Everyone responding to this thread, define "Pretentious."
I want my potato.
Strawberry ice cream being the best ice cream is true subjectively. Saying it rains outside when it isn't raining is not subjectively false, it's objectively false.
you want a practical application?
best ice cream -
best is an
abstract term that only really makes sense when giving an opinion. I can not see why and how your ice cream should be the
best, I can not smell or taste
best. you can't argue for the
bestness of your ice cream, because that is
sense-lessrain outside -
rain refers to some worldy happening. it has a place and a time, you can
examine it. I could verify if it is actually real, with my
senses.
notice how the semantic meaning of sense-less actually makes sense? because you can tell if your senses aren't being used.
one practical application is to avoid such terms. "truth" is such a term.
Indeed, it is useful to define what people mean by "bombing Syria" when discussing it; but you will be talking about things that make more sense, such as asking them which military targets would be bombed and how effective they think it would be and what the civilian casualties would be.
well, fine. to you bombing Syria means different things than to me, which still proves my point that we all have different associations. I hope you see that now.
You would not be discussing whether or not they mean bombing the Syrian culture.
How is this relevant? Obviously your average American won't know much about Syrian culture, if that's what you're getting at (your text is very, ah, wandering to say the least and it's hard to follow what your bottom line is at times...) - but so what? What relevance does that have with them talking about bombing "Syria"?
but somehow we do have a discussion about Syrian culture, right? I know it was me who brought it up, and it
is relevant, because same as with Iraq, Vietnam, even Germany in two world wars, war in
any country will result in losses you can hardly measure in human lives. things can not be understood seperate from another: history and culture and the ground people live on influence how they behave and react. if you attack it or disrespect it, people will hate you for it. it will (and it happens all over the place, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.)
create terrorism. the mere presence of the US troops and military bases in the middle east is an affront to Islamic people, because of their believes. we are unbelievers in holy lands.
of course it is also stimulated through secret weapon exports, but you probably know that yourself.
I'm getting a litte impatient too, for all this derogatory and misleading talk about peoples you seem to have no respect for and interest in. frankly, I don't believe Iraq or Afghanistan invasions were in good intentions at all. and based on lies too. they were fought for oil and poppies, with the poor or desperate people dying on both sides.
violence breeds more violence.
there is a simple truth for you.
Syria's situation doesn't start and end with islam. Revolutions and civil wars remain revolutions and civil wars even centuries apart.
this too. surely the whole middle east has some religious problems, but we often forget the economic forces and the social structures that make up dictatorships and opposing groups. reoccurring patterns can be studied and applied to guess what's coming.
Define Xant:
a) Troll
it could be worse.
Xant, your derailing is noticeable though. I only keep replying because I felt you mean what you say at least half of the time.
So here is my answer to your question: You need to read Plato, because you will not understand Nietzsche. When you understand the basics - you move to something more complicated. You don't build a rocket, before understanding Newton's 500 year old theory of gravitation. And to have just a little bit wider view on Syria, it would help to read about other civil wars - it might not be relevant, but it will not hurt, even if it is 2000 year old Roman civil war.
this.
things are never as easy as one likes to paint them. reading up on related topics or past thoughts is always helpful, as it's not that important what happens now, but
why it happens and how it came to be (which includes the
what to a certain extend, and puts it into perspective). imagine repairing a PC: you can not fix it to last until you know why and how, or find someone who knows. attacking it with a nerf gun probably won't help. (the equivalent of bombing a country [with an oil pipeline] for humanitarian reasons, instead of asking how the problems were created, and looking for constructive solutions to those causes [-- and keeping the hands off the frickin pipeline, just saying])
[edit: more precise wording]
[edit2: one more point covered]