Uploaded June 2011 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
A few notes:
This is a response to "Might DOES Make Right:" youtube.com/watch?v=dNxxxdjlLFE
Might does not make ALL history - it just helps weed out the history that the person wielding the might finds inconvenient. The surviving stories of oppressed people indicates that those who attempt to write history by main force may not all be on the same page, either.
Also, the ends and means can not be separated, which has some interesting consequences for your example - when a regime says it's acceptable to write history with bullets, sooner or later they get around to trying to rewrite other books that way as well, and are on their way to collapse (or defeat at the hands of someone who pays a little more respect to reality, at least militarily and - more importantly - logistically speaking).
Not to mention that any use of force both powerful and precise enough to simultaneously eliminate all of those who held contrary viewpoints would so alter the moral "landscape" of the survivors that it would reduce the originally contested event to irrelevancy.
I suspect that we agree on one thing, however: the process of making and having moral judgements and opinions can only take place while the person is living, and is non-transferrable. You can read someone else's writing, hear someone else's words, but ultimately it's a combination of what you perceive and what goes on in your head that constructs your morality (mostly without your conscious participation).
Sorry for the disorganized presentation.
A few notes:
This is a response to "Might DOES Make Right:" youtube.com/watch?v=dNxxxdjlLFE
Might does not make ALL history - it just helps weed out the history that the person wielding the might finds inconvenient. The surviving stories of oppressed people indicates that those who attempt to write history by main force may not all be on the same page, either.
Also, the ends and means can not be separated, which has some interesting consequences for your example - when a regime says it's acceptable to write history with bullets, sooner or later they get around to trying to rewrite other books that way as well, and are on their way to collapse (or defeat at the hands of someone who pays a little more respect to reality, at least militarily and - more importantly - logistically speaking).
Not to mention that any use of force both powerful and precise enough to simultaneously eliminate all of those who held contrary viewpoints would so alter the moral "landscape" of the survivors that it would reduce the originally contested event to irrelevancy.
I suspect that we agree on one thing, however: the process of making and having moral judgements and opinions can only take place while the person is living, and is non-transferrable. You can read someone else's writing, hear someone else's words, but ultimately it's a combination of what you perceive and what goes on in your head that constructs your morality (mostly without your conscious participation).
Sorry for the disorganized presentation.
