The human body is actually not disgusting to me. It is an incredibly complicated living machine, with so many redundancies and so many efficiencies in it's basic processes alone. Furthermore, the human brain is fascinating to me, every aspect of it. That said, yes, a person is more than that amazing organic machine.In post 1394, Accountant wrote:First of all, let's acknowledge that humans as biological organisms are inherently disgusting. There is nothing attractive about a sack of meat, bones and blood. So does this mean that I am a misanthrope who loathes humanity? No. That's because I also acknowledge that humans are more than just gross sacks of flesh - indeed, to view humans as sacks of flesh alone is in a way offensive and insulting.
What humans have that allows them to rise above their fleshy origins are their ideals, those beliefs that they hold to the highest extent and with every breath, every heartbeat, every moment of their lives strive to uphold. Justice. Honor. Selfishness. Equality. Freedom. Balance. Love. Hope. Those are the things that take people beyond the level of animals. In this manner, even a disgusting pile of meat may be transformed into something beautiful. The lungs are still fleshy lumps, but they're fleshy lumps that pump air into an ideal. The face is still a mottled surface indented by crevices and scars, but it is used to express and impose a beautiful ideal.
Therefore, we arrive at the inevitable conclusion: humansaretheir ideals. Their worth, their status as human beings, the seat of their existence as something above an animal, their very personhood - this is all due to the strength in which they execute their ideal. The purer the ideal, the purer the execution, the more dedicated a human is to their ideal, to the point where they can no longer be said to be a "thing", but a living embodiment of their ideal - that it what it means to be a person. That it what it means to be a human.
If we accept, then, that a person is defined by their ideal, we see now why nuance is a terrible idea. Adding nuance messes up the extreme black and white ideals of the world. Black and white are very pure colors. Grey is not. It's a mixed color; it dilutes the purity of anything it is set onto. And the purity in this case is that of their personhood. We therefore come to the inevitable conclusion that people who do not think in black or white have diluted identities. Uf the world can be seen as a race of beautiful heroes and villains clashing as they attempt to impose their ideals on the world, then grey people are just side characters. Extras and NPCs.Boring losers. They're not people, just like an extra in a movie isn't a person and is only fit to be background noise or killed off when convenient. They do not have the purity of ideal required to be a real person.
You ignore that humans also have ideals that many find distasteful, like hate and spite and anger and greed. Humans aren't some perfection, but that said, yes the ideals are part of what makes us...us. However. People whos bodies have undergone purely aesthetic changes, such as wrinkling or going more pale, often deal with depression because of these changes. We are -also- our bodies. The two are combined. You cannot ignore this fact just because you want to, it is not something you can handwave. Furthermore, people are not their ideals because they very often do not act in a way they would see as ideal. That is why if you ask 100 people if they think it's okay to steal they will say no, but some of those who said no will still shoplift or swipe things from purses, etc. We are -not- our ideals. We are our actions. Ideals mean little, even "how they execute their ideals" doesn't mean as much as -what- they do.
You are, however, assuming that Black and White is good, and concluding from that the idea that grey is bad. There is no reason to assume black and white is good. Extremes are almost always bad, in fact, and there is no such thing as perfection. There never will be. Nuance also is not a matter of "accepting some bad with the good", it is a matter of "Doing this objectively good thing will cause this objectively bad thing. There is no way around it. Alternately, this objectively good thing here causes this other objectively bad thing. They are different, they are our only options, and neither is particularly better or worse because it depends on your perspective. To that end, I will ask you this. Are you prepared to accept that other people have different perspectives than you, that it is okay for them to do so, and that them having a different perspective does not make them necessarily wrong?
