Are you a good person?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Knygathin- words can gather negative associations and power they didn't use to have through the way they are used, bullies utilize this and all the better for them if they can use a word with some more legitimate usages. So they can make their excuses for using it.
Consider all the people who suddenly started using "niggardly" to provoke people then play innocent when others bristle.
Or people who use "paki", claiming that it's only a harmless abbreviation, as if it didn't have a long history of violence.

Don't worry about that new world order, it's a fantasy.

[Druidic]

"Niggardly" isn't a word I'd use in conversation, it's too ostentatious. But it's a good honest word and I wouldn't hesitate to use it in a CAS-like fantasy where "stingy' just wouldn't cut the mustard.

You have to give people some credit for common sense. Who would use it in a conversation with a black friend? And how many people even know the word exists?

A guy working for a mayor--was it San Francisco?--used it in a meeting a few years ago and lost his job.

Ironically, he was a black man. Apparently, his only 'crime' was over-education and he payed dearly for his innocent remark. How nuts was that?

[gveranon]

I like this passage from Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker. It doesn't fully fit me, or I don't fully fit it. For one thing, I haven't (yet, at least) been expelled "as a useless member of society"; I have a job, and do what I have to do to get by. Still, I tend in this direction, and this describes my character fairly well.

Quote

The conclusion I can draw from all these reflections is that I have never been truly fitted for social life, where there is nothing but irksome duty and obligation, and that my independent character has always made it impossible for me to submit to the constraints which must be accepted by anyone who wishes to live among men. As long as I act freely I am good and do nothing but good, but as soon as I feel the yoke of necessity or human society I become rebellious, or rather recalcitrant, and then I am of no account. When I ought to do the opposite of what I want, nothing will make me do it, but neither do I do what I want, because I am too weak. I abstain from acting, because my weakness is all in the domain of action, my strength is all negative, and my sins are all sins of omission, rarely sins of commission. I have never believed that man's freedom consists in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do, and this is the freedom I have always sought after and often achieved, the freedom by virtue of which I have most scandalized my contemporaries. For they, being active, busy, ambitious, detesting freedom in others and not desiring it for themselves, as long as they can sometimes have their way, or rather prevent others from having theirs, they force themselves all their lives to do what they do not want to do and are willing to endure any servitude in order to command. They were wrong, then, not in expelling me as a useless member of society, but in ostracizing me as dangerous, for I confess that I have done very little good, but never in my life have I harboured evil intentions, and I doubt if there is any man living who has done less actual evil than I. (Translated by Peter France.)

To me, it is best to have an ethnically and culturally homogenous community with social consensus on what constitutes good and evil rather than a community characterized by divergent interests, which will typically result in endless debate in what is good and bad given their relative character. The latter leads to constant tension and a lack of social cohesion.

For example, foreigners should not abuse or eat dogs in this country regardless of their own foreign practices, and I would gladly impose my will, regardless of its ultimate moral baselessness to prevent that. True freedom is an illusion, considering we already have the constraints of the body to deal with, and those that value it above others tend to become Marquis de Sade's. And I would gladly, out of my own volition, restrict De Sade's freedom.

"The Stranger” — A Poem By Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control–
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

---

Virtues such as honor, chivalry, compassion, wisdom, etc. mean nothing without societies that project constraints on what is permissible. If everything is permissible, then niether goodness or its complement evil can exist.

[DarkView]

Good defined as what?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I think a very mixed society is good for people. They learn more and are less presumptuous. People who live with an overwhelming majority group tend to get strange ideas about people they don't know.
If a foreign person or immigrant violates the laws, you can only uphold the law and educate. Even immense difficulties in doing this aren't remotely persuasive to want to have any kind of nationalism.

People naturally congregate with those that possess similar phenotypes and ideologies. Mixing is terrible, especially racially since it can lead to identity problems further down the line and destabilizes continuity of ethos.

In my city, all ethnic groups stick to themselves and don't really intermingle. It is much like a cafeteria where high schoolers stick within their cliques but on a larger magnitude. Why do foreigners congregate and create their own local towns? Because they desire to be within their own kind. However, there is a small vocal minority that wants to impose their ways on everyone, and most of us can infer who those are.

The USA was made for Anglos in mind by the founding fathers, if I remember correctly. If people dislike the growth of the right-wing, then they can leave the country. Ethnic Whites are threatened to become minorities, and it is not even in my self-interest to admit this fact.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

What identity problems?

I have encountered many racially mixed people with identity crises or what have you. Point is, it's not easy to have multiple allegiances to irreconcilable ethnic identities with competing national interests.

Prejudice is an organic truth, false in itself but accumulated by generations and transmitted: we cannot rid ourselves of it with impunity. The nation that renounces it heedlessly will then renounce itself until it has nothing left to give up. The duration of a collectivity and its consistency coincide with the duration and consistency of its prejudices. The Oriental nations owe their everlastingness to their loyalty to themselves.
- Emil Cioran

China purged Manichaism, which was growing in large numbers, in the period of a few days to preserve Daoism and Confucianism's predominance and legacy... I wish Iran did that to Islam to preserve Zoroastrianism...