 14y ago
        > So putting pressure on international bodies to enforce crippling sanctions should count, right? You really want that moral equivalence, don't you? OK, OK, Bill Clinton is Literally Stalin. Next, we equate Gandhi and Pol Pot. Happy?
shantanubala 14y ago
Agreed. My main point was just that "doing whatever it takes" in this context does not mean sacrificing your values, because your values are definitely part of your original goals to begin with. If you value being flexible or adaptable, then you will certainly expand your goals and change things along the way. But the one thing that should never change is the vigor with which you pursue your goals (you should take breaks, rest, etc., but breaks and rest are arguably also just ways to optimize the pursuit of a goal). And I agree with you, Mao was quite evil, and it would require a very twisted set of goals to lead to the death toll of his regime.
dullcrisp 14y ago
"I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want" sounds more like a slogan for cultivating motivation. It doesn't say "I am unwilling to reflect on or revise what it is that I want," just that one is willing to work as hard as it takes to achieve one's goals.

pretoriusB 14y ago

"within my existing system of values"? Yes, that would also work well for Charles Manson... I'd rather hear it like: "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my society's system of values to live a good life, help people, and get some of the things I want".