true nobility is what you do with what you're given in life. in this
sense, a slave master can be noble if he was born into such position
but tries to be a fair/just slave master or end slavery because it's
seen as a moral wrong. and someone born into slavery can be ignoble if
he abuses power within his (limited)sphere of influence or refuses the
learn the moral lessons of slavery upon liberation.
we have no control over how we are born. but, we can control our
lives and make our own choices within our sphere of our influence/
power. so, even as certain principles of nobility remain constant,
their worth among individuals can only be determined by human choice/
actions within social contexts. so, deng, as an autocrat, is not
noble by american democratic standards. but, given his background and
situation, he did the noble thing in turning china away from maoism to
pluralism. same can be said of gorbachev. both deng and gorby can only
be judged by what they did within the context of their sphere of
influence. similarly, though khrushchev was no democrat, it took real
courage for him to confront and expose some of evil of stalinism.
this is why some conservatives who only condemn gorbachev as a
communist fail to understand how far he came from his starting point.
'the given' in his life was communist monopoly on everything and ...

Your position seems contradictory since you say people should accept
what they were born into and then do something with it, but what if a
person wants to fight for equality or inequality, wouldn't that
translate as not accepting the default position. And what of social
contracts and individual rights? Are you saying that we should support
a system that denies basic living conditions for humans just because
we are born into it? I think your orrientation on nobility is off
track since in the West and other parts of the world individual rights
are the unit of focus, to mainly just stop people from harming and
restraining others.

By consenting to be a member of a community, citizens consent to a
Social Contract. They agree to abide by the decisions of the majority,
because the community is a body which is governed by the majority.
Government by Consent of the Governed.

In essence the social contract theory is an agreement whereby people
accept certain restrictions on them for the benefit of society.

Social contract theory is the view that morality is founded solely on
uniform social agreements that serve the best interests of those who
make the agreement.

On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:08:48 -0700, RSF Group wrote:

You do realize you have just contradicted yourself with this statement,
do you not, to the point of invalidating your entire position?

What is 'wiring in the brain?, btw?

Your post smells like teen angst.

We have enough angst from the old farts on alt.philosophy, please remove
this group from future posts.

"ZerkonX" X.net> wrote in message news:pan.2008.06.14.13.43.54@X.net...

piss off, net-nanny

On Jun 14, 12:28 am, Immortalist yahoo.com> wrote:

no, all i'm saying is nobility is an individual quality and must be
judged on the basis of what the individual does within the context of
what he's been born into.
we have this pernicious concept of 'noble victimhood' where people are
supposedly noble because they've been born into a 'victim' group while
others are automatically evil because they've been born into 'victor'
groups.