Frecus,

Interesting discussion you have generated! You should not put so much pressure on yourself! I can only reliable rely on my own experiences, but I know partially how you feel. My parents were very dysfunctional through long stretches of my childhood. My mother frequently discussed suicide, in front of us as young children, it never happened but it was tough hearing those things as a child (not as tough as what you have gone through, obviously). I survived by trying to excel, give everyone in my family something positive to look to, talk about.

I would recommend a therapist to everyone, and wish I had the wherewithal to seek out more guidance when I was younger, it is mainly a venue for self evaluation, it really does help though. In many ways people tend to recreate the relationships that were the foundations of their life, through their entire life . Really becoming aware of what you are doing is a valuable tool for living your life.

I’m 36 now, have achieved a high level of education, have a happy marriage (12 years) , 2 wonderful kids, have a great job with a leadership roll in my company, A house with plenty of income, and 3 painted warhammer armies (well 2 and a half maybe . ..maybe). Yet there are plenty of challenges that plague me and my vision of happiness that others can not see from the exterior view on my life. Recent challenges in my family with mental illness, substance abuse, terminal illness, coupled with the parental anxiety of passing “issues” on to my children, have made the last few years extremely challenging. I’m through most of those things now, things are cruising right along. But that does not mean things may not get dramatically worse or better. These challenges have taught me that I need to be prepared for change, now more than ever. I can’t recreate the same patterns in my life and hope for success, and definitely will not be happy recreating my childhood relationship with my parents. Nor can I really look externally for my own happiness.

“The past is History. The future is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why the call it the present.” – from Kung Fu Panda . I’ve been annoying my wife for weeks with that quote, and now I can annoy you too! (fun movie by the way). In the last few years. My father has inspired my be studying budhism. It has fundamentally changed his life. I am amazed that he can change so fundamentally so late in life. One thing he is always relaying to me is to “be in the moment”.

Regarding your question about what is valuable in life. You might ask yourself what do you value and respect in other peoples lives. Do you hold somebody else as insignificant because they have not changed the world in some way? That there life has had no meaning?

Its not that unusual for people to want to have a legacy. It may be a fundamental human drive. In many people this materializes in a desire to have a family, or pass on their accumulated knowledge. My advice to use is to use your creativity, to Create! Add to the world. Choose a profession, or spend your free time in an endeavor where you can express this. One of the reasons I chose to be a civil engineer is to be a part of large projects, (bridges in my case). That and so I can visit job sites and get yelled at by irate iron works with no concept of seismic design . . . I digress .



Agree 100%! I would also say I like to live my life such that I can look back at my actions and be proud of how I lived it. Do not disassociate yourself from the world and people around you.
Why put so much value in how others or even history see your life? You need to be comfortable with your self. You are here because you , yourself, are intrinsically valuable, not because you have some task that the world, or any others, need to recognize as valuable or noteworthy. I feel like giving you a big hug

Regarding Evil. I do believe good and evil certainly exist and are definitely concrete definable concepts. The trick is that definition is itself fluid and changes with the refraction of history and your current cultural bias. As many examples above show, we can define many of those historical acts as evil, where as the people and culture of the time of the events may have not done so. Some people define good and evil in religious context others in societal (e.g. sociopathic) context, some events and people clearly qualify in both (e.g. Hitler). As a society we co-exist together by sharing similar values and finding common ground, regardless of our varied backgrounds.



Somewhat off topic, I would like to respectfully disagree with Ghengis Khan. Most of the "evil" acts attributed to him are products of western centric propaganda. I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Maki ... 866&sr=8-1

A great perspective that most us have not seen on the Mongols influence, and a must read for people interested in world history. The Mongols have been key to the world distribution of many important technological and sociological innovations.

And Gengish Khan didn't do anything that the Mongols would have considerd evil. The tatars didn't eat people at barbeque or anything like that. They simply won many battles by superior tactics and psychological warfare. They new the power of terror, the most powerful weapon in war and they used it. Every country that is in war will use terror because it is an effective weapon and kills less people than outright war.

A terrorist is generally considerd as an evil man. Still this is totally relative. When Finland was under Russian rule on 19th century Eugen Schauman shot the russian general governor of Finland and got killed in return.

The Finns thouhgt that Schauman was a hero, the russians thought that he was a terrorsit. Schaumans effort helped the finnish people on their way towards independece, but was he evil for what he did? He killed someone for a thing that he thought was the greater cause but we all know that killing is wrong. So it is relative. It was good for one society and bad for the other. Was it good for the whole mankind? Don't know, so I won't say that he was an evil man. He was a freedom fighter either with the right or wrong ideals.

Sure, ignorance is the source of evil acts. Its the intolerance of one culture over another that makes it possible for massed murdering and genocidal war. As we move forward in the global community, we learn that through education we can accept our differences and live together. its like the Breakfast Club, we view the world in "the simplest terms and most convenient definitions," but as we evolve those terms become obscured. Simplicities like "good vs. evil" rob us of perspective, removing the context in which horrible things happen. This makes it difficult to learn from the past, and therefore, doomed to repeate it. The only true evil is ignorance.



That's not entirely true. People today have access to a much broader and objective view of history than we've ever had before. Just like Ender's example of Ghengis Khan, the historical and Anthropological/Archaeological communities have done amazing work in exploring the many intricacies of history and revealing the real chain of events and the motivations of the people involved. The market is ripe and eager for fresh and alternative interpretations of history. No longer satisfied by the traditional, people look for the truth not writen by the winners. And they can find it if they want to.



Again, this isn't really the case. The events of Charlemagne's reign are well documented, often times by people who were there and who witnessed it. My Western Civ. history text book, "The Making of the West," which is a fantastic "general history" text, specifically mentioned the events at Verdun. Charlemagne was a Barbarian King who fell in love with classic Rome and did everything he could to rebuild it, and that meant the complete destruction and/or subjugation of the other Barbarians who had torn it down. From his point of view, it was "evil" to... say... worship a tree; which the Saxons did. For him, Christianity was the ultimate good and if he had to force it on people, well, he was more than comfortable with that.



Don't mean to be redundant, but this should be addressed as well. Everything Charlemagne did, he did either at the request of or with the best interests of the Roman Catholic church in mind. He was the personal champion of the Pope, the highest of christian authority. Using words like "supposedly" in quotations like that creates an emphasis that isn't really appropriate. Charlemagne rode under the real and true banner of Christianity, answering directly to the Pope, it doesn't get any more official than that.



Actually, He was probably one of the most Pious and God-minded people who ever lived, or at least in the top ten.

Under his rule he sanctioned the development of "Carolingian Minuscule" which was the primary writting style of Monks throughout the Dark and Middle Ages. During his reign and for the first hundred years after there are over 7000 manuscripts that can be dated to this time. For the near 1000 years before, there are less than 2000. Charlemagne presided over what has been called the mini-Renaissance, the first age of enlightenment that made the second age possible. Monks working under him, in monestaries that he funded and oversaw the building of, developed what would be called the Liberal Arts. He never really succeeded in re-building all of the roads and aquaducts of the fallen Roman Empire, but under his rule, the newly united regions of Europe experienced trade and cultural integration like they hadn't enjoyed since Rome.

Charlemagne is an excellent example for this debate because he shows that an individual is capable of both extreme evil and extreme good. By many, many accounts, Charlemagne should be regarded as a paragon of virtue. He is the father of and the ultimate image of chivalry. For the English, they have King Arthur. For the rest of Europe in the Dark and Middle Ages, they had Charlemagne. Both did the same thing, rescued their land from pagan barbarism by preserving the classic Roman ideal of civilization through literature and education and civil Law. But Charlemagne employed brutal tactics to make this happen, creating his new civilized world by purging "undesirables."

Not that I condone purging undesirable people. Its just the perspective that matters.

Access does not equate to knowledge. I think Ender's example is prime. He sought the knowledge about Khan, and therefore knows more accurately what happened. But for the general public who took high school world history, the propaganda claiming that he was a homicidal murderer is good enough. Many people are not concerned with digging deeper, it doesn't affect them.




Once again, my argument applies. This is not something found in many high school (nor college, if memory serves correctly) textbooks. Maybe it is, I have not looked through many. This is something not openly taught, because it draws attention to the disconnect between what he did and what his faith should have compelled him to do. The closest you get is the quote, "Under this sign you will conquer," or something to that nature. The only reason I know of it is because of my Church History classes, and I decided then and there that his actions were evil.



No, i think the quotations are very appropriate. The Roman Catholic Church has a long history of corruption. The Pope is not the highest of Christian authority, despite what he and many others might think. Charlemagne was the the personal champion of a man (Leo III?) who was also greedy and lusted after power and land. Why? I scratch your back, you scratch mine. There was nothing holy or divine about their mission. It was all about power. This is not the real and true banner of Christianity. That is something else all together. Answering to the pope, regardless of how official it is, is not a get out of jail free card.



Sorry, but you can not call someone pious and god-minded who was the cause of such slaughter. It is an inconsistency of the highest order.




Which, by your very definition (the intolerance of another culture), makes him evil.



edited once to remove unquoted text

Still his intentions were good, and probably or hopefully his acts have caused greater rightness than wrogness. Atleast most people would think that a christian Europe is a better place than a barbaric Europe (I know it's not the right word, but you get the meaning).





Pious and good minded doesn't mean that his actions were "good" as you would like to call it (I would say right). He just did what he thought was the right thing to do and did it as well as he good. To follow a god doesn't mean that you will do the right things in your life, and I think that this is what Willowdark meant.

Actions and their consequences look different from different perspectives. Humans just need to call some things right/wrong + good/evil. It makes life so much easier.

(I am not saying that I don't do this, otherwise I would not be a human.)

I could say that his intentions were not good (even if the outcome is positive for us), but I think either side would just be working with assumptions, since we haven't talked with the man or seen his true heart.

I must argue the use of vocabulary, though. To call someone God-minded, which in this context would be Jesus as portrayed by the New Testament, is to call them good, holy, righteous, concerned with the things of God. This does not include forced baptism at the point of a sword. People are imperfect, yes, and will screw up. But to call the actions of a butcher pious is to wholly misunderstand what it means to be a follower of Christ.

I also would like to say that I hope no one was offended by the "history of corruption" comment in reference the Catholic Church. It was not my intent to characterize the current Catholicism as such, only its historic presentation and its most obvious fallacies (lust for worldly power, indulgences, etc...) As Willow said, both Charlemagne and Catholicism have been the sources of good, whether intentional or otherwise. I did not intend an anti catholic rant and hope it did not come off that way.

Not to pick nits here, but being an Athiest is not the same as denying the existance of the Christian God. Athiesm is the denial of the existance of ALL gods. If the idea of a god isn't in your head, then you my friend are an Athiest. Just defining terms.



I believe in myself, in my own abilities, but I also recognize the need to be saved. I believe that it is "By grace through faith are you saved, not by works lest any man should boast." The best way I've heard it described was in the words of the comedian Mike Warnke "People say that Religion is a crutch. Well, that's not a bad thing if you're crippled."

Take care.

My use of the word atheist was quite lazy I agree.
But I still think that if the idea of something devine (all gods) doesn't exsist in my head I'm not an atheist. An atheist is someone who denies the exsistance of gods (basicly) but I'm not denying anything. I just don't see the need of gods or other supernatural things.

I know that sicience can't figure out if god exsists. It's impossible because supernatural objects can't be observed by natural means. Supernatural is above natural.



Well I just don't see from what I should be saved I guess. The world is fine to me. Sure there are things that mess the world up but IMO this is it. It wouldn't be a good world without bad things. There would be no contrast and nothing good could exsist because good can't exsist without bad.

BYTW I like the quote from the comedian. Well said, the only thing is that I don't view my self or anyother one as crippled par the crippled ones (those without leggs ).