Refining one of Stefan's Principles

[Bennbo]

Hello all,

 

I am new to the forums so forgive me if this topic has been addressed previosuly.

 

 

 

I have watched a couple hundred hours of Stefan's videos on youtube and continuously hear the following paraphrased principle: "any objective that you attempt to achieve by violence will end up achieving the opposite"

 

Technically this statement is incorrect. I believe a more accurate version would be something along the lines of:  "any morally good objective you try to achieve through violence will produce the opposite".

 

It may just be semantics, but history has proven that violence can be used to successfully achieve a variety of morally deplorable goals; When the state attempts to achieve more slavery/death/genocide through force, it is typically sucessful.

 

I'm excited to be joining the community and I hope this first post isn't a complete failure.

 

Thoughts?

 

~Bennbo

[Kevin Beal]

Makes sense to me

 

I think I remember the context of one time that principle was expressed being in reference to the ostensible goals of government programs. Like using violence to bring people out of poverty and that sort of thing.

 

But I think something worth noting is that Stef has said that he doesn't actually believe the goal of these sorts of social programs is to bring people out of poverty, but rather to grow the dependent classes. But, obviously, the nationalist patriotic voting population isn't going to be rallying themselves behind a goal like that. So from the perspective of the ruling class, it is achieving it's goals, but not from the perspective of the, ... less intelligent masses (am I being too nice? haha).

 

At least, that was my recollection.

 

And pretty much everyone turns their immorality into some kind of virtue. I'm sure the ruling classes have their own grandiose vision of things that paints them as good guys.

 

I think your addition is good since it matters whether or not it's actually a moral good rather than the grandiose hallucinations of narcissists and sociopaths.

[Ruben Zandstra]

 

Hi Bennbo, welcome

 

"When the state attempts to achieve more slavery/death/genocide through force, it is typically successful."

 

I see your point. I'm curious though if you have any actual examples of states openly advocating goals such as "genocide" and "slavery". 

To my knowledge it's all usually heavily shrouded in ideological language and propaganda( keeping the race "pure", cleansing, taking what belongs to our deity, saving souls, equality etc )

Only in history, as documented by the eventual conqueror, will the propaganda be exposed, and replaced with propaganda of it's own ( state X was *really* all about more slavery/ death / genocide, that's why we enslaved and sent your grandparents to their deaths in order to conquer them). So the goals as defined by the violent state itself is what has to be looked at in my opinion.

 

On a personal level I think your refinement fails

If I use violence to prevent a rape ( which is morally good), I might fail. But it's hard to conceive how I would achieve the opposite of my stated goal.