We haven’t had a new one of these threads since v. 2011.2. With elections coming up in three months, we’ll probably need one for 2012.
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A place for careful, clear, respectful discussions of difficult topics. No flame wars, please. This isn’t the rest of the Internet (as you may have noticed).
Cats are better than dogs because they sort of run on autopilot.
I’m kidding.
I think you mean ”
“
?
For clarification I repeat here, verbetim, Paul Baker’s extraordinary summarization of the great Dog vs. Cat war of 2003. Originally published September 2005.
If you’re new to Muse, you may be puzzled by the rabbit problem on the “Muse Mail” page. Occasionally, part of someone’s letter gets eaten by hot-pink bunnies, which pop up in a smug row, aving completely obliterated what the unfortunate person wrote. The Queen of Muses decided that a full explanation was called for. “Get Paul Baker to write it,” said Kokopelli. “Don’t be silly. He’ll write it in Elizabethan,” said Aeiou’s sleeves. “Exactly!” said Kokopelli. “Crowned in 1558, died 1603,” ruminated Bo, which was accurate but not very helpful. The Queen of Muses had lost the plot by now, so I got the job. If you don’t understand the Elizabethan, write and complain. But you’ll have to complain in Elizabethan, or you might get bunnied.
A Surfeit of Coneys
Being a true and faythfull Historie of the Greate Bunney Warres that have raged and burned within this Journal these twoo yeares past; the whyche are like to continue yf no Balm can be founde to ease theyre festering.
The cut and parry of these Warres having lately furnished that monstrous ferment wherin Dissent and Enmity do flourish, to the grete detriment of Peace and Order, al the noblest Authors as labour long o’er their pens to fashion eminent prose, and al the Muses as are writ of herein, and al the Officers of the Press charged with the good governance and worthy Reputation of this moste well regarded Quarto, all are agreed that an end shal bee putt to the said Warres. And to beginn upon the Reconciliation of the seaverall Armies, it hath fallen to me (at the behest of the Quene of Muses), to write a true accompt of what was the cause of the matter, and wherefore suche grete Contention arose among those gentle and dicernyng persons as comenly reade these pages.
Know, then, that it came to pass that a grete clamour sometime arose among certaine Cat-fanciers; that theyre chiefeste toyes, wherin they take grete delighte, were spoke not of here at anie length, but onlie in passying. And suche fyne Petts as they had were deservying of more Consideration, and theyre habits, condition, bewty, benevolence, and maner of mewing, should be beter written of by learned men and women. Wherefore sundry of these Cat-fanciers were provoked to write unto the Muses, demanding that such Injustice shoulde be straitlye requited.
Let it not be said that the Muses take alwaies theyre owne path, and heed not the plaints of theyre disciples. For in the verie next Edition, there was put in a Cat-counter (as it was called), whych shewed the number of persons who had desyred som essay uppon the feline realm. And though manie thought it false (it being sene at the firste to number above six thousand million), yet it semed indede that manie readers woulde esteem Catts worthy of discourse. Wherefore ere long an entire Edition was printed, having lytel within it but homilies, and tractes, and theses, and pourtraytes, all concernynge Catts and theyre doings.
And thus began the Warres. For there were among oure readers also manie Dogg-fanciers, who had scant regard for catts, and gretly misliked a whole Edition devoted to theyre cause. It availed lytel that the Muses, in that verie edition, put up a Dogg-counter. For it began at three, ran on to one and thirty, and then fell all in pieces. Rumor saw therein cozening and dissebling by the Catts and theyre masters.
Lo, within two moneths the Dogg edition appeared, whiche gladdened the Dogg-fanciers, but drew forth scorn and wrath from the Catt-fanciers. And thereupon the trump sounded, and the cries rose up uppon both sides, and naught was to be heard save the dread discord of battle.
The Quene of Muses was constrayned to assemble her Court in extraordinary session. And this she ruled, that anie further fulmination uppon the merits or failings of Catts or Doggs should be cast into the Pit; or else, if yt were onlie parte of a letter, the offending passages should be struck out with a row of coneys, set in the fairest shade of pinke that the Printer could contrive. This tincture he called Hot Pink, methinkes because yt is made by longe boyling of al maner of straunge substances, the nature of whyche onlie a foole wolde enquire into. And the coneys he called Bunnies, whych is theyre pet name. (For children are perverse, and oft will make a pett of that which woulde make a beter potage.) Howe’er be it, Hot Pink Bunnies were made forthwith the Mark of Excision.
Thus for a tyme were the doggs of warre putt back uppon theyre leashes, and the catts too. For al writers wel knewe that to hold discourse uppon the forbidden beastes was to be straitlye Bunney’d. Yet was strife ever ready to break forth anewe. For when the Printer anon took up his inkes uppon a later Edition, he carelessly bent to some other paltry purpose his famed Hot Pink, and thus was constrayned to use some other pink for his Bunnies; whyche alteration he deemed of lytel accompt, thinking twould pass unnoticed.
Marry, it near rekindled the Warres. For the want of a goodly Field wheron they could fight o’er theyre petts, both Armies rose upp and fought the Printer for miscolouring theyre Bunnies. The Poore fellowe hid in a priest hole for a week, and nowe hath himself the look of a coney aboute him. One that hath sene a foxe.
Lo then, child, if thou art new come to this fyne Publication, bee not dismayed at rows of bunnies, nor flowers, nor heartes, nor al maner of other smal devices, set in a letter. For they signifie onlie that some mater hath bene rehearsed beyond reason, and there is lytel virtue in wasting ink with further orations uppon it.
A Warning to Fanciers All
O, hast thou, child, a hounde, belov’d and brave, / The chiche in equal measure loveth thee?
And was thy Treasure mock’d by some foul knave, / Whose cattish wordes thou’lt spurn unquietly?
Beware! Lest in thy wounded Fancy’s rage, / Unreasoning Opinion thy pen
Shall leas in warlike fashion o’er the page, / Denouncing all the joyes of other men.
For then, a host of coneys pink shall rise, / And hide thine angry wordes from all men’s eyes.
It’s kind of prophetic that Paul wrote that children were “perverse” for thinking of HPBs as pets, isn’t it?
So I’m going to try and turn this thread into a direction that is slighter hotter than hot pink bunnies–the election. At this time in 2008, there was a lot more discussion going on about who to vote for, etc. I haven’t seen much of that in 2012. Well, actually, I’ve seen various complaints on this and the rants and plaints thread over various things REpublican spokesmen have said.
As for myself, I know I’ve been disillusioned since 2008. I’m not exactly pleased at everything Obama’s done. At a lot of things he’s done, actually.
But I disagree with Mitt Romney’s platform more. So it’s lesser of the two evils, right? But I don’t really want to support either one.
This is my first presidential election where I’m eligible to vote. Why such a cakey selection?
Two-party system wwwhhhyyyy.
What things that Obama has done bother you? (just to kick off the discussion)
I can’t believe the whole “War on Women”. I mean, come on, what century is this?
To start: drones (kill list), NSA (room 641A, Camp Williams).
Even if you think an election is a choice between two evils, isn’t voting for the lesser one still a rational choice? After all, it’s a vote for the best possible outcome (with emphasis on the word “possible”).
Well, yes, but there should be more than 2 to choose from. (Oh, 3rd parties exist, but it’s the main 2 that have all the power).
It would also be nice if the 2 candidates were both qualified, but that’s not the 2-party system’s fault.
Oh boy. Before I really get into this, let me say that weevils came up somehow during a sailing lesson I was teaching, and I’m proud to say that I did not let the opportunity pass without making a “lesser of two” joke.
1. It is the 2 party system’s fault that we have candidates like we do. Each party has an established base whose turnout doesn’t vary too much. This leaves the middle (mostly “independents”) to decide who wins. Third parties can’t take root because people worry about the Spoiler Effect; i.e. voting for Nader takes a vote away from Gore. So instead of candidates and parties who take decisive stands for the core of their constituency, we get parties and candidates who spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to woo the minority undecided.
2. We need a better system. I present to you: Instant Runoff, a.k.a. The Alternative Vote. I think CGPGrey has a video or two on the subject, but I’ll try to explain it simply here. Instead of voting for just candidate A or B, you rank A, B, C, & D in order of preference. Once all of the first choice votes are tallied, the minority candidates’ votes go to the majority candidates with whom their voters most closely identify. This means that all votes are counted, and the winner is liked by the most people, but candidates can still run independent campaigns.
3. My state, New York, has fusion voting, which allows for more parties in a slightly different way. My party (Working Families) can either put up its own candidate, or back another party’s. In a large race, we know before hand that the winner will still be either the Republican or the Democrat, but I can still vote for the Democrat by selecting en on the Working Families ticket. My vote will still count towards that candidate, but en’ll know that a percentage of en’s votes came from WF voters, whose goals differ from the Democrats’.
4. All this math raises a problem: how do we run efficient elections that can be tallied quickly without the Supreme Court getting involved? E-voting seems like the answer, but it has to be implemented correctly. The machines and methods have to be open and secure, and especially not made by Diebold because oh my god. The solution: more math! Specifically, cryptography (<3). David Bismark's TED Talk "E-voting without fraud" explains the basics- your vote is cast in such a way so that only the owner (you) of a password (part of your ballot) can know which candidate you've voted for. The votes are tallied electronically and immediately, then posted online. You can check your vote online because they're all displayed publicly, but only you can check who the vote went to, because you have that password.
thanks for listening, i wish i could just walk into the cafe in town and talk to people about stuff like this.
Added note to your first point: the most partisan voters tend to be over-represented in the primaries. As a result, the candidate selected is not necessarily the one with broadest appeal even within the candidate’s own party.
RANKED VOTING
it is what I want
1. That’s a good point that hadn’t occurred to me. Thank you.
2. I agree! I did even before reading 1 because it was clear that we didn’t have enough choices.
3. That sounds slightly better than the normal system, I think.
4. I know absolutely nothing about this, but it definitely sounds like an important problem.
On ranked voting: That’s actually what Cambridge does for their local elections. I like the system in theory, but I’ve worked on some campaigns there, and it seems like we always run into trouble with people not fully understanding the voting system. So I like the idea, but if it’s going to work than people need to be better educated in how voting works.
I guess what I always worry about when people change the voting system around is that having more complicated voting systems will just make politics less about knowing how to govern a country and make good decisions and more about how to manipulate the voting so you, or someone you like, wins.
I think my city did that last year.
If people aren’t willing to even take the time to learn how their voting system works, I think they shouldn’t vote. Of course, I suppose some of them would do it, anyway.
A tangentially related thing it’s interesting to think about:
In most Latin American countries, there has never been a two-party system as we know it. In general, there have tended to be a lot of different parties that all achieve success in winning legislative seats, as opposed to our more familiar system of two parties that each win about half the seats, with other parties getting virtually no votes. However, the wider partisan representation found historically in Latin America causes a whole new set of problems: since no party holds a majority and no party retains a significant amount of power for very long, passing legislation is extraordinarily difficult and painfully slow. Since each party has its own goals and motives that differ from every other party, getting more than half of the votes on something just doesn’t happen. Now, this next part is a bit of a simplification, but I’ve read some interesting arguments that this multipartisan gridlock is one of the main driving forces behind the near-constant civil war and armed political movements that are historically common in Latin America. Because the government is incapable of passing legislation and helping the country, the people get fed up and take matters into their own hands.
Obviously this is a generalization and a simplification of a horribly complex matter, but I find it pretty fascinating to consider.
Vendaval–drones, among other things. I’m not too pleased with Obama’s foreign policy.
Piggy– I don’t really know enough about Latin American governments and politics to say. But I do know that many of them weren’t really democracies at all, and had military dictators. So you could also invert that, and say that armed political movements have made it diffcult for any one party to establish themselves, at least unless they control the military and become de facto dictatorships.
As far as I can tell, lots of countries with parliamentary systems, like Britain, Germany, and others, have multi-party systems. There are two or three major parties, but there are also smaller parties that do win seats, unlike America, where it’s Democrat or Republican, or nothing. And they form coalitions to work together on voting, and it seems to work out pretty well for them.
Ultimately it the first past the post voting system that we have that cause the two party system, as opposed to a representational voting system. And changing something in the constitution like that would be very difficult. (Or…not, I just read the constitution and I don’t think it says anything about how we vote, or count the votes, just about how many congresspeople per state, but the first past the post system is still so entrenched in our country that it would require a massive effort to change it.)
Is it just me who cares much more about domestic policy than foreign policy? Not that the latter isn’t important, but I feel that foreign policy is less likely to affect me on a daily basis, whereas whether or not I have healthcare (especially healthcare which only applies to women, which certain people in office seem very against) is kind of a deal breaker for me.
I think it depends on what’s perceived to be at stake. I care very much about US domestic policy because healthcare is an important issue to me. I care much less about Austrian domestic policies (even though I live there): although I hope fair solutions for the parking tickets debate and the bilingual sign dilemma* are found, overpriced parking tickets are not going to pose as much of a threat to my welfare as lack of healthcare is.
*Don’t laugh- this has gone on for over a decade. At one point, opposing politicians even had a demonstration where they symbolically dug up an offending sign and moved it just to make their point. Yes, this is the sort of thing that state politicans do there (they were Carinthians, of course).
I guess I feel awful for caring more about domestic policy because on the whole, our foreign policy is killing many more people every day, but if is true that I find myself thinking about domestic policy a lot more. I guess that might be that in most cases, foreign policy is just one category and domestic policy is separated into a bunch of them…
Hey, at least when you think about our foreign policy you’re thinking about other people. Sometimes when people care as much about foreign policy as domestic, what they really care about is where their tax money is “disappearing” to.
Since I live in a country with a multiple party system that originally started out as a two party system, I figured that a (simplified) historical anecdote might be interesting to some when weighing different systems. Of course, the historical context was very, very different then.
Government 101
As you all know, WW1 went less than swimmingly for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. After just about everyone else declared their independence, the Austrians finally proclaimed themselves a republic and kicked out their last Emperor. Since they had already been allowed (mostly nominal) political rights during the monarchy, several political parties already existed, two of which grew, gained followers and elbowed out everyone else. For the sake of this narrative, let’s call them the Caths (Catholic Socialists) and the Dems (Democratic Socialists).
The Caths were the “bourgeoise” party, very conservative (they’d supported the monarchy), very religious, partly comprised of members of the clergy and very right-wing. The Dems were the socialist/marxist workers party that wanted to create a more or less communist society and build hygienic, affordable housing. The big issue at the time was the huge debt- Austria and Germany were blamed for the first world war and forced to pay reparations. The Caths, who narrowly had the majority in parliament, decided to focus on repaying the debt instead of creating jobs and otherwise assisting the population, who had the nasty tendency to starve and freeze to death. The Dems more or less went along with it and had their hands full torching the justice after a nasty incident with some militias that (accidentally) killed an invalid and a child in some scuffle.
Fast-forwards to 1933: the debt was all paid up (or almost all paid up), but people were still unemployed and starving (though different people now, since the original unemployed starving people starved to death by then). Then some workers had the gumption to go on strike.
How do(n’t) you solve a problem like that? Vote on it in parliament. The votes came in 81(Caths&Friends)-80(Dems&Friends), but there was some mix-up with the ballot and the chancellor resigned in protest. Since the chancellor was elected from parliament, he now technically returned to parliament and he just so happened to be a Dem, causing a tie. The Caths called a revote, one of them was elected chancellor but resigned and called for a revote when he realized the nasty trick the Dems were playing. Rinse and repeat; three different chancellors were elected that day: four of them stepped down until, late in the afternoon, they did what civilized Austrians do: they gave up and went home for dinner.
By the time the parliament regrouped, a certain Cath named Dollfuß decided the parliament was bloody useless and set up a fascist regime. Since both parties had semi-official “defense groups”/milicias, there was a brief civil war/Dem massacre that ended with Dollfuß gloating for about half a year until the Nazis got him in a failed coup. Even though that coup was a failure, they came marching in 4 years later- finis austria (though also finis unemployment).
Once more, with less murder
As you all know, WW2 finally ended in Hitlers defeat and after some negotiation, Austria was born anew with more political diversity (including some humbled Caths who changed their party name and promised not to turn the shiny new republic into a fascist dictatorship again).
The plethora of checks and balances forced the SPÖ (reformed Dems) and ÖVP (reformed Caths) to form a coalition. Since both of them had been banned and most of their leaders killed in concentration camps, they had a lot more enthusiasm for democracy now. They started the rebuilding process and managed to rebuild the economy with help from the Marshall-Plan. However, a lot of difficult questions were left unanswered and the state remained rather authoritarian.
Then, in the late 60s, came an anomaly: the Kreisky government. Even though the actual demonstrations of the new hippie, anti-war generation remained (comparatively) small and peaceful, they managed to give one political party (the SPÖ, our new Dems) the majority for over a decade. During that time, literally hundreds of social reforms were passed that Austrians take for granted but other seem surprised at, including socialized health care, a multitude of education reforms (including the abolition of university tuition for college students), legalized abortion (during the first twelve weeks), a whole spate of women’s rights measures (equality in marriage,…).
This too passed after a referendum about nuclear power was negative (no nuclear power plants in Austria) and a new young party (the “Greens”) was created that wanted to save the flora and fauna as well as the economy. But their influence rapidly decreased as the only remaining “ecological” thing on their program became the motion to build more bike paths in Vienna.
And now for something somewhat different
Anyhow, it’s 2012 and mostly, the parties are in a gridlock and they’re all starting to mellow out with old age. Last presidential election (he’s purely representative, but still) resulted in only a roughly 54% attendance, of which a bit over 7% were blank or invalid. Decent candidates, my foot. All three of ’em were awful.
That sort of draw is more the rule than exception in many elections, but at least voters can risk not voting for the lesser weevil because check and balances will prevent them from doing too much damage.
On the other hand, checks and balances are stalling a lot of necessary reforms. No political party will touch touchy subjects like our permanently neutrality (which may be somewhat permanent, but certainly isn’t neutral), or the military that desperately needs a reform (because the only feasible way of keeping it on-budget is to cut down by perhaps cooperating and consolidating more with our neighbors *coughcoughbutsinceit’sgermanyno-onehastheballstosayanything coughcough*) or the corruption that has flourished out of the nepotism of our current politicians.
There is a glimmer of light on the horizon- the pirate party, a relatively new, young protest-party, has made it into the government. If they can get together a decent program by next election without completely alienating young votes, they have a very good chance of coming out with one of the three highest number of votes, since they’re the only party that can appeal to young voters- and the voting age is 16. All I’m saying is, I think they have a good shot and their Austrian branch seems a lot more together than others. At very least, they have a fighting chance- which wouldn’t in some other systems.
Phew… sorry about the really long post, hope at least some of it was interesting.
No, this is really interesting. You don’t have a lot of discourse about other governments in the US. I took an AP Comp Gov class in high school, and the textbook was basically, “This is how the government differs from the US, and how it should be more like us.” It was filled with this rampant ethnocentrism and cultural stereotyping, and white man’s burden type of things, though not in those words. Luckily both my teacher and the other students recognized this too, and class time turned to some very interesting discussions about politics and history and culture and everything. I loved it.
Anyhow–all this information is completely new to me, and I really like learning about it, so thanks for broadening my horizons.
oh my god
the back-and-forth with the chancellors
dinner
THE PIRATE PARTY. I’ve heard of their existence but didn’t really know anything about them in any countries.
This really was fascinating, thank you for taking the time to write it up!
Just wanted to mention (not sure where this really fits, not a hot topic but politically related) that the Barak Obama tumblr is pretty quality stuff
it got into a short gif war with VH1 to see who could post the most patriotic gif of Darrin Criss reminding everyone to vote
and responds humorously to random things people say mentioning Obama
I’m more than a little bit nervous about posting this because I know this is a really hot-button issue that many people on the blog feel very strongly about, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately and I don’t feel comfortable talking to anybody else about it.
So. Abortion.
More broadly, the question of when an zygote/embryo/fetus/unborn child has rights under the Constitution.
As background, know that I think like a liberal on a lot of issues, I’m a feminist, and I’ve always considered myself to be pro-choice. I would vote for Barack Obama this November if I were old enough, assuming no third-party candidates caught my eye.
At my camp about a month ago, though, I took an extremely fascinating class about rights – their history, what is guaranteed by the Constitution, how the Supreme Court has interpreted them, and what we think they should be. After addressing speech, religion, contract, commerce, and criminal rights, on Friday, we talked about reproductive rights.
Now, we didn’t head straight towards abortion, because it is such a hot-button issue (and we leave the cutthroat shouting matches to the “Ethical Issues Facing Society†class). The instructor started out by asking us what we think a woman’s reproductive rights are or should be. “Right to choose her partners!†“Right to have access to birth control!†“Right to see the child!†– it was easy to come up with lots of those. Then, what are a man’s reproductive rights? This was trickier, but we came up with and a discussed a few: the right to see the child and the right to have a role in its life, for example. Then, the instructor asked, what are the child’s rights?
This is where I got stuck. What really struck me at first was a different issue somebody raised, not abortion, which is the soon-possibility of parents being able to modify the embryo’s DNA in order to create “designer babies†– certain gender, certain eye or hair color, above-average intelligence, whatever. I cringed when this was brought up. What a terrible thought! The idea of parents able to direct doctors and scientists to mess with their embryo’s DNA for trivial purposes like that strikes me as completely immoral.
But why? Why should I have such a gut reaction to that? Well. From biology class, I know that a sperm cell only contains half of the chromosomes of a human being – it’s called being “haploid†or “nâ€. Same for the egg. But at the moment they come together, when the sperm dissolves the outer part of the egg and injects its nucleus, when the egg cell membrane changes to prevent fusion with other sperm, that complement of DNA is all of a sudden complete. It’s diploid. It’s 2n. It’s a complete set of instructions to make a human being. Furthermore, it’s a unique complement of DNA that never has existed and never will again. My instinctive emotional reaction is that such a miracle of uniqueness means something, that somehow the zygote is more than the sum of sperm and egg. That somehow it has dignity, that somehow it has a “right†not to have its DNA messed with because its parents want a blue-eyed daughter.
Now I’m feeling awfully like I’m saying “life begins at conceptionâ€, and when it comes to abortions, usually I mentally ridicule such statements and such legislative proposals. So I don’t know what to think. When I try to think logically, I’m clearly pro-choice, but I’ve learned that our traditional concept of “rights†is based heavily off of what we as a society ‘feel’ is unjust. What do I do when my heart argues with my head?
The other element that my instructor in that class brought to mind is that there are actually several debates raging simultaneously when it comes to “the abortion debate†in this country and its courts. One is woman vs. state, and I think this is how most pro-choicers frame the debate: I have a right to freedom from the state in making medical choices for my own body. This is, as I understand it, basically what Roe v. Wade decided. This is something that Americans, including most conservatives, probably agree with out-of-context, since we as a society are very big on protecting the individual from excessive government and tyranny.
However, a second debate is woman vs. child, and this is what I think most pro-lifers are talking about. They’re saying: I believe that unborn children have rights under the Constitution, and in that case, they are entitled like everybody else to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which being aborted would unjustly take from them. I think that’s one of the reasons why pro-life people and organizations (most prominently in the news today is the Republican Party) are reluctant to allow exemptions: the mother’s interests in cases of abortion are in their barest form in conflict with the child’s (ignore quality of life arguments right now), and if the zygote/embryo/fetus/child has rights, then there really probably are limitations on what the mother can do with her own body.
I think the first debate I described is settled, correctly, by Roe v. Wade. A woman has a right to privacy and autonomy in her medical decisions, period. Some people might argue against that, but I don’t think there’s a lot of value in the exercise, since, as I said, Americans are big on protecting individual freedom from the state. More interesting to me is that second question, which (at least according to my instructor), has never been decided on by the courts. When does a zygote/embryo/fetus/child have full rights under the Constitution – specifically, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? When it exits the womb? The third trimester? Conception? Heck, age 18? Do those rights just relate to being aborted, or do they extend further, to pre-natal DNA modifications? What if those DNA modifications are called gene therapy and are used to Parkinson’s disease? How do we decide on what’s right when there are conflicts between rights – the unborn child’s, the mother’s, the father’s, the society’s?
I don’t really know what I think, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, especially since “personhood amendments†are showing up in the news and in party platforms. Anyways, thanks for reading all of this, and I know I can trust MuseBloggers to take this as it is – a lengthy, rambling, questioning, confused, inconclusive train of thought about a very controversial subject in which I sort of argue against my usual position – and treat my opinions with respect. At the same time, of course, challenging conversations are fantastic and are honestly the only reason why I’m questioning my fundamental beliefs in the first place. I would love it if you could share a different perspective or explain to me why you think I’m wrong.
Interesting question.
I generally am pro-choice, and do believe that women should have the right to decide things about their own body, and I think that that’s mostly because I don’t think that a fetus, much less a zygote, is a human life. I’m not even entirely convinced that an embryo is actually alive because it can’t live on it’s own, but even if it is alive, it’s definitely not conscious. Since I don’t believe in souls, I guess I don’t believe that there’s anything that makes humans special apart from the fact that we appear to be sentient, my personal belief about when someone should get those rights is when they are sentient enough to care about them (although, I guess that is a hard thing to measure), and I don’t think a fetus is. I guess I don’t have any more of a problem with aborting a fetus to make a woman’s entire life better than I have with killing a chicken, which at least seems to be able to experience pain, to make someone’s life happier for a little while (in fact, as a vegetarian and someone who’s pro choice, I think I have more of a problem with the latter) I know that sounds kind of brutal, but I guess I just don’t think that a fetus’s having human DNA alone makes it special.
I guess I do have that same gut reaction to the “designer baby” stuff though. I think that’s partially because I disprove of genetic engineering that isn’t extremely necessary, whether it be in food or in babies. I’m ok with gene therapy if it greatly improves the life of a child, but not for petty things, because it seems like a superb waste of recourses, and it seems immoral to me to take money and technology that could actually be helping people and use it to give your baby the eye color you want. I guess I also don’t like it because acting like a person’s eye color is important enough to spend that much money, brains and time on is giving people the impression that it’s actually something that matters, and makes our society put even more pressure on beauty. In addition to that, it makes the beauty that we care so much about into another thing that rich people can buy, and turns it into another way of giving rich people a higher status in society.
first of all, I haven’t had any coffee yet today, so apologies if I make less sense than usual
“Furthermore, it’s a unique complement of DNA that never has existed and never will again. My instinctive emotional reaction is that such a miracle of uniqueness means something, that somehow the zygote is more than the sum of sperm and egg. That somehow it has dignity, that somehow it has a “right†not to have its DNA messed with because its parents want a blue-eyed daughter.”
This is the part I personally disagree with. I don’t see how a single cell has dignity. No matter how unique its contents, a woman is also unique, and has thoughts, and feelings, and those to me are what gives one dignity.
Furthermore, often cells are fertilized but don’t implant. Miscarriages happen too. Should we really be mourning the loss of a potential human being beginning immediately after fertilization? Worse still, in my opinion, is blaming the woman hosting the cell/embryo/fetus for something largely out of her control — which legislators seem to be perilously close to doing in some places.
I am, theoretically, against abortions after the first trimester, because a group of cells, especially a human-shaped one, is more dignified to me than a single cell. HOWEVER just because I’m against something doesn’t mean it should be illegal. I’ve read that almost no abortions after the first trimester are done for frivolous reasons (especially because it’s so hard to get them in the US). And women absolutely shouldn’t have to, for example, carry dead fetuses to term.
I know that a lot of laws are based on what we feel is right. But I don’t think laws should be based on feelings as much as based on what we need to keep society running. (e.g. murder isn’t a law because it’s sad and awful and horrifying that a person isn’t around anymore. it’s a law because if we went around killing people civilization wouldn’t last very long….)
Here are some bonus feelings about prenatal genetic modification:
I have a friend who’s interested in biology, and she told me once that she was interested in making people photosynthesize. She said that it was absolutely, no question, illegal to experiment on embryos/fetuses because they can’t give consent. (Which is why she was planning to experiment on herself… long story.) I am a strong believer in better living through technology, so I have no problems personally with any sort of genetic modification — as long as it’s done to yourself. But I agree with the laws according to my friend that you shouldn’t change unnecessary things about other people without asking them first. Although, I am not sure gene therapy should be different from any other sort of medicine, so it might be okay to do without asking.
I think that there is a very big difference between what you personally feel and what you believe should be legislated on others, and I think it’s important to distinguish between those when talking on the issue.
Every part of you belongs to you.
SFTMC.
Anyway, my response is long overdue. Why do you think legislation shouldn’t be based on personal feelings? Can you give me an objective reason that is true no matter what you feel is good or bad?
I’d also like an example of any law that was not based on personal feelings to any extent. It doesn’t even have to be a real law anywhere; I honestly cannot imagine any law that is not emotion-based, so I would love to hear any examples you have to give. Of course, this assumes you think there should be laws at all, which you never said was the case–but on the other hand, all the reasons I can think of for not wanting laws also come back to emotion in some way, so it doesn’t really make a difference.
I wrote a really long response to this, but then the page refreshed and ate it.
I’ll try agin sometime soon.
Other people have covered other stuff, so I’d like to take a minute to talk about artificial genetic selection! That is, what are commonly referred to as “designer babies.” Not specifically directed at Cat’s Eye but to everyone because I think information is good to have.
A lot of people get upset over this topic because they do think it means the ability to pick out a blond-haired blue-eyed child (this is NOT what most scientists have in mind), because that’s what people in the media got huffy about, so most people don’t know what it’s actually really useful and why I think it’s a good thing to research.
Genetic diseased.
Imagine, for a minute, that you suddenly found out your parent has Huntington’s disease. This is a late-onset genetic disease, that very rarely shows up before the individual is 21, and most often after middle age. By that time you’ve already been born and your parent didn’t know they were going to start physically and mentally deteriorating at such an alarming rate.
This means you are potentially a carrier for the disease. This is something you can be tested for. Let’s say in this hypothetical situation that you are. Fast forward, you’re happily married and want to have kids of your own. But. Because you are a carrier for this genetic disease, your child has a 50% chance of also being a carrier. If your partner also is a carrier, your child has a 50% chance of having Huntington’s. It used to be people couldn’t tell if they were carriers so it was just sad chance when the disease appeared, but these days due to the marvels of science we can test.
Now. If given the choice, would you want a child that would develop Huntington’s and live a shortened life where they lose control of their mental and physical capabilities. Probably not! Now, someone says to you, “We can make sure that your baby is healthy and won’t have to worry about this disease (or, if only one parent is a carrier, about passing it on as well).”
What happens is they take genetic material (eggs & sperm) from each parent, test them, and select one of each that is free from the mutation that causes Huntington’s. Or, they let a few samples combine, then test them to see if any are free. I’m not sure which order is used and I’m having trouble figuring it out just through google (it’s all articles on designer babies, of course, not explanations of the scientific process). Then the female is artificially inseminated, and if the embryo takes, pregnancy and life continue as normal (although with extra tests to make sure everything went okay and all is well, which are good things).
There is no alteration of a embryo that was already implanted in the uterus wall (aka the start of pregnancy). So, there’s not really any “right to not be messed with” that applies here. It’s not alteration, but selection.
This situation doesn’t just apply to Huntington’s. It applies to muscular dystrophy, Down’s syndrome… lots of genetic diseases. Diseases that not only negatively affect the life of the child, but the parents as well. Do they have a right to decide they don’t want to (or in many, many cases, CANNOT) have to go through that pain and the amount of money it takes to care for someone with a disability like that? If you choose to bring a child into this world, should you have the choice to make sure it’s healthy? There are thousands of reproductive cells that go unused in your lifetime (in fact you cannot possibly use them all, even if you lived for 500 years and were able to reproduce the entire time). Is it really right to tell parents “you can’t make a decision that will affect the quality of life for you and your child because then the just-barely-not-quite-as-random combination of genetic material would not be the same as the fairly-random combination of genetic material that would have happened otherwise.”
Anyway I have to go to the doctor so I can’t write more at the moment, but I just wanted to put this out there. It’s one of those topics people think they know a little about, but it’s a very complex issue and is often misrepresented. I think that it really a leap forward in science that these are things we can test for and in some cases control.
I do agree that using genetic modification or selection to help cure diseases is completely fine, and I agree that using it for this purpose is the scientist’s intent in inventing the technology, but I think that, like with most technology, if there is a market for using it for another purpose, like making designer babies, and it’s profitable, then someone will start using the technology that way. This is what I’m against: using the technology not for it’s original purpose to allow rich people to buy beauty for their children. I do think that curing genetic diseases should be allowed, but making designer babies shouldn’t.
I agree, but even curing genetic diseases is a fuzzy thing. I mean, how do you define a disease? Some psychological conditions are not necessarily unpleasant, and if they disappeared from the world, we’d lose perspective and diversity.
It’s good that you’re examining your beliefs, looking for inconsistencies in them, and being open-minded. Here’s what my head says about the issue, and I’ll leave my heart out of it because nothing it says can be objectively proven, so although I’m going to listen to it, there’s no reason why I should expect anyone else to. My heart doesn’t disagree with anything I’m going to say, though, because it doesn’t actually have beliefs about reality; it just has emotions, which my head decides how to act on. Because of its relevance to its issue, I’m also going to discuss the relationship between feelings and reason and how I think that affects legislation. Actually, I think I’ll start with that, because without knowing what I think about what a right is, you can’t fully understand anything I say about them. If there’s anything you disagree with, please let me know, because I’d love to hear counterarguments.
You can’t objectively prove that an something/someone has rights or that it/en doesn’t, and it’s not because of lack of evidence; it’s because rights aren’t objective. My dictionary defines ‘right’ as ‘a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral.’ A legal right is objective, but we’re not talking about that here, because if the issue was whether abortions were legal, we could all just go to our state documents and know the answer. But a moral claim implies something someone/something ought to have, which is really just a more respected way of saying something you want someone to have. “I love people, and not starving is generally very important to them, so I want them to be free from starvation,” for instance, is essentially the same as, “People are good, and not starving is generally very important to them, so they have the right to be free from starvation.” The problem with the latter is that because of the phrasing, people start to think they’re saying something objectively true, although I’ve never heard a good explanation of how that follows. Anyway, just because something is subjective doesn’t mean it has to be done away with. If you think someone has a right not to starve, the logical thing to do is to make sure en doesn’t have to starve.
This doesn’t just apply to sentient beings. You could rephrase, “I love cyanobacteria, and I want them to continue existing,” as, “Cyanobacteria are good, and they have the right to exist;” you could even say, “Tables are good, and they have the right to exist.”
Rights, though, are direct goals. Not everything you want is a right. They are ends, not means. You don’t say, “People have the right not to starve, and they’re less likely to starve if crops don’t grow, and rain helps the crops grow, so it has a right to fall.” Rather, “People have the right not to starve, and they’re less likely to starve if crops don’t grow, and rain helps the crops grow, so it’ll help secure peoples’ rights and has no ill effects stronger enough to counterbalance this, which means it should fall.” Otherwise, language gets really confusing, and rights become meaningless, so I think a rightholder is what one loves for itself, unrelated to its impact on other things you may value.
For someone who values… er… pre-humans at any point before birth, opposing some or all types of abortions may be the only logical option, depending on how strong of a value it is, what ens other values are, etc, etc. For someone who doesn’t value zygotes, embryos, or fetuses, supporting abortion is generally the only logical option. Logic used to determine how reality is should be unconnected to emotions; logic used to determine which course of action to be taken needs emotions and must be affected by them. I’m sure there are people on both sides whose thoughts on the subject are completely rational, although on both sides, this is sadly the exception rather than the rule. (Dodec once mentioned an extreme pro-life bill that would prevent women from aborting fetuses that had already died, so that they’d have to give birth to a dead child. That is not consistent with any value that people are likely to have).
Ideally, from this point of view, logic and emotions do not conflict. However, emotions are not always consistent with each other, and then you get problems.
It seems like what happened is you realized that you’re against designer babies, and you’re pretty sure it’s because of how much you value zygotes. Then you realized that if you do, that would also compel you (logically) to oppose abortion, which you do not. Assuming that the zygote thing isn’t a rationalization (sometimes people don’t know why they oppose something because their reasoning isn’t conscious, so they guess at the reason inaccurately), then I’d say your emotions are being inconsistent and therefore illogical. I recommend using a number scale to rank your values, giving zygotes a number and the value that makes you pro-choice a number each, using another (or the same: it doesn’t matter) numeric scale to rank a given course of action’s benefit to each of your values (which may be negative), multiplying the amount of benefit to the value by the value’s importance, and adding the 2 together to see the overall effect of an action. Then you can at least know what your feelings logically impel you to do. Unfortunately, you may run into inconsistent feelings that disagree for no good reason, and I can’t help you with that, because I haven’t solved that for myself yet.
(I’ll respond to Lizzie’s post, which I don’t agree with, tomorrow).
On an only marginally related notes, I would like to mention that I personally do not think people are less likely to starve if crops don’t grow, but it’s such a widely held opinion that I still used it as an example.
I mean more likely, not less, of course. I’m not that blatantly unaware of popular opinion.
This is kind of a minor issue, but has anyone else heard of the whole tumblr firestorm thing when John Cambell admitted to faking depression? He wrote an interesting (if somewhat brief) article on his kickstarter project about it. What do you guys think?
I hadn’t heard of it, but Google searching found me the Kickstarter update.
Here are the two things that bother me most about it:
-There’s a part of the update that says he regrets most the people who, seeing his comics, decided that they were “struggling with depression” instead of trying to face the issues in their life. He refers to it as perpetuating a “culture of depression.” I’m not sure where he sees this epidemic of not-actually-depressed people as coming from. I don’t see how anyone could use depression as an excuse like that — the therapists I’ve had over the years have tried to help me by helping me work through the issues in my life, not by allowing me to avoid them. I have never been able to use my depression as a reason to give up, but only as a reason to fight even harder.
-This comment is currently the first one to appear after the Kickstarter update:
“I am really sad that so many of you don’t understand what it is to fake depression. You’re just hurling abuse at this poor man, after he bared his soul for you like this. Fake depression is a real disease, and I can’t believe how heartless, cruel and relentless most of you have been. Cut the man some slack. It’s not his fault that he’s happy, and he needs our support in order to get better.
Shame on you, people. Shame on you.”
I don’t think depression is funny. I don’t think jokes about depression are funny. They weren’t funny before I was depressed, when I was dying my hair bright colors and my “friends” drew pictures of me with scars all over my arms, and they’re not funny now that the real scars have faded as much as they’re going to.
I think it’s fascinating. If you’re not familiar with Campbell’s work (and even if you are) he probably just seems like he’s being every manner of expletive for no reason about a very painful topic. But I think it’s a really gutsy piece of satire about a singularly interesting topic, and I think as an artistic/intellectual/critical move it’s enormous. It’s something that could easily destroy his career (to say the least), but that kind of risk-taking in order to get a message across is kind of incredible. Today he also posted a list of “creatives” (including Jeph Jacques, KC Green, Louis CK, and numerous others) who he claims have confirmed with him that they’re “faking depression”; some of them have said he’s spouting hogwash and some of them have supported him.
That’s not to say that what he’s saying isn’t offensive to many people, or that it won’t cause people some real psychological distress. Of course it is and of course it will. I don’t care to discuss whether being offensive is ever justified in the artistic field; opinions will vary. But as a topic of analysis, I admit I’m fascinated.
Rereading my comment, I think I didn’t explain my thought process well enough and so it probably sounds like I meant the opposite of what I actually think. Let me clarify as fundamentally as I can:
What Campbell is saying is satire. He is satirizing the claim that depression is a simple problem or a fake problem or can be easily fixed. He is being ironic and does not actually mean that he is faking depression or that other people are faking depression. He is making fun of such a ludicrous claim. What I find fascinating is different people’s responses to this satire: some people understood it, many people did not (thus the Tumblr firestorm), and people have varying opinions about it. That response and the specific artistic work Campbell has done to provoke that response are what I find fascinating.
I hope that’s clearer. I have rather a history of being misunderstood here on MuseBlog.
I think what disturbs people is that many who suffer with depression have to endure accusations of faking it, making a painful situation even worse. The piece could be seen as a variant on Poe’s law about the point where parody and extremist beliefs become indistinguishable.
And I think that’s exactly what Campbell was going for.
I’m not familiar with his work, thanks for the background! As a satire it’s less painful for me to read; however, I still feel that this isn’t something which should be satirized. See what I said earlier about depression not being funny.
Clarification: I know that “being funny” isn’t a characteristic satire necessarily holds.
Basically, what Rebecca said.
Pictures for Sad Children is excellent because it manages to be funny and heart-wrenchingly sad at the same time. This piece was meant for an audience that understands that intimately, and wants more.
From an analytical perspective, the question is whether or not the “culture of depression” among artists he uses to justify his actions exists or not.
Oh sorry, I guess I didn’t get it. Never mind.
Today Campbell wrote another updating confessing that he has been pretending to be pretending to be depressed. Feel free to find the Kickstarter page in question and read this newest update. I’ll post the last three paragraphs here:
The idea of a happy person drawing hundreds to thousands of compulsively melancholic stick figures “for profit” is a funny idea.
The idea that a person could believe that all depressed people are “faking it” is funny.
It would be funny if a mental illness caused someone to write the previous update in a sincere way. It would be funny if a mental illness caused me to write the previous update in an “insincere” way. It would be funny if the mental illness you have makes you interpret these words in this order in the way that you do.
Thanks for posting this.
I give up. Trying to discuss this is just feeding a troll.
Jeph Jacques, creator of QC, which I have open in at least three tabs right now, had a long conversation on tumblr with someone who didn’t get “the joke”. I believe that Jeph Jacques does actually suffer from depression. He wrote about it in several news posts attached to his comics. He brought Cambell and fake depression up in news posts a couple of times, making references to the joke as a whole.
Jeph’s tumblr conversation with that now-former fan went as follows (notes by me in [ ] brackets, swears omitted):
Fan:
>!! DO NOT SUPPORT PICTURES FOR SAD CHILDREN !!
>The creator [Jeph Jacques] recently admitted [he did not admit, he made an allusion to the joke in a news post] that he is faking his depression for money. He also goes on to >accuse the entire disorder of being a “socially enforced†construct that doesn’t medically exist. (Pointedly he only brings this up… [the remainder of the reply is cut off in Jeph’s reply]
Jeph:
>oh my god, tumblr
>tumblr
>tumblr I hate to break it to you
>but
>I am pretty sure it was a joke
>i’m sorry tumblr
>i’m sorry you didn’t get the joke
Fan:
>God **** it dude, I liked you.
>Ya know what isn’t very ****ing funny to a lot of us? ‘Jokes’ like this. Even if it is a joke it’s still scummy as **** because joking about mental illnesses being made up (and he implies most >depressed people are making it up) is playing into a really wonderful little trope that already exists in which people tell us to ‘just think positive’ or ‘get some fresh air’ and we’ll be magically >cured. Where depression is seen as a weakness and an excuse to do nothing. Where people with mental health issues are routinely kicked off disability benefits because we ‘just need to try >harder’. I don’t exactly get what is so ****ing funny about some douchebag making a shitton of money by saying he’s disabled, then saying ‘oops, nevermind, i was faking because >depression is mostly fake lololol’.
>Seriously, where’s the ****ing joke?
Jeph:
>You just explained the entire joke right there.
>And you “don’t like me anymore†because I found something funny that you don’t? I’m sorry dude but that is also hilarious.
Another fan:
>…Jeph, what they’re trying to say is that they find your behavior offensive. Hell, I do too. I mean, I love your work, and I’m not going to tear my hair out and storm off and never read it again or something, but I’m disappointed in you, man.
It is not cool to make jokes about those of us who don’t have standard-issue brain chemistry making our illnesses up. It is ****ing offensive, in fact. Mocking us, making us into fodder for your humor, is not right. It is, in fact, unjust.
I seriously thought you were a bigger man than this.
Jeph:
>I have depression, OCD, and anxiety problems, and I got the joke. It’s not mocking people with depression. It’s satire.
This is not to say that it’s fine for someone who suffers from depression to make tasteless jokes about depression, the same way it’s not okay for someone to go around hurling a homophobic put-down around and justifying it with the words “Oh, it’s fine because I’m gay.” This applies to everything. Hypocrisy is not okay, especially when it’s in the “Oh, I can insult other people because I am the originial intended target” format. But this is not a tasteless joke.
I just think that it is a satire, and people blew it of proportions because they didn’t get the joke (or that it was supposed to BE a joke).
Humor is generally a pretty subjective thing. Satire most of all. Some people like it, some people don’t. I for one am a massive fan of South Park and people like Campbell because they cater to their audience and insult everybody. They do not bias their satire. They don’t specifically make fun of say, black people, to the point where it becomes obvious that they’re not joking. Satire humor is meant to make fun of every aspect of every-day life, and sometimes people are not going to be okay with it. The voice actor for one of the South Park characters actually left the show after they did an episode about scientology, but didn’t complain once about their episodes on catholicism, judaism or countless others.
The point I’m trying to make is that it is, in fact, a satire. And if you don’t like it (I’m speaking to everyone, not as a reply), that is unfortunate, but…well, too bad. I don’t say that to be snarky. It’s just true. There’s not much you, me or anyone else can do to chan-
WAIT.
WHY DON’T WE START A KICKSTARTER…
TO CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE FUN OF PEOPLE THAT FAKE DEPRESSION.
I just don’t see how satire such as this serves any useful purpose, if it’s so subtle that it has to be explained to a casual observer that it’s satire.
And I think that amusing the people who get it is not really worth the cost of perpetuating negative stereotypes about mental illness for those who don’t.
It wasn’t for the casual observer, it was for kickstarter funders. It’s not necessarily “useful,” it’s art, it’s humor. It’s delicate and fickle, and it would be a shame to sacrifice that for the sake of someone who is still caught up in long disproven falsities.
I posted a response to this but it was REALLY long and I think that maybe the spam filter eated it?
For once I actually know where I stand on a political issue! Hooray!
…
I’m really miffed at the school board right now. [Snip] County School Board does nothing but sit around all day and have little catfights and flamewars between the Democrats and the Republicans on the board. The Republicans hired a superintendent who did maybe one thing and then the Democrats kicked him off after a disastrous bus fiasco (the buses were everywhere and nowhere- my English teacher actually pulled her kid out of school in protest- right now my sister is having to sit in the aisle with her trombone). The bus fiasco was maybe the last straw, I guess.
But is it too much to ask to have a school board who actually gives a cake about education and not catfighting the other party? I think they should be former educators and parents who have no strong political opinions.
((Disclaimer: Not that I hate Republicans or that I hate Democrats. So if you’re a strong supporter of either of these parties, it’s not that I really hate them. I just hate how they’re bringing their fighting into something like education.))
My school district is really emphasizing a mock election this year. In our mentor (like homeroom) classes today, we got fake voter registration forms, and sometime – probably in a few weeks – everybody in the district is going to vote.
In preparation for this, students had the option today of going down to one of the gyms and hearing from representatives of the local Republican Party. Apparently the Democratic Party was here last Thursday.
Very cool, but the main problem with this? I bet there wasn’t a single senior at either one. The past two mentor periods, we seniors have had special senior assemblies about the timeline for this year, college applications, and our senior portfolios.
How does that make sense? The seniors are the only ones who even have a chance at voting this election or, if we’re still too young (my friend misses getting to vote by 5 1/2 hours), registering to vote sometime in the next year. Why would they schedule those things when we can’t go?
Anyways, the election should be interesting, even if most people don’t actually care and will probably write a certain guy’s name in to see if they can get him to show up in the district statistics. I remember doing mock elections in 4th and 8th grades as well, so maybe the younger kids will even get something out of it too.
I turned in my form to change the state I’m registered in yesterday. Swing state voting gogogo!
I did this too!!
Neither of my resident states are swing states… I stuck with Oregon.
Okay, I’m really miffed about something and I’m going to share it here because it seems like the right place.
So I support gay rights, okay? Right. We’ve all established that fact.
You all probably heard about the Chickfila snafoo where Chickfila (or its director, or something) announced “homosexuality is an abomination, we support traditional marriage”, etc, and then a bunch of gay rights supporters were like, “Uh, NO” and boycotted Chickfila and now suddenly eating a chicken sandwich is making a political statement. Which really stinks. Because Chickfila is pretty much my favorite fast food place, by a wide margin.
At competition yesterday they were selling chicken sandwiches from Chickfila at the concessions stand, and I bought one because I enjoy eating chicken sandwiches. My friend said, “I don’t eat Chickfila, I don’t support what they stand for.”
And I mean… as much as I disagree with an opinion, they’ve got a right to it, and just because they have an opinion does that mean we have to hate them or make their business suffer?
Do politics have to be brought in to everything? Can I not enjoy my gosh darned chicken sandwich without being labeled a conservative?
I mean, I used to be against gay rights. My mom basically told me, “Um, some people have different lifestyles and we, um, should do what God wants us to, because, um, it’s not natural.” I mean, when I first joined MB I was a little shocked and wasn’t quite sure what to do. I guess I made the decision to support gay rights for myself.
But I still want to eat my gosh-darned chicken sandwich.
I think the point of the boycott was not because gay rights advocates were angry at the statements, but because Chick-Fil-A was (and still is, to my knowledge, although I haven’t checked recently — the last I heard was that they’d promised to stop but hadn’t actually) donating huge amounts of money to groups which spent the money on promoting hateful attitudes, for example via television ads. So the problem wasn’t the business, but that when you bought something from Chick-Fil-A part of the money you spent was going towards anti-gay groups.
I live in the northeast US, so I have personally never seen a Chick-Fil-A. And I understand that when you’re at marching band competitions you often don’t have a choice of what food is offered for sale, and you need to eat /something/. But I do think that, when you do have a choice about which business to support*, you should try to think at least a little about whether you agree with where your money is going.
*Not everyone does! Sometimes you don’t have a lot of money but you really need to get something, so you need to buy the cheapest thing regardless of who makes it. Sometimes there’s a functional monopoly in your area, so if you don’t go to this one company your life becomes much harder, and it’s not worth the effort. But there are plenty of situations in which you do have some choice of where to go for a service or product.
The thing is, though, I don’t feel like I can ever agree with where my money is going. I don’t have to worry about Chik Fil A in particular, because I’m vegan, so there really isn’t much I can eat there (unless I’m in a dire situation, I’m not just going to go to a restaurant for French fries; they’re not a meal). But I feel like no matter how many things I boycott (including the things I’m boycotting by being vegan), there are always more that I haven’t stopped eating. There are awful things done by almost every major company, when you look into it.
…I guess I don’t know where I’m going with this. Mostly, I’m just frustrated. I realize that the answer, in a situation like this, is to prioritize and try to avoid the worst bits and keep subtracting things. But it is hard. Especially when you don’t buy your own products.
Yeah. I know what you mean. I mean, I pretty much have no control over where my mom buys stuff, and I know a majority of things I use may have been made by slave labor but I feel so helpless sometimes. I’d love to only buy things from small businesses but life isn’t like that; sometimes we have to grab something from Wal-Mart because it’s convenient. (I actually strongly avoid Wal-Mart. I’m not very fond of it.)
…when I grow up I think I’ll grow my own food, sew my own clothes, and live in the middle of nowhere. The only thing I’ll buy will be solar panels and medicines…
wouldn’t that be nice.
Anyway. Thank you for informing me, Dodecahedron. I had no idea.
Even that wouldn’t necessarily be sufficient–you can sew your own clothes all you want, but where is the thread coming from?
You can get all of your clothes used, like I do. That’s much less inconvenient than making your own thread and then sewing clothes with it, and it’s cheap. But it is just so impractical to do everything that ugh.
I mean, I do have plans for when I grow up, and I do want to implement them. I can tell myself that it would be ridiculous not to, because I know that the sort of rationalizations that non-psychopaths use to justify their buying things that were made in horrible ways are extremely illogical (If you ask straight out whether someone would keep a slave if it was legal and got them money, the vast majority of people would vehemently deny it, so why wouldn’t the same argument apply to supporting slave labor in order to save a bit of money? It does, but everyone ignores it because it’s not convenient) (I can’t say the same about completely selfish people, but I’m not one, and being one is by no means logically necessary, so their moral arguments don’t generally apply to me), and I like to think I wouldn’t be so inconsistent with everything I believe in. But if it were that easy, everyone would boycott everything I want to boycott, and they don’t. Good (if intellectually lazy) people whom I love don’t. So clearly there’s something I’m missing that makes it much harder than I thought, and since I don’t fully understand it, I have no way of knowing whether I’ll be strong enough to resist it.
And what’s more, things aren’t even labelled accurately half the time. The food regulating industries and so on can’t get to everything at once. All sorts of things get claimed that sound good but are false and it is so hard to find out everything and this is not fair. It isn’t fair that the consumers have to make the choices about what makes food, because they don’t care enough. The organisms actually affected get almost no say, even the ones who can talk. And I feel like everyone in our culture is trapped in this endless cycle of mindless buying and ugh.
And then there’s the knowledge that no matter how many things I give up, it won’t be enough. If I have no children (not counting adoptions because while I don’t expect to want to adopt, I don’t think it would harm anyone if I did), ride a bicycle everywhere (haha, I don’t even know how to ride a bicycle), buy everything used or at least recycled except for food, buy that as responsibly as humanly possible (even if I grow or gather all my own food, for that matter–hunter-gatherers generally need to work only 3 hours a day, and at least 60% of food came from gathering, so if it was all gathering, it shouldn’t take too much longer, perhaps), only use what I need, ad nauseum, I can’t change what I did in childhood, when I let my parents decide how much harm I would do everyone else with the products I use. I could try to make up for it, doing good things. But I just feel like I should be doing something now; I feel like a really caring person would take charge of the shopping or something, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what I can possibly say to my parents to make them understand what is happening because of the things we do. But I feel like I’m just passively sitting by and doing nothing about all this even though some of it is because of me, and that’s not right. I just… am frustrated.
How would not having children help? I mean, sure, they’d use up resources like any other being on the planet, but they might also contribute.
That’s true, but since the average human uses way more than ens fair share of resources, it is not especially likely, on average, that a given person’s net impact will be positive. Because of this, I think that in general, if we can lower birth rates as much as possible without using force (leaving aside the issue of what force is, whether abortion counts, etc., because whatever I think about that is for reasons unrelated to anything here), that would be a good thing. Personally, though, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to whether I give birth even if I did think otherwise, because even if I decide I want children (which I don’t expect to happen, since I may be aromantic, really don’t want to be a single adoptive mother, and am not sure I’ll want kids even if I do fall in love and get married someday), it just seems a bit… unnecessary to bring a child into the world when there are so many already who would be very glad to be adopted and have parents. I realize that for most people, there seems to be some positive emotional… thing attached to giving birth, which of course makes the whole equation a bit different, but I don’t have that, so it doesn’t apply to me or to my decision.
“Baby fever,” as it’s sometimes known, doesn’t just stem from emotions. Many young people are adament about children and childbirth until later in life- it is a biological imperitive after all.
Why do you consider such adamence to not be an emotion?
Is anyone in the mood to talk about religion or ethics?
Almost always.
What about them?
Yes.
Well, some people are interested, so I suppose I’ll start. The trouble is, I’m not really sure of the specifics; there are several things that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I think I’ll just list them and see what gets responded to; of course, that could result in multiple discussions at once, which may or may not be a good thing. I’m going to state my own views for them all, I suppose. If you disagree with me, I’d love to hear why, and if I’m particularly interested, I may quaeritate.
Um… I’m curious about why people have whatever ideas they have related to religion (and if you’re completely agnostic about everything, I’d be interested to hear whether you think that’s going to be permanent). It might also be interesting to hear what (if anything) would change your views.
Personally, I don’t believe in any literal gods or afterlives because I haven’t found sufficient evidence for any that I’ve heard of or imagined. My views on gods would change if I asked any to do something extremely unlikely to happen by natural processes, and it happened consistently, one hundred percent of the time. I’ve tried it; it didn’t work. I realize that there are hypothetical gods that would ignore me, but they seem to me impossible to prove, which I find highly suspicious. My views on an afterlife will change if I die and enter one (a near-death experience wouldn’t count).
As for ethics… How do you decide whether something is good? What is/are your standard(s) goodness, if you have any? If you don’t, do you want any? If not, why not?
I decide what is good based on my emotions, because I can’t imagine any other possible way of doing it, although I’ve heard people claim they don’t involve emotions.
Personally, my standards for goodness are increasing the amount of happiness per organism capable of feeling happiness, reducing violence towards organisms, and increasing the total amount of knowledge. I haven’t yet assigned numerical values to them so that I can rank them on a scale and calculate (on the same scale) exactly how good or bad anything is, but I’m working on it. The thing is, my emotions aren’t used to being analyzed so much, so I have to gather data by putting them in hypothetical situations and seeing how they react. Otherwise, inconsistencies happen; I only realized that I care about average happiness rather than cumulative happiness, for instance, when I read about a blog post asking whether there was any number of people whose all getting dust flecks in their eyes would be as bad as torturing one person for ens lifetime. I realized that if it was cumulative happiness that mattered, the answer would be yes, even thought my emotions were shouting no, so it had to be average happiness that they cared about. I wish they’d just tell me these things.
So, I have to lead a conversation in my English class about a news article I choose, and I chose one about third party presidential candidates.
So, just out of curiosity and to help me prepare, what do you guys think? Why do third party candidates never stand a chance? Is it truly a wasted vote to vote for one? What can change so that they do have a chance?
Third parties don’t exist to get elected. Third parties exist to create ideas that the Democrats and Republicans adopt once they’re done laughing at them.
I think you’re probably right. I do wish third parties could get elected in addition to that, but it doesn’t seem to happen much. Granted, some of them are even worse than the Democrats and Republicans–but there are also some who are really excellent. As to whether they’re truly a wasted vote… I don’t know. After all, if a good percentage of people vote for a third party, it can at least show politicians that maybe their policies are worth adopting after all–but if you live in a state where you can just register for a party and have that show up when you vote even if it’s from someone from a different part and candidates can see what percentage of their vote came from that party–like what Vendaval described a while ago–just registering for the part might be enough. I think that the way to give them a chance is just to have ranked voting.
What do you guys think of otherkin? How far is too far when it comes to identifying as different genders, races, ages, species, disabilities?
(Otherkin = People who identify as nonhuman animals: wolves, cats, dragons, fairies, etc. They’ve been getting a lot of attention on the internet lately.)
Whatever floats their boats. As long as they don’t feel the need to steal my sheep and/or children, burn down my house or pee on my door I’m cool with it. Though I have to admit that if someone IRL told me that they’re actually a dragon inside, I’d be somewhat
snarkyskeptical.Same here. However, I do think that there’s a difference between identifying as something that exists and something that doesn’t. I think that if one identifies as something that doesn’t exist, then yes, I’m going to be pretty skeptical of that because I don’t care if that’s what they’re like psychologically; that doesn’t suddenly make dragons exist. It means that this person is unusual in a way that happens to resemble a dragon very closely–whatever that even means, since dragons are portrayed differently in different works.
But if an adult actually identifies as, say, a wolf, I respect that, but I have the expectation that the person behave like a wolf. That means no talking or using silverware, and if that person is an adult, en should probably make a genuine effort to be accepted by a wolf pack and live with it, assuming en can get someone to bring en food (since biological humans can’t live entirely on what wolves eat). Otherwise, I would think this person has a psychological disorder because en clearly either doesn’t understand the difference between typical human behavior and cognition and typical wolf behavior and cognition or really doesn’t understand how ens own mind works.
This is fundamentally different from identifying as a gender that is different from your sex because there are psychological and behavioral differences between biological humans and biological wolves with no exceptions. Although people of a given sex tend to exhibit certain traits, these are not universal, and it is really just a stereotype that someone who is male, for instance, will be closer to the male side of the gender spectrum than the female side. Statistically, it’s usually the case, but it isn’t always, and so when exceptions come along, they’re exceptions. That’s it. Basically, species is a physical trait, while gender is a psychological trait that happens to be commonly associated with a physical trait.
I think that identifying as part of a race you weren’t born into is frankly a failure to understand what race is. Do people actually do that? Race is only a physical trait. Yes, races have some psychological tendencies, but like with sex, there are plenty of exceptions, and thinking that everyone of a given race thinks/acts a certain why is stereotyping. Perhaps they are confusing race with ethnicity. Ethnicity is kind of to race what gender is to sex. If someone identifies with an ethnic group normally associated with a race that is not there own, I don’t have any problem with that, and I don’t think society should, either.
I think it’s fine to say, “I’m technically x years old, but my mental age is y.” However, just saying that one is y years old is going to give people the wrong idea, and I wouldn’t encourage it because one is going to be misunderstood.
I don’t know what you mean by disability. Are you talking about physical disabilities, psychological disabilities, or mixed ones? I oppose identifying with a physical disability that you don’t have symptoms of for the same reason I oppose identifying as a member of a race you weren’t born into. If the disability has psychological components, though, I’m not sure what that would even mean. “I think I have this disorder but have not been diagnosed,” is reasonable when true; “I don’t have enough symptoms of this disorder to count but I’m going to say I have it because I feel like I do for some reason,” is going to cause harm to people who really have the disability and is therefore unacceptable, in my opinion.
I feel like there may be a fine line between identifying as another ethnicity and appropriation, though. How does one tell the difference between someone genuinely identifying with another culture and heritage and tradition, and someone who (I’ll use my own ethnicity to avoid offense and because I know a lot about it) says they identify as an eastern European Jew because they like latkes? (Obviously it is possible to convert to Judaism; I’m talking about claiming to be part of the Russian, Ukranian, Polish, etc. Jewish peoples.) I don’t want to be close-minded, but my gut reaction to someone who says they have that identity would be very, very negative. I wouldn’t understand how they could identify with my culture without, for example (obviously not all eastern European Jews have all or any of these experiences), knowing what objects if any their family brought over from the old country, or learning how to make hamentashen from their bubbe when they’re eight, or going through their first Christmas as a Jew when they’re a kid, or being aware at every second of what happened to their family because they were Jews.
I feel awful about this, and I feel as if I’m policing others’ identities, but I also feel that ethnicity is much more of a social construct than gender, and I don’t understand how it’s possible to identify with another ethnicity without appropriating it.
Although, how do you determine what ethnicity someone _should_ identify as? A bunch of my friends, for instance, were adopted by white families from China as infants or toddlers.
“obviously not all eastern European Jews have all or any of these experiences”
If mutual experiences are not requirements for ethnicity, what are?
The difference between appropriation and adoption is that appropriation gives the work new meaning due to its new context.
Which also happens to be a hallmark of creativity.
I thought that a requirement for ethnicity was having ancestors from that culture and/or growing up in that culture??? I didn’t think it was something you could adopt unless you were, you know, adopted and grew up in the new culture. For example, I could identify as an Eastern European Jew, not because I like latkes and kugel, but because I have a 2x-great-grandmother who was from Austria and Jewish, and because my mother talked about her family history, including said grandmother, when I was growing up.
(I’m not an expert on this, and I know the question isn’t directed at me, but just wanted to chime in… I’d really appreciate it if someone could enlighten me on if/why that isn’t true, because I find it really difficult to participate in this discussion while being respectful towards everyone — if someone claims to be otherkin, I don’t wish to be rude to them even if I disagree with their self-identification)
Races have psychological tendencies? Could you explain what those are? Also define how you’re defining race / separating people into races, and make sure that you aren’t assigning cultural tendencies as racial traits.
personally, I feel that otherkin is probably mostly stemming from people adopting provocative positions in an attempt to gain attention, and doubt the sincerity behind it.
DO YOU TRULY DOUBT MY DRAGON-NESS??
I WILL BURN DOWN YOUR VILLAGE!
… people actually identify as other races, ages, species, and disabilities?
Species?
If someone could explain to me how this works, that would be good.
New year, new thread?
I don’t know. This one is still pretty short.
Big question: Do aliens exist?
(I’m assuming you mean extraterrestrial aliens specifically, because I doubt any sane person would ever claim that foreigners don’t exist).
You’re asking whether there is any life anywhere in the universe that isn’t of Earth origin? It seems inevitable.
I think that it’s likely, but at present we can’t know for sure.