We got scared

[Econoline]

Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

[RayThom]

Thank you.

This has been available on youtube for quite some time. It was nice viewing it again. I was first exposed to it when a friend sent me a link attached to the Dawkins Foundation. As a secular humanist it was great to see a comprehensive website devoted to Freethinkers like myself and I've been a member ever since.

At that time, and as it does now, this video evoked a passage I remembered from the movie "Time After Time":
HG WELLS:... Exactly. And Stephenson was right about one thing. Violence is contagious like measles. And the trouble with progress is not that things are more efficient. The trouble is they’re the same things. World War This. World War That. Oh, we’re obviously killing much more efficiently but we’re still killing. Well, I’m not going to stoop to that man’s barbaric level. The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas...

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science http://www.richarddawkins.net

[MajGenl.Meade]

That's the same H G Wells, is it? The one who wrote:

“This is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever. Every soldier who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!”

I remember his "smash the Hun" enthusiasm from the early editions of the WW1 Illustrated Weekly collection that my grandfather bequeathed to me.

[BoSoxGal]

Great video; loved the narrator's voice.

Newest polls show Americans are moving away from religion, especially the millennials. Anecdotal evidence in my own family, despite being raised very religious and homeschooling/attending religious school until the last few years of high school, my nieces and nephew all identify as atheists now they are young adults.

Progress.

[Lord Jim]

Hit it Dick...

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... dition.jpg

[rubato]

That's the same H G Wells, is it? The one who wrote:

“This is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever. Every soldier who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!”

I remember his "smash the Hun" enthusiasm from the early editions of the WW1 Illustrated Weekly collection that my grandfather bequeathed to me.

Bertrand Russell's reaction to the outbreak of war was more perceptive and illuminating. And rings with greater truth today.


In the piece you quoted Wells was acting merely as a propagandist for people who can't tell the difference.


yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

What "difference" is that?

[rubato]

http://conwayhall.org.uk/ethicalrecord/ ... rld-war-i/

“Sir – Against the vast majority of my countrymen, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago, Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now .. he is a patriot. We rejoice when we read of innocent young men, blindly obedient to the word of command, mown down in thousands by the machine guns of Liege.

Those who saw the London crowds, during the nights leading up to the Declaration of War, saw a whole population, hitherto peaceable and humane, letting loose, in a moment, instincts of hatred and blood lust .. Dim abstractions of unimaginable wickedness conceal the fact that the enemy are men like ourselves, neither better nor worse – men who love their homes and the sunshine, and all the simple pleasures of common lives.. And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and its hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, have chosen that it should occur, rather than any of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride…

The diplomatists … restrained by punctilio from making or accepting the small concessions that might have saved the world, hurried on [in] blind fear to loose the armies for the work of mutual butchery. And behind them, stand vast forces of national greed and hatred .. fostered by the upper class as a distraction from social discontent, artificially nourished by the sinister influence of the makers of armaments, encouraged by a whole foul literature of ‘glory, and by every text-book of history by which the minds of children are polluted. Our diplomacy has not been guiltless. Sir Edward Grey refused, down to the last moment, to inform Germany of the conditions of our neutrality or our intervention…”

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

OK, that does make sense; I thought you meant that Wells' propaganda was directed at people who didn't know "the difference"; but like a lot of British authors at the time, he became a government propagandist.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I see now. When Wells writes something that person X (say, rubato or Ray, for example) likes, he's an insightful genius. But when he writes something they don't like, he's nothing more than a lying propagandist with the brain of a toothbrush.

Obvs, really

[Big RR]

Well I would think a propagandist might be stupid, he might be filled with patriotic fervor and support his country right or wrong, or he might be misled, or he might be deliberately deceptive. For the latter two (and possibly the latter three), his brain might be considerably larger than a toothbrush.

[MajGenl.Meade]

".... than that of a toothbrush"

[rubato]

I see now. When Wells writes something that person X (say, rubato or Ray, for example) likes, he's an insightful genius. But when he writes something they don't like, he's nothing more than a lying propagandist with the brain of a toothbrush.

Obvs, really

Reasonably intelligent people can learn to distinguish between what is propaganda and what is honest argument intended to persuade although it is sometimes a matter of degree. If the difference between Well's writing and Russell's quoted ab above is not apparent to you you can learn more by reading this. Its just an introduction but you'll have to start with baby steps.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques




yrs,
rubato

[dales]

Reasonably intelligent people can learn to distinguish between what is propaganda and what is honest argument intended to persuade....

And thereby hangs a tale (tail).

[MajGenl.Meade]

Thanks rubato. I was not impressed by your dragging Russell into it. Good red herring to distract from Wells' (customary) drivel

[rubato]

Thanks rubato. I was not impressed by your dragging Russell into it. Good red herring to distract from Wells' (customary) drivel

drivel which you supported.


yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

[rubato]

Your claim that what was propaganda and what was not is merely a matter of opinion is dishonest crap.

If I were you I would be ashamed to have made it.

While it is somewhat a matter of degree a reasonably intelligent person would say that:

" Every soldier who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!”

Is obviously propaganda. Get over yourself.


yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

Your claim that what was propaganda and what was not is merely a matter of opinion is dishonest crap.

Boy, you really are deficient in reading skills!

I see now. When Wells writes something that person X (say, rubato or Ray, for example) likes, he's an insightful genius. But when he writes something they don't like, he's nothing more than a lying propagandist with the brain of a toothbrush. Obvs, really

The point is not that propaganda is merely a matter of opinion. The point is that your kind kiss the likes of Wells' arses when it suits and get all righteous over the same people's pontificating drivel when it's obvious to all that it's propagandist crap.

[Econoline]

RayThom was the one who first mentioned H.G. Wells in this thread...and as far as I can tell, the words he quoted were not from Wells himself but from the fictionalized character H.G. Wells in the 1979 movie Time After Time, (the screenplay of which was written by Nicholas Meyer). Just sayin'






A big THANK YOU to everyone here for derailing this thread, though...