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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 som

by 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.
    - pretoriusB 14y ago
      >So you can be objectively 'ill' but not 'evil'? Yes. Mental illness is something that can be objectively examined and testified by medical experts. "Evil" is a BS non medical pulp journalism term that takes us back to the witch-hunting days... >'severe psychological problems' that cause people to deeply hurt others for their own happiness is within spitting distance of a definition of evil. Only one is a SPECIFIC case of an actual mental evaluation by a professional and the other is a word that can used to mean anything. >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. Really? Do you want to go tell the victims of slavery that they were better off than the victims of German's genocide? Including the tens of millions of people that died under slavery? And that their suffering is somewhat "not comparable" to Germany's victims. Let's see how they'll take your fair and balanced ordering of what's better and what's worse. Oh, and that "per capita genocide"? Plenty of it in the hands of European powers too. Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
        I meant that everything was per capita, sorry for being unclear there. As in: kill two million people as part of genocide and it's worse than having two million slaves. And yes I'll tell standard slaves they have it better than far worse treatment combined with starvation and followed by execution. You really think they'll disagree? Slavery may kill you early but it's no death camp. Also I don't know why you're acting like giving more examples of evil acts is going to make me decide the word evil is useless.
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?

by 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.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    >So you can be objectively 'ill' but not 'evil'? Yes. Mental illness is something that can be objectively examined and testified by medical experts. "Evil" is a BS non medical pulp journalism term that takes us back to the witch-hunting days... >'severe psychological problems' that cause people to deeply hurt others for their own happiness is within spitting distance of a definition of evil. Only one is a SPECIFIC case of an actual mental evaluation by a professional and the other is a word that can used to mean anything. >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. Really? Do you want to go tell the victims of slavery that they were better off than the victims of German's genocide? Including the tens of millions of people that died under slavery? And that their suffering is somewhat "not comparable" to Germany's victims. Let's see how they'll take your fair and balanced ordering of what's better and what's worse. Oh, and that "per capita genocide"? Plenty of it in the hands of European powers too. Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      I meant that everything was per capita, sorry for being unclear there. As in: kill two million people as part of genocide and it's worse than having two million slaves. And yes I'll tell standard slaves they have it better than far worse treatment combined with starvation and followed by execution. You really think they'll disagree? Slavery may kill you early but it's no death camp. Also I don't know why you're acting like giving more examples of evil acts is going to make me decide the word evil is useless.

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?