The greatest tragedy in human history

Monique

Wide spread hysteria and death, one third of the population of Europe dying. Definately a great tragedy.

fourier jr

really? (flips back a couple pages...) well you said "M.L. number 3. J.G number 2. J.C number 1.".... & then switch 1 & 2. sorry i didn't read everything very carefully

stoned

Marx went to London lived and died there, and he wrote his most important works there. he was in schock when he saw in what conditions people were working in England, not even in France or Germany people workers have been treated this way, England beats them all. Most of workers rights were won in Germany and France and even far sighted and wise governments of those two (specifically German government) nations did enacted some revolutionary ideas like unemployment insurance, universal health care,children care etc.
You can still see after hundred years of development that continental Europe is FAR ahead in everything literally everything! Socialism can work and works very well, but we have to stop being paranoid and not buy into anti-socialist American/British propaganda.

russ_watters

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the plagues - not much can top 1/3 of the population of Europe being wiped out.

russ_watters

Yeah, I think that historical context is important to understanding Marx's errors. Marx did his work in the mid-1800s, right smack in the middle of the industrial revolution. He witnessed things like sweatshops and child labor and guessed incorrectly that capitalism would be unable to deal with them. Marx witnessed a revolution and didn't realize that it was a revolution - that it wasn't finished.

Also, I wouldn't get too down on England - since England led the revolution, its understandable that they had the most difficulty with it (followed closely by the US). That's just the way things work - what takes enormous effort and pain for one person (country) to figure out seems self-evident to the next one. England didn't have the benefit of learning from the mistakes of another country.

alexandra

Hi all

As you can see, this is quite an argument. Russ and I have agreed to continue it where it started off, so I won't be posting my responses to his points here. To all those interested in this debate, please refer to the ‘Politics and World Affairs’ section (aka ‘the dark side’) of the General Discussion forum where over the rest of my lifetime I intend to address russ_watter’s arguments point by point with supporting evidence. It’s too complex a discussion to pursue here, and much has already been written there on the topic that it would be a waste of resources to repeat here...

alexandra

Hmm, ok - it seems we haven't quite shifted the debate to the dark side yet, so I'll do a quick response to this one here:
russ_watters, Marx was correct that capitalism would be unable to deal with sweatshops and child labor. They still exist, not only in 'third world' or 'underdeveloped' countries, but in the US. Here is the link to information about this: http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/index.php?s=50&r=5

And here is a taste of the information you can get on that website:
So, you see, Marx was correct.
PS: Marx was not *guessing*. His analysis of capitalism was based on empirical observations and on the application of sophisticated economic theoretical tools of analysis.

ShawnD

Deciding that cats were the problem, then killing all the cats was an even funnier tragedy.

zoobyshoe

What is it you're up to, exactly? Are you suggesting with all this talk of Marx that it would ever be feasable for any country to make a transition to Marxism?

I say, lets keep things the way they are, and stay vigilant about the excesses like the LA sweatshops.

loseyourname

If we look outside of human history to the history of the entire planet, aside from the mass extinction at the end of the Cambrian period, the evolution of humans was probably the greatest tragedy.

Bladibla

But it can't be really called a tragedy.. can it? I mean, we couldn't exactly stop some x-organism evolving over millions of years to become us.

A tragedy would be a event which it *could* have been prevented, but could't due to human failures.

Correct me if i am wrong.

dextercioby

Bladibla,I guess your acception of "tragedy" would consider the earthquakes and other natural catastrophies resulting in massive death toll to be something else than a "tragedy"...Hmm,interesting.Are u thinking ancient Greek theater ?

Daniel.

Bladibla

You have a extremely good point. They could be called 'natural disasters' but then again, it is a 'tragedy' after all.

Greek theatre?

kaos

Hmm i would agree with you man.Its the worst thing that happened to the planet.

Huckleberry

I'll have to mention that to them the next time I see them. They'll get a kick out of it.

As it is over 1 billion people in the world have bad water quality. About 1/3 of the world's population have substandard sanitation. These numbers will increase in the next few decades. Most of the people that suffer from this are the poor. They already live without running water and good sanitation systems and without vaccinations. Because a person lives in a poor, out of the way place does not make them ignorant to the world. You are making an assumption that they are ignorant of modern technology. That is untrue. These people know exactly what they are missing but live according to their means as best they can, and I might add far better than many in richer nations would in the same circumstances.
edit-I had thought of this and decided against it. Perhaps just removing the part of humanity that causes us to be selfish would remedy the problem. That is why I voted for the destruction of the ego. Then again, I guess we wouldn't be human without it.

loseyourname

The classical tragedies (which is where the word came from) generally involved circumstances that were beyond the protagonist's control. What made them tragedies was that a trait that is usually a virtuous trait became disadvantagous and leads to the tragic fall. This trait is referred to as the protagonist's 'tragic flaw.'

In the particular case of human evolution, what might very well be considered the great 'tragic flaw' of our race is our propensity toward violence and warfare, a trait that evolved in chimpanzees as a method for controlling access to reproductive resources. The great tragedy is that the same mechanism of natural selection, which relies on differential reproductive success, that produced the wonderful biodiversity we see everywhere around us, also produced a species that threatens to destroy most of it. This is what is known in the literary world as 'tragic irony.'

kaos

Anyway do u guys remember the part in the first matrix movie ,when agent smith said something like "there are only 2 species in the planet that does not achieve equilibrium with its environment ,viruses and humans".
I honestly think that that is how external observers such as aliens would see us.