Stoney

And anyway, to everyone: you don’t need to go around wearing studs to be a metalhead. Being a metalhead is a state of mind!! Because often, the most metal in attitude are those who walk around dressed like perfect bank employees, claiming to listen to "everything," but at home have the complete discography of Iron Maiden, Metallica, Dream Theater, Judas Priest, Children of Bodom, Manowar, Testament, Megadeth, Slipknot, Helloween, a Shakira album, and a remaining ten divided between jazz, fusion, 70s prog, disco music, Elvis, Beatles, Nino D'Angelo, and the Prophilax. And they are the ones who, when listening to Cannibal Corpse, don’t go wild but remain still and focused, capturing all the notes and enjoying the powerful technical fusion between the drummer and the guitarists. Come on, admit it, I’m right, it’s true!! :D

Pixies77, I was hopefully waiting for your response on the Shadow Gallery review :P

One should be free to listen to any nonsense they like, while being aware that it remains nonsense. In less colorful terms: listen to whatever seems appealing, keeping in mind that nothing is absolute and everything is open to criticism.

You’ve gotten stuck in an endless discussion. It’s not that this book sucks because "at 11 years old one should read better stuff blah blah..." or because "at 11 years old one should be held responsible etc etc...": this book sucks AND THAT'S IT, no matter what age you read it at, because it’s essentially made up of nonsense. But nonsense can be read for fun, after all, we can’t only read highbrow material; we need some entertainment too. The problem arises when such nonsense is considered the beginning and end of all literature, and when the press and critics elevate it to the status of essential works, confusing entertainment with culture so that everyone feels entitled to consider themselves cultured and stops searching and caring.

Yosif. Talks don't matter: you can't expect to bring a serious critique to metalheads, that’s just how it is. You either say "this band is the best on earth, there is objectively nothing more beautiful and culturally complete, nothing of greater depth can be conceived or intuited, this band is the emanation of the divine One and its members sit at the right hand of the Father," or every OBJECTIVE criticism is destined to be obliterated by the attitude of the metal community that insists on consecrating an instinctive, visceral, and immediate type of music to absoluteness, something that everyone can understand without any effort. That said, Pantera are not to be dismissed. They have always shown personality and have always had something to say. Of course, the genre they play is that, and they are certainly not immune to the clichés and limitations that come with it.

Macaco, what I had to say, I have already said; perhaps I haven't expressed myself clearly or perhaps I'm just not being understood. After all, I realize this is a rather thorny and delicate subject. It remains the fact that certain thoughts are far from being "instinctive" or "innate": instinctive is the action and the violence, not the reasoning about so-called ethical values (which, by the way, have changed throughout history in a decidedly controversial manner). Perhaps Kant does not recall that the feeling of altruism and compassion was introduced about 2000 years ago and not before, by a religion that, coincidentally, had significant political repercussions at the time and still does today. To say that a person already knows what is right and what is wrong is misleading, implausible, dogmatic, and elevates humanity to a dignity it does not possess. It is the influence of Christian morality that leads one to think that, in the end, everyone is good and evil is merely a degeneration of the Primary Good (after all, Lucifer is just a fallen angel). A Japanese or a Chinese, for example, would never think such a thing.

Kant, let me give you a very silly example. I would never kill a man, but not because I believe it's "wrong": simply because it doesn't suit me. You know how many people I would like to see dead? However, I have always thought that facing the prospect of spending the rest of my life in prison, it's better to opt for a more peaceful and fundamentally different solution. Anyway, we can talk as much as you want about the fact that it’s not right, that it’s brutal, primitive, whatever you want, but you have to admit that the most important reason is the risk of a huge practical consequence for oneself (let’s call it selfishness). The law can do this, nothing more. It makes you refrain from crimes under the threat of personal punishment, and that’s it. In fact, there are people who don’t make this reasoning, whether it’s because they are seized by a momentary impulse, or because they have powerful friends who can help them avoid legal consequences, or because life has been particularly cruel and it’s worth risking thirty years in prison for another day of survival, or because they spend their lives planning a crime that leaves no traces (and there are many such crimes), or because they sit in Parliament and make laws for themselves and their friends. Now, this reasoning has absolutely nothing moral about it, as you can see, and I don’t believe it’s fundamentally different for you and others. If you had grown up in a family affiliated with a criminal organization, perhaps you would have a different set of values, even there with a clear distinction between what is right and what is wrong (the codes of honor in such cases are among the most scrupulous that can exist). We can sit here and philosophize as much as we want, but the harsh reality is this. People shape their behavior based on the law of reward/punishment, just like a trained dog that has been taught not to relieve itself indoors or to bring the newspaper to its owner, not for "uprightness". I don’t see anything elevated in this; rather, the opposite. Perhaps if we admitted this simple truth, we would already be many steps ahead.

The point is that we are not talking about religion at all, but about the criminal use that some make of large-scale religious suggestion for profit and often political purposes. It is a full-blown scam, but since it is masked under "sacred" symbols, there are those who even have the courage to defend it or, in any case, to underestimate it.

Thank goodness you all have such certainties about what is good and what is bad. Evidently, Debaser is populated by enlightened masters, and I hadn’t noticed.

Of course, if you make the "ranking of absolute goods" after accusing me of having grown up with dogmas and mental schemes... It's like saying: the classic self-inflicted wound.