War -- victor or no victor?

I thought you guys must be interested in reading this: it's an essay of sorts that I wrote for one of my English classes a little while back. Now, the professor didn't weigh the assignment all that heavily, so you'll have to excuse me if it seems a bit terse, or clipped off at the end. I hate it when teachers give you assignments, but they are for bread crumbs, and although you'd love to devote more time to it, you have to be obscenely practical, and cut it short.

Otherwise, let me know what you think.

In War is there a Victor?

People have a lot of different opinions on war. When I say that, I mean everything about it, and of it. Whatever your opinion, you cannot deny that war exists. Can we make war extinct? Can we lessen its incidence? Can we make more war and at the same time come out the better for it? Should we do one of those if we could? Those are all valid questions, but I think the answer, if indeed there is one, is elusive, and beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, let's answer the question of whether there are any "winners", in a combat situation. In order to say that you have won, there must be a stated objective; once you achieve that objective, you have won. In board games, chess especially, it is not hard to determine if someone has won or lost; either someone has declared checkmate and won, or there is a stalemate, tantamount to a "draw", where nobody has won. Interestingly in chess, stalemate can occur even when you have a superior "material" advantage over your opponent; still nobody wins. Clearly, if your perspective is humanity's, in war there is no victor; nobody has won, because war inflicts damage, physical, psychological, and mortal, on humans, by humans, and that violates the objective of humanity to do no harm (Turner Para 7, O'Brien Para 2, Weigl Para 6).

Brian Turner an Iraq war veteran said of the same war, "I cannot believe that the lives lost have been worth the cost (Turner Para 7)." Turner is arguing that the loss of life in the war is too much, compared to the alternative of no war. It might seem on its face a simplistic notion, but if you accept it, then you are accepting the notion that there is overall loss incurred in the Iraq war; there were no victors and there will be none - you'll find this even more intriguing when you consider that the former President and Commander in Chief Bush, also the person most culpable, if not solely so, for the Iraq War, in May 2003, gave a "victory" speech in front of a banner that read "mission accomplished (Murphy Para 1)." At minimum, this shows that the former president's objectives were not aligned with humanity's. But a lone person cannot supplant humanity or subvert its aspirations - the only scenario in which the Iraq war could have a victor.

Tim O'Brien chose to make a very personal account of his life public, in his short story, "The Vietnam in Me." The story is told from a first person vantage point and often refers back and forth between different times and places (O'Brien Para 18). Tim O'Brien as he portrays himself personally, by switching to the present in which he is writing the story - is a shell of a person. He reflects on his state, describing himself as variously depressed, guilty, anxious, and more than anything else he says in describing himself "If war is hell, what we call hopelessness (O'Brien Para 25)?" A large portion of his story is about the My Lai Massacre, an abominable mass-slaughter worthy of only the deepest disgust, perpetrated by American soldiers on the defenseless -- "...whatever could be killed. They killed chickens. They killed dogs and cattle. They killed people, too. Lots of people. Women, infants, teen-agers, old men (O'Brien Para 32)." He reflects on the ignorance of some Americans, which he has had the shame of witnessing firsthand, "In the colleges and high schools I sometimes visit, the mention of My Lai brings on null stares, a sort of puzzlement, disbelief mixed with utter ignorance (Para 37)." In my own experience, the American public is more prone to saying that we have achieved "victory in Iraq", than "victory in Vietnam." It seems the loss of American life is the ultimate determinant of whether a war is "winnable" or not, for America, that is. Did you win by the measure of American casualties being minimal, the others' loss of life unimportant? By that same token, can anyone "win" in a war against America, by their loss of life, their permanently disfigured, their psychologically tormented, being less than a given, with no regard for Americans?

I think the answer to those questions, and the question of whether in war there can be a victor, depends on whether you consider yourself: black, white, brown: American, Iraqi, or Ugandan: rich, middle class, broke: intelligent, ordinary, dull: Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or human first. Do you classify it first as: quarter, nickel, or dime, or money?

Works Cited

Murphy, Jarrett. "'Mission Accomplished' Whodunit." cbsnews.com 2003.

O'Brien, Tim. "The Vietnam in Me." nytimes.com/books 1994.

Turner, Brian. "An Interview with Brian Turner" alicejamesbooks.org 2005.

Weigl, Bruce. "Song of Napalm." poetryfoundation.org 1999.

Nice! Good observations. If the goal is to live long and well, nobody wins a war. Similarly, nobody wins in an accident.

In the chess game sense, somebody wins. But what do they win, something that is worth more than the lives that were lost? You can't put a price on life, so... the only way to win is to save more lives than you sacrifice.

What if you attack me and I successfully fend you off. Did I win? Maybe winning a war means to get it to end...

What about those people who say give me liberty or give me death. For many people, they would rather die than live as slaves under authoritarian regimes. Now don't jump to conclusions because I'm not saying that all wars are fights for freedom because they rarely are. If you define an objective and you achieve it then you have won. (Sean and I have been arguing this for days, ha ha. Maybe that will continue into this thread, oh no...) Just because there was a tremendous loss of life in the process of fighting doesn't mean that things would not have been much worse if we hadn't fought at all.


You only consider the first part: "live long" but what about the second part: living well? In World War II many people deemed that it would be better to die than to see their homelands occuppied and bastardized by the Nazis. If they had to sacrifice their culture, freedom, and dignity to the Nazis then they would rather die than live. To be honest, I would rather die than live as a slave.


You make it sound like being alive is the only thing that is valuable in the world. That is completely ridiculous. I can think of many situations where I would rather die than face the consequences of being alive. What if you were going to be in jail is some foreign country for your whole life where you would be regularly tortured and abused. If I was in North Korea and had no hope of escaping I would probably want to die rather than live my life their where I can't even think for myself. Life is worth something to me if it is a good life (I am talking about my life by the way) but it is worth nothing if it is a bad life. So yes, war is horribly wasteful when it comes to human lives but in some wars, not all, it is worth the price because death would be a better option than seeing your people stripped of freedom, dignity, and culture.

Um, I suspect that for most nations, the measure of how successful a war has been is, in large part, how few of their people died and how many of their opponents did. I would not say, though, that the others' loss of life is unimportant. Killing as many of the others as possible is sort of very important, the main goal of most combat maneuvers, in fact. As Rumsfeld said when a reporter asked him why the U.S. was dropping cluster bombs in Iraq, despite the U.N.'s frowning upon their use: "They're very good at killing people. And that's why we're using them, because we want to kill people." It was a very honest answer, and one that revealed the stupidity of the reporters question, and of the U.N.'s blathering.

As to whether or not there can be winners, America has prospered by winning war after war -- First against the Natives, then against the British, then against itself, then against the U.S.S.R. (and no, the fact that it was a Cold War doesn't make it any less of one.) Had any of these wars gone differently, America would have been a very different, and probably much worse, place. And this doesn't cover its involvement in the two World Wars, though these too helped it rise to prominence on the world stage.

Never use "I think" in an essay.

I think "I think" is appropriate in certain instances, one of those being when you are involved in the content of an essay, and also in a pragmatic sense, at a point in your academic career where it's acceptable.

Separately, if I was going to omit "I think" I would add a semicolon after "questions" and also strike the "is" that you've marked in red ink, though that isn't the only way.

I wouldn't bet that Sean read the conclusion and my subjective definition of humanity's objective, as carefully as he did the line which he quoted me on, but then again, I wouldn't bet at all because I don't view gambling favorably; so now there is for sure, more than one conspicuous inference that one [another person] can draw from my words.

This doesn't make much sense. The humans who win may believe that what they have gained outweighs the damage, physical and psychological, that they have suffered, and so view it as a victory. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of some human life necessarily lessens humanity as a whole. In fact, in a world overpopulated by six billion or so people, anything that kills off a few thousand, or even a few million, of us probably is beneficial to humanity. Obviously, which humans you would prefer to the Earth to be rid of depends upon which side you are on, but from the perspective of humanity as a whole, war is no worse for us than it is for, say, ants. As for the objective of humanity being to do no harm, that's just plain silly. The goal of any species is to survive, and within a species, different genetic populations strive to displace each other, to survive a brutal competition for continued existence, and harming ones' competitors is very much a part of that competition.


This made even less sense to me. Your introduction at least summarized a distinct philosophical view of war, even if not a very defensible one. This is . . . almost a non sequitur. One can be many of the things that you list at the same time, and it really doesn't matter which ones, because all have engaged in wars at some point. I assume that you are trying to oppose all of the items in the list except the last to the last. So, if you have an individual sense of self, rooted in ethnicity, class, religion, then you will view wars as having victors, whereas if you view yourself as human first, then you will not. This isn't what you have said -- the sentence isn't structured properly to carry your point, but I'm assuming that it is what you mean. If I am mistaken, I apologize in advance -- just tell me what you actually meant and I'll respond to that, instead. Assuming that you mean what I think you mean, though, it still doesn't make sense, unless you assume that war is somehow foreign to human nature. But, obviously, war isn't, or we wouldn't keep fighting them. I suppose you could mean that a person could see himself as part of a single tribe, called humanity, and that then he would wish to preserve the tribe, rather than tear it apart through war. This might work if there were a single global culture, I suppose. Mostly, though, it is unrealistic. Such a person would soon discover that others didn't share his view, and be forced to defend himself, and how would he view a successful defense, if not as a victory? Moreover, the person would be delusional, because humanity isn't a single tribe -- it is several. Some share enough values to be able to coexist peacefully, but others clearly don't.

After all that, I've concluded that, if you were to rewrite some of your sentences to express your ideas more clearly, you might end up with a fairly strong case for an idealist point of view. If you wanted to, you could get into the interplay of genetics and culture, of how culture in many ways has usurped genetics in human affairs, and how this might affect our view of war. That could allow you to bolster the case against many of the criticisms I have made.

It makes perfect sense! You know what he means. Thinking of humanity collectively, you cannot win a war, because war hurts humanity. In the second part, he says that the onlly way you can think of "winning" a war is to think from the perspective of a member of some subgroup. To me, it makes great sense, and it is insightful. John Lennon-esque, even.

Kevin, if you disagree with what Sean is saying then you have to at least make some attempt give logical reasons why. You can't just say, "Thinking of humanity collectively, you cannot win a war, because war hurts humanity." You are just repeating something that Mustafa already said which Sean has already disproved.

This goes back to my original post which introduced ideas to disprove Mustafa's thesis. So far no one has even attempted to challenged these ideas so I can assume that you all have nothing to say, ha ha. If I am wrong then please show me your logic.

There are other goals in war other than saving lives. Some instances require a re-evaluation of the value of life when the conditions of such a life have dropped below a certain point. There are many situations where it would be better to die than to live under the current conditions. For instance: being free is not specifically a "black, white, brown: American, Iraqi, or Ugandan: rich, middle class, broke: intelligent, ordinary, dull: Christian, Muslim, [or] Buddhist" goal. It is a "human" goal. People are willing to die for this goal and it has nothing to do with being a member of a subgroup. So this is a "human goal" that is worth the cost of death for many people.

Put another way, how does war hurt humanity? In fact, to deal in specifics, tell me how the European war of aggression against the North American natives hurt humanity? I firmly believe the war was wrong -- the Europeans had no right to displace the natives, much less to exterminate them, as they did with many tribes. That said, can you really argue convincingly that the great advances in technology and culture for which America is responsible haven't made the world a much better place than it was, or than it would have been if the New World had remained undiscovered? If so, I would be greatly interested in hearing your reasoning.

What?! Ha ha, no, I had no intention of making a new point. I was just pointing out that Mustafa's insight makes perfect sense. It needs no further explanation. I was just stating it (my understanding of it) in a succinct way. Unless I misunderstood, what he meant was that, in order for someone to win a war, s/he must identify with a subgroup rather than with humanity in general. If you identify with humanity in general, you don't want to see any war. You want to see alternatives to war.

Strictly speaking, war hurts humanity. It's humanity hurting itself. Sean did not disprove that. Sean is just playing the devil's advocate.


This blows my mind. How can you imply that technological advancements would not have been made over the course of these 200 years if Europeans had not displaced Native Americans and settled here?! I don't even know how to comment on such a zany statement.

Maybe you believe that the technology available today is BETTER than it would have been if the Natives had not been displaced? Well, whatever way I think of it, it seems unfounded.

But even before that weird comment, you said something even weirder: How does war hurt humanity? Maybe you are over-thinking it. I am pretty sure that what Mustafa meant was that in war the warriors hurt humanity by killing humans. It is so simple.

But I know that, like Mustafa, Sean enjoys the sport of debate, so I am sure he is just playing the devil's advocate.

The problem is this: Mustafa says something. Sean counters it. You try to support Mustafa by repeating what he said earlier. The point you are repeating has already been countered so it is useless to repeat it. A valuable response would be one that counters what Sean said. Its like this:

David says, "The earth is flat because it appears to be flat when I look at it."

John counters by saying, "That doesn't make sense because the laws of gravity would pull the matter of the earth into a sphere and our vantage point does not provide us with a good perspective to judge the shape of the earth based on how it appears to us... etc.

Then George tries to support David by saying, "No no, David's point makes perfect sense! You know what he means. If the world looks flat to us then it must be flat!"

Obviously George's comment offers no extra logical content to the argument and does not succeed in supporting David's argument because it fails to confront what John said to counter David.

If you say that something makes sense right after we logically explained to you how it doesn't then you have to point out the flaws in our logic, not just repeat what we have already countered.

Theoretically if we had a war for absolutely no reason then it would even help get rid of extra population. Wars, however, are rarely fought for no reason. In fact some wars are fought for "human" reasons that transcend political, ethnic, and racial groups. I will present the example of a war fought for freedom or "independence." Such a war can be won and can be beneficial to humanity because it can improve the lives of millions of people who would have otherwise lived under oppressive conditions. That was point #1.

Point #2. For many people there are other things more important than simply preserving human life. Maybe you would always choose life rather than death no matter what the consequences were but many people would not. There are some causes worth dying for. There are some situations where fighting to the death to resist would be better than accepting oppression.

There are my two arguments. So now you have two choices. You can either agree with everything I have said and then agree that Mustafa's point was too overly simplistic and failed to take into account a lot of unseen factors... OR you can try to counter the two points I just gave you.

Show me the logic!

Okay people! As a debater I know you cannot refute something by rephrasing/reiterating something that was said earlier! Just never works! (Not picking a side or anything like that)

Kevin, I never meant to imply that there would have been no technological progress if the natives had not been displaced -- that's clearly not the case. But, I do believe that America has been good for the world, both culturally and technologically. The American Revolution, for instance, helped speed along the progress of democracy in Europe. The U.S. involvement in the World Wars is the only reason all of Europe isn't now ruled by a tyrannical Germany. And, many of the technological advances that we enjoy today have been driven, in one way or another, by American businesses and by the American military. I therefore suspect that humanity would be far less advanced, both technologically and culturally, if America had never existed. But, if you believe America has been, on balance, good for the world, then this presents a problem for you, because America in its present form only exists because of a genocidal war against the natives.

I picked this example, btw, because it involves an unjust war -- the European settlers had no right to do what they did. If even an unjust war can lead to a better humanity, then how much more beneficial must be the just wars referenced by Tyler?

Also, to say that war hurts humanity by killing humans, you would first have to show that humanity is always lessened in some way by the loss of any of its members. There seem to me to be a great many people whose deaths would greatly improve humanity. Pedophiles, murderers, rapists, etc. There may also be other groups of people, who, by virtue of their political views, would by their demise render the world a much better place. This isn't to say that we have the right to bring about their deaths, but it does make it difficult to argue that humanity is always lessened by the deaths of any of its members. And if that is not true, then to say war harms humanity because it involves some humans dying makes no sense.

Wow, and to think that I was under the misapprehension that I had honed my essay to within a very narrow range...

I'm responding primarily to posts #3 and post #7; other than that, I don't have time nowadays to make marathon posts or argue to win, or even argue with an obscured view that my feelings should matter -- that there is anything I can gain or lose personally. But I think I already mentioned this some time back, when I submitted for review a paper, after a hiatus.

Gautama: If it's possible to settle differences amicably, which is almost always the case, then war doesn't much have a victor.

Note that I didn't even bother touching upon war and proposed justifications; I didn't bother AT ALL with the parameters of a just or unjust war, or the infinite number of reasons why someone might find themselves involved in one -- I just said that there is no victor.

That's why I view some of these replies as completely off base. Don't assume too much -- in fact, don't assume more than what is stated explicitly as the sole talking point.

Sean: Part 1 of your reply deals with the theory of evolution, which you are entitled to believe in; just keep in mind that some people, while they are willing to discuss it, as they might pink unicorns, don't view it as any more real [than pink unicorns].

Part 2 begins as a misinterpretation of my conclusion because as I've said already, but have been compelled to repeat, I didn't even touch on the reasons why someone might be involved in a war; it's unfair to hop 20 sidewalk cracks and reply to something I didn't say.

I may have flubbed the punctuation in the conclusion since I'm still learning the finer rules of English through practice, but after reading that Kevin understood it, I became disillusioned from my leaning that because it may have been incomprehensible to you at first, it might have also come across that way to my classmates, and to anyone else who bothered reading it.

Some of these replies presuppose by inference that I said or even talked about something which I didn't. Be careful not to get too far ahead of yourself.

Good stuff here, ha ha. Mustafa, look at what you started!

This reminds me of Hegel's famous argument about the "ethical moment of war." You guys are arguing that many wars have been necessary (i.e. WWII) or have ended with the emergence of something excellent (i.e. America after the Revolution), but Hegel goes even a step further: he says that the courage and sacrifice are meaningful all by themselves. I am compelled to agree with him, but... that is very abstract, whereas the fact that KIDS DIE in wars is not abstract.

In this discussion (thanks, Tyler, by the way, for your instructions about how to argue! :-), in this discussion good points are being made about the fact that war is sometimes necessary. Don't mistake my argument for that of a radical pacifist who would refuse to fight. Tyler, in answer to your question, the reason I don't refute your points is because I do not disagree!! The fact remains, however, that what Mustafa said is true. "Nobody wins a war." In the simplest sense, war is fighting and fighting hurts.

Sometimes it is not necessary to refute points and mount a strong argument. Some proverbs and other very profound statements (like Mustafa's here) need no explanation.

Nobody "disproved" what Mustafa said. Eric and Sean, are either of you suggesting that the world would not be better if nations could always avoid war? Of course you are not!

It's like this: Even though you are right when you say that war "helps" in some ways (ha ha, reducing overpopulation, like you mentioned, you sicko! ha ha), it certainly would be better if the same ends could be achieved peacefully. Ha ha, look at me, repeating what Mustafa already said again.

Um, I believe in the theory of evolution the same way as I believe in the theory of oxidization. It is valid science in a way pink unicorns are not. Anyone who doesn't understand that is . . . not someone worth debating, if only because the gulf between me and that person is too great ever to bridged by any possible argument.


But perhaps the parameters determine whether or not there can be a victor. In which case, bringing them up is perfectly valid in responding to what you said, and your not mentioning them is in fact a weakness in your essay.


But that changes the context of the debate. In a world in which all people were pacifists and no one ever fought, then wars would have no victors. Of course, there would also be no wars. One can only talk about whether wars have victors in the context of the world as it is, which is to say in world in which some objectives may only be accomplished, or may be most easily accomplished, through war. And, if we did live in an "ideal" world in which everyone was a pacifist, our natures would be very different from what they are, and we might lose the benefits of having that nature, as well as the disadvantages. So, it may be that the world would not be better if nations could always avoid war, if you actually stop to think about what would be necessary to make that condition true. Idealist statements of the sort you made above only ever seem appealing and right if one ignores context, cause and effect, reality.

Mustafa, you've obviously fulfilled the goal of writing a provocative essay! However it is, as you suspect, unfinished. I'd like to see you flesh out that final paragraph and then, perhaps, publish it.

"Oh dear. I really, really, really, don't want to get into a argument with Creationists."

You know, I'm not so certain that that's truly the case.

I've picked up on a general tendency of yours to include evolution or a facetious comment/view that likely steers the conversation in that direction [evolution].

But on a completely different note, I have to thank you before I forget; I was writing for an assignment of some importance and ALMOST used a mixed metaphor -- but instead, by remembering what you said, I ended up writing one that matched tit for tat, and [it] was much more powerful for it.

Abstracting from that example, I don't think I thank the participants of this website often enough; I've really learned A LOT from you, whether that was your primary intent, or not.

Another example would be Replacement Level Fertility (which I first heard here -- btw it's refererred to as just that (not RLF Rate), among people who are familiar with it); just a week or so ago, I had never heard the term. About a day or so ago I was involved in a problem that involved RLF, and I was all the more versatile for being a member here and seeing it already.

This is as good a time as any to say thank you -- thanks to all who make this site possible (in plain view, or behind the scenes), especially the Essay Forum contributors Kevin and Sean.

That does not logically make sense. If war can be avoided then yes it would be better to avoid it, but that does not change the fact that once you start to fight a war, it can be won or lost. I would avoid a fist fight with someone but if I was forced into one then I would be fighting to win. It is very possible to win a war such as getting independence or repelling invaders. Just because human life can be lost does not mean that it is not possible to achieve objectives that will be beneficial for humanity. (don't ask me what objectives I am talking about because I have repeated what they are countless times and have never been challenged on them.)


The problem is that reasons for fighting war are directly related to objectives and how we define if we have won or lost a war. So if you say that "there is no victor" it's like saying that no one achieved what they were set out to achieve. This is just simply incorrect. As I said before just because lives were lost in the revolutionary war doesn't mean that the colonists did not win independence.


My points counter what Mustafa says, so it would be impossible for you to agree with Mustafa and I at the same time. Mustafa says that no one wins a war because human lives are lost. I counter by saying that there are things of value in the world other than human lives and thus wars can still be won despite create human loss if the human loss was worth it. You can't agree with both points because they contradict each other.


It's this simple: Someone makes a statement. Someone else comes along and counters the statement with a logical argument. No one is able to refute what the second person said. Therefore, until someone is able to logically refute the argument that counters the original statement, the statement is worthless because no one can support it. If a statement is easily countered through logic then it is illogical and invalid. If you don't think that we have disproven what Mustafa has said then show us where our logic went wrong. I believe that everything needs an explaination. Thinking that some things need no explaination is very dangerous mindset because it encourages people to stop thinking about difficult questions and to accept ideas that don't make sense.


This is all irrelevant to the conversation at hand. We are talking about whether or not it is possible to win a war. Your comments relate to whether or not it would be beneficial to fight a war in the first place. That is not the topic of discussion here. I would conceed that if we could it would be better to settle things peacefully. That is not in question. This is like the strawman fallacy. You take what we are saying, change it into something we never actually said, then you defeat the new "warped" version of our argument. This achieves nothing.


Are you saying that you don't believe in evolution? Seriously, come on... I vouched for your intellectual power so many times in that horrendously long thread. The fossil record provides an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of evolution.


Ok, you don't understand how mutation works. Mutation does not remove information, it simply alters it. The DNA code does not become shorter and shorter as species evolve. But, even if this point were true it would be irrelevant because it says nothing about the validity of the theory of evolution.


Swine flu is a new type of disease. The reason that new diseases are created is because they evolve from existing ones. New diseases are not spontaneously created.


Ok, so you don't understand what evolution is either. What you just detailed is called natural selection and it is the mechanism for evolution as Darwin detailed it. So without knowing it, you have just argued in favor of Darwin's theory of evolution.


This still does not say anything about the validity of the theory of evolution. Also over time, selective breeding can lead to a change in reproductive compatability. This would lead to the creation of a new species. This is called speciation and is a form of evolution. Speciation does not have to fully occur in order for us to see that evolution is at work. A building does not need to be fully contructed for us to see that its construction is taking place.

Yes, good point. I understand what you mean. I don't think that you or Tyler missed the point of Mustafa's original, idealistic statement. I see that you are pointing out an important truth -- the fact that, in this world, war is part of reality, and that it is futile to strive to avoid it.

Tyler, I see what you mean, too. It is obviously true that somebody can win a war. It is a no brainer. However, it still seems to me that there is truth to the saying, "nobody wins a war." In a certain sense, you are wrong when you say that things other than human life are important; nothing is important without being alive to enjoy it. However, I don't want to seem as though I disagree with you. You and Sean both have made good points that are important for consideration when thinking idealistically about the fact that war is fundamentally harmful. In a world where war takes place, it is true that somebody wins each war.

Still, one of the most insightful things that was said in this discussion was what Mustafa said about how, if you think of humanity collectively (as if you were humanity's mother, for example), you would see war is basically destructive. He said something about how you need to identify with a particular subdivision of humanity in order to see that subdivision as having won a war. If you were the mother of humanity, you would think of war as basically harmful. However, the fact that I am talking about an abstract concept like "being the mother of humanity" shows that, as you guys said, I am not addressing the question in its realistic context. I have been talking about an ideal, and I was being unrealistic.

So, you are right! You win! :)

You seem awfully invested in arguing the merits of evolution -- why does it matter so much to you?

I am secure enough in my beliefs that I wouldn't foist them on you -- in the end, the only person you will be accountable for, will be you.

I'm afraid that's the way it is.

You come into this world alone, you exit this world alone, and you will carry the burden of what you have done, alone.

Here goes my post regarding something which I view as unrelated to my initial post (yes, my comment on "shecat's" post was to be taken as a hint not to confuse obfuscation and propagandism with "constructive criticism").

I'm going to analyze your latest post, as time permits, with all the objectivity I can muster.

"Why does the search for truth matter to anyone? In this case, though, I have several reasons for defending this particular theory:"

I thought your question might be rhetorical at first, but now if I had to choose, at least based on the context, I would say you're serious/trying to portray yourself as serious.

What is the truth? Obviously we disagree. Intelligent men have lived and died before us and they could not agree unanimously on one.

Since you tend to view things with a fair amount of logic, I think you'd understand that as you are an adamant supporter of the theory of evolution, there is either no truth, or we cannot comprehend the truth (for you, that is -- in your frame of mind).

If there IS a universal truth for YOU, tell me what it is.

So, unless there is some hidden agenda, I think you've failed to see that you can't talk about "the truth" when there isn't any such thing (in your view at least). Again, we can talk about something which doesn't exist; but I wouldn't say you could formulate a truth ("the truth") out of nothing, or by talking about nothing. (Say your truth, or stop here; if you think we "cannot know any truth", move forward)

If you are willing to concede that your view is one that we cannot know any truth, I think this might possibly have a genuine tint and we could proceed on to the next segment.

"..reasons for defending"

So we can't know any truths, but you have reasons?

Reasons are usually grounded in a rationale, which is ground further in a universal truth. If you've made it this far, you're

a) curious
b) skimming
c) neglectfully absentminded and not wholly sure of your beliefs; otherwise you can't have materially valid "reasons."
d) made a mistake; shoo, there's nothing to see here.

Tyler, feel free to join in; I understand you are a practitioner of logic.

If you can pry yourself away from doing whatever it is that expert logicians do in their spare time, you're welcome to don a shirt with vertically directed black and white stripes adjacent each other, and see that this is done right

Everyone else, the party is here; have a bucket of lemonade and make yourself comfortable.

Just make sure you don't repeat yourself, and we make progress in our quest to reach our personal goals, whatever they are for each of us uniquely; I imagine no human can read another human's mind, nor can we see what's in another person's heart -- some of us cannot decipher what is in our hearts, even as we say "I", presumably to speak about "ourselves."

Of course it could be that each of us has that ability (to know our motivations intrinsically), but where we find ourselves lacking, is in the ability to accurately depict it (at least however we know it) in interaction with others, surfeit of terror with what we see.

This is what sociologists are describing when they refer to the slang word "fronting", a word seen most often in the vernacular of inner city youths.

I bet if they don't already know, they'd be surprised to find that "fronting" knows few boundaries.

urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fronting

That's a dictionary straight off the streets; the words related to any "x" word you type in this dictionary (that also exists in it) invariably ends up being a word referencing or shortly leading to a word that references the female reproductive system, intoxicants, a state of intoxication, or in this case, [insert euphemistic word/phrase/explanation for "fronting"].

Sometimes words agreed as "crude" among the socioeconomically stratified majority, are best left intact to depict their nature upfront and outright.

Um, wow! That's the first time anyone has ever accused me of being a subjectivist. I don't know whether to be mortified or amused. I'll go with the latter, I guess. But, no, my view is absolutely not that there is no such thing as truth. Or, to get rid of all of those pesky negatives, I believe that there is such a thing as truth. Or, to refine it to be somewhat more accurate, I believe that there are truths and that reality is objective.

"Burning is a process of oxidization" I believe to be a true statement.
"The Earth revolves around the sun" I believe to be another, and so on.

That said, I fully realize that many of our perceptions and desires are subjective. I also tend to believe that a lot of our political and philosophical beliefs are ultimately subjective, a matter of personal preference rather than of objective principle. To give a very brief, and admittedly oversimplified example, communists are people who would prefer to live in a society where everyone was equal, even if that has to mean equality at the lowest level. Capitalists are people who prefer to live in a society where people can achieve whatever they can, even if it means others end up with nothing. That's why the two sides never agree. They don't really disagree on the facts. Oh, they pretend to -- capitalists will argue that capitalism will result in benefits even for the poor (and in some ways they're right) but deep down they know that the very poorest of the poor will be worse off. And the communists like to pretend that some ideal form of communism could be idyllic and free from the dire poverty that characterizes most truly communist states, but deep down, they know that the system they embrace will lead to equality at the lowest possible level. The facts aren't in doubt, not really. Its just that some people prefer the idea of one system and other people prefer the idea of the other. However -- and this is important -- the range of subjective beliefs we can hold is limited by our understanding of objective truths. That is, we can profess belief in magic, but never really believe in it enough to jump off of tall buildings to test it, because then the belief dies with us.

I further believe that any set of beliefs embraced by a large number of people for a long time contains some truth -- otherwise, it wouldn't accord with our experiences, and no one would believe it. Therefore, it is generally best to meet on middle ground.

The reason I get so . . . concerned when defending evolution is that I see it as falling into the camp of objective, scientific facts, truths, if you will, rather than into the camp of subjective political beliefs. Now, the two are not wholly unrelated, and I understand that it may be impossible to admit the truth of evolution and still hold certain subjective beliefs that are dear to ones' heart. That just doesn't strike me as having any bearing on the truth of the theory.

Sean, I was hoping that I have made clear by now, not to bring extraneous, erroneous, self-contradicting views to threads which don't need it.

I don't know..

I've tried telling you in so many ways, you are not helping me improve my essay; the debate, forget my opinion on it, is unrelated.

So continue elsewhere, because the only reason I posted this thread was to get feedback about my essay -- can you understand that?

Nicholas, I would ask the same of you.

There is nothing erroneous or self-contradicting in any of my posts, though your labeling of them as such reveals your true motivation for your complaint. As for it being extraneous, as I recall, the debate had been entirely about the topic of your essay, until you bought up evolution in one of your posts. As I recall, you compared believing in evolution to believing in pink unicorns. You must have expected that to provoke some sort of response, though Nicholas's appearance on the thread drew the digression out much longer than anyone could have foreseen.

But if you want to bring the discussion back to your essay, that's perfectly understandable. Why don't you post a revised version of your essay, based on the feedback we gave you before this digression occurred then? That way, we'll have something new to comment on.

Sure, yah got it!


Good or bad? :D

Good, definitely. I enjoy these sorts of debates, though this one was getting a tad frustrating. Why don't you write up an essay defending your point of view? Then, you could post it in its own thread, and I could point out all of the flaws in your arguments without disturbing Mustafa. :-)

Thanks, I appreciate you guys understanding.

I would like that but now I need to study for some online courses and CLEPs... Maybe I'll do that in the near future.

Dagnabit, I just returned to this site after a couple days absence and my favorite thread is already gone! But, I would be interested to hear your revisions, Mustafa, if you care to make them.

Mustafa, I have moved the posts dealing with evolution to a new thread, https://essayforum.com/essays-1/creationism-evolution-debate-6731/. In retrospect, I wish I had done that from the beginning. As it is, a couple of the posts here reference some of the posts that have been moved, as I have left some of my posts and Tyler's posts that respond directly to things you said, even if those posts also contain references to the moved posts. Still, this thread now mostly deals with discussion of your original essay topic, and those of us interested in the digression, as Tyler's post indicates he was, can continue the debate on a wholly separate thread.

If you and Tyler would like, I can go through the messages here and clean them up so as to excise any and all reference to the evolution debate. I will not, however, do this without first getting permission from both of you to carry out the alterations, for ethical reasons.

That's very telling of your ability to recognize and correct errors.

It goes without saying, I appreciate it.

For those of you interested in seeing this essay go further, you'll just have to find more flaws for the time being, because I cannot devote any time to it as I'm extremely busy right now.

I do expect that I should resume the process of refining this essay, after I knock out some of the things which are occupying my time unduly.

Mustafa, I encourage you not to let it drop for too long. You were impelled to write it and then to post it here later and spend all of this time discussing it. That means you really want to say what it says. And I do think there's an audience for it. Just say so if you'd like to discuss your options for publishing it once you've got it polished.

How would I go about publishing it?

Who's going to take a 17 year old seriously?

It strikes me as profoundly ironic that I'm accused of being an idealist, writing the essay, but I'd probably be called pragmatic/cynical if I dismiss the notion of having it published as fantastical.

There are a number of online progressive publications that accept, and sometimes publish, unsolicited essays. Press Action, Freezerbox, Dissident Voice, Brainbox, ZNet, and Common Dreams all come to mind. I think they would be more, rather than less, interested in your piece knowing that you are only 17. Among opponents of war, there's a sense that older generations have (obviously) not yet figured this out, and an openness -- even an eagerness -- to hear what thoughtful young people have to say.

If the essay were not accepted by any of those publications, then you could publish it yourself on IndyMedia, which is a sort of D-I-Y publication, with sites in most major cities as well as global and national cites. Anyone can upload an essay.

I'm dealing with some F****d up professors, who hate to see a student that's not only there to learn, but to perhaps correct them when they're wrong, and teach them something too...

This "college" is a joke, and has lost all credibility in my eyes. It's more like a protracted version of high school.

I can't wait until I go to a real university with competent instructors who don't let their personal opinions about you, transfer to how they grade you.

At least I'm not bad when it comes to "self-learning"; then, I would be totally SOL.

Give me the damn textbook, and let the computer grade me -- not only did you fail to teach me anything in 2 years, you can't even fucking grade impartially.

Quasi-professors apply here: just bring a shoelace with you, and you're hired.

Why did I go to this POS college anyway?

Oh yeah, it was supposed to acclimate me to university, and on the cheap.

I can just as easily take a trip to the sewage treatment plant, and stuff my nose full of shit, for free.

I've become that much more disgusted with the nature of people.

I never would have thought that professors could stoop to this level. Everyone I've dealt with so far in academia, is a child at heart. Hurt their feelings or be outspoken enough, and you can guarantee that your grade will literally be a mix of farce and contradiction, compared to other, docile students.

If you thought you "taught me a lesson" you're fucking out of your mind, dumb assholes.

You just convinced me that an adolescent deficient in tact, can render you incapable of doing your job.

Incompetent fuckheads.

Oh yeah, pardon the french.

I'm just a bit flabbergasted.

I gather you received a grade that you found unsatisfactory? Was it for this essay, or another? If you would like to post the work you submitted, together with the professor's comments, perhaps we could give you some sort of helpful feedback, or at least some sympathetic commiseration. As it is, your rant, though crude, contains some amusing invective. I especially liked the shoelace remark and the sewage plant metaphor.

Its a pretty good essay.
I believe that in war there is no victor. There is always consequences and sacrifices made by both sides.

Mustafa, You seem so very upset. Please do let us know what happened.