This thread is a place for careful, clear, respectful discussions of difficult topics. It is not a place for having two-fisted no-holds-barred discussions.
MBers should be able to express their opinions without attacking others personally, and be able to listen to people who disagree with them without feeling personally attacked.
Easier said than done, of course. But MuseBlog is a good place to practice trying.
Sigh. Egypt, anyone? Or Indonesia?
Indonesia scares me, because I was just there a few weeks ago and it seemed fine. Egypt just scares me in general.
I hate the fact that all this political tension occurs in places with really important and interesting historical sights, like Mecca or Medina, or the pyramids at Giza.
Wait. Stuff has been happening in Mecca and Medina? I knew there was stuff happening in Egypt and Tunisia, and I heard about some stuff in Algeria and Yemen, but not there.
Personally I’m hoping nothing happens in Jordan until after I get back. I also hope that these revolutions end up for the better and don’t end up in the total collapse of society and looting. But…if things do work out, I think it’d be amazing. Taht region really does need reform.
Not actively, it’s just that it’s really dangerous for westerners to go there and women under 45 aren’t allowed to travel alone in Saudi Arabia. In my opinion, it’s a pretty messed-up place.
Same here. There are certain Egyptian governmental organizations tasked with protecting the antiquities, and I’m worried about how they’ll be affected.
I hate that too. My sister was going to mexico 2 years ago but it got canceled be becuase of political unrest and riots.
I hate violence that kills innocent civilians. It’s unfair and often unneccesary.
Often? When is it necessary?
Never, but seeing as I’m supposed to be diplomatic I figured I should be on the safe side.
Egypt is freaky. It’s like, suddenly there’s this revolution going on there that’s in all the newspapers. I mean, what? I didn’t see that coming.
Yea. Did anyone notice any buildup to the revolution or was everyone- including egyptians- caught off-guard. I knew there was some political tension but didn’t know it would explode like that.
Hm. If I may tie this Egypt discussion in with the Google discussion we had a couple weeks (months?) ago:
Google has worked with a Twitter and a company they acquired just last week (called “SayNow”) to create a way for Egyptians to send news to the outside world even though the internet is more or less shut down in Egypt now. Basically, anyone can call one of several international phone numbers, record a message, and it will be automatically be tweeted to a certain Twitter feed with the hashtag #Egypt. No internet or Twitter account needed–just a telephone. In my eyes, this is a great demonstration of how important private companies are in helping the world. No government could set up a system like this without being seen as “taking sides”, potentially sparking a full-out war. It also demonstrates that companies which have gained a lot of wide-ranging importance can quickly do great, selfless humanitarian deeds. Nothing in this action will booster profits of any of the companies involved. They’re doing it because companies are made up of people, and people help other people. From what I’ve seen, Google is one of the biggest practitioners of what I’ve heard called “corporate philanthropy”, which is basically companies doing good things for the sake of doing good things.
Anyway, Egypt. Everything there is so chaotic, I think it’s too soon to tell what exactly is happening and how it all will turn out. I hope there will be a new, fair, democratic government installed, but I fear that things may become worse than they have been–unstable, controlled by extremists, violent. I also know that, whatever happens, there will be all sorts of priceless historical artifacts stolen and destroyed, and that concerns me deeply. And then there’s the possibility of either Israel or Iran overreacting to it and, quite possible, instigating a full war which the US will unavoidably be dragged into.
What Piggy said. I really don’t want the US to involve itself in any more wars. Go, Egyptians!
My Facebook feed is full of messages of support to Egypt now, and clips of what’s happening, and news articles. I suppose it’s another example of how the Internet is affecting this.
Same.
I’m also deeply concerned about the artifacts. I remember what happened to the National Museum in Iraq in the chaos after the invasion.
Is there such a thing as an archeology superhero? And if so, where do I apply?
I hope the pyramids don’t get destroyed. They’re works of art and architecture.
I don’t think it would ever come to that. At least, I hope not.
Doesn’t Indiana Jones count as an archeology superhero? If so, you can sign up with Steven Spielberg…
Well, yeah, but he hasn’t been active for about 50 years…
Zahi Hawass managed to get out a statement by faxing it to friends in Italy. The good news is, he’s been out in the streets and the people aren’t against HIM, and in fact were asking him if the museum was OK, so the consensus seems to be that whatever happens to the government, he’ll stay in charge of antiquities.
The bad news? Well…
“My heart is broken and my blood is boiling. I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities.”
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just where I am right now, with Egypt always, always on the news. But I honestly thought that the protests in Egypt would be met with more attention form Museblog than they have been–just a few posts regarding antiquities, and nothing of the potentially huge social upheaval that could result from this. Am I the only one who is more concerned with the people living and protesting for greater human rights right now and not mummies?
I’ve been surprised too, actually, FF. In my lifetime, I can’t remember mainstream news organizations devoting this many hours of surprisingly thoughtful news coverage to any event happening outside the United States — and yet for the most part I’m not hearing much reaction among people I know, other than those who already pay attention to world events. Yet this is such an extraordinary story at every level.
FF:
There was a fairly long discussion of the Iranian protests on Hot Topics, v. 2009.3, but for some reason Egypt doesn’t seem to be getting the same sort of attention here.
I was kind of hoping this thread would be more active too. I like discussing world topics, and my Global class discusses them a lot too and I was hoping to have more to contribute.
The sad thing is how this has really overshadowed the Tucson shooting, which would be getting a lot more national attention if the riots had not started. It would be getting a lot more attention here on MB, too.
Mubarak is OUT! w00t! I just hope that the military will also concede to the people and not become a military dictatorship.
The Iranian government is scared–they told the people not even to think about following Egypt’s example. It will be interesting to see what happens there, especially sine there was such an uproar over the elections in 2009.
My mom texted me the news in first period. I was so ahead of the information curve when my second period teacher still thought that he hadn’t resigned yet. 8)
So far, it seems like everything’s headed in the right direction. As long as it stays peaceful and the military’s role remains merely stabilizing and transitional, I’m really optimistic. A relatively nonviolent, grassroots, democratic, successful revolution in the Middle East would be a great example for the region.
And now there are riots in Algeria. I suppose it’s all going to be spreading in the Middle East, isn’t it? I just hope it doesn’t turn out like Yugoslavia, or post-colonial Africa. It probably helps in Egypt that Mubarak didn’t have a cult of personality, and as a dictator, he definitely could’ve been a lot worse. So the people don’t seem to be revolting so much against him as for democracy, which is good.
Well, hooray for self-determination! Good luck, Middle East!
My global teacher told me that China forbid all knowledge of what’s going on in Egypt (or at least blocked media attention). To stop people from getting ideas, I guess.
My grandparents, who live in Foshan (it has more than a million people, GAPAs), can get several of the main Hong Kong channels on television. Whenever the evening news shows something about protesting, democracy, protesting for democracy, anarchism, Tibet or Taiwan, or anything portraying the Chinese government in a negative light (we have free media in Hong Kong), that segment of the news is blocked out on mainland television sets and replaced by adverts until the threatening part is over. Sometimes, though, if something important’s happened and it might be blocked, my mother will call my grandparents and tell them about it (they both usually watch the 6:00 news on the same channel).
It’s basically true that the Chinese government is paranoid about people getting the wrong ideas, but my general impression of China is that most people seem to be pretty content about the way things are run and not too many have extreme enough feelings to spark a nation-wide revolution, such as in Egypt. In Egypt, I think they had been essentially dissatisfied with the dictatorship anyway, and Tunisia was just the spark.
SFTDP According to the Wikipedia entry on censorship in China, news stories that have been blacked out include anything to do with Tiananmen, the Dalai Lama, Tibetan unrest, the 2008 milk scandal, and even negative developments about the Beijing Olympics. Apparently everyone broadcasting the Olympics live were told to delay their broadcasts by 10 seconds to allow time to censor pro-Tibetan protesters and such.
Same here.
Why is it that although it is illegal to hit prison inmates, (people who have possibly committed murder, if not worse) in thirteen states, it’s still legal to use corporal punishment on children in schools?
Wouldn’t it be setting a bad example if prison wards were allowed to beat prison inmates?
Maybe they think that the prison inmates will retaliate but little children won’t. That makes it worse though.
You can thank the U.S. Supreme Court for the discrepancy. In 1977 Ingraham v. Wright, the Court ruled (in a 5-4 decision) that the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause did not apply to students, because a school environment is different from a prison. [Insert joke here.]
Corporal punishment is prohibited in the public schools in about 30 states and some individual school districts. Still other school systems restrict it in various ways, such as requiring parental permission. According to testimony at a Congressional hearing last year, about 75% of all corporal punishment instances occur in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia.
maggie- Isn’t it setting an equally bad example for children?
Rebecca- Hm… and it’s not Child Abuse because it’s not considered serious harm? That second bit is especially interesting… I think it’d make the punishment so much worse if I knew that my parents had okayed it.
On the topic of public schooling, our school district (I go to a private school, but my sister goes to public and my mom is involved in it so that’s how I know) is creating a big stink by putting up “data walls”. For those of you who don’t know, that’s where they the scores and grades of every student is up on a wall where everyone can see them. Most of them are anonymous, but some aren’t. And really, anyone can figure out roughly who’s scores are who even when they are anonymous. The idea is to raise test scores by turning it all into a competition, basically?
Am I alone, or is this ridiculous?
(Also, sorry for the very poor wording of my posts recently. I’ve been rather inarticulate.)
The Court did permit individuals to sue in case of injury or excess. But I’m just reporting, not defending. You asked why prisoners and students were subject to different standards, so that’s what I answered. Congress has been considering a bill prohibiting corporal punishment in any schools that receive federal subsidies. I don’t know where it stands.
Thanks.
Students should be able to compare their scores with others. However, it should be completely anonymous. Students have the right to know how they are doing in comparison with their peers.
Except what if you’re doing a lot worse? (Or, for that matter, a lot better? I know someone who already gets bullied for performing well, and the test scores have just made it worse.) Also, it seems unrealistic to think that you could keep it anonymous- Kids know who’s doing well in class, and who isn’t, even without scores posted up on a wall- Those’ll just make it easier to pinpoint exactly how badly someone is doing. I don’t even see the point of it, how is knowing that you’re doing exceptionally bad supposed to be encouraging?
Tragically, rape is both endemic and accepted in our prison system.
And our prison system has many flaws. Did you know, for example, that while we have under 5% of the world’s population, we have a quarter of its prisoners?
better question: why is it okay for you or anyone else to categorize the worth of human life?
Second.
Axa: To which previous comment are you referring here?
Sudo’s original comment.
Um
I’m not?
you seem to imply that it is logically inexplicable for inmates to be beyond corporal punishment. to me this assigns a spectrum of worth to people which i’m not sure i agree with. if you’re saying that corporal punishment is wrong in all senses, okay– if you’re saying it should be uniformly instituted that’s also another argument. i took your question as literal, if you meant it in a hypothetical sense then i was wrong to respond to it any other way.
Yeah, I more meant the inmates part as a comparison- if people don’t find this acceptable for people they have decided are undeniably guilty of prisonable offenses, why do they think it’s okay for children? I probably could have phrased it better, I pretty firmly believe that corporal punishment is all around not okay.
All right, this isn’t as hot a topic as most things on here, but I still think it deserves mention.
I recently read an article about how an 8-year-old racked up $1,400 in iTunes bills through in-app purchases in Smurf’s Village. This article quoted many sources who complained about this being some sort of money-laundering scheme from Apple. My problem with this is the fact that 1. these parents gave their second grader an iPhone and iTunes password and 2. when you make an in-app purchase, it says the following: “Do you want to buy [item] for [amount of money]?” I personally think that it’s the parents’ responsibility to know that their child is responsible with their money, and not Apple’s. What does the MuseBlog think?
I agree. It’s the parents’ fault. If you gave your kid a thousand dollars in cash and released them into a Toys ‘R’ Us, they’d do the same thing–spend the money their parents game them.
Parents do need to be more responsible than that, but everyone makes mistakes. It is not Apple’s fault at all, but people can make mistakes and hopefully a company can be nice enough to offer a refund.
They did apparently give them a one-time refund.
ugh another example of someone’s inability to use technology and then blaming said technology for their own failings. really, humanity? it’s not apple’s fault your kid knows how to use an iphone and you aren’t savvy enough to keep en from buying stuff :/
I also love the parents who say that parental restrictions should be the default setting. Maybe Apple didn’t do that because THEY DIDN’T EXPECT CAKING SECOND GRADERS TO BE BUYING APPS. Again, it’s an issue of responsibility. In fact, I actually set my own parental restrictions on my iPod Touch, so I never need to cleanse my mind of anything.
You know what bugs me? That hitting prisoners is illegal, but apparently common practice at Guantanamo Bay. And on that subject, which I probably shouldn’t be getting in to, but am anyway, 48 of the 172 prisoners there are planned to be held captive indefinitely without trial.
I don’t like the word “detainee.” That makes it sound like all the guys at Guantanamo were delayed getting off their plane from Heathrow. What about “prisoners”?
“Detainee” just has that nice ring to it.
Yay euphemisms!
The prison north of here is called “Regional Justice Center”. Gack.
While we’re on the subject of unjust prisons… The Maine State Prison, before it got torn down and moved, still used the cells from when it was first built in 1824. (I know this because I lived by it.) Narrow, cramped cells. Standards were lower then, evidently. My mom went to see it before it got torn down, and she was appalled by what she found. You have to wonder…
Why do people think it’s okay to mistreat humans just because they’ve committed an awful crime? (This was a maximum security prison.)
14 (Mikazuki)~ Because it’s easier to lock them away and hide them than it is to foster a just society or to provide rehabilitation for individuals who’ve made mistakes. It’s easier to do this to people if you can convince yourself that they’re bad or subhuman, and when you’re firmly rooted in the idea that they’re subhuman, why should they be treated with any dignity? I think it’s largely a power trip as well, having complete control over another life.
The most depressing thing is that if we as a society were to set up programs for rehabilitation and reentry to society it would end up costing far less (once they’re in prison they must be fed, clothed, medicated, etc. by the state or government) as well as not taking a large number of the population and making them unable to contribute to the communities. Incarceration is a temporary fix that’s used as a permanent one and it’s highly ineffective. Being arrested and put in a place with lots of other people who’ve made serious mistakes and are probably still very angry does not do anything to show an individual why their mode of behavior was wrong; to the contrary, it provides stronger incentive to not get caught next time.
Although there are programs in prisons such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, Alternatives to Violence Project, art classes, GED programs and other very beneficial groups, there’s very little support once they’re out again, and many haven’t learned enough (or simply don’t know their options) to stay away from their old habits. Even if they do try to avoid bad habits, once you have that on your record finding employment, housing, anything besides going back to the streets that much harder. It’s a vicious cycle, and one that bothers me greatly.
We need to start seeing prisoners as people who are worthy of humane treatment and the opportunity to better themselves and benefit society. We need to stop being afraid of them and calling them bad people. We need to talk to them, look in their eyes and understand where they’re coming from. We need to realize that although they have made serious mistakes, their lives are still important.
Something else messed up about our prison system- We have about 3% of the world’s population, and about 25% of the world’s prisoners.
Why? My guess is that we aren’t retraining them, helping them to get a good, helpful life so that they don’t have to hurt people to survive. As Fiddler said, we need to see them as people who are worthy of humane treatment. Just like the rest of us. That’s why it’s called humane treatment.
Post 11.5?
I knew I had seen it somewhere! Thanks!
Another thing: The county jail in (city) is the second-largest mental-health treatment facility in the state. People who are released from jail often end up going back, simply because they can’t take care of themselves, don’t want to stay in homeless shelters and there’s nowhere else for them to go. people with mental illnesses can get treatment in jail. They won’t be treated humanely, but at least they’ll get medicine.
Right?
On the subject of mental health, what do people think of not guilty by reason of insanity?
That’s what the Tucson shooter tried to get an easier punishment on. I think that they should be given a shrink if they truly are criminally insane, but then put back in jail to serve their time. If they were not put in jail, there would be a ton of people pleading not guilty by reason of insanity and then just let off easy. Even with a test of some sort, some people would still get by.
I haven’t checked the statistics. But I’ve heard that insanity pleas are much rarer than most people think, and successful ones rarer still.
My personal opinion is that mentally ill people who commit crimes need treatment, and good treatment, first and foremost.
My mother is a psychiatrist (like yours), and her experience is that our legal system has wronged both mentally ill and stable people by not having an “insane but guilty” plea. She speaks to people where their mental illness had nothing to do with and little impact on crimes (minor, in her case, except with the drug dealers) and they got off on an insanity plea. She knows they’re insane, but they were fully aware of what they did and the implications of that.
That said, I think treatment should still be a priority, especially the insane but guilty.
I think our moms would get along well- mine’s a psychiatrist too. And seems to share your mother’s opinion. For my part, I think everyone should be tested when they turn 20 for any psychological disorders so that they can’t later suddenly claim to contract one. Although it’s rare that they do that.
Are insanity pleas and guilty pleas necessary mutually exclusive, though?
So adults who develop mental disorders would simply be out of luck?
Okay, okay, it was a bad idea. I’m full of them. I suppose you would have to have an overflow of pro bono psychiatrists for it to work. On the subject of statistics, how many people who are diagnosed with a mental disorder before their crime use the insanity plea?
“Testing” every person in the country for psychiatric disorders would be horrendously expensive and, realistically, impossible. There aren’t enough psychiatrists to work with that many people. And a general “testing” for disorders would take quite some time. Under normal conditions, a person sees a psychiatrist because there’s something clearly wrong. You don’t go in for a yearly checkup or what have you, as you would with a GP or dentist. Besides, psychiatry is an ever-changing, never-agreeing field. No two psychiatrists are going to agree about a patient.
baseline screening could be good, but with the thing with mental illness is that it can be caused by an unknown plethora of external causes at any time, (think PTSD, also drugs) so that wouldn’t work if taken exclusively.
In our current legal system insanity and guilty pleas (although as it has been pointed out not that many actually plead insanity) are, to my knowledge, treated as exclusive most of the time, and when they’re not an insanity plea can seriously commute a sentence, wether or not the insanity is relevant to the guilt. This is the one problem with our jury system: juries are selected by lawyers and thus in a case involving insanity less likely to include people who actually know anything about mental illness–those with knowledge are harder to sway, thus less desirable to the lawyers.
The guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart hasn’t gone to trial yet on grounds of insanity, but Elizabeth Smart and his wife say that he’s perfectly sane and knows exactly what he’s doing. That could be called semi-successful.
If he knew what he was doing, then his mental health is irrelevant. He should be treated for whatever, if any, mental disorders he has, and he should be imprisoned. Jared Loughner was likely a schizophrenic, but (correct me if I’m wrong) he did supposedly plan the murders. In that case his mental health has no bearing on the fact that he committed a crime.
While I’m not defending either of those men, I’d say that mental health does have a bearing on committing crime. If you have a serious mental illness, that can remove some of the checks and stops that normal brains have, and your view of the world can become distorted.
According to what I’ve read, about 1% of felony defendants use the insanity plea. Out of those, about one quarter are successful.
Note that the legal definition of insanity is not the same as the psychiatric definition; the criteria differ from state to state and at the federal level.
Let’s say I’ve been diagnosed with *checks Mom’s psychiatry encyclopedia* paranoid schizophrenia, and I walk into the MRT station and stab someone with a pair of chopsticks from the noodle shop because I thought God told me to. And let’s pretend that Singapore has a guilty-but-insane conviction bylaw. Could there be some sort of proportional reduction for mental illness? As in, “well, yes, she’s crazy, but the fact is that she killed someone with a pair of chopsticks. So let’s take the usual 60-year sentence for murder by chopsticks and reduce it by 70%, so she serves 18 years.”
So, the judge would say: “Yes, we are convinced that you believed that many people around you were vampires determined to kill you, and that you were the only one who could stop them. You hallucinated that the person in the MRT was a monstrous vampire with scales, fangs, and flaming orange eyes. You heard voices, which you believed to be those of God and several archangels, shouting at you to kill the vampire NOW NOW NOW. Therefore, we are reducing your sentence from 60 years in prison to 18 years.”
Would such a sentence be fair punishment for the crime? Would it deter the murderer, or other people, from committing similar crimes in the future? Should someone in that condition share a cell, or a prison, with other prisoners? If you were a judge, is that how you would rule?
(These aren’t supposed to be leading questions. I’m curious.)
I think that the person, having been previously diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, would be in prison and psychiatric treatment for 18 years, since they did in fact kill someone, and be taken to review at the end of those 18 years by a board of psychiatrists who would determine whether the person should be placed in a heavily guarded mental institution, a treatment/rehabilitation center, or released on the condition of daily sessions with a psychiatrist and medication, any violation of which would result in placement in an institution. I certainly think that 18 years of prison would deter a person from doing anything to cause them to be placed there again. No, I don’t think that person should share a cell with other people, although murders appear to happen in prison a lot anyway (and, may I add, at least 17% of them in California). Depending on the verdict of a number of psychiatrists, the condition of the criminal, that is probably how I would rule. How would you rule?
Why not just put the person directly into the mental institution?
I suppose it depends on the pleasantness of the mental institution- that is, whether it will constitute any punishment for murder with utensils. It might be more convenient, though, since psychiatrists would be close at hand. Do prisons have psychiatrists?
So the most important thing is punishment, and a mental institution would be fine as long as it was unpleasant enough?
So you’d allow a person with severe schizophrenia to sit in a cell for 18 years before he gets needed treatment? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to go to a mental institution for a while, till their schizophrenia is under control, and then go to prison?
For that matter, what’s the point in imprisoning someone for obeying direct orders from God? If you think God is commanding you to do something, will a prison sentence really deter you?
I agree. If someone is legitimately ill, and their actions are entirely a result of their illness, they have no culpability.
Okay, you guys are right. I concede your point.
Are you allowed to side with the opposition in a debate?
Debate isn’t about “winning” or “opposition”. It’s about discussing an issue and learning from other people. I’d say we’ve all succeeded in doing that.
My general rule for MuseBlog debates is “Piggy is usually right”.
That’s a good rule of thumb.
Or, “Side with Piggy, because he is usually right.”
That is usually my rule too. The only time I have disagreed with him is about pi/tau
Mine is, “I usually disagree with Piggy, but he’s a far better debater than me, so I should carefully observe and take mental notes.”
Agreed.
I posted this on Advice, but it could go here too:
We recently elected a president for NHS. I didn’t vote for him because I thought he had a poor work ethic, and evidently I was completely correct.
He was caught cheating on a Calc BC test, of all things.
Now our chapter has been thrown out of whack, and I don’t know what’s happening – some said that he would be forced to quit as president and that there would be new elections (but that he would be allowed to run again), and some said that no action would be taken.
No one has said that he would be kicked out of the chapter.
In any other situation, this kid would be kicked out. Heck, people have been kicked out for behaving badly at a school dance. CHEATING is compromising academic integrity, one of the freaking TENETS of NHS.
Now, this makes me worried, because I don’t want to just sit back as if I condone this cheating. But I don’t want to quit in protest or make a stirring speech, either, because it seems that no one cares besides me.
I want to take action and speak out against this somehow – to show how horrible I think this is – but I can’t…
What is NHS? Google says it’s National Health Service, but I get the feeling that’s not what you mean.
National Honor Society.
Oh. Then yes, I completely agree with you.
Ehh, ‘s life. NHS is just…something that looks good on a college application. And I know it seems totally unfair that some idiot who cheats his way through a [imho, insultingly easy] exam might get the edge on someone who’s legitimately smart. Because it is totally unfair. And frustratingly so. You should be angry.
But that’s life. He sounds like someone who will brag about doing well on some freshman writing course and then burn out once he gets to real classes in college because he never figured out how to learn. It’s hilarious, really. High schools expecting poor students to cheat. Because they don’t care enough to cheat. It’s always the book-smart-couldn’t-be-creative-if-their-lives-depended-on-it types. They’ll have the best GPAs and extracurrics, but in the end they’ll convince themselves they’re happy in some dead-end unsatisfying job just because they’re making money or receiving some other sort of affirmation of what they know isn’t true–that they can do this on their own.
Taking tests and school, they’re not about grades. They’re about knowing stuff for the sake of knowing stuff.
So I suppose you could feel justified in that. Thing is, do you really want to devote your time and mental energy to someone else’s terrible, embarrassing, and ultimately trivial silliness? You could quit, if you wanted to. Or you could make it make your résumé look good. You could quit, and write your college applications about why you quit, and stick it on the activities bit like so: “NHS for X months/years.”
It’s good that you care, because you’re not academically dead.
Kokonilly and Melpomene-
I agree with Melpomene, but it seems like quitting NHS would be a huge and difficult ordeal. I’m not in NHS, so I don’t know, but from watching the NHS kids at my school it seems like they think it’s some kind of elite group and it’s really important just to be a Member.
Last year, our NHS president was seen in racy photos from a choir trip on facebook. Apparently it’s a tradition on the choir trip to take pictures in the robes, but with the robes all tied up and moved around to look really skimpy. She got in trouble, but wasn’t forced out of office.
That is our most public NHS scandal, but there are a lot of people who aren’t the most honorable. I wouldn’t want to be associated with them.
I don’t really have the respect for NHS that I probably should. When I first rejected the invitation it was because I didn’t have enough volunteer hours to make the cut. (I was later told that I probably could have made the cut even with my lousy volunteer record) After that I was really glad that I didn’t join.
Well, I guess there isn’t really a level of respect that I “should” have, if the members aren’t earning it. (in my opinion, the members in my school don’t earn much respect)
You seem a little bit cynical. Kokonilly is right; National Honor Society is about honor and if you care enough to join it – even if it just looks good on college applications – you should abide by the rules.
Sigh. Libya opened fire on protesters and raised the death toll to 100. I’m all for people protesting Gadhafi, but not if it ends in violence. Do you suppose that if this works (which I am doubtful of, seeing as Gadhafi’s forces are willing to kill citizens, unlike in Egypt) it will sprout revolution in countries all over the region?
I think it’s been heading in that direction for a while, although I don’t know if this one will succeed.
I think it’s amazing what Tunisia started.
According to my Humanities teacher, there has been growing unrest in China along the same lines as the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
Considering that China has the world’s largest population at 1.3 billion, a full-scale revolution like that in Egypt would have dire consequences, especially for me.
The Chinese government doesn’t have much tolerance for protests and demonstrations against authority and such, but then again, Mubarak ruled as a dictator for 30 years and no one ever complained until now.
*hopes desperately that Selenium is not affected*
But the thing is, protesters in Egypt were really lucky that the army refused to shoot. They could easily have overpowered them and killed thousands of people. That won’t happen in China or Libya- think Tiananmen square. I find it ironic that Tiananmen basically translates to “heavenly pacification.”
Anyway. Stay safe. You can always flee to Singapore. But I’m not sure that protests in China would have so much effect in HK, since HK is a lot better run and doing pretty well.
Yes, it would be a lot worse in China because the state is so paranoid and touchy, and not at all afraid to use their army against their people to protect their power.
It’s true that the Chinese government doesn’t have too much say over what we do here (hence the fact that I’m able to post the above sentence without getting arrested), but we do have a garrison of the People’s Liberation Army stationed here, quite close to where I live. It’s still a worrying thought. Revolution and violence are hard to contain, as demonstrated by the recent events in the Middle East.
How big are the protests in China getting? Does anyone have any predictions on how big the protests in China are going to get?
I don’t think they’re as serious as those that happened in Egypt and Tunisia, but there has been talk on the Internet as such about it. Then again, there have usually been dissenters and the like anyway, even before the whole Jasmine Revolution thing.
I think the authorities are taking the usual response – arresting the people that sent out an Internet call for people to gather in an organised revolution in more than a dozen cities, censoring the Internet (I believe they’ve blocked all searches for the word jasmine as well as several other sites), etc. I heard that over 100 lawyers and activists have disappeared, and police have been deployed to the sites that were planned for demonstrations.
It’s not that easy to indice the Chinese people to direct revolt, though. A lot aren’t willing to risk the wrath of the state for a cause that probably won’t be heeded anyway. Economic growth is a powerful incentive, and the Chinese generally seem happy to exchange political freedom for a strong economy and more money. They’re not necessarily going to want to revolt against the government that’s brought them all this wealth.
So, my prediction is that the Chinese population overall won’t protest to such a large-scale degree as the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt etc. but the few activists that do feel strongly about the matter and do protest will be taken care of by the government in its usual way.
*’Indice’ in the third paragraph should be induce, sorry.
So, wait, being in Hong Kong but not China, can you google “jasmine”?
Yes, I can Google anything I want here. The Chinese government has no control over our Internet; they can’t block certain sites, they can’t block certain searches on Google, etc.
Basically, we run ourselves except for for the military (the PLA as I mentioned before) and diplomatic relations. Other than that, the Communist Party really has no say. I have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to protest.
Reviving this thread with a conversation-starter about censorship:
I am currently a member of an oekaki board(online drawing board that registered and anonymous users can draw on and then post their pictures to). There are various sections of the board that art can be posted to, mostly based on time and effort spent. There is also one section of the board that “mature” art can be posted to if a user is over 18(though minors can comment on it). The definition for “mature” used is gore/excessive violence, and exposed genitalia. Breasts are fine on the other boards; all of this is stated in the rules. Recently, a user posted an anatomical study of breasts(well done, and not OMG boobs! Just a study) to one of the sections devoted to things the user has put a lot of effort into. It was shortly moved to the mature section. Cue huge argument. The original artist wanted it moved back, some people defended her, while others defended the moderator who moved it. Basically, while it was supported by the rules of the board, the mod thought it would offend people and had “gotten a few concerned comments from oekaki users”.
What do any of you who read that wall of text think about the situation?
Hm. While I think it would probably be best in the mature section, the rules state otherwise… I think that if they want to do something like that, they should first either put a disclaimer on the rules page stating that there may be exceptions when the moderators think there should be, or mention there that there although they can show that sort of thing on non-mature sections, it can’t be the actual main focus of the picture. That way, there’s no confusion. Either way, if the moderators moved that picture–which they have a right to do–they should change the rules so that it makes more sense.
I would question why she wanted it on the under-18 board in the first place.
She felt that since she had put a significant amount of effort into it and it wasn’t violating any rules, it belonged there. It has now been moved back. Any further comments about its location are being deleted. Perhaps she’ll just get critique now?
And perhaps MBers will remember our policy of not discussing other websites.
I’m sorry.
I thought it’d be all right if I didn’t mention the website in particular, and it was an issue I found interesting.
No harm done — just a reminder.
In our government class we are doing a mock House of Representatives. We started out in committees writing bills, then passed the bills on to other committees to be edited and rewritten.
Our original bill was to repeal DoMA (look it up), and to require that states follow the 4th article of the US Constitution (honoring the legal actions of other states, which include marriages). We were going to also have the federal government recognize same sex marriages, and within our bill we defined a marriage as a legal union between two adults of either gender.
The committee that rewrote our bill rewrote it using same sex unions and opposite sex marriages. They said that the two are “equivalent”. I am upset about this change.
I do not believe that unions are a suitable replacement for marriage. Though unions do make a good step for the legal rights of couples (such as filing taxes and hospital visits…etc) unions do not mean equality. Having a separate institution for same sex couples creates a stigma that their relationships are not based on the same ideas as other relationships.
Our class is very good at staying calm during discussion, so I am apprehensively looking forward to the debate.
I know the arguments against same sex marriage, but I do not understand them well. My main confusion comes from the religious argument, as I am not religious. If marriage is a religious institution, and the major religion of the country can decide who may be married, then why would they allow atheists or people who worship their Nemesis to marry?
When I was a little kid, I didn’t think about decorations for my union day and draw pictures of what my civil union dress would look like. I want to get married!
(Yes, I know same sex couples can still call themselves married, but it’s not the same as public recognition. Technically they aren’t married even if they act like it)
I think that prejudice about gay people is probably the stupidest prejudice since that against black people. Religions can say whatever they want, but that has no basis in government, and as far as I know there is no other valid reason that gay people shouldn’t get married (though I don’t think that one is valid either)
Apparently money is an issue with same sex couples too, like more paperwork and stuff for the government for each marriage. But I think that the taxes recieved by all the stuff going into the marriage would compensate for the paperwork, and why should gay people be the ones to suffer? Why just them? I completely agree with you about this.
That’s just my take on all this.
I think (though I could be wrong) no-one has a problem with non-Christians marrying because marriage is completely unrelated to the fact that they’re not Christians, whereas with homosexuals it would mean supporting what they think is a sin? At least, that’s definitely how I would feel if I objected to non-Christianity and homosexuality, though I don’t. The religious argument I don’t understand (though I haven’t heard it often) is when people say that marriage should only be between people of opposite genders because God made Adam and Eve that way. It seems completely irrelevant to me; that’s just one aspect of them, and there’s nothing in the Bible saying that they should be our role models. Anyway, I’m sure they had all sorts of qualities that weren’t good or bad, just existent, like eye shape or hobbies; I don’t see how gender is any different from that. It’s true that they weren’t specifically mentioned, and their gender was, but shouldn’t it be kind of obvious anyway if they’re really everyone’s acestors?
If you are a Christian, then you believe that God made Adam and Eve. You also believe that God made you. If you are gay, then God made you gay. Therefore, religion has little logical factor in the gay-rights issue, and the objection results from prejudice.
I just discovered what the Defense of Marriage Act is, and I find it ridiculous and hard to believe that it was passed in 1996, when there should have been enough activists to convince Congress to block its passage.
Ah, marriage rights (/rites)
It’s important to remember in any discussion concerning marriage and homosexuality that marriage is an institution of both the church and the state. In case of legislation, only the state aspect of marriage is being discussed. Individual churches can and do choose individually who and what they consider marriage/married, therefore religious arguments really have no place in legislative discussion.
State aspects of marriage include differential taxation, adoption, position in terms of hospital rights and wills, property laws, and divorce rights between the married and unmarried.
Our country is founded on the principles that everyone is created equal with equal rights. Yet at no point in the history of our country has legislative equality taken place, which makes me horribly sad and yet hopeful. We are a young country. We can accomplish this if we set our hearts on it, and we have.
I hear the arguments against same-sex marriage and I am filled with anger. Here are people, who for the sake of their so-called religious/moral principles, have no problem with denying my rights to me. To get married to the person I love is to pursue happiness. Here many of these individuals are calling on their constitutional freedoms of free religion and are ignoring that I have those freedoms as well. If per my religion I should marry who I love to better love them, that is my right. If marriage is pursuing happiness for me, I should be able to do so. In forbidding me to do this they are placing their rights above mine, when I am human and they are human and we deserve equality.
Furthermore, many of the studies quoted by propionates of DoMA and banning same-sex marriage have dubious to no scientific or logical backing. Read the fine print–the sample size, the author of the study and who funded it, and you’ll find that what has happened (not being omnipresent and I can’t speak for all but for what I’ve seen) is too small a sample with a biased study done in the first place.
For anyone especially interested in LGBT rights, I’d suggest finding both , Gay America , which is more general, and Odd Girls And Twilight Lovers which is specific to the lesbian rights movement and well worth reading.
Prejudice of any kind I find disgusting, but since homophobia directly concerns me it passes disgusting and gets scary. For a nation renowned for its liberty and equality we still have a long way to go.
(Not just as far as gay rights go either. Women still earn less than men in many fields, racism, while not as prevalent as it used to be, is still a major presence here, and so on.)
These kinds of rules have no point. What is there against someone loving someone they care about, even if they are the same gender? Soon, I fear that this whole thing will boil over to more prejudice, maybe even being good friends could be a problem in the future.
There isnever anything to back up why they ban this, and all it does in cause arguments, and people to not be able to love.
Laws like these are ingrateful .
clare — preach! i agree with everything you said but am replying mostly to the last part (book recommendations)
Do you have any thoughts on relations within the LGBT community between gays (meaning gay men) and lesbians? Or put differently, can you think of any books that would maybe contrast the two movements?
I don’t think people realize how different the two experiences can be, or that there really are separate movements withing the larger gay rights movement.
I guess, actually, this is more of a broader sexuality question. Hmm.
Something I had in mind (and I have talked about this with friends) is how when a guy comes out, for whatever reason people tend to take it more seriously than if a girl does; when it’s a girl I think there is a tendency to call it “a phase” more than with guys. Things like that.
of course that’s entirely leaving out transgender and intersex and so many other things. i always feel so uneducated about everything…*sigh*
I hope this doesn’t sound weird, I’m just curious!
shadowfire — that is a very good point. i disagree to the extent that i see racism as a lot more prevalent in our society than i care to think about, as well as misogyny. but it is important to remember that while i feel like on paper those fights have been won, there is still a lot of work left to be done.
books–I’ve only really had access to middle and high school libraries (though exceptional ones) so I’d either look in a college or public library–social studies/history sections are often good–for a more collaborative one or just find two specific books because yes, there is a pretty dramatic difference. males and females interact differently and interact differently with each other, which means that when you add a romantic element within each group it is reacted to and treated differently. This is seen in countries outlawing homosexuality but only in men, as well as in the bible…it’s mentioned that men sleeping with men was regarded as a sin when that section was written, but doesn’t mention women, then again it didn’t really mention women that much at all. On the other hand in ancient greece a woman was considered a virgin until she slept with a man regardless of how many women she’d slept with, and it wasn’t important if men were virgins.
Also, the “phase” thing (sidenote: that annoyed me SO MUCH. if I say, at age 13, as I was when I came out, “I’m gay” I’ve already bloody considered that it could be a phase. Yeah. a phase that’s lasted since I was seven!) Anyway, the “phase” thing is because it’s been considered (and I’m not sure how much of this can be considered provable or factual) to be a normal stage in female development to crush on and be affectionate with other girls since the victorian era. People expect girls to be cuddly with each other, so temporarily developing crushes on other girls is more expected than guys, who are expected to be brusque and not remotely affectionate with each other, developing equivalent emotions.
Some of the difference might be able to be connected with physical and hormonal structure, but I think at this point and throughout the rights movements it’s mostly been sexism (especially in early movements) stereotypes and societal expectations.
Just a side note: I find it very funny how guys are stereotyped as being less touchy-feely and really paranoid about being gay. This might just be the guys I know, but most of them actively encourage the whole homosexual-subtext thing. In Acting, especially, the rule is “Every guy has a secret gay lover. Except Mercutio, Theseus, and Poseidon, because they have a secret gay threesome.” And cross-country… I don’t even have words for the shenanigans of cross-country.
*wishes my school was like yours*
The attitude of most guys in my school is something along the lines of “Whoa, I’m totally not gay at all. No, 100% heterosexual. But I don’t care if you’re gay.”
There’s probably about two or three people who are actually straight that I hang out with regularly. Most of the freshman class, however, to quote Clare: “ooze heterosexuality”. I don’t know any gay guys though, so your point definitely holds. There’s one guy who fits the stereotype but I have no idea about his sexuality.
I think oozing heterosexuality is a good description of everyone at my school.
*repeatedly bashes head against wall*
*sympathy squid*
axa–I noticed a similar thing at my school. There are tons of gay guys and everyone’s OK with it, but recently a girl came out as lesbian (or maybe bisexual, I’m not sure) and it was kind of a big deal in a not-so-good way. It’s actually almost cool to be gay, but not lesbian.
Can we please define the term marriage? People are using it incorrectly.
Marriage–a sacrament of the Church joining a couple before God and the rest of the Church
Civil Union–a union in the eyes of the law, with legal rights given to the couple such as adoption, tax things, etc.
One can be in a civil union and not married, or vice versa.
So what are we talking about here? Do gays and lesbians want civil unions? Do they want a marriage in the eyes of their religion? Do they want both? This needs to be cleared up.
vanillabean — do you live in the U.S.? same-sex civil unions are by virtue of their distinction not equal to hetero marriage licenses, which is what i think you’re talking about. Civil unions are not recognized in all states and do not entitle the bearers to the same legal rights as a marriage license does. Religious marriage ceremonies are separate from legal marriage, in that you can get married without having a wedding. This is where many people find a problem with the religious argument against same-sex marriage, since one’s religion or lack thereof should have no bearing on their legal rights.
Gays and lesbians want recognition as equal citizens of the United States.
Clare — I will look at the library!
but thank you for your suggestions and well thought out reply!
I agree that gender roles probably play a big part into that. Wow, i find this all so interesting… There’s so much to think of, I can’t really make a good reply
I know about the distinctions there in the US. I was wondering what exactly gays and lesbians wanted–religious marriage or civil unions–because everyone keeps using the term marriage ambiguously.
True, we’d have to go deeper into this though.
I want secular marriage rights. Marriage because in the US that is the term used for the state granting marriage licenses and marriage rights. Religion can do whatever it wants; people have a right to believe what they wish and to practice that, but they do not have a right to take my rights away. I won’t care if various branches of religion don’t recognize my marriage–I just won’t subscribe to their belief systems–what I’ll care about is having the government acknowledge my marriage and in doing so acknowledge that there is no fundamental difference between me and a straight person who has fallen in love and wants to get married. that’s what’s at stake here. Religion does not have power over me, but the state does.
Thank you, Clare! This is just what I want to say!
The U.S. definition of marriage as a legally defined relationship shouldn’t have anything to do with the definitions of different religious marriages. Because both the religious and the secular government institution use the word “marriage”, it can be difficult to keep track of where the conversation is headed.
I was wondering if we could switch topics, we have gotten a lot of points on this.
My topic would be on Concussion Through Sports.
I play two very competative sports, basketball and baseball. Neither of these have much chance of a brain injury, unless someone was wild with the ball.
Maybe not in those sports, a concussion is probable, but what about football, and hockey? As you might know, some states are trying to pass laws that coaches must go to a medical training, to deal with this and more.
Is that necessary, and should rules like no, “Helmet to Helmet hits”, be enforced more?
Just a thing I have been wondering about for a LONG time.
I once thought I got a concussion from a merry-go-round. My dad lost teeth through being hit with a baseball bat. I think there’s always possibility for serious injury, no matter what you’re playing.
Anyway, more on topic, I think it would be a great idea for coaches to get medical training. When children are running around and playing, some of them will get hurt, and if there’s somebody around who knows how to deal with it.
My dad thinks they should eliminate helmets altogether.
Helmets save lives. My friend flipped off his bike a year and a half ago and spent weeks unconscious and several moths more in rehabilitation, but thanks to the helmet he lived. Now he’s back to taking AP classes and doing Science Olympiad (although a year behind–what with a slightly slower response time and thought process and several hours of rehabilitative therapy/therapy homework daily, he could only handle one class last year. Of course, that class was calc. He’s a genius.)
My brother just did a project suggesting that soccer goalposts should be padded.
I have a friend who knows this dude, who drilled his head into a post, and a girl who’s teammate (that is a goalie) runs away from the shot, into the post.
Your dad has a point.
If eliminating a helmetcauses more players to be cautious, and notbe super aggressive, there will be less concussions, right?
Somewhat right, and wrong… At least I think so.
It might eliminate head to head hits, but with no protection, and simple tackle could cause head injuries. If someone gets hit at the waist, then thrown to the ground, the helmet isn’t there to absorb force.
I fail to see his reasoning on that point.
Think of it this way:
If players aren’t so aggressive, there will be less concussions , as people won’t want to hit so hard.
Even though they won’t have helmets, all other hits won’t be life-threatening mif they get hurt.
Helmets = Agressive, HtoH, More Likely Concussions/Severe Injury
No Helmets = Less Aggressive, Less Likely Severe Injuries, (more just bruises, at the worst, broken jaws/face)
Yeah, he says players will be more inclined to protect their heads if they have nothing on their heads.
And I’m pretty sure he thinks eliminating helmets is only good for football players. When he sees people riding bikes without helmets he calls them nitwits.
Yes, only for football.
Not wearing helmets outside of that is stupid.
Exactly.
Do you MuseBloggers have any thoughts?
I am curious..
~Ψ~
Definitely, but do you think there is a better probability for more contact sports? And should they have the better medical training?
Hm… I think so.
I can’t wait until this whole thing is safer…
I happen to be somewhat accident-prone and can tell you that you can get injured doing pretty much anything. I once lost a fingernail knitting, for Pete’s sake.
I’m not sure how hot a topic this is, though. Concussions, while nasty, are unlikely to offend anyone. But we’ve already started a discussion here, and we might as well finish it.
I live in a country where being gay is illegal, but being lesbian is not. Oddly, though, there’s a much greater social stigma for lesbians. Which is not good for me. At any rate, nobody can marry anyone else of the same gender. *will spare you long rant about how much she hates Singapore* I think it’s partly because Singapore is sandwiched between Indonesia and Malaysia, two fairly conservative nations.
So, marriage- about the church/state thing- could I, in order to avoid offending my Catholic side of the family or the Hindu side by having a wedding at a Unitarian church, have a wedding not involving any religion whatsoever?
It might not be important to you, but to me a nd the sports world, this is major.
Do you know how many people die from head to head hits every year?
I’m pretty sure what she’s saying is not that concussions aren’t important but that a discussion of concussions, as there is little controversy or strong emotion that I’m aware of surrounding the topic, might not belong on this thread.
Oh, okay.
It is just very important to me…
There may not be much controversy here on MuseBlog, but the topic elicits extremely heated (euphemism alert) “discussion” in some other circles.
Oh, okay..
Ah, I see. Thanks Rebecca.
CO- Umm… I don’t know about the church thing because I don’t live with people who go to church. For some reason I feel like if you do anything other than the Hindu or Catholic church then both sides will be offended (even if they’re nice about it to your face). If you pick or have 2 separate ceremonies maybe there will be fewer offended people?
I don’t really know how serious your family is about religion or how much your extended family likes the UU church.
I don’t want my wedding to have anything to do with religion. I do not believe in any religion and I don’t want my ceremonial commitment to be based on something that I believe is false. I feel like that would be a really bad metaphor for my relationship.
My immediate family isn’t churchgoing, but some of my extended family is. I don’t know what their reaction would be if I had an atheistic ceremony. It wouldn’t be great, but I don’t know if it would be really horrible or just kinda disappointed.
In all technicality, yes. You could have a civil union if you went to Europe.
there are officiants (i think that’s the word…) that can perform nonreligious marriage ceremonies. I’m pretty sure the Unitarian church would be thrilled to marry you, and really, you can do just about whatever you want for the religious end of marriage. Here in the US as long as you go to a judge to get your wedding license (well, if you’re straight, that is) you can literally have a wedding ceremony presided over by talking pine trees or no wedding ceremony at all.
Wow, you know a lot.
*laughs uproariously* Thank you. Many people seem to have this impression but in actuality I don’t know half of what I wish to know and some of what I have to know. The issue at hand is one that’s very important to me so that’s most likely where the impression’s coming from.
I’m not sure if this counts as a hot topic, but here I go:
English class. We recently finished a memoir by a holocaust survivor (Night, if anyone cares. It’s amazing). While we were reading it, our English teacher had a short Powerpoint presentation on Aushwitz and the horrors that happened then. For me, it was horrifying. It looked so bleak there, I couldn’t imagine dying there with essentially no hope left. But that’s not the point of this post.
The point is that pretty much no one else in my (honors) English class looked like they felt anything. Half of them were chatting under their breaths, and the other half just looked bored. Did they actually not feel for all the people who died there, exterminated, one more step towards the Nazis winning? Or could they not process it, was it too big for them to imagine? Or worse- did they just not care, was it just another boring English class?
Seeing them not caring really twisted me.
Not everyone expresses their reaction to something in the same way. And I doubt you burst out crying and ran out of the room.
Still, the Holocaust is horrifying, yet people don’t care?!
They don’t necessarily not care. They just don’t express it in the same way.
If they don’t express it in a concerned way, people think they don’t care, which may turn out bad.
ie, “Pay attention or detention!”
So they should put on a false mask? Lie to appease someone else?
Didn’t we have a discussion about this a couple months ago?
If you guys did, I wasn’t there; joined yesterday…
Yes, we did.
Interesting, I am somewhat glad you brought it up again, I can say I am a participant.
Not lie, but if they are paying attention they should try to look it.
I mean, if you are happy, and you look sad, won’t someone ask what is wrong and things?
Excuse my bad use there.
Won’t someone misinterpret that you are sad?
HAPPY.
Misinterpret your happiness.
This is what a 2.5hr baseball game in freezing weather, with a 2nd basketball party, and then blogging at bedtime, does to me.
No worries.
Piggy, I would love to hear more points of your side, so you have something else?
The way I see it is: people don’t have a certain emotion because they choose to. Emotions occur organically and are mostly beyond conscious control. After an event, you don’t think to yourself, “Hm, what emotion should I have in response to this?” and then choose something. It just happens. Thus, I don’t think that it’s possible to have an “incorrect” emotional response to something. This idea is always thrown around in regards to the grieving process–everyone responds to an event in their own, valid way. An event that’s horribly sad for one person may not be as severe for another–they have different experiences, different upbringings, different memories, different values. Logically, they’ll have different responses. Is one response more “correct” or “valid” or “desirable” than another? No, because the factors towards the response are different.
So should a person fake a response to try to avoid insulting or offending someone? I don’t think so. I think they should be polite, by all means, but they don’t have to become an emotional chameleon. Their emotions are just as valid as anyone else’s.
Very, very true.
I respect what you said, but still, even if it is automatic, what if your real emotion is masked for no reason?
Please excuse me if that didn’t make sense, I am SUPER tired.
Night…
It’s how they feel that matters. If they don’t feel like changing their expression in a way that isn’t natural to them is worth it, they have every right not to do that.
I hate looking at people in the eye. It’s really uncomfortable to me. It just feels really wrong. Therefore, some people, usually teachers, have assumed that I’m not listening to them as they talk, even though I always am. It bothers me, but I really don’t feel comfortable looking at them when they’re talking just so that they’ll believe be when I tell them I’m listening. Does it really matter so much, as long as I am? I don’t think so, really, and anyway, it’s not as if they hold grudges against me, so it’s not a big deal.
I suppose that if showing a particular emotion that you ordinarily won’t doesn’t bother you, it’s a good idea. Still, they may not even think of it. I wouldn’t have realized that other people look each other in the eyes while talking if I hadn’t been told. Does it really matter, though? If someone looks sad when they’re happy, and someone asks what’s wrong, the person will explain that they are happy and everything will probably end up fine. Overall, I think the person with an emotion has a right to express it however they want, whether or not that’s the conventional way.
Yes, they have the right.
But what if it is conceived wrong? You’d have to alter what you do, maybe repeating what they say…
I understand the looking in the eye part. That is hard, especially at school.
I didn’t burst out crying, but could feel myself nearly tearing up.
Re: The fact that there isn’t a “proper” emotion to feel.
Yes, there is no “proper” emotion for someone to feel when learning about the holocaust. But that doesn’t mean that it is okay for you to just ignore it.
They might not be paying attention if they are thinking about it, but if theyvlook bored, maybe they don’t understand.
They should pay attention.
As a Jew, the Holocaust and other discussions of anti-Semitism really hit home in a very personal, gut-twisting way. It’s a pretty horrible feeling, and I don’t like it, so I tend to try to think about it as little as possible, and I turn myself off during discussions of the Holocaust and try not to listen. I know that these things happened, I know it was horrible; listening to it being rehashed again and again just causes me pain, and so I zone out. I think about puppies and kittens or what I had for breakfast or what I’m going to have for dinner. It probably comes across as a bit callous, but it’s a coping mechanism for when it’s presented in a setting such as a classroom in which I don’t feel comfortable being emotional. I can’t allow myself to care.
When I was in the Czech republic this summer, I did visit the memorial in the Jewish quarter in Prague. It was extremely powerful and gut-wrenching: room after room of walls covered in names and dates. So many people died, and with them basically / almost died an entire way of life, a language, a culture.
I am so sorry this topic hurts you.
We should change now.
Possibly on Libya?
Calm, grasshopper. We can’t change topics so often. We’ve barely begun several discussions.
Yes, sensei.
*bows*
With me, the Holocaust is the only topic on which I get really, truly irrational. I am incapable of fuctioning like a sane, thinking, sentient being when the atrocities are brought up. On a surface level I can talk about it, especially about non-Jewish Germany, but when people talk about what was happening inside the death camps I can’t even think. I just have blind responses, which have included screaming at people like a child, crying quietly for an hour, and running to my room and hitting my mattress as hard as I can.
Which is odd, because I don’t have a single relative who was in the Holocaust. But once, when asked why I was being so irrational, I said that I cared because it was personal. It’s not, in any measurable sense. I don’t feel that it’s personal because I’m Jewish. It still feels personal, though. Maybe it’s a human thing.
There is one very annoying boy in my History class, who, every time the Holocaust is brought up, raises his hand and gives us a long, long lecture on why we’re all horrible, horrible people for not caring about the Armenian genocide and focusing exclusively on the Holocaust instead. It’s not that the Armenian genocide wasn’t horrible, because it was horrible and wrong and unjust. We just wish he would let us talk about the Holocaust for a bit, is all.
I understand your hardships just hearing about it. The holocaust was HORRIBLE.
And, genocide is disgusting no matter what, so maybe next time you would focus on the Armenian side?
We did cover the Armenian genocide already, for two days. He spent all that time telling us what horrible, horrible people we were for not continually petitioning the Turkish government to acknowledge it. It’s not that he’s wrong about any of this, per se. It’s just that he isn’t being very accommodating or diplomatic in saying it. I mean, to inform us that the Armenian genocide was horrible is not annoying at all. To continually compare it with the Holocaust is grating. There’s no need to get in a contest about whose atrocity was worse.
Oh, okay.
Definitely no need to compare.
There’s a guy like that at my school, too!
Common?
We’ve done a lot of stuff about the holocaust at school.
It makes me want to cry.
When I hear about genocides in other countries or read about the holocaust at home I will show how upset I am because I’m in private.
At school most people are generally unwilling to show emotion.
When we did the holocaust stuff at school I didn’t cry. I just stared at the stuff with a blank expression, but I had a million thoughts going on.
Just because I didn’t show how upset I was doesn’t mean I didn’t care.
This kind of reminds me of a White Stripes line:
“…then I guess not feeling is the same as not crying to you”
(not directed at anyone specifically, it’s just a line that reminds me of this, and that hiding emotion doesn’t mean the emotion isn’t there)
They didn’t even look like they were hiding something, and I have to say that I’m pretty good at hiding emotions, so I know what it looks like. Nobody looked like that there.
I mean, they were chatting with their friends. And one guy (who was with me in my French class) essentially later said that the only thing he really payed attention to in the presentation was how one person in one picture looked like he was smiling. He didn’t even think about the sufferign it caused so many people.
He didn’t?!
As far as I could tell.
This same guy has made a comment to the effect of “I’d like to shoot anyone who thinks that violent videogames make you violent.” And he said it seriously.
Win.
That made me laugh.
Except he meant it and didn’t realize the irony.
Wow…
And today he was one of the people who was like “Yeah, yeah I get the holocaust was a terrible thing, can we do something interesting now?”
GAH
What a kid.
That’s just charming…
They were probably trying to act unfazed, even though I’m 99% sure they were about as horrified as you were. Showing deep emotions–like horror and grief–are kind of a taboo, seeing as they make you seem vulnerable. And Piggy’s right, not everyone reacts to terrible things the same way.
Still though, not even (at least seeming) to pay attention? They could at least pay attention and look at the screen.
Yes, but in different cases, different things happen.
If they are to disgusted to pay attention anymore, I don’t blame them.
I completely agree. I think I’m either way more emotional than the rest of my class, or they just don’t really think about what was happening. We’re in the middle of that book, by the way. I actually started crying in the fifth grade when we read Milkweed, because the character is so, so innocent.
What gets me really mad is when people, like my classmates, say, “Why do we have to keep telling these depressing stories?” Why? To honor the people who died in pain for nothing, to remember their stories to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.
Classics always have sadness…
Thank you.
You have reassured me that yes, there is someone else who cares about the people who died in pain for nothing.
*hug*
Enc- I think that the people in your class probably were either not paying attention or simply trying to look tough and calloused for the people around them. So much of what some people do is centered around how it will make others think of them, and probably they though that if they expressed negative emotion it would probably make other people think that they were “not cool”. If everyone else was sad about it, I bet they would have been too.
That’s no excuse though, in my opinion.
Yeah, who cares what other people think, if being yourself helps you in everything?
They weren’t really trying to look tough, and many don’t care about looking “cool”. I mean, it’s an Honors English class.
Then, why would they act like that?
Because, I think, they didn’t really care about what happened. That’s the impression that I got from talking to the rest of my class in later classes.
They didn’t care that someone got killed?
Nice class…
Not just someone. Millions. (Or is it thousands? I’m not sure of exact numbers.)
Oh, yeah.. Whoops.
Six million plus, I believe. I’m also pretty sure that that’s only in the camps, not in the fighting.
Enc–I really hope they care but just don’t understand on an emotional level what 6 million slaughtered innocent people actually means.
That is a ton.
Sad…
Over six million Jews alone. That’s not even counting all the people who were killed for other reasons.
HORRIBLE.
Eleven million people in total were killed by the Nazis…
11 million too many.
One person dying is a tragedy, a million is a statistic, I guess?
Cat’s Eye:
That’s what Robert says at the bottom of the page.
:]
Enc– I definitely sympathize with you, but I also see Piggy’s point. For my part I’m always annoyed when classmates say something like “why do we have to read this book, it’s so depressing” and things like that. But there are people who just don’t want to invest themselves in things, and then there are example such as what Lizzie said where it’s not something they want to think about for other reasons.
I also think a lot of people have a pretty big emotional disconnect from things because they convince themselves it’s not relevant to their lives and so they don’t have to worry about it. While this is not a good thing…it’s hard to criticize people for turning away from pain.
Re: Holocaust- My great grandfather was trained in Hitler’s Youth. He was brainwashed and trained to hate Jews. World War Two ended just before he joined the air force, and he was captured by Russian soldiers and took years to realize what had happened to him. He told me that there was one Jewish boy at his school (this was before the Nuremburg Laws). My great-grandfather and the other boys teased and abused this boy so much that he killed himself. The boy was eight years old.
Right before he died, my great-grandfather told me that these stories have to keep on being told.
Which is why it angers me so much when people ask why they have to hear about the Holocaust again.
33- That is sad, but I am glad your grandfather tried to change his ways.
But before, urgh…
Before we started Beloved, we had a discussion about this in English class, about people’s tendency to keep disturbing things at a distance. The fact is, when something happens further from you–in space, relations, or history–it’s so much easier to feel disconnected from it. Cognitively you may know it was sad, but it takes a lot to overcome the walls that we build to protect ourselves from these things. We can’t go around crying about everything, so we build up a protection within ourselves. We have to be careful what we let through. We still feel bad when the boy we’ve never met is hit by a car, but when the girl in our French class dies of a heart attack during surgery, that’s when we cry. Or maybe someone else’s wall is more sturdily constructed, and it’s only when it happens to a friend that it truly, deeply hurts them. We always know something is sad and upsetting and usually feel sadness to a degree, but we can’t let it all through or we’d fall down and never get up. So when we hear about something as monumentally and staggeringly horrifying as the Holocaust, it can take a lot for us to let ourselves react. For some it’s the pictures, for some a survivor’s tale, or some it’s a movie or a book. Or maybe it’s all of them. But it takes something that shocks us to bring down those protective walls we’ve built.
I’m Jewish, and some of my relatives did die in Holocaust. The rest escaped. In fact, Hitler is the reason I exist, as uncomfortable as that is to say. I think I found out about the Holocaust when I was… Seven, maybe? The first time I remember crying about it was reading The Devil’s Arithmetic when I was ten. I’ve cried over it many times since then, but not reading Night. Reading The Book Thief. Watching The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Writing a spoken word poem about my family’s experience and my own as a descendant. But not every tale of the Holocaust gets to me. We can’t let everything in, or we’d have nothing left.
Very true, it all depends on how you think about it, or how you just are.
“we can’t let everything in, or we’d have nothing left”
That was a beautiful line. Just saying.
I read Night last year, as part of a unit about “Holocaust literature”(?). We were doing an independent reading session, which I was extremely grateful for, as we were just getting to the part that I knew I was going to cry at. And, I did, but not around everyone else, because I do get the impression that they’re bored with it sometimes.
Oh.
Have you read, The Book Theif ?
Indeed I have. I cried then too.
It was kind of sad..
I read “The Book Thief” at school, then we watched “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” Some boys in my class were being like the ones, we’ve been discussing. Laughing at the deaths and the camps. Although I just cannot believe that they really understood what happened and felt it. That just makes me think for a moment about how kids in America don’t always get how the world was and is.
I feel that, especially with books being read for school, people often distance themselves from the book, from the horror, and purposely insure that they don’t become too emotionally invested in it, because that would make them “uncool” by their estimation. They don’t pay attention, they belittle it, ignore it, become bored with it in order to prevent themselves from feeling anything they aren’t comfortable feeling. Yeah, the unfortunate truth is that caring somehow became uncool.
I often become quite emotional over books and over books from school. When I’m at school though, I attempt to translate that emotion into passion about my opinions and analysis of the book. I can’t make everyone else see what they’re missing emotionally by distancing themselves, I wouldn’t be able to handle expressing it, but sometimes I can make them see what they’re missing academically by distancing.
If they just didn’t care what others think, they would be more engaged in school.
A beautiful paraphrasing of my point.
Yep,
Re: Holocaust: When we covered it in school, it was all I could do to stop myself from crying. It’s horrible what they did to people. My classmates took it better than me, but still, no one can see or hear things like that and not be affected. Just because they didn’t show it doesn’t mean they didn’t feel it.
Yes, true. But if they don’t show it, do people think they were affected?
I don’t really care if people think I am affected or not. If I am aware of my own emotions about something, it doesn’t matter whether I show them.
I do not have emotions in order to show them to people and appear sympathetic.
If I don’t show my emotions and people don’t think I am affected, they may approach me and ask about my reaction. When they ask, I will explain my emotions and that I simply did not show them immediately.
If someone is upset because I don’t look emotional, but en doesn’t ask me about it, then en’s opinion does not affect my life or the way in which I express my emotions.
Yeah, I guess…
Re Holocaust and emotional distancing: The horror and inhumanity of the Holocaust was staggering, and for a lot of people it might just be hard to absorb all of that and believe that one person would order the mass killings of people and that others would actually go along with his plan. People might act unaffected because they simply can’t grasp the magnitude of the Holocaust. They’re not being callous, they just can’t imagine it.
True.
Enc/everyone:
I suspect it’s largely a failure of imagination. (Here, by “imagination” I mean the ability to create mental pictures or other sensations of events that one has not personally experienced. It’s not the same thing as creativity.) Without that, historical events are just words or numbers on paper.
Numbers, particularly big ones, can have a paradoxical numbing effect. There’s a quotation attributed (probably incorrectly) to Stalin: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
Perhaps your classmates are also wary of allowing themselves to think or feel what they think the school authorities want them to think or feel. Indifference is one way to rebel when you feel you’re being manipulated.
The scale of the Holocaust is hard to grasp. When I went to Auschwitz, the most affecting parts of the museum there were the simplest and most concrete ones: piles of the victims’ personal property. A mountain of eyeglasses. A mountain of toothbrushes. Of false teeth. I’m pretty sure your classmates would have found it hard to ignore something like that.
Wow, that really concludes everything.
Nice one, Robert.
Mhm.
When all the Egypt stuff was happening I was aware of it, but it didn’t really strike me emotionally until I saw a video of protesters running down the street, and then the video focused on a man with a gun who was turning around and shouting at the people chasing/threatening the protesters. He just looked terrified and desperate and I started crying because it was so frightening.
I can’t really imagine a million people living in poverty. I can imagine the fear of a man being run down by a crowd. I can imagine the life of a young person crossing the border because she can’t do anything but beg at home.
That sounds horrible..
Completely off topic, but why does in the RC sidebar after imagination in your post it have &# 8221? Is that some HTML thing our what?
It’s HTML code for a quotation mark. I don’t know why it showed up there.
Not a secret anymore..
Health Education at my school:
Teacher: I want you to know that this is a completely open class. You can ask me anything without embarrassment, and I will answer all your questions simply and honestly.
Student: What is sex?
Teacher: I can’t tell you that.
Personally, I don’t think they’ve ever taught us anything we haven’t learned from TV.
Oh, wow.
I wish I could tell you about health education at my school, but that class gave me nervous breakdowns when they talked about stress and mental illness and things like that which affect me, and I got as close to dropping it as I could while still being able to graduate. (Health education is mandatory in New York.)
Pretty sure they told us what sex was, though. There was also apparently an STD slideshow, which I had the good fortune to miss in both eighth and twelfth grade. I did not miss them passing around fake genitalia with tumors that you were supposed to find by examination.
Oh, um..
Okay?
FAIL
When one of my (lesbian) friend’s Health class was discussing how not to get pregnant, her answer was “Be gay!”
And we never talk about any other type of sex.
Wow, yet that still works, right?
Yes, but the teacher was like “… We don’t cover that in school.”
Health at my school was a joke.
I sat in front of a fool who made comments under his breath about all the girls he supposedly hooked up with every time the teacher said something negative about sex.
We did a really short thing about non-straightness where we had to define different terms about sexual orientation. The fool mumbled something about how he would never “let my kids be gay”. (like he has a choice in that matter?)
Then a girl asked how people know they are gay. The teacher made a fair answer (maybe a cop-out) saying that since he isn’t gay and doesn’t have any good friends who are he can’t really speak for them. At this point I decided that most of the people in the room were open minded, so I raised my hand and said that I knew I liked girls because I got crushes on them just like on guys, and it was just like any straight girl who only gets crushes on guys, but with girls thrown in.
I was pretty nervous, so I wasn’t really looking at anyone except the girl who asked. She just nodded and seemed satisfied with the answer. Apparently the fool looked at me weird and the teacher almost fell out of his chair because I had the guts to basically come out of the closet to most of my class all at once. (only my friends in the class knew)
I guess the fool asked to have his seat moved, and the teacher said that he couldn’t because there was nothing distracting about anyone around him. A couple weeks later I got tired of listening to the fool mumble about his sex life and asked to have my seat moved.
The teacher told me about what the fool said and asked if I was sure, and I said yes because I was so distracted.
*clapclapclap*
WOW. That is incredibly brave.
Oh god. Health…
In middle school we technically did health for three years but we really only talked about sex in seventh grade, and then we only talked about straight sex and STD protection.
This drove me crazy.
One day, we were talking about “Why we won’t get pregnant before we finish school”, everyone had to give three personal reasons.
I was so damn sick of this class. When it came to be my turn, I said “I’m gay.”
Only two people in my class knew.
My parents didn’t know.
My teacher told my parents. It was unpleasant and high on my list of “If i could redo this I would.” I’m not sorry for coming out to my class (which actually means my grade, given the gossip channels, and really most of the school) but I’m sorry I didn’t tell my parents myself. Our communication skills are still messed up because of it.
Gah. Health. A complete waste of time. I just went to the planned parenthood website and looked up all information they had that’s actually relevant to me.
Your teacher told your parents?!
My. —-ing. God.
Don’t most health classes have a “whatever you say here stays here” policy? Anyway, that’s a betrayal of trust from that teacher, and it’s horrible. *glares at teacher although she knows that this was a [few] year[s] ago* .
Yup. (2 years ago, by the way,)
Planned Parenthood might get all their federal funding cut, which I think is an exceedingly bad idea.
An exceedingly bad idea indeed. I went to really liberal and generally good (academically) middle school, and my health class left my knowledge so full of holes, I can only imagine what some of the more conservative curriculums are missing.
A lot, is the short answer to that.
Definitely. A measure, I might add, which was proposed mainly by anti-abortion advocates. *terror for PP and NPR*
Okay. That just makes no sense . Planned Parenthood exists to make it so people don’t put themselves into a situation where they have to/want to have an abortion. *fumes quietly*
…we have a fantastic Health class. we have open, honest discussions about drugs and sex, and the teacher treats us like thinking people with a right to know everything. everything said there stays there, and believe me, people have shared things that need to stay there. it’s my favorite class that I’ve ever been in, ever. just one of the places where I can be myself without worrying that that’s not okay.
*hides*
That’s awesome
Health at my school is hilarious. We only have it for half of the year, which is good because it’s a little boring, despite the amusing benefits. Our teacher is slighty insane. The first day day she had us all wash our hands “The [her last name] Way”! She also handed out toothbrushes and said that we could come into her room anytime and brush our teeth, if we wanted. (She had toothpaste, too.)
…Then she had us sing “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” to musical accompaniment. Siiiiiigh.
She’s actually very nice, however, and lets us talk/argue for most of the class as long as we’re getting work done, and doesn’t interupt us. She also has a very strict “whatever we say here stays here” policy, which is followed…mostly.
Anyway. The health curriculum at my school kind of sucks; so far, we’ve studied how not to get sick, immune systems, etc, and nutrition. Pretty much the same the year before that, too, and the year before that, although admittedly we did have 1st level puberty added onto it then. But they don’t exactly educate us on a lot of stuff.
Health class isn’t very helpful at my school, but it’s for less than a week each year. Last year was hilarious because we each got a test tube with a clear chemical in it and went around taking eyedroppers of our solution and mixing it with other peoples’ by “having sex”. Of course, the twist was that a few people had slightly different chemicals in theirs that turned red when something else was added, so by the end nearly everybody had “STDs” that had been passed onto them.
Anyways, this year I’m a little apprehensive because I’ll be taking it with my AP Euro class and the boys are insane. My teacher won’t let the school teach it to us until after the AP test, which is good, but the boys have such immature, inappropriate jokes that each ~normal~ class involves at least a couple of awkward moments. Health class will be a whole other beast.
Dude, we did that too! It didn’t really work though, since almost everyone already knew what was going to happen.
Well, yeah, so did we, but we were required to exchange fluids with at least 3 others, so we still saw the effect.. Funnily enough, one girl had “sex” with 6 or 7 people and emerged unmarked. I guess she was lucky.
(A distant part of my memory is telling me that you live in Washington? If so, maybe that exercise is a standard or common part of our state’s Health curriculum?)
Yes, I do. Perhaps it is, I don’t know.
No one took that class seriously. I mean, it’s a hard class to take seriously if you’re a bunch of seventh graders, but really.
And after sex-ed we watched Supersize Me and had difficulty eating for a few weeks.
No kidding.
I watched that movie a few years ago. It’s disgusting, but I guess that’s the point.
It’s not. I’ve taken five years of washington state sex ed, four of those received credit from the state, and we’ve never done that.
Health at my school is a joke as well, we get these handouts that are geared towards eight year-olds (Which we are not,) and watch movies from 1980 era.
You guys are complaining? At least you actually had Health class.
I am dreading Health; it sounds SO boring. I think we need to focus on nutrition and how to eat a healthy diet. That would be relevant to me.
In my health class we had a unit on goals and planning, and we had to set a health-related goal and accomplish it in ten weeks. One of the suggested goals was “lose weight.”
Another unit was on nutrition, when we had to track literally everything we ate for three days and write a report on it.
I felt that both these units were huge invasions of privacy and should absolutely not have been taught in that manner. But on the other hand, they actually tried to do something. Would you be in favor of or against projects like that?
I think that there should be nutrition education, but requiring students to turn in records of what they eat and telling them to lose weight is the wrong way to go about it.
This could really knock someone’s self-esteem, especially if they struggle with eating disorders or body image issues.
I would be in favor of it if the goal was “eat healthy” or even better: “replace soft drinks with milk or water”.
The idea that losing weight is inherently healthy should absolutely NOT be taught or even suggested. It is more important to exercise and eat healthy. A natural healthy weight will automatically follow from healthy habits.
I agree with you on the invasion of privacy, and besides, a lot of kids would probably fake most of what they wrote on the reports. That aside, good nutrition really needs to be taught in all American schools. (And not that Atkins cake about carbs being bad and limiting calories.) Most of the health information people get is from advertising, for heaven’s sake. That’s not healthy.
They did that in my school, too, only it was in math class, not health (My math teacher seems to believe that since we multiplied, it’s math…never mind the fact that we’ve all been multiplying for, um, four years? At least. Isn’t that kind of what health class is for…), and I really felt like it was an invasion of privacy. I don’t eat a ton, but I eat until I’m full; however, my math teach told me, “I think you need to rethink being a vegetarian, Mika. You obviously aren’t eating right,” which made me feel very uncomfortable. She also suggested that, for the goal we had to make, I should eat more. (I glared at her and made my goal to drink more water.) Also, there were some overweight kids in my class, and I could tell that she was making them uncomfortable too. I think they should certainly teach the units about nutrition and exercise–but, a) In health class, b) not making the kids have goals, and c) not making them tell what they eat. The school has no control/shouldn’t have any control over what you do off school property, as long as it doesn’t interfere with school. Telling kids that they have to exercise more/eat better/be healthier and having them bring in what they ate is none of their business and doesn’t affect them in any way. The school can and should, of course, make efforts to prevent bad things happening off of school grounds, but I don’t think they should be allowed to tell you, “You need to [insert healthy goal].”
What I hate is when people, especially health teachers feel the need to come up with stupid terms so that the “Little kids” can understand them, and then act like these terms are very clever. It’s almost as bad as “guesstimate” (Ugh! My computer is actually recognizing that as a word, which tells you something…). My health class was pretty boring, because they were supposed to be teaching us about a balanced diet, but all that they ever got to were the food groups, since we only had health for five days, and we would do the same stuff over every year.
I’m with you regarding “guesstimate” — which, come to think of it, I first heard from a teacher, too.
I’m with you. For instance, there’s range of hills in northern Austria called “Böhmische Masse”. Of course, our teacher has decided that we should all call it “Granite and Gneiss Highlands” instead, because that way you don’t have to memorize what types of stone it consists of. And of course, there are obviously no other mountains consisting of Granite and Gneiss in Austria. Nope. I mean, who’s ever heard of the central Alps?
It really gets on my nerves when people create ridiculous words for something like “guesstimate”, when a perfectly good term exists. Why can’t people just be happy with the existing term, and why do people think that kids deserve these hideous constructs?
Or, say, “ironical”. And “inflammable”. Grar.
And then there’s “refudiate”, but that’s a bit different.
Refudiate ♥
“Inflammable” is a legitimate word. In fact, it’s older than “flammable” (and means the same thing, not the opposite). It was dropped from warning signs because it confused people.
Makes sense if one thinks of “inflame” — or its relatives “inflammation” or “inflammatory.” We don’t say “flammation.” (Not yet, anyway. But English does have a habit of lopping off unstressed syllables.)
Hmm…”inflammablamablous”?
I know. It just seems a bit odd that we have two almost-but-not-wuite-identical words that mean the same thing.
“inflammablamablous”.
Overexaggerate… Gahh! Why not just say exaggerate?
Because just saying “exaggerate” wouldn’t get the point across as well. If you are just regular exaggerating, that’s not very impressive. Saying “overexaggerate” really shows how much you are exaggerating!!!!
A lot!!!
(sarcasm)
Too legit. Too legit to quit.
(I’ve recently become addicted to “legit”. I thought I’d never see the day)
or over exaggerate. Works as two words…it’s a perfectly legitimate phrase, but one word? Honestly? Do we just not breathe or something these days?
I guess i don’t really have a problem with words like that. How else would language evolve?
Although i make words up all the time.
In my opinion theres a difference between inventing cool words, and maiming current words.
I just noticed that this thread beat out R&R for “Most Popular.”
RRRGH. Justin Bieber. “Everything happens for a reason.”
Again. RRRGH.
If you listen to Justin Bieber music backwards, you hear messages from Satan. Even worse, if you listen to it forwards, you hear Justin Bieber.
dumbledore died? that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason.
I’M LOLIN
except not really because victim blaming is the worst
Hmmm…
I was wondering today about the reason so many teens are stressed out. Is it because society expects too much of them (sports, school, work, social life…)? Or is it because they have not been taught good coping skills and organization? Or a combination?
Personally, I think that if I had learned to handle stress and do work in a timely manner (i.e. not procrastinate) I would have had a much less stressful high school career. Up until about this time last year I didn’t know how to handle all of my activities. I kind of just realized it on my own, but I think that de-stressing is a skill that can be taught.
We recently had a thread about this.
I was just listening to an Intelligence Squared in which someone was asking if it’s only teens nowadays that are stressed. Are we any more stressed than we would have been fifty years ago? Okay, fifty years ago was the Cuban Missile Clustercake (thanks, Piggy). How about a hundred years ago?
The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t quite 50 years ago (October 1962), and it lasted just two weeks. I don’t think it blighted a whole generation of teens. Most of them probably had other things on their minds.
All those duck-and-cover drills took their toll on some younger kids though. One of my college roommates told me she had been absolutely terrified that we were going to be attacked. That seemed so odd to me because I don’t remember anything about the crisis.
In California we had to do duck-and-cover drills anyway for earthquakes, so I probably didn’t notice. I’m pretty sure our next-door neighbor had a fallout shelter, but to us kids things like that would have been part of the landscape, like barbecue pits.
CO’s broader question about stress is interesting, though. I can’t help thinking that with fewer choices, more-modest ambitions, and more unstructured free time, teens of 1961 or 1911 must have had an easier time in many ways. I wonder how homework loads (for example) have varied over the decades.
Someone must have studied this. Maybe I can find an expert and coax en onto the blog. Meanwhile, we can compare anecdotal evidence and speculate.
I think if you go back to the time when our society was still mostly subsistence / farming, teens today would have an easier time: we’re not expected to be adults, and our lives don’t depend on our work. I think, though, that teens today (at least in the US) are growing up with a fair amount of fear: we’ve been taught not to hitchhike, to be wary of strangers, to carefully control who we are and where we are and to always have a backup plan. And I feel like that’s changed in the past fifty years. For example, my aunt ran away and followed the Grateful Dead around when she was 16 and a friend’s dad hopped trains and traveled all over the country when he was young, but nowadays I don’t know if any of that would be possible.
I’d say my parents did their best to instill major amounts of fear regarding the items you mention. Whether that was the norm for my age cohort, I can’t say for sure, but I always had the impression that we were a somewhat timid bunch taken as a whole. I had this theory that it stemmed in part from the string of high-profile assassinations that punctuated the national news in our early years (“here’s what happens to people who stick their necks out”). From what I’ve read, the 50s was another safety-obsessed decade.
But for me, anyway, the external fears were less of a problem than the internal pressures. My major stressors involved the (perceived) need to be perfect, to live up to high standards that I didn’t realize at the time were actually impossible. I get the feeling that many MuseBloggers have similar feelings. In that department your generation may experience more stress simply because the day-to-day world keeps getting more complicated, more demanding, with ever more distractions, meaning there are many more opportunities to fail at being perfect.
Piggy, I saw that thread! I think that here I have tried to start a discussion about the difference in different eras rather than just a general discussion of daily stress.
Rebecca, I agree with this. I definitely feel like there are too many categories in which I can fail.
I have to keep my grades up, which is hard enough. Unfortunately, I have to be afraid of being rejected from college even with good grades, so I must have extracurriculars.
I have a job.
I have to keep up with the news because if I miss more than a few days of current events I can be relegated to “selfish American teen” status.
About 2 or 3 years ago I was thinking about how weird it was that my parents grew up being ready for war all the time. It seemed like something weird. Now with all the Korea stuff and the threats of terrorism, I realize that fear of war is not a generation gap. The only thing that’s changed is the “enemy”.
I think that technology has made teens a lot more stressed. I am expected to be reachable 24/7 through my cell phone. When I had a facebook I was expected to be aware of all social events through it. (even without one people forget and expect me to know, and I have to remind them that I now require contact to know about events).
Before cell phones and the internet it was easier to be alone. You could just not answer the phone and tell people you weren’t home if they asked. With cell phones you can say it was off or you didn’t have it with you, but then people will wonder why you didn’t just charge your phone or take it with you.
If you didn’t know your friend’s dog died it was acceptable to say that nobody told you. Nobody would get upset that you didn’t know about something before you were told in person.
Before cell phones you could go on a walk and nobody could bother you unless they actually came out and found you or you decided to go home.
We had earthquake drills in California. For most of the elementary school they were just fun, and a good way to miss math class. Then there was actually a big-ish earthquake- 5.8- and suddenly everyone was terrified when the drill alarms went off.
Apparently there were aftershocks from the Japan earthquake in Java, which we felt here, and now the school has to do earthquake drills. It’s rather like distributing gas masks to Hawaiian residents after Pearl Harbor.
Duck and cover drills just seem like they stress people out more than they’re useful. And why did you do them during the Cuban Missile Crisis? This is something that i never understand. If your internal organs are getting fried by radiation, why would ducking under your desk help?
That comment did not go where I wanted it to.
I also think that part of the stress issue is the way that we think about grades, and what we consider failing, as opposed to how we used to. It used to be that you only got A+ if you were good enough that your teachers thought you were wasting time in a class, since you already knew everything, and you could get into a good college even if you got B,s, but we all know how it is now… I think that people were less horrible to their children about all the grades stuff.
So in the news I was watching the other day it was mentioned that Congress has called a committee to address the issue of home-grown Islamic terrorism and it’s become pretty controversial as to the committee’s existence in the first place, which some say is necessary, some say is fear-mongering, and some say bring up good questions but not the resources to answer those questions, thus becoming fear-mongering. Ideas?
I think that the whole “islamic terrorists” thing is getting way out of control. A board on home-grown terrorism in general would much more address needed issues without restricting them to only Islam. Muslims aren’t the only people that can be terrorists, and it is such a minority of them that it would be much better to have a general home-grown terrorism group.
It is out of control. I had a dream last night in which I was from the middle east and was oppressed at my own school. People simply that region along with Russia as being overall malevolent. It is pointless to say that the only people who cause fear are Islamic, because that rules out the majority that is spread throughout the world.
Terrorists are found worldwide. We just have a bizarre focus on the Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists for some reason. It’s ignorance, that’s all.
Well, we probably focus on the Middle Eastern terrorists because they were the ones who did 9/11.
Not that that’s an excuse for the way we treat Middle Easterners/Muslims. But it’s most likely the basis of that attitude.
Yeah, but if Al Qaeda hadn’t done it a similar act of terrorism would likely have happened anyway.
I’m just deeply concerned that McCarthyism is making a comeback…
That’s actually what I was thinking about as I saw the report–how similar it all seemed to McCarthyism.
Extremist Islamic terrorists have most of our attention because nowadays they do make up for most of the terrorism in the world, and they have the most impact on the United States.
I think it’s bringing up good questions, as you said- most terrorist attacks that we hear about seem to be perpetrated by “fundamentalist” Muslims- but it’s unlikely that this committee is going to bring forth any useful solutions, and will still generate the horrible stereotypes, prompting anger at America’s government, prompting more terrorist attacks.
I object to the term “fundamentalist.” I’ve read the Koran, and it’s no more violent and hateful than the Bible (which, you must admit, has some pretty gruesome stuff in it). It’s people who take a peaceful religion and distort it so that they can indoctrinate others into a cycle of violence who are the problem.
As for the “home-grown” part- I’ve heard of Prislam, where resentful criminals are convinced that a violent form of Islam is the solution to their anger at the judicial system and, when released, promptly go commit terrible acts of murder. But to me, that doesn’t seem so much a problem with Islam as with the US government.
1st off, remember that, especially in recent years, there have been multiple acts of terror committed or attempted in the United States by US citizens (which is the “homegrown” being discussed) both in the name of the Bible and the name of the Koran. (I completely agree with you, by the way, but the wording of your point made it sound like the bible isn’t currently being used to justify terror. It is.)
Of these, I cannot recall any where the suspect had any prior offense, much less jail time, on record. The general demographic seems to be young men (20’s to mid 30’s) either from a highly religious background or who had recently established radical religious views. Radical because no religion to my knowledge ever suggests that it is righteous to kill innocent people, as is being attempted or carried out. Some of these men established these views through institutions located in America and then traveled elsewhere, further establishing them, some never left the US at all.
Personally, I do not deny that homegrown terrorism is an issue. I do not deny that worldwide we hear a lot more about acts of terror committed in the name of Islam (sidenote: this may be a reporting bias in that all over the world atrocities are being committed that we do not hear about at all (and in fact that no one does until much later), or a bias in that our news organizations pay more attention to Islamic terrorism) However, I do not believe that there is a significant enough increase in the amount of homegrown terrorists that justify their actions using Islam than any other religion or cause to warrant a committee focused solely on Islamic-justified terror
I know. That was what I meant- that the committee is directed only at Islamic terrorism when there are other belief systems that cause it too. I should have phrased it better, sorry.
This might seem to set the stage for religious and racial profiling, though. I’ve listened to the arguments supporting profiling, and while they are often good ones, I can’t bring myself to approve of it.
I just have to say it makes me VERY angry that the bill in Wisconsin was signed into law. All those union activists – Frances Perkins – lobbying for years to get union rights, and a person can just sign that all the way. That is not what this country is for.
I just read in a time article that 51% of Republicans believe that Obama is not a U.S. citizen.
Goodbye, faith in humanity.
ah, conspiracy theorists. A poll taken a while ago says that more than 1 in 20 people believe we did not land on the moon. They make me laugh.
What will they say next, something crazy like colored bunnies will take over the world?
51% of republicans also believe that anyone who doesn’t look like them isn’t a us citizen, so I’m not surprised. Conspiracy theories are sometimes funny, but they really get on my nerves, as does the phrase sheeple, when there is absolutely no reason to believe that there was any conspiracy, and no good reason that anyone would want to make a conspiracy. Why would anyone want to fake landing on the moon? And how come everyone challenges the original moon landing, but no one disbelieves the international space station?
Please take back that snide little jab at Republicans. It’s just as closeminded and prejudiced as you perceive them to be.
I believe en is jabbing conspiracy theorists, not Republicans.
Choklit orange is correct. My intended point was at conspiracy theorists, and I should have made that clearer, although that doesn’t change the fact that it was pretty cakey and hypocritical of me. Would it amend the comment if I were to explain that the only reason that I said republicans was for my comment to match up with Radiant_Darkness’s comment, and made it clear that I am just as fed up with conspiracy theories that I have heard from democrats, as ones that i have heard from republicans. I’m very sorry if that ended up sounding the wrong way, and i probably should have considered that more. apologies!
Holy cake! (RD and oobatooba)
I didn’t think it was that high! Where did you find that out? I’d like to know if this is a reliable source.
Somehow I find it hard to believe that about 1 in 4 Americans think that their country would permit a President who doesn’t meet basic qualifications to take office. (if you allow an equal division of the population between republicans and democrats, then half of republicans is a fourth of the population)
If you asked the question that way, instead of asking people if they believe Obama is a citizen, there would probably be a much lower number of apparent conspiracy theorists.
I think that a lot of the people in those polls and people who say that Obama is not a citizen are just trying to agitate people and get a reaction. I find it hard to believe that so many people actually think Obama is not a citizen.
I read it in an article from TIME.
well, 1 in 4 Americans believe that their country is so stupid and gullible that they would believe all the stuff that “The government feeds them”, so thats probably why they’re all up in arms about it. I’m with you on the agitating people, or just trying to get attention, point, but that’s usually the point of conspiracy theories, isn’t it?
Actually, there are a lot of perfectly reasonable reasons people would have wanted to fake the moon landing, and reasons people believe they may have…
/leftover debatism
Which moon landing? Just Apollo 11’s, or all six of them? Or the entire Apollo program? Just curious about what debaters considerable reasonable nowadays.
Any time that NASA landed on the moon.
Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17, then.
How about Apollo 8, 9, 10, and 13, which orbited the moon but didn’t land?
I have no idea. I just debated it in science class; my resources were one sheet of paper my teacher gave me. It didn’t say. I was just pointing out that there are reasons behind the theory.
I see. Thanks!
It’s funny, I’m just glad it’s not higher.
Tragic.
Agreed with both. It isn’t Islam that’s the problem, it’s a minuscule group of people who take it as an excuse to do terrible things. Terrorism has nothing to do with the religion, and a small group of insane people in the millions of people who worship Islam worldwide is not an example of what everyone who believes the religion is like.
The bill in Wisconsin also makes me VERY angry. No one should be able to simply sign away someone’s rights without the person even getting a say.
Umkay. What’s this bill in Wisconsin? I think I missed it….
It basically took away the rights of unions. And so it couldn’t be passed, Wisconsin Democrats went into hiding, but apparently that didn’t work.
Exactly. These terrorists are to Islam as the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity. But you rarely hear people saying Christians are all like the WBC. Ah, double standards…
Really? I hear Christianity as a whole being portrayed in that way all the time. All Christians are fundamentalist, Creationist, close-minded, “Bible-thumping” fools, or so a lot of the popular media says.
Popular media may say that, but I don’t know any actual peopl who agree. I do know many, many people who are prejudiced against Islam.
Guess who doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the popular media?
I don’t know, I think it depends what you read/watch/listen to. Everyone gets stereotyped, but there’s not a Congressional committee being formed to analyze Christians as a threat to America.
I think every group of people, religious or otherwise, deserves the benefit of the doubt.
1st off– personally I don’t see a whole lot of that, though I am very aware it exists.
More importantly– there is an log-scale difference from being stereotyped as closed-minded or foolish and being stereotyped as someone out to deliberately kill and harm innocent american citizens.
I agree.
If you are feeling upset with a particular group of people, religious or otherwise, I would suggest that you google “30 worst atrocities of the 20th Century” and click the first link.
This is an informational page detailing the death tolls of the 30 events in modern history that caused the most deaths.
The page mentions that there are horrible events from all parts of the world, from many kinds of religious and non-religious groups. There is no group that is any better or worse than any other.
Everyone is capable of committing horrible acts against other people. It is statistically wrong to blame death or war on any particular group while trying to portray another group as innocent.
(the end of the writing on the main graph page explains this further)
I agree, and this is why I am not on the side of atheists, although i do disapprove of many of the religious based crimes that have happened. No religion is to blame, only a group of horrible people, who can, and have, belonged to any religion. We shouldn’t blame all the innocent people of an entire race or religion simply because someone once did something. Blaming all Islamic people for 9/11 is like blaming all Christians for the Holocaust.
assuming all atheists have the same point of view is just as bad as assuming all people of the same religion have the same point of view.
Furthermore I would not blame something like the Crusades on either Christianity or Islam but rather on so called followers of those religions who were weak enough to use their religion as an excuse. Everyone is free to do what they want, but not to use inherently peaceful religions as a REASON to do harm to others. And I would think anyone of any faith would think similarly. That’s why it’s ridiculous to assume that all Muslims think the same or all Christians are zealots. They aren’t. There are just individuals within their faith that choose to do cruel things and through that are obviously not true believers anyway.
I’m sorry to seem snippy but I dislike the constant negative portrayal of atheists.
My history teacher told us that during the Crusades, people were so faithful to God that they would go to fight for the Holy Land…but since they didn’t know the way, they assumed God would show them the way. So they started walking in a random direction. If they encountered a body of water…well, they drowned.
The irony there is that by the end of the crusades, the crusades were quite arguably much more a tool of the Kings and feudal lords who collaborated with the pope in beginning of the whole shebang as it was a tool of a) the papacy and b) a right of passage for the faithful.
Princess M.:
Did your teacher cite a source? I’ve heard similar stories about the Crusades, but they sound like legends to me. I’d be very surprised if this one turned out to be true.
As would I. People aren’t lemmings.
Even lemmings aren’t lemmings.
I knew someone would have to bring that up.
No it’s Ok. You don’t sound too snippy. I think that we’re on the same ground here with the blaming religions for crimes of individuals argument, and I was not trying to jab at atheists at all. I didn’t mean to accuse all atheists of anything, and I actually agree with atheists on many issues (atheists being atheists in general, not every individual atheist), but there are some atheists who I know (not all of them though) who believe that religion is to blame for these crimes. I respect atheism as much as I respect anyone else’s beliefs, and I didn’t mean to insult anyone.
I’m feeling really apologetic now, so maybe I should take some time off the hot topics thread, since i feel like I end up insulting someone every time I post…
There is no “side of atheists”, so it’s not possible to be on it.
“Yes, please, Mr. Butcher, I’d like three pork chops and a side of atheist.”
All joking aside, religion can serve as an easy justification for atrocities. Does the religion cause atrocities? Not usually. Does lack of religion cause atrocities? Also not usually. What annoys me are the religious folk who proclaim that no one can be moral or a good person without God. I don’t think I’d want to live in their world, if all that is stopping them from killing / raping / etc people is some sky-parent.
Although, sorry for the double post, but I just remembered a point I’d like to make:
I’m not sure some religions are inherently peaceful. I’m not sure whether you could call any point of view that promoted / promotes spreading it by force peaceful, whether religious or political, and I feel like some religions do have this position built into them. (i.e Matthew 10:34, all the various passages dealing with smiting the nonbeliever…)
So what guides morality, if not some supernatural force? Common agreement? Innate biology? Personal choice?
I’d say a lot of is empathy and respect for other beings.
So, emotions?
Technically, I suppose. The combination of social enculturation and some genetic hardwiring, if you want the most literal response.
So, in your mind, culture and a bit of instinct carries more weight than an omniscient god. Hm. I can’t say I personally agree with you, but quite a bit of the population does.
It all depends on whether an individual recognizes an omniscient god. I personally do not. I recognize an omnipresent god, but not omniscient.
If God is omnipresent, how can He not be omniscient?
Just because you know evverything that’s going on at the moment doesn’t mean that you necessarily remember everything that’s going to happen and know what will happen in the future.
Being omnipresent means being present throughout space and time.
Okay. This isn’t really relevant–it was put in as a tangent.
I believe that God is inherent in everything, because for me God is the order of the universe, the patterns, the rules…this is explained in more depth on the Manifestos thread.
Despite this omnipresence, I do not believe God is really sentient at all–which is complicated and a bit hard to grasp but then my definition of God isn’t exactly simple. For me, god does not think, god does not know or have any ability to do anything, but nonetheless god is present in all things by virtue of their existence. God is the soul of the universe, completely intangible and unreachable but still what makes the world the way it is. God is why DNA replicates as it does, for instance, why atoms form bonds and snail shells grow in fibonacci spirals.
52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.3: Yes, but if time is completely linear and the present is the only present whichever way you look at it–which I don’t believe, but it’s possible, so I’m speaking hypothetically–the past doesn’t exist anymore, so just because you were there doesn’t mean it still exists, and that’s not to mention the future, because if time is so linear, it doesn’t yet exist, so no-one can know it.
The past exists at a different point in time. Time is just another dimension, like the three spatial dimensions we’re familiar with. Your argument is like saying that anywhere other than where you are doesn’t exist. The past exists at a different location in the dimension of time; the future also exists in a different location in time.
If said omnipresent being created the universe, it’d likely be able to mathematically work out the formula for the future.
You’re forgetting free will.
ibcf:
Really? When I created MuseBlog, I didn’t have the faintest idea where it was going next. I still don’t.
52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.8- Perhaps, if you believe in something like souls. If people are nothing but quarks then our actions are mathematically determined.
Still, divine beings are pretty good at predicting our actions (“One of you will betray me”)…
52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.9- MuseBlog is part of this continuum?
Yes. Although since I’ve yet to be convinced of the existence of an omniscient god, pretty much anything with any empirical data carries more weight.
Good luck empiricizing emotions.
I don’t think one needs a god to have morals. It’s more of a personal decision.
How can belief in an omniscient god give you better morals than those without belief? That’s insulting a lot of people.
Why is it insulting, RD? If you think that somebody else knows all your thoughts and actions and is prepared to punish bad ones, aren’t you likely to behave differently from someone who doesn’t believe in that kind of monitoring and judgment?
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong; I’m saying it’s insulting every atheist, every agnostic, and every other person who doesn’t believe in a god.
Why? Suppose I were to say, “I believe that God created mathematics.” Would that belief, or my revealing it, be an insult to atheist mathematicians?
Ethics may be more personal than mathematics, but surely it’s possible to debate the origin of ethics without taking someone else’s opinion as a personal affront.
Now, if you were to say something like, “If all ethics have a religious origin, how does that explain all the kind, decent, law-abiding non-religious people out there?” — or, more simply, “Are you saying that atheists can’t be ethical people?” — that would be a different approach and would help keep the topic considerably less hot.
I’d say morality is a combination of personal choice and societal agreement/expectation. Originally, that societal agreement stemmed from Juedo-Christian teachings, (specifically the Ten Commandments) and while much of that remains as the core of our laws and societal opinions/pressure, a lot has also been added, taken away, and changed over time.
A lot of the Ten Commandments stemmed from the Code of Hammurabi, it seems like.
Hammurabi’s code had 282 commandments, so you’d expect a certain amount of overlap. I’ll bet nothing in it corresponds to the first three-tenths of the Decalogue, however.
Yeah, but according to the code of Hammurabi ) all sorts of things were ignored or okay that certainly aren’t okay per the Ten Commandments, such as adultery and what amounted to embezzlement.
Significantly, Hammurabi made no mention of monotheism or moral autonomy (widely considered one of the greater juedo-christian influences) or soverntity as a people outside of the ruler (no individual rights) and was less a code based on morality and more on what was convenient for Hammurabi.
The Romans weren’t Judeo-Christian, had morality, and much modern thought stems from them too.
As did the Greeks.
Yet the primary contribution of the Romans is often thought of (and taught as) the legal system. What was most (from a morality perspective) important form the Ten Commandments was probably the concept of Moral Autonomy (which I should have mentioned in my post-sorry)–basically that each individual can choose right from wrong–and the Romans never really solidified that, though their laws show they had some concept of it on some level.
*is a large fan of the alphabet*
Sorry. Just had to put in a word for we bibliomaniacs.
Us, not we. It’s the object of a preposition.
Yes, I too am a large fan of the alphabet. Forgot about that. Also, all this info. is coming from my Western Civilization class, and as it is a class that leads to classes about governments, legalities were prioritized.
I believe what guides morality is empathy. True compassion for others requires the imagination and fellow feeling to put yourself in their shoes so you can help them.
I’ve heard it said the true opposite of love and compassion isn’t hate, but indifference. To get as far away from compassion as possible, you have to say to yourself, “I don’t even care about this person enough to hate them.”
Personally, my atheism is a strong reason why I am more charitable, compassionate, and empathetic. When I was agnostic (a mix of belief in karma, an afterlife, and an underlying spiritual force that links all living things) I believed that there was some sort of underlying justice in the universe, that someone cared about everybody and would help the ones who deserved it.
I don’t believe in a self-correcting universe anymore, nor karma. I look up at the stars and I know that they don’t care whether the suffering live or die, and they won’t help.
But someone has to. So I will.
my personal opinion on religion is that everyone can do their own thing if it makes them happy, as long as they aren’t seriously impeding the happiness of others. who am i to say otherwise? in the eternal words of the fresh prince, mind ya business.
I notice we’re not stoning adulterers or killing our first-born children, so why on earth does anyone pay attention to the anti-homosexuality passages of the Bible?
Sorry, I just had to get that out.
Actually, adulterers or adulteresses probably are stoned in some countries. Additionally, it isn’t unheard of for parents in China to kill or otherwise bump off their first-born children if they aren’t boys or have some sort of defect.
You’re right, we don’t stone adulterers or use “eye for an eye” sorts of laws anymore. But we are still against adultery, theft, and injury.
Or systematically slaughtering lambs when we sin.
Actually, the reason for not doing that is explained quite clearly, so it isn’t actually completely relevant (not that I don’t agree)!
Oh, you mean I wasn’t supposed to have done that?… want some mutton?
Muslims sacrifice livestock as part of the ‘Eid al-Adha holiday, which falls about 70 days after the end of Ramadan — around November 6 or 7 this year.
Surprise! It’s illegal here! Well, not illegal, but ever year around Ramadan these government posters come up advising everyone to “go to your local butcher” or “try healthy meat substitutes.” Believe it or not, there is a Religious Food-Related Activities Danger Committee.
0.o What’s up with Singapore?
I’ve been wondering that for two and a half years. I think it’s sort of a disciplined depravity…
P_M That thing about the Crusaders just walking off and hoping to be guided to the battlefield amused me. :]
C_O People will often use religion to justify personal fears or desires. I am not saying that the Bible does not oppose homosexuality, it does, but that people often “pick and choose” what parts of their religion they deem relevant. To many people now, the anti-homosexuality part of the Bible is an important aspect of Christianity. If you look at different sects of a major religion it is easy to see that different people find different actions important. Pentecostals and Mormons usually think it is important to dress modestly. Catholics often believe that the church ritual is important to being a Christian.
I believe that religions rise out of natural human emotions such as empathy, vengefulness, hope, and fear (often fear of death/the unknown). I believe that religion is a method of organizing and instructing groups of people in order to promote action based on favorable emotions and to prevent action based on unsavory emotions. It is important to have some sort of societal temper to suppress some emotional reactions and to encourage others. This can be religion, education, family values, or other similar systems of interaction.
I’ve realized lately that oftentimes when I meet someone who is strongly opposed to atheism they attempt to discredit it by asking heated questions. For example, “You hate God?”, “You think the universe just popped up out of nothing?”.
This also happens to people of differing religion meeting on unhappy terms. Often the more confrontational person will attempt (possibly unknowingly) to cause the other person to get angry and be unable to answer coherently. When an undecorous response is made, the original questioner is able to discredit the person by saying that “en can’t even explain en’s beliefs, and en is just getting angry because en knows en is wrong and can’t admit it”. (I think this is a Socratic point)
Bibliophile 52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.2 – Good point.
Clare 52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.4 – Interesting, because for me biology class is a religious experience.
Lots of interesting ideas flying around here!
47.1.2- (shadowfire) “Terrorists are found worldwide. We just have a bizarre focus on the Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists for some reason. It’s ignorance, that’s all.”
Their threat has the broadest scope (“Great Satan, Middle Satan, Little Satan”) and they probably have the most funding (Iran). Plus there is the oil.
50.2.1.2 (shadowfire) “I think every group of people, religious or otherwise, deserves the benefit of the doubt.”
A committee to address the issue of home-grown Amish terrorism. Brilliant!
52.2 (axa) “Furthermore I would not blame something like the Crusades on either Christianity or Islam but rather on so called followers of those religions who were weak enough to use their religion as an excuse.”
The Crusades were actually the popes’ fault! Those darned conniving, evil, Roman popes!
52.3.1.1- (Lizzie) “I’m not sure some religions are inherently peaceful…”
By advocating a single viewpoint to follow, aren’t these religions encouraging homogeneity, a.k.a. peace?
“I’m not sure whether you could call any point of view that promoted / promotes spreading it by force peaceful, whether religious or political, and I feel like some religions do have this position built into them.”
What do you mean with “spreading it by force?” Does world peace require all belief to be subjective, since outside influence could “force” people to think a certain way? What is your take on preaching, pressing similar beliefs on your children, and etc?
52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.4.3 (Robert Coontz (Administrator)) “Now, if you were to say something like, “If all ethics have a religious origin, how does that explain all the kind, decent, law-abiding non-religious people out there?…â€
In many religions, humans are portrayed as being innately virtuous and moral, often the blessed centerpiece of their creator/creators, and being able to tell right from wrong (tree of knowledge, etc) without even knowing who their god/gods is/are.
52.3.1.2.2.2- (oxlin) “The Romans weren’t Judeo-Christian, had morality, and much modern thought stems from them too.”
Like crucifixion, totalitarianism, and imperialism?
52.3.1.2.3- (Cat’s Eye) “Personally, my atheism is a strong reason why I am more charitable, compassionate, and empathetic. When I was agnostic (a mix of belief in karma, an afterlife, and an underlying spiritual force that links all living things) I believed that there was some sort of underlying justice in the universe, that someone cared about everybody and would help the ones who deserved it.
I don’t believe in a self-correcting universe anymore, nor karma. I look up at the stars and I know that they don’t care whether the suffering live or die, and they won’t help.
But someone has to. So I will.”
But what’s the need? Compassion is just arrangements of sub-atomic particles.
53- (axa) “my personal opinion on religion is that everyone can do their own thing if it makes them happy, as long as they aren’t seriously impeding the happiness of others.”
Now there’s a sensible idea.
54.3- (Pseudonym) “Or systematically slaughtering lambs when we sin.”
People systematically slaughter animals for ridiculous reasons. Sin is one of the better excuses I’ve heard, actually.
55- (Unintended Pun) “That thing about the Crusaders just walking off and hoping to be guided to the battlefield amused me.”
Misguided people committing mass suicide is definitely hilarious!
“I believe that religions rise out of natural human emotions such as empathy, vengefulness, hope, and fear (often fear of death/the unknown)…”
Well of course they do. But we’re above that because we know better! X)
“I’ve realized lately that oftentimes when I meet someone who is strongly opposed to atheism they attempt to discredit it by asking heated questions…”
What does this lead us to conclude? Beliefs other than atheism merely stem from primal human emotions, so we must live in a godless universe? Egad.
What are your own thoughts, IBCF?
I agree withmost of what you said. There’s just one thing I want to answer, and one I object to.
“Compassion is just arrangements of sub-atomic particles?” Yes, but the beings that we feel compassion for are real. No matter what compassion is, it’s worth having. Of course, I think that because of the compassion, and if I didn’t have it, I’d probably disagree. Still, “What’s the need?” It’s preferable for as few beings as possible to be suffering, so it makes sense to try and prevent that suffering, doesn’t it?
And as for, ‘“I’ve realized lately that oftentimes when I meet someone who is strongly opposed to atheism they attempt to discredit it by asking heated questions…â€
What does this lead us to conclude? Beliefs other than atheism merely stem from primal human emotions, so we must live in a godless universe? Egad,’ I fail to see where your coming from. She wasn’t talking about religon; she was talking about opposition to atheism. Basically, it means that people against atheism are prejudiced, closedminded, and often not good at debating. It does not mean that there is no god.
I’d like to make a correction. I wasn’t saying that people who are against atheism are bad at debating or anything like that. I was just making an observation about the way that some people react to opinions they dislike. This could apply to almost anyone trying to fluster en’s opponent.
ibcf- I would like to make another correction. I do not think that killing or suicide is hilarious. Perhaps I should have said “intrigued” instead of “amused”. I didn’t mean to imply humor. I just think that it is very interesting that people placed so much trust in faith that they would risk their lives in unreasonable ways. I think that it is not rational to walk into the ocean and it is very interesting that some people believed it was justified, for any reason, not just religion.
I think that these people must have felt some sense that they were dying for their beliefs, which is admirable in some ways.
The Romans were responsible for many atrocities, but they were also responsible for great art, literature, and advancements in the organization of society. The same can be said for most religions and cultures.
57.1- I have a sort of pragmatic Christian faith. Agnosticism is good and all, but what if there is a God and I’m screwed? Religion also helps me deal with mental and emotional stresses. Christianity is the most convenient, as my family is Christian, Bibles are plentiful and I agree with most of the doctrine. I’m no fan of anything that exploits people’s faiths for monetary gain, so I’m not in a church.
A bit of trivia: the Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental aid organization in the world.
You broke the nesting limit again, Robert.
That always happens when I moderate on my cellphone. I’ve fixed it.
Let’s get out of the nesties.
IBCF (52.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.10)- God does not predict the future; he knows it. Since he is eternal–that is, outside of time–he can view all of time at once. However, his knowing of future events does not cause them–that is, things are not pre-determined. Think about it this way: we humans can view the past in the same way that God can view the future. But our knowledge of past events does not cause them, even though we know the outcome. As for being mindless machines, I think that even a surface study of quantum physics as we know them would show that subatomic particles are anything but definite.
Whew. That’s a relief. (Escaping from the nesting limit, I mean. I don’t have a strong opinion about St. Augustine’s theory of time.)
57.2- (Bibliophile) “Yes, but the beings that we feel compassion for are real.”
“Living†things have real feelings, as opposed to rocks? It’s all made up of the same matter, right?
“It’s preferable for as few beings as possible to be suffering, so it makes sense to try and prevent that suffering, doesn’t it?”
Is there meaning attached to suffering? Of course we would think so, since our atoms are built to make us feel compassion. But that would mean being fooled by our frail human insecurities. Isn’t that what Atheism is against?
“She wasn’t talking about religon; she was talking about opposition to atheism. Basically, it means that people against atheism are prejudiced, closedminded, and often not good at debating. It does not mean that there is no god.â€
She made no conclusion, but it sounded like she was presenting evidence to lead someone to form their own. You’re right, though.
60- (Piggy) Fair enough. I still believe that free will derives from the soul, rather than the material universe.
Then, might I ask, why were you trying to argue that we’re mindless machines, if you believe in a soul that has free will? Unless you’re doing what I often do–arguing in a way that in no way reflects your actual beliefs. If that’s the case, let me know so I can argue accordingly. Good mental exercise.
I think the technical term is “pulling a Bugs Bunny”.
:]
I like being the other side sometimes.
I heard that sometimes Orville and Wilbur Wright would switch sides in the middle of an argument and continue arguing heatedly on the opposite side from that which they originally believed.
You are correct. The matter in living things interacts in a very different way from that in rocks. The interactions of various chemicals and materials in a living thing gives it the ability to have senses and needs. A rock has no senses or needs. By putting the word “living” in quotes, I think you are implying that if you consider the physical body of a living thing and a rock, they are the same. It seems like you are implying that something other than a physical body is necessary for intelligent life, and that without some kind of “life force” (or whatever you call it) a body is about as useful as a rock. Am I correct? Please clarify if I am not.
There is meaning to suffering. I wish to prevent as much as possible, and I am an atheist. I do not believe that I should be indifferent to emotions. I do not think that acting on emotion should be forbidden or disapproved. Atheism is not against emotion. It simply disbelieves in supernatural beings. Atheists are not necessarily against other people believing in the supernatural either.
It seems like you might have some bad experiences talking to atheists, or maybe you just haven’t talked to many at all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but many of your comments lead me to believe that you think atheists dislike emotion. It also seems like you think that atheists think that everything is already defined by science. Do you think that a lot of people who think and argue scientifically try to use evidence that is incomplete? I’m not really getting your entire view here, so please tell me if I’m wrong.
Atheism isn’t “against” anything. Atheism isn’t “for” anything, either. It’s not a philosophical movement, or a religious conviction. The lack of a god or gods is pretty much the only thing atheists agree on, and some of them have issues with that. We’re an argumentative bunch. (And no, we don’t agree on that last sentence, either. :D)
“Is there meaning attached to suffering? Of course we would think so, since our atoms are built to make us feel compassion. But that would mean being fooled by our frail human insecurities. Isn’t that what Atheism is against?”
I think you’re confusing atheism with a nihilistic existentialism. Lack of belief in a god or gods doesn’t mean that atheists also believe there is no meaning to suffering, and that all we are is a collection of atoms stuck together by forces of physics. (Personally I don’t think my mind could handle believing that. It might be true, I don’t know, but I don’t think my sanity could support itself under the weight of that conviction.)
““Living†things have real feelings, as opposed to rocks? It’s all made up of the same matter, right?”
Yes, everything is made out of atoms. But no, rocks cannot feel pain, or have emotions, since they have no neurological system that would report pain to their brain, or hormones that would affect their psychological state. The fact that everything is made out of atoms doesn’t mean it’s all the same thing. So yes, living things have real feelings, as opposed to rocks. That’s exactly right.
I feel the urge to prevent the suffering of other living beings. This is due to a tendency towards empathy in my species, which tends to collect in tribes and groups which help each other, as opposed to more solitary animals, such as large cats. This is also due to the capacity of my brain to “put itself in another’s shoes”, which I think is due to mirror neurons (though I may be wrong on that, my mom threw away that copy of Muse).
As a being that wishes to live (because all of my ancestors also wished to live, except my great-grandmother and thankfully I didn’t inherit that), and one that forms social connections as part of the natural psychological responses of my brain, I dislike it when those I have formed social connections with, like love, leave, for whatever reason, like dying. Because of the ability to imagine myself in the place of another, I understand that others also dislike it when the ones they love die. I can also feel a lesser version of the feelings they might feel in a certain situation.
I cried when the earthquake in Japan happened. I also didn’t believe in God. (Don’t get me wrong there, it wasn’t like I said, “Millions of people died, therefore there is no God”, because I’m a rationalist for the most part and that reasoning isn’t solid.) I know that the people who died were collections of atoms. But they were collections of atoms who could feel pain and happiness and love and heartbreak. So I cried.
That doesn’t mean I’m being fooled by fragile human insecurities. It means I have a strong commitment towards the survival of my species and a higher-than-usual ability to imagine myself in the place of another. Compassion is caused by empathy, and both of those are good.
Gaah annoying comment nesting!
57.2.1- (Unintended Pun) “I was just making an observation about the way that some people react to opinions they dislike. This could apply to almost anyone trying to fluster en’s opponent.”
Alrighty. I’m used to seeing that being used in an ad hominem context.
“I do not think that killing or suicide is hilarious.”
I know, just messing with ya X)
“The Romans were responsible for many atrocities, but they were also responsible for great art, literature, and advancements in the organization of society. The same can be said for most religions and cultures.”
No debate there!
61.1- (Piggy) “Unless you’re doing what I often do–arguing in a way that in no way reflects your actual beliefs.”
Bingo!
61.2- (Unintended Pun) “It seems like you are implying that something other than a physical body is necessary for intelligent life, and that without some kind of “life force†(or whatever you call it) a body is about as useful as a rock. Am I correct? Please clarify if I am not.”
No, I was wondering what you thought made some matter matter more than other matter (hehe) and now I know.
“There is meaning to suffering. I wish to prevent as much as possible, and I am an atheist. I do not believe that I should be indifferent to emotions. I do not think that acting on emotion should be forbidden or disapproved. Atheism is not against emotion. It simply disbelieves in supernatural beings.”
Interesting. So do you consider yourself to be a humanist?
“Atheists are not necessarily against other people believing in the supernatural either.”
Not the ones I’ve squared off with lately.
“It seems like you might have some bad experiences talking to atheists, or maybe you just haven’t talked to many at all.”
The former.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but many of your comments lead me to believe that you think atheists dislike emotion. It also seems like you think that atheists think that everything is already defined by science. Do you think that a lot of people who think and argue scientifically try to use evidence that is incomplete? I’m not really getting your entire view here, so please tell me if I’m wrong.”
Atheists I’ve debated with have usually tried to discredit religion with scientific technicalities. They almost always use evidence that is incomplete! They usually don’t bring emotional factors in, though. I’m afraid my views may be horribly skewed.
61.3- (Cat’s Eye)
Overall, how is it that Atheism appeals to you over religion?
You didn’t ask me, but atheism appeals to me over religion because both the religions I’ve experienced were more about following stupid rules and going to church/synagogue than about being good people. They meant for the rules to make you good people, but they didn’t line up with my personal beliefs. I can elaborate on this if necessary.
I consider myself to be a secular humanist. I think it’s okay if you have religion as long as you don’t force other people to conform to it in order to be taken seriously.
To whom it may concern- Why does religion appeal to you?
Religion doesn’t appeal to me because I’ve never seen why it should be that way. If you’ll pardon the comparisons, why should an omnipotent, omnipresent God be any more likely than a story about werewolves or magic spirits or multiple gods with the heads of elephants? Just because there’s a very old book that has been the moral foundation for some societies for the past few thousand years? On an emotional level, it appeals to me – it would be nice to know that Someone is looking out for me or making sure that everything happens for a reason. But at the same time, I’d like there to be English-speaking cats, too. I hope religious people can at least understand that neither story sounds very probable to me.
That being said, I think humans are capable of being good whether they’re guided by religious principles or secular morals. Throughout history, people have done awful things with and without religion, but they’ve also done wonderful things with and without religion. It does offend me that some people believe one can’t be moral without a God looking over one’s shoulder, but I hope to prove them wrong with my example. I try to be a good person not for God, but because that’s how my parents and role models have taught me to be and because I feel bad about myself if I do something that I know is wrong.
Anyways, that’s how I feel about religion and morals for me, personally. I’m interested in how the rest of you think.
ibcf: Gah, no, we’re still misunderstanding each other. Atheism doesn’t “appeal” to me. It’s not a choice. To me, that’s like asking, “Why does the theory of gravity appeal to you?” It’s not what I prefer, it’s just what’s true. If I believed in a god or gods, that would lend a lot more meaning and hope to my life, but I can’t lie to myself. (Yes, I realize it’s not a lie for others, it’s just that it would be one for me personally.)
Dodecahedron: I am actually also Jewish, as well as atheist (accepting Reform synagogue win! :D), and I intend to continue being Jewish for the rest of my life. I love the traditional aspect, that I’m part of this line of my ancestors that have sung Torah the exact same way for thousands of generations, dating all the way back to the original Israel. As well, being part of that “outsider” culture is very important to me, since it seems to me like outsiders have an easier time seeing what’s going on. Also, we get great food, heheh. For me it’s mostly about the food. I am a wonderful materialist.
How can it be a lie for you personally? There either is or isn’t a god. Your opinion does not change that fact one way or the other.
En doesn’t think God exists. Therefore, embracing religion would be lying.
It would be incongruent with her beliefs, but for something to be a lie it has to be independently and absolutely false.
I think she means that it isn’t considered a lie by others, namely those who do believe in God/gods.
I’m glad that you found something that works for you, and if you like the trappings of Judaism instead of the trappings of humanism, that’s fine with me!
I personally stopped liking Judaism around the time that my Hebrew school teacher said “I know your mother didn’t, but you need to marry a Jewish boy to continue the line” when it was clear to me how little importance any religion had to my parents and their love.
Piggy – I think what Cat’s Eye is saying is that, while she does not believe in a god and it would be a lie to her to think that there was one, there are people who do believe in a god and to them it would not seem like a lie, even though in her opinion it still is one.
Oh, I’m a humanist too. XD This is difficult to explain. Culturally, I’m Jewish, but only culturally. I’m also culturally American, in that I celebrate a nonreligious Christmas and such. Scientifically, I’m an atheist, because the existence of a god or gods hasn’t been proved to my satisfaction. Philosophically, I’m a humanist, with very heavy shades of rationalism. I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I don’t know what. Mention it and I’ll let you know.
Misc thoughts, mostly related to ibcf’s posts and probably a bit incoherent since I didn’t sleep well last night and it’s before 7am. Although some of your (ibcf’s) posts kind of make me thing you’re trolling / being purposely dense to stir up dirt, I’m going to treat them as serious.
–Enforced homogeneity does not cause peace when heterogeneous elements exist. I’d also say that it’s probably not a good thing, because from a diversity of ideas we get a diversity of strengths.
–By spreading religion by force I mean killing / torturing non-believers. Withholding medical care or basic supplies until they convert. Taking their children from them to be “civilized,” e.g. raised in their religion. That sort of thing. There’s a huge difference between influencing thought and actual force.
–What if the God that exists is not the Christian god? What if it’s Baal or Zeus or any of the many other notoriously jealous gods? That’s the problem with Pascal’s wager. Also, would God prefer a feigned belief to honest disbelief?
–Rocks are not sentient, as far as we know. Humans are. If rocks turn out to be sentient, we’re all basically screwed.
–Atheism and humanism are very very much not contradictory positions.
–Atheism appeals to me over religion because one encourages truth and questioning whereas the other encourages blind obedience to authority. One, by removing an afterlife, encourages people to make the most of this life, to be happy and productive, while the other teaches us to feel guilty and presents a black and white picture of life, of right and wrong. As Tim Minchin put it, “Just because ideas are tenacious doesn’t mean that they’re worthy.” And I could go on but I have to go to class.
Yes. All of this.
63- Religion (if it can be called that) appeals to me only in a Unitarian sense. We like to sing, we like to listen to people’s opinions in sermons, we like to debate, and we like to eat cake. Nobody is encouraged or discouraged from believing in a/some/few/none god(s).
I got turned off religion in a big way, though, because I was brought up as a Hindu at the insistence of my grandmother. I think religion is more appealing if it isn’t shoved down your throat. I never actually believed any of it in the first place, and then I got kicked out of Bala Vihar Chinmaya Mission (Hindu sunday school- Chinmaya was an educator-sagey guy) for asking too many questions. Our teacher was going on about how brave and pure Sita is for staying behind imprisoned by a demon when Hanuman comes to rescue her and refusing to leave with anyone except Rama. And then she went on about what a wonderful guy Rama was, ignoring the passages in the Ramayana where he insists Sita is unfaithful, makes her go through trial by fire, rescues her, kicks her out of Ayodhya once he becomes king because he thinks his people’s mistrust in her fidelity might undermine his regime, makes her live in the forest for years and raise his twin sons, and then tries to get her to go through trial by fire again and she leaves the earth.
So anyway, I had read the not-dumbed-down translation that was at our library, and I was kind of shocked, so I brought it up in class during one of our teacher’s Rama-and-Sita-are-the-model-couple speeches.
Me: Why would Sita stay behind in Lanka, if she had a chance to leave with Hanuman?
Teacher: Sita is loyal only to Rama. She is faithful and pure. Don’t you agree?
Me: Um, actually I don’t. I think it’s silly to stay in a prison just because the guy who comes to get you isn’t your husband. Besides, Rama sent Hanuman to get Sita in the first place.
Teacher: Sita is pure and kind and the model for all women. Any other questions?
Me: Why have you skipped over the parts where Rama makes Sita walk through a fire and expels her from Ayodhya?
Teacher:.. what parts?
Me: See, it says here. *pulls out book* Rama tells Sita that she’ll have to leave, because his people think she’s pregnant with Ravana’s children.
Teacher: Oh, that part. Well, see, they’re actually Rama’s children. See? She’s not unfaithful.
Me: But he makes her walk through a fire and then exiles her to a forest! Is that the model of a marriage you want us to follow?!
Yeah, so I got expelled, and on free samosas day too.
The other thing that angers me is that Hinduism is so conservative. Don’t be gay. Cover yourself as much as possible in thick clothing even though India is 90 degrees in the shade. Girls should not go to school. Girls should not get jobs. A woman’s place is in the home. Have ten billion children.
I’m sorry. Hinduism is one of the few religions that makes me actually seethe with rage. It’s hard to imagine coming out as a lesbian to people who like to pretend gays don’t exist.
Choklit:
I’m curious. Are there something like “Reform” Hindus who retain traditions and celebrate holidays but don’t take the old stories so literally?
Having little experience with the religion I don’t know definitively, but one of my closest friends is Hindu and she’s liberal, accepting, dresses normally (actually, she has excellent fashion sense), has educated parents (both dentists), and is generally a progressive-minded person. I think every religion has its range of beliefs and practices.
Eh, well, my third-cousin’s-friend’s-daughter’s-friend is kind of a Hindu-Christian-Agnostic. But I’ve never met her, only heard whispered rumors about what a bad job of religious education her parents have done when I ought to be asleep.
It seems Tesseract has found some, though, which pleases me.
I was thinking more of a formal branch or denomination. But maybe Hinduism isn’t organized that way.
I don’t think so. I mean, nobody knows what you think, and you can go to temples as often as you like, but everyone does exactly the same thing there- which is to try to confuse me with as many arcane procedures as possible- and there don’t seem to be any casual or less focused temples. I think in India most Hindus who are devout enough to attend a temple want a nice statue-filled formal one, and if you get enough people and money together to build one in the US, you want to do it properly.
63- (Dodechahedron) “You didn’t ask me, but atheism appeals to me over religion because both the religions I’ve experienced were more about following stupid rules and going to church/synagogue than about being good people…”
For the record, I don’t go to a church or synagogue, nor do I force people to conform to my beliefs.
“To whom it may concern- Why does religion appeal to you?”
Religion works for me because it is more idealistic than narcissism and more practical than humanism (really, faith in basic human goodness?) and more humble (we can’t assume we can explain everything about the universe). Also it is not too mathematical or lacking in justice or free will.
64- (Cat’s Meow) “Religion doesn’t appeal to me because I’ve never seen why it should be that way…”
Yes, religion requires faith. Just as humanism requires faith in our morals, faith in our knowledge, faith in our scientific method, faith in our senses, and faith that there is nothing beyond what we perform litmus tests on.
65- (Cat’s Eye) “Atheism doesn’t “appeal†to me. It’s not a choice. To me, that’s like asking, “Why does the theory of gravity appeal to you?†It’s not what I prefer, it’s just what’s true. If I believed in a god or gods, that would lend a lot more meaning and hope to my life, but I can’t lie to myself…”
Technically it’s faith. We put faith in the law of gravity because we trust the scientists who tell us about it, and the law always functions properly as far as we’re concerned. Atheism is just as clear-cut to you? I see.
65.2- (Dodechahedron) “I personally stopped liking Judaism around the time that my Hebrew school teacher said “I know your mother didn’t, but you need to marry a Jewish boy to continue the line†when it was clear to me how little importance any religion had to my parents and their love.”
Wow.. Hebrew schoolteacher=dumb
66- (Lizzie) “Although some of your (ibcf’s) posts kind of make me thing you’re trolling / being purposely dense to stir up dirt, I’m going to treat them as serious.”
Thanks(?)
“Enforced homogeneity does not cause peace when heterogeneous elements exist. I’d also say that it’s probably not a good thing, because from a diversity of ideas we get a diversity of strengths.”
Unless, of course, we all became secular humanists?
“By spreading religion by force I mean killing / torturing non-believers. Withholding medical care or basic supplies until they convert. Taking their children from them to be “civilized,†e.g. raised in their religion. That sort of thing. There’s a huge difference between influencing thought and actual force.”
I don’t know any religions that say “thou shall kill, torture, withhold medical care, and kidnap the children of nonbelievers.” Few (lasting) religions advocate violent force. People who do these things usually don’t know much about their own religions. BTW, that Matthew 10:13 part you referenced was only stating the facts. Even family ties are split when their deepest convictions fracture.
“What if the God that exists is not the Christian god? What if it’s Baal or Zeus or any of the many other notoriously jealous gods? That’s the problem with Pascal’s wager. Also, would God prefer a feigned belief to honest disbelief?”
The Gawd of Christian/Jewish/Muslim fame is more empirically likely than Baal or Zeus, on terms of both science and scripture. For example, photos of the summit of Mount Olympus clearly indicate a lack of Grecian deities. If you’re going to make a wager, you might as well make an intelligent one. According to my research, God (not the Greek/Phoenician one) dislikes both feigned belief and honest disbelief.
“Rocks are not sentient, as far as we know. Humans are. If rocks turn out to be sentient, we’re all basically screwed.”
Our particles are arranged in such a way that we can call ourselves sentient. Theoretically I could rearrange the particles of a lead pipe so that it could sentiently hop around and whack people. The point is that at our very basic forms, nothing makes us special.
“Atheism and humanism are very very much not contradictory positions.”
Alright, so: Atheism=any belief that involves the lack of supernatural forces/deities? Humanism=subset of atheism that believes in human values and such?
“Atheism appeals to me over religion because one encourages truth and questioning whereas the other encourages blind obedience to authority. One, by removing an afterlife, encourages people to make the most of this life, to be happy and productive, while the other teaches us to feel guilty and presents a black and white picture of life, of right and wrong. As Tim Minchin put it, “Just because ideas are tenacious doesn’t mean that they’re worthy.—
Religion should be limited to guidelines for a moral lifestyle. We should be blindly obedient to virtue. The guidelines of my faith have never limited truth or questioning, and do encourage living a full, wholesome life. Since when is feeling guilt wrong? And I think clear, black and white rules are much better than gray ones (murder, stealing, lying, cheating…no questions there)
67- (Choklit Orange) “I think religion is more appealing if it isn’t shoved down your throat.”
Sadly that is a difficult concept for some clergymen to grasp.
67.1.1 (Tesseract) “I think every religion has its range of beliefs and practices.”
It’s true! Religion doesn’t have to screw your life up.
Although I haven’t been reading every post in the atheism/religion discussion and don’t have time now (school), I would like to put my two cents about something. Like Cat’s Eye posted earlier, I consider myself both Jewish and atheist. Atheism is not any set of ideas, values, or anythig else that I ‘follow’ or ‘subscribe’ to like a religion, it is simply te fact that I do not believe in a god. Why do I choose not to believe in God? I don’t. I just can’t believe in God. I don’t have reasons or things that lead up to my disbelie.; I was raised in a way that didn’t put a lot of stress on piety, so I don’t think I thought about God much when I was little. I was consciously Jewish but not consciously a believer. Then when I started to think about it a little, there was just not a god. That’s pretty much it–no period of doubt, nothing. I sometimes used to wish that I could believe in God, but I could never convince myself. For me, belief in God is just something my brain will not do. I respect others’ belief, but for myself I see no proof, and extremely strong proof is what it would take for my brain to let me believe. That isn’t an invitation to try to prove it to me, by the way, not that I think anyone will. When I say extremely strong, I mean extremely strong. Not believing isn’t a choice for me, it’s the only possible course of action. And I am fine with it.
Tess:
It sounds as if, in your experience, disbelief is loosely (very loosely) analogous to not owning a dog. An “akynist” doesn’t necessarily hate dogs or have a coherent anti-dog ideology or anything against dog owners, and may be aware that many people enjoy dogs and couldn’t imagine living without them. But en may have grown up without them and feel no need to acquire one enself. Is that more or less what you’re saying?
Kind of, except a non-dog owner could go get a dog if they were one day curious about having a dog. I can’t make myself believe in God; it doesn’t seem logical to or make sense to my brain. A non-dog owner is, overall, choosing to be dogless, whereas I am not choosing not the believe in God–I just don’t and can’t. Like the akynist, though, I am satisfied with my situation, feeling no need to ‘acquire a dog,’ but understand the appeal of ‘having a dog.’
I play around a lot with the idea of religion with the whole Ooba thing, and reading too much discworld, but I’m not actually sure where i personally stand on the issue. i don’t truly believe in any particular god, nor rigorously practice any faith, but I do like some teachings and morals from various religions, and semi follow them as good rules for morality. I really don’t know where I stand on the free will thing, but I do like the idea of fourth dimensionality and beyond… I mostly like to puzzle these things out, but i haven’t really reached a decision yet…
61.3, 65- (Cat’s Eye) How does a truly scientific evidence-minded person subscribe to compassionate values? The universe doesn’t seem like a very compassionate place. Isn’t compassion a taught social advantage thing? Do you really deeply believe in it?
The GAPA calls time out for clarification.
ibcf, I don’t understand what you’re saying or asking here. Is it that the universe as a whole isn’t compassionate, so people shouldn’t bother to be? Or that the natural world isn’t compassionate, so people can’t be without supernatural help? Also, what do you mean by a “social advantage thing,” and why does it matter whether it’s something that people learn? Unless Cat’s Eye understands your questions better than I do, I don’t see how she can answer them.
This thread in eight words: Sometimes things are complicated, but science is cool.
So…what are your thoughts on Libya or Japan? (pick one and focus on it or people will get confused. First commenter gets dibbs.)
My thoughts: Japan aaaaaaah! Libya finallyyyyyy!
I’m sorry, I’ll pick Libya, since the general consensus of people I know on Japan is, “oh god, that’s horrible. And now it’s in the tap water. Yikes.” Panickment. I heard Robert Gates saying that the US shouldn’t participate in the air strikes because it would seem too much like Afghanistan or Iraq, but now that they’ve transferred power to NATO is there any danger of that being the perception?
Also, my opinion of Gaddafi: Crazy guy with too many guns.
Why don’t the crazy, power hungry dictators get it.
Abusing human rights and rigging elections is NOT cool and we want to get rid of you if you do that!
No dictator cares about what’s “cool” or what other countries think. They have different motivations for their actions.
Simple, but very to the point.
America poses itself as the defender of democracy and freedom, and I’m glad that we’re in Libya. Even if America (or at least the government) is a tad hypocritical, the more we can help people rid themselves of tyranny the better.
Yeah. And what’s up (or actually not going up) with the no fly zones? What is it that we are doing over there (like why do we have it)? I’m kind of unclear about that.
The no-fly zone was installed to try and restrict Qadaffi’s forces. If he can’t use his air force, then he can’t spread his troops around as easily to oppress the rebels.
Gaddafi is/was using his air force to give him a drastic advantage over the rebels and inflict mass casualties. The no-fly zone is basically saying that if he continues, the UN will shoot his planes down.
71.1- Logically, both compassion and God are psychological constructs with no more meaning than the other. I’m asking Cat’s Eye if she thinks there’s something deep–not necessarily God, but at least metaphysical–inherent in compassion, or if it’s just a learned/advantageous/enjoyable human feeling. I’m not sure if this makes any more sense than what I said before…
So it looks like we have a government today after all
I’m assuming everyone reading this has internet access and has therefore heard the news. What to think, what to think. Will post a more coherent response/thought process tomorrow when I am done with the test I should be studying for right now.
Re: Bin Laden’s death:
As I said on VoldyNet (thereby stirring up a bucketload of controversy); “Why are we celebrating someone’s death? Shouldn’t we celebrate life, and mourn for the harmful choices–both great and small–that people make while living?”
I realize that he (and other people) have done terrible, terrible things, but to celebrate death is, to me, impossible. If anything, to see the celebrations makes me incredibly sad. Sad that we as a human family will rejoice at the death of one of our own, even if that one has done terrible things, instead of mourn for a life that was wasted.
To achieve peace we must be peaceful, not have the biggest guns and a less corrupt government.
My pastor had a sermon on that very thing today. It was brought up in my household before that too. I’m still conflicted.
I know. I hate how we seem to think that violence is a valid method of solving problems, and I hate that we would celebrate someones death like this. Celebrating the loss of life makes me feel sick. Why do we dehumanize people like this, just because they are our “enemies”? To celebrate the death of anyone is saying that you support killing, and that you think that it is okay to kill people. The taking of a life is never a thing to be celebrated , regardless of what the person has done.
Celebrating Bin Laden’s death also makes me uneasy but you have to think about what these people went through if they lost someone in 9/11. You can see how they would want the person who was a major cause of that die. Other than the grieved, I’d say most people are celebrating the fact that this is a victory in the war against terrorism, not the root of the event, which is the loss of a person’s life.
On a related subject, I was very angry the other day when I read that a NATO ( what does that stand for, anyway? ) airstrike aimed at Khadafy killed four of his grandchildren but not him. Why don’t they wait until the children go away if they have to target Khadafy?
NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The airstrike that targeted Qaddafi obviously had negative unintended consequences, but it’s clear that something has to be done about him. Qaddafi is openly killing his own civilians. It was extremely improbable that he would survive that airstrike. Bad luck, really.
“Celebrating Bin Laden’s death also makes me uneasy but you have to think about what these people went through if they lost someone in 9/11. You can see how they would want the person who was a major cause of that die.”
Maybe in some cases. However, a very close friend of mine lost her father in 9/11, and she felt sad that Osama Bin Laden was killed, for the same reason as everyone else.
People’s desire for revenge by killing the person who harmed them, even if the person did something horrible, that disturbs me. If we think that killing is so wrong, than why do we kill people, just to get revenge for their crime? The “eye for an eye” reasoning is what upsets me. And someone’s death being considered a “victory” is also disturbing. the entire war on terror upsets me as being hypocritical, because we are fighting a war in which innocent civilians are often killed, much like in terrorist attacks. We can’t solve all the worlds problems with violence, especially when we are just causing more of what we’re trying to prevent.
The airstrike thing really upset me too. Violence disgusts me so much! And we’re still getting ourselves into more wars.
Did someone suggest we move the abortion debate here? For the record, I’m pro-choice. Although I think we’ve already argued about this pretty exhaustively.
83-I did, but I think it’s still hanging out on the other thread.
I don’t really know what I am right now. I’m not against all abortions, just most of them. I also have a problem with making people follow my beliefs, but since I don’t know what my beliefs are it’s hard for me to decide. I generally think that people should be allowed to do anything that doesn’t excessively harm themselves or another person, and I don’t consider an embryo a person.
I think that if someone is having sex they should be mature enough to use birth control and accept the risk of pregnancy. In cases of rape this doesn’t apply and I have no problem with someone who was raped having an abortion, but I would prefer it if they used emergency contraceptives. (like plan B. I am under the impression that these medications prevent the embryo from forming in the first place, but I’m not sure. Does anyone know?)
Yes, I think that’s how they work.
I am strongly pro-choice but I agree that you should always be responsible and use birth control. I feel like that’s something everyone can agree on and maybe we should be working on making sure everyone has access to reproductive health services instead of fighting over when life begins.
“I think that if someone is having sex they should be mature enough to use birth control and accept the risk of pregnancy. In cases of rape this doesn’t apply and I have no problem with someone who was raped having an abortion, but I would prefer it if they used emergency contraceptives.”
The problem I have with how you’ve stated this is that it sounds a bit like you’re thinking of pregnancy as a punishment, in a way: if Person A chooses to have sex, and if Person A gets pregnant, then Person A should just suck it up and have the baby, no matter whether they are capable of caring for an infant or dealing with a pregnancy at that time. I don’t know if that’s actually your position, or if your position is (consciously/subconsciously) motivated from that belief, though.
AGREED
If my method of birth control fails, it is NOT my fault. With several methods of birth control, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s failed until your next period, so it’s not as easy as “why didn’t you go get Plan B if your condom broke”. ((Also, emergency contraception can be difficult to get, and I hear it wreaks hell with your emotions.))
[We’ve snipped some very specific personal details here, which in our opinions do not affect the general argument. –Admins.]
As stated on Rants and Plaints, I believe that access to an abortion is a fundamental part of women’s rights. I should not be forced to hold a parasite inside me, endangering my own existence, for nine months if I don’t choose to. I’m not saying that abortions are good–I agree that they should be avoided if possible. BUT it’s not my decision, and each woman should have control over her own body. It disgusts me that lawmakers who are male are trying to decide what’s right for people in an entirely different circumstance than they will ever be in.
I’m not going to argue with you about how much about myself I can get through the filter, and while some of it was personal, I do believe the point I was trying to make was relevant to the discussion, so I will try to rephrase.
Are some forms of birth control more valid than others? Because I have the feeling that you don’t count methods like withdrawal, or abstaining during ovulation only, as viable. Are people who use these methods immature? Are they unworthy of abortions because their chosen method might have a higher risk?
I do not think that you should be allowed to have an abortion only if you were /trying/ to use protection and it failed.
Using birth control isn’t always that simple, though. In so many parts of the country sexual education is ridiculously below par. Kids are taught that “abstinence is the only way to prevent pregnancy”, in the belief that this will cause them not to have sex. However, teenagers being teenagers, that just isn’t going to happen.
In an ideal world, yes, someone having sex would definitely be mature enough to use birth control and realize that pregnancy and STDs are possible. However, this just isn’t possible. There are enormous societal pressures on both males and females, there are people who believe that they’re mature enough and really aren’t, and there are people who are just willing to take the risk. (We’re teenagers. We’re impulsive and horny. The majority of us are mature enough to be careful, but there is a significant portion that just isn’t.)
You know America has the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates of any first-world country? And my health teacher keeps emphasizing to my class that when we go to college, we will have gotten a much better sexual education than most everyone around us, because my school has such a fantastic program.
I believe that the solution to teen pregnancy is lots and lots of really good sexual education. Sweden has the lowest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the world, and they credit their sex-positive sex education with it. In schools, sex is taught as something dangerous, something to be scared of, whose terrible consequences should be saved only for someone you love. Not only is this a very worrying mindset for our nation’s kids to have, but no class wants to believe it or listen to it. I believe abstinence-only and sex-negative sex ed are ineffective and poor teaching methods. Exhaustive, sex-positive sex education is the solution to our national teen pregnancy and STD problem.
I used to be pro-life but now am a mix of both. I think that there should be more contraceptives available and when people do get unwanted pregnancies, there should be a place they can go where they can be informed about their baby ( this could potentially prevent the abortion ) and about options after birth. I think Planned Parenthood is great and would be extremely angry if it lost federal funding. Darn House of Representatives.
Re: poor people not being able to have abortions in the Medicaid law, or whatever the heck is going on. Truly destitute people shouldn’t be having babies. Children suck up a lot of income and the country really can’t afford to support people like that. Again, back to the birth control thing – should be free and available. So those are my views on abortion.
I saw a TV commercial the other week saying that 52% of Latina girls get pregnant as a teenager.
I would be wary of the information you receive from television, especially if it only sites a statistic without listing sources or circumstances.
And while I agree that someone having a child they’re not certain they can fully support might not be the wisest of decisions, I would be very careful about saying who “should” or “should not” have a child–“people like that” as you called them. That’s a dangerous road to walk down, although I don’t necessarily disagree completely with your sentiment.
I’ve got more to say but late for an exco oops
“when people do get unwanted pregnancies, there should be a place they can go where they can be informed about their baby”
Please can we stick to scientific terms? It’s not a baby until it’s born, in my opinion, and I find this to be an annoying attempt to appeal to emotion.
The law was about “no federal funding for abortion”, and what it means according to my ANE teacher is that middle-class women would pay to get abortions anyway but people on Medicaid couldn’t afford it.
I read an article once a while ago (I know, this is the MOST SCIENTIFIC way to cite something) that said that all young women should be forced to go on birth control by the government. Do you think that would be a good idea? What about all poor people?
(your post showed up while I was writing my other post. Sorry!)
I think that your question is a different discussion altogether because I think that it is relevant to government mandated healthcare and population control. It could also be related to discrimination by some people who hold certain beliefs about socioeconomic status.
I understand that it seems related because it involves federal funding and preventing pregnancy, but the difference is that the support for abortions for women on Medicaid is that it is a voluntary procedure. I think that requiring anyone to take any medication would be harshly opposed just because of American culture. That would be like the government forcing everyone to have an ID chip implanted in their arm in the eyes of some people.
I also think that because birth control often has many negative side effects, it would be detrimental for someone to take it just because they are in a specific group. If I am not having sex and I don’t need to regulate my hormones, then I do not need birth control and should not take it. (some people take birth control to regulate their menstrual cycle)
All young women go on birth control? That’s what people do to animals (I’m speaking metaphorically here, please, don’t anyone contradict me and start a new argument). I also find it to have a sexist connotation; women shouldn’t have to take drugs starting from the age of 10-16 just because they’re female and could possibly get pregnant one day. And – while I realize this is true in some cases – it shows a complete lack of faith in the common sense and judgment of women. And also that’s really dictatorial.
Also, if anyone is confused by my word choice – “baby” instead of “fetus,” “people like that”, etc. – I’m not really putting a lot of thought into my word choices. In general, destitute people having babies doesn’t help them rise out of poverty. By “people like that,” I mean very poor families or children on welfare. I know there’s a lot of problems with the welfare system right now.
Some teens do become pregnant by choice; that is, they are actively attempting to have a baby. I don’t think anyone has the right to forbid someone from having a child any more than they have the right to forbid someone from aborting the fetus. That’s why I’m pro-choice; I believe it should be the choice of each individual woman whether she carries a fetus to term or aborts it. For instance, in China, due to the one-child policy, some women had been forced to have abortions when they would rather have a child. I find this equally as bad as forcing a woman to have a baby when for whatever reason she needs to abort it.
And of course having an abortion is a very serious decision and should not be made casually or lightly by anyone; if you really don’t want to be pregnant, use birth control; if birth control fails, use Plan B. (Which I really would advise over abortion, as abortion is not contraception.)
Plan B isn’t really contraception either, and also it can only be taken if you know your birth control has failed within a day of having sex. So it doesn’t really make sense to me to say Plan B is a less serious/more casual decision than abortion.
I might have said this already in different words? If you find repetition annoying, my apologies
plan B can also sometimes be hard to get a hold of, especially if you’re under 18 or live in one of the states where pharmacists are allowed to withhold medication that goes against their personal beliefs (which has always seemed really messed up to me)
I guess… I guess it comes down to how I feel about when a fetus becomes a human. It’s always sort of made sense to me that before conception, a sperm/egg are for sure not humans, not even sure if they can be counted as alive, and contraception is of course morally acceptable. And at the moment of conception, and in the few days and weeks afterwards, though it is on some level alive, it’s not more. I feel that as pregnancy goes on and the fetus develops, it becomes more and more of a person, culminating at birth, when it can be called a baby, and it is most likely not morally acceptable to kill it.
During the pregnancy, I still feel that a pregnant woman has the right to do with her own body what she wishes. It’s just it seems to me that the earlier the abortion is had, the less one has to worry, and that’s why it seems like Plan B would be a more casual decision.
Biologically speaking, a zygote is Homo sapiens and fits the requirements for life, though said requirements cause perpetual disagreements between scientists.
I agree with Jadestone. I understand where you’re coming from though. I also agree with you because I think that education and availability/eliminating stigmas about buying contraception would prevent a lot of unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
I’m kind of a mix like you are.
To the responses in the last section: (mostly Lizzie) I think you are kind of right about my motivation. I never really thought about it that way, but I do think that people need to seriously consider what might happen if they have sex irresponsibly (maybe this is the abstinence education taking over. “if you have sex you deserve bad things and anything that happens to you because of sex is bad”). I think that Person A should be allowed to get an abortion, but it makes me very uncomfortable. So I suppose I’m pro-choice technically. I think that it is a women’s rights issue as well.
This is just a really complicated issue.
It’s one of those things that is also different depending on if you are thinking theoretically or personally. When I think of it like this in theory about “Person A”, I waver. When I think about a girl I know in real life who told me that she had an abortion, I am strongly pro choice. I don’t think that she is a worse person for having an abortion. I just think of her as someone who made a mistake and had to make a hard decision about how to handle it. (that girl is a few years older than me)
I also know a girl who is my age (18) and she is having a baby in June. She’s going to keep en and raise en with her boyfriend, and I respect her and her boyfriend for that decision and I’m happy that she didn’t get an abortion.
I think that Jadestone has a good point. When we start thinking about “those people” and “Person A”, we start to make generalizations and we forget that every case is different. Everyone is subject to making those generalizations because it’s how we tend to think, and it’s hard to think about “big” political issues on a personal level.
Well, for once I’m glad I’m a lesbian. Chances are I won’t get pregnant unless I want to. Anyway, seeing as abstinence for heterosexual couples is the only way to completely prevent pregnancies (excluding rape) and I highly doubt that will ever happen, I am strongly in favor of contraceptives- not just to prevent pregnancies, but also STDs- and abortions if they fail or if people fail to use them.
83.1.2.1 (Dodecahedron)- While I agree with you, I think an abortion would wreak havoc with your emotions as much as Plan B. I’ve never been in that situation, but still.
The thing is, Plan B is bad for you emotionally because of the hormones in it. Some people, who feel abortions are bad but still get one, may feel terrible about it, but there are others who are fine and consider it a good choice, whereas Plan B has a medical reason for making you feel bad.
Okay, this was in the news recently. Ground Zero Islamic Center? Personally I’m heavily in favor, but there’s been a lot of debate/crazies-in-Florida-burning-Korans/petitioning. What do you guys think?
I definitely think there should be an Islamic center, but I find it a bit insensitive to put it near Ground Zero, even though I realize it wasn’t the Islamic religion that caused the Twin Towers to fall. If there is absolutely nowhere else to put it I guess it has to be there, but I really think there should be another solution.
Would it be insensitive to put a Christian community center at the site of the Oklahoma City bombings?
It’s true, Islam is quite misrepresented in America. For one thing, a lot of people seem to take the Ground Zero Islamic Center as an attack or point being made directly about 9/11 and peacemaking. I think that may be a small part of it, but there actually was a mosque in that spot before. It was damaged during 9/11. I think debris from an airplane fell on it, although I could be wrong.
On another note, isn’t this where we got “refudiate”? *checks* Yes, it is!
“Peaceful Muslims, please refudiate.” Ya gotta love Sarah Palin for that.
I believe it was actually a Burlington Coat factory, but there are mosques quite near the area already–it’s a difference of about two blocks closer, which given spacing issues in Manhattan should not cause that much of a fuss. Also, multi-denominational prayer services, including Islam, have been held at the Pentagon–the other place that got hit–for years.
I’m in favor too. Islam didn’t cause 9/11, and the Islamic Center wouldn’t actually be at Ground Zero, just near it. Wasn’t there already a mosque at the site where the center would be built, anyway?
I’m also in favor. Not all Muslims are guilty of 9/11, and if we blame an entire group of people for things that someone of that group did, then we wouldn’t be able to have anything anywhere. What really upset me was someone who said that he opposed the mosque because it was “cruel and hurtful to the families who lost members in 9/11” or something along those lines. There were Muslims working in the twin towers, and they deserve a right to be honored too. American Muslims are not all responsible for terrorism, and were just as hurt by the attack as any other American was. Another guy said something about how we oppose a mosque at ground zero because it would be “Just like putting a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor.” Why would that be wrong?
Ahem. I am not pro-choice. I am pro-life. I just felt the need to say this.
Argue all you want. I probably won’t read the responses to this anyway. I feel very strongly about this. Just throwing my two cents out there, for what they’re worth.
I am in favor of a ground zero mosque, but it wasn’t only Muslims who were killed. There were Christians and Jews in those planes and in the buildings. And all three of these religions have been building tensions. Putting a monument for all three religions would be a symbol of peace.
I will never be mad at you for holding that opinion. I would only be mad if you actively try to prevent women who need them from having abortions.
On your second point, I totally agree, and I think that the proposed community center would be open to anyone regardless of their faith. Isn’t that what this is about–peace between people of all religions?
I’m pro-life too. (:
THANK YOU. *hug*
Out of curiosity, are you pro-life for religious reasons or not?
Religious. It’s what I believe.
Oh, I’ve been wondering about that! See, the only religious reasoning I’ve actually heard spelled out for pro-life, I heard from the people in Jesus Camp. I know that all religous people (and, in fact, the majority of religious people) are not the people in Jesus Camp, so could you please elaborate? I’ve been wondering about this for the longest time.
I’m pro-life! I’m pacifistic and I approve of universal health care and all of that good stuff. Life is good and I enjoy it most of the time.
I also think that if you want an abortion you should be able to get one without any interference from anyone who is not your doctor. And I don’t think that prioritizing the welfare of a potential human – a fetus – over that of an actual, living, breathing human with friends and relatives and people who love them – the mother – is really all that much about life.
I’m also pro-life for religious reasons, but I think that instead of arguing about abortions, it’s more important to make needing an abortion unnecessary (aside from medical reasons, which is a different story) by creating a culture and an economy that can enable a young mother to better care for her child if she has an unwanted pregnancy or make it easier for her to give the baby away. That way, abortion doesn’t need to be an option.
That’s all I’m going to say. Goodbye.
I feel like a mosque (and a church a synagogue and whatever, if “fairness” is an issue…) should be built near Ground Zero exactly because there is a lot of healing that the country needs to do. Making any one group of people into a scapegoat group and saying that it’s “not appropriate” for them to build a center of faith and prayer is not what America should be doing. It’s not good if the country is pulling apart instead of coming together as a result of 9/11…that’s precisely what the terrorists want to do to us. The fact that so many Americans oppose putting a mosque there there is a little sad and scary to me, especially considering that those who are planning the mosque project want it to be a statement against terrorism and against hate.
Pro choice. If the mother is going to die in the birth, she should definitely be allowed to get an abortion. Or, if the mother is a victim of rape, I think she should be able to not have the baby.
Guys, I just want to point out- the muslim community center is
a) not a mosque
b) has pretty much nothing to do with 9/11. I’ve seen a map, it’s not going to be next door, but down the street at most.
I knew that it wasn’t really near Ground Zero, but I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t considered a mosque. Thank you for correcting me.
As far as I know it will have prayer spaces, but no, it isn’t just a mosque.
Re: muslim community center: I think building it on the exact same spot where the twin towers is disrespectful, but I see no problem with building it anywhere else.
Re: Abortion: I’m strongly pro-choice. I agree with Lizzie- you can’t prioritize the life of a fetus over the mother’s- and not just if the mother’s life. I suppose I’m emotionally colored because I see an unwanted pregnancy as something that could happen to me, my sister or my friends. Should a woman be forced to endure pregnancy, then childbirth (I sincerely doubt it’s as painless as a certain author claims) and all the psychological consequences this brings only because she made a few stupid mistakes?
So there should be no consequences for mistakes?
would you force someone to be pregnant against their will?
Should a child be a “consequence”?
Lizzie, Tess- ((I’m arguing with bookgirl_me here; don’t take my ignoring of your comments as an insult or a victory.))
Okay. For the record, I don’t have any kind of solid position on abortion anyway.
There will be consequences even if the potential mother does get an abortion; emotional, financial and social ones. But forcing someone to have a baby they don’t want seems rather draconic to me. Even if one potential mother escapes completely untouched by consequences, does that call for a law to make hundreds of other women suffer?
Killing a child to spare some trouble for an irresponsible woman?
Okay, so now we’re back to the same old issue: are fetuses human? You say yes. Others say no.
Also, because someone’s birth control failed may not necessarily make them “irresponsible.” Birth control is not foolproof. “The only 100% sure way to prevent pregnancy is abstinence”, remember health class?
I’m sorry, I can’t debate this anymore. Biologically, when the sperm meets the egg; it’s a human being. The only opposing arguments are based on emotional appeals about the mother. I can’t argue about justifying something I see as horrendously immoral and illogical.
Biologically, when the sperm meets the egg, it’s a two-cell embryo. It has the potential to become a human, but calling it a human to me diminishes humanity.
(my point with that post is to point out that you’re appealing to biology / science to say something that isn’t really scientifically based)
At what point is it more than “potential to become a human”? I would say that a sperm and an unfertilized egg have potential; once the two meet, it’s inevitable that it will develop into a fully adult human, excepting biological problems (diseases, genetic defects), abortions, accidents, or being killed in some other way (murder, lion attack, spontaneous combustion, etc.).
But it isn’t a human yet, which makes your whole argument of murder fallacious.
SFTDP: Sorry, I was concentrating on your earlier post and didn’t see the I-don’t-want-to-debate-this-anymore one.
Let me ask you this. Would you rather there was a childless mother or a motherless child? Because that’s what it can come down to in some cases.
See, from the point of view of those who disagree, it’s the exact same argument– except the other way around. They say the baby is only a baby once the mother gives birth to it, and the only opposing arguments are based on emotional appeals about “unborn children”. They can’t argue about justifying something they see as immoral and illogical, either.
Not arguing one way or the other, just presenting the other side. And if you don’t want to debate this any more, that’s fine. You don’t have to debate anyting you don’t want to.
It’s not yet a child, not for at least the first few months. Also, the woman in question isn’t necessarily being irresponsible just because she got pregnant by accident (what about rape?). You can’t pass judgement on all of them just based on a few negative examples. In fact, I don’t think anyone but the woman has the right to ultimately decide because every situation is unique and it’s none of our business to make a choice that will change this woman’s life.
Waitwaitwait, where did the “irresponsible woman” part come from? What if the woman was raped or drugged? Should one night of poor judgement when someone is underage change their life? Should someone be denied- well, have a lower chance of getting- a job and a good career because they made one mistake? What if they were using birth control and it failed somehow?
I’ll agree that it’s a bad idea to have underage sex, get drunk, or go otherwise crazy. And I don’t think abortion is a brilliant, wonderful thing by any means- but I approve of it, because at the moment, there is no third option. You either have the baby and it changes the course of your life forever (keep in mind I’m arguing the underage-mother aspect here), making it hard for you to go to college or get a job- or you have an abortion and suffer the psychological consequences, but have a better chance of your life getting back on track.
And what about the family position? What if you get pregnant and your family would ostracize you if you had a child out of wedlock? What if you had to protect yourself from abuse- by your husband, parents, etc?
Honestly? Women suffer more if they get an abortion. Having a baby pulled out of you piece by piece is a disgusting, horrifying and traumatic experience, and much more daunting than carrying and delivering a child. There are countless accounts of women who have had abortions and are now emotionally scarred and depressed, as well as physically damaged, by what they have done and what has happened to their innocent, unborn child. I haven’t heard of any such woman has been thus scarred by carrying out a healthy pregnancy (not including cases of rape, in which they would be mentally disrupted for life anyway).
I’m pro choice, not for forcing them to get abortions. If they choose to abort and find it unpleasant, their problem. If they choose to have the baby and find that unpleasant, also their problem. It’s about giving them the right to choose what happens to their own body.
I never said anything about forcing someone to get an abortion. Forced or not, it’s still traumatic. I feel like without an abortion, a woman IS making the better choice for what happens to her own body.
I find it really hard to believe that anyone could walk away from an abortion without consequence and happily get on with their life.
I find it really hard to believe that someone could just become pregnant accidentally, carry the baby for nine months, go through childbirth and then just give the baby up for adoption without consequence and happily get on with their life.
But that’s not my point: for me, it’s about the fact that the mother has the freedom to make the choice she feels is right.
That’s not actually true. Some women are traumatized by abortions; some women aren’t. There are also countless accounts of women who had abortions and now have happily gotten on with their lives. Legal abortions are much less likely to leave someone damaged than illegal, also, since they’re being performed by trained medical professionals. Possible repercussions of pregnancy: post-partum depression / psychosis. Death. Eclampsia. Uterine rupture. Gestational diabetes. Deep vein thrombosis. Until the last hundred years or so, pregnancy was the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 15 and 40.
Do some women manage to go through pregnancy without difficulty, multiple times? Yes. Do some women have abortions without negative effects? Also yes.
That’s up for debate, seeing as I don’t think many of us have delivered children. But there are health risks associated with pregnancy, as well. Depression from hormonal imbalances, or after giving birth. I don’t think someone who gave birth would be necessarily less physically, or mentally, damaged than someone who had an abortion.
No one should be forced to have an abortion. I find the idea abhorrent. But no one should be forced to have a child either, especially women who are for any reason unable to support one. Should someone be forced to have the child of a rapist?
We’ve seen what happens when abortion is illegal. Women get illegal abortions, and those are dangerous.
I read an article in Marie Claire about a woman whose fetus was seriously retarded and deformed and would most likely have died in the womb or been miscarried. If it was born, it would have lived only a few days. She got an abortion, which I think is the right decision. Think of how painful it would be if the baby died inside the womb instead of miscarrying, and then had to be delivered by the woman. Think of carrying a dead baby around inside of you.
That makes sense. I mean, if a perfectly healthy baby is there, who could be the one to cure cancer, and you get an I abortion…
It seems sort of selfish, if you have the financial means and the ability to support and/or properly dispose of the baby after it’s born. However, I don’t want to speak for pregnant women, never having been in that situation.
We could all be the one to “cure cancer”, what makes a certain baby more likely than another?
that argument is usually presented as “What if Beethoven’s mother had had an abortion.” I think the correct response, of course, would be “What if Hitler’s mother had had an abortion?”
(Godwin’s law! Whoo!)
also, this is just a quibble but cancer isn’t a single disease, and probably does not have a single cure either..
“What if Beethoven’s mother has joined a convent?” also works. Personally, I agree with vanillabean. I don’t approve of abortions in general, but sometimes they’re necessary. We need to work on them not being necessary. After that… It’s not something I would ever do, or approve of, but I can understand why other people would, so I won’t object. Different people have different moral systems. So I don’t think there should be a law against it or anything. It’s like… eating meat. I think oobatooba compared them earlier. The fact is, people make their decisions about these things because they have different ideas about how the world works, and there’s no way to prove what’s right, so there I don’t think there could ever be a way to convince anyone to change their opinion on it–nor is there any point in situations where you’ve no more reason for your belief than they do (of course, in those situations, you should really question your idea to make sure it’s most likely true, and you’re not just jumping to conclusions, but that’s another story…), which are common. And yes, I know there are many people who believe that abortions are worse than eating meat or vice versa, but the way I personally feel about them is pretty much the same.
So yeah. I suppose I’m pro-choice. That’s interesting. I don’t think I really knew my opinion on the subject until I tried writing it down. I love it when that happens.
On a somewhat related note, has anyone read Unwind by Neil Shusterman? It gives a very interesting look at the topic without taking a position either way, unless you count ‘This argument is potentially dangerous.’
Urghhh, Unwind. Yeah, I read it a while ago. Talk about nightmare fuel. For people who haven’t read it, it takes place in the future where abortion has been banned, but before their eighteenth(? it’s been a while, I’m going from memory) birthday, unwanted children can be “unwound”, and their various body parts are used for transplants, limb replacements, etcetera. At one point we get a firsthand account of a child being unwound, and it is terrifying.
Well, yes, there is that…
This is only sort of relevant, but today after the AP Bio test my friends and I were hanging out with this other girl from our class. She was telling us about this list that her friends have compiled of all the girls from our school that they know of who are or who have been pregnant. Out of my school of maybe 900 people, there were probably 8 or so girls who were definitely known to been pregnant within the last year or so. One of those girls has almost certainly been pregnant more than once. I believe that every single one of them aborted the pregnancy.
I don’t blame these girls for not wanting a baby to change their plans for the rest of their lives. But the point is, even though they’ve been educated about abstinence and using protection for their entire lives just like I have, they’re still choosing to have risky, unprotected sex. And I’m sure they’re not the only ones. Maybe I’m just being pessimistic, but if they didn’t get the point about abstinence and/or protection and/or birth control under the current system, would any other changes short of requiring it convince them to be safer?
Just popping in to say that even if someone has been educated and uses protection, pretty much any kind of birth control, barring getting your tubes tied or a vasectomy, can fail and you can have an unintended pregnancy. It’s true that most of the time they won’t, and some options are nearly 100% effective (IUDs, for example), but there are exceptions.
Condoms, which I think are probably the most commonly used birth control (especially with younger couples who may not be able to afford pills or other methods) can slip or break even when used properly.
Obviously, doubling up methods is a very smart thing to do, but people, especially kids, don’t always do it due to cost or being afraid to ask their parents for the supplies they need, due to the lingering social taboos that surround people, especially young people, who are sexually active without having the means or desire to raise a child.
(Oh, and a P.S.– I saw a shirt one time that I thought was absolutely brilliant; it said “Abstinence: 99% effective” with a picture of Mary holding the baby Jesus. My apologies if it’s offensive to some, but I found it highly amusing.)
My opinion: I’m pro-choice, but I believe that we should be doing all that we can to make sure that people aren’t put into a situation where they have to make the choice. If people are put in that situation (If they are raped, or birth control doesn’t work) then they should be able to choose to have an abortion. There are physical and psychological risks involved with both abortions and having a baby, and it should ultimately be the choice of the woman. Children should not be used as a “punishment” for being irresponsible, since often it isn’t the woman’s fault that she got pregnant, and even if it is, a child should never be used as a punishment. I’m not saying that irresponsibility should go unpunished if that is indeed the case, since having to go through an abortion seems like punishment enough to me, and when it isn’t the woman’s fault, we should make it as easy as possible for her to choose an abortion if that is what she chooses, and the choice should be available.
I don’t feel that abortion is murder for the reasons that I previously stated on the rants and plaints thread before it was taken over here. I don’t agree with the decision that when an egg meets a sperm the zygote is immediately human.
I don’t think many people on here have ever had a pregnancy scare, and so can’t really understand how harrowing it is. When I see comments about abortion being a safety catch for “irresponsible women” it feels like a slap in the face. Why don’t people ever talk about irresponsible men, or at least irresponsible couples? To put the “blame” of a pregnancy entirely on the woman is wrong.
Abortion is in a distinctly grey area of morality, but I believe that it should be an individual choice, which means it should be legal. Legalizing something doesn’t mean that it will suddenly run rampant, but it will ensure that a procedure is available and safe for those who need it. Legalizing it doesn’t mean that if you’re pro-life you must have an abortion, it means that those who don’t share your views aren’t put at risk because they’re forced to agree with you or break the law. Being pro-choice doesn’t mean having a safety latch for your irresponsibility, it means being able to take responsibility for your actions in whatever way you see is best suited to your situation.
I didn’t really have a solid opinion on the matter until a few months ago when Planned Parenthood came under attack. You see, that happened at nearly the exact same time that I became sexually active. Even though both myself and my partner were extremely careful, we knew the possible repercussions of our actions. Thinking that an institution who’s purpose was to take care of people like me was coming under attack was terribly upsetting and made me feel under attack. Even if I never needed their services, it was very comforting to know that there was a place I could go without fear of being judged or turned away.
I’ve never had a real pregnancy scare, but, being prone to paranoia, I’ve imagined a few for myself and gotten quite worked up over them. Just wondering whether you’re pregnant is an extremely scary and isolating thing, and enough punishment by far to strike the fear of God into one’s soul. Not that pregnancy is a bad thing, but worrying about having one at the wrong time is harrowing. I can only imagine that choosing to have an abortion is equally, if not far more, difficult.
While I admit that there are probably lots of people who do see abortion as a safety net that means they can do whatever they wish, I ask that when discussing these sorts of things you try to be less judgmental and make a better attempt at understanding the motivations of others.
(Please do not try to guess who I am, I’ve remained anonymous for a reason.)
I agree with all of this, especially “Legalizing something doesn’t mean that it will suddenly run rampant, but it will ensure that a procedure is available and safe for those who need it. Legalizing it doesn’t mean that if you’re pro-life you must have an abortion, it means that those who don’t share your views aren’t put at risk because they’re forced to agree with you or break the law”
I don’t see banning abortion as realistic, to tell the truth. How are women who are found to have had illegal procedures– and believe me, there will be many — to be punished? Will you fine them? Will you try them for murder? Imprison them as you would imprison any other criminal– and what is the cost to the public for that? What if she has other children, now motherless or without resources? Will you have her weigh these risks? Either undergo a risky and illegal procedure of risk going under completely? am i obligated to report people i think are getting abortion? do i become an accomplice if i don’t? because if it gets down to it i have no problem telling you that if a friend comes to me and says she needs my help to get an abortion, i have no problem telling you that i am going to help her. yes i will talk to her, i will turn the situation every which way looking for another solution. i am not a lover of abortion, i would very much prefer that it never happened. but it does. and i believe that in this pluralistic society the views of some should not be the law for all.
I want concrete answers to these questions, not “well it depends” or “that’s not the point”. That is the point. Banning something doesn’t make it go away. The problem to be solved REMAINS sex education that doesn’t intimidate) (ie “you will get pregnant….AND DIE”) but lays out the facts and points one toward the proper resources.
Slippery slope, dearie. Careful.
i am open to refutation of my claims if you would like to offer examples.
I’m purely in the metadiscussion here.
aight, i will watch my arguments but my main point remains the same
I don’t care about your main point, just keep an eye on your fallacies. Proper logic wins arguments.
A general question to the people debating this topic. (Keep in mind that any questions or arguments you direct at me will not be responded to in any manner.)
What is a human? That is to say, what are the requirements or requisites to be called a human being?
This is what the debate about abortion boils down to in the end.
Through basic biology, I’d say that a fetus is made up of human cells but isn’t a full human being yet; it is a human being when it is born and begins its extra-womb life. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to kill it if you don’t have a really good reason. I won’t list really good reasons here, but if a woman simply doesn’t want to take care of a child then I believe it’s her responsibility to give birth and then give it away responsibly. I realize this is a broad generalization, so please don’t start listing all the sub-possibilities.
But what do you think about stem cell research? I think it’s a creepy thought – using human embryos for research. But if the embryos were just sitting there unused, then what’s the point of that? If an embryo is never going to be used then it shouldn’t be frozen somewhere waiting to become a person. It should be used in research that could potentially save a lot of lives. That’s what I think, anyway.
I think most everyone will agree that something with human DNA is a human, but in the abortion discussion people are more focused on whether the fetus is a person. Personally I believe that a fetus is a person at the moment of conception because it’s been given a soul, but I know others don’t share my views.
Is it OK to kill a human but not a person? When does a fetus become a person? More questions for discussion!
Bye!
Mm. I would be inclined to agree with you, but in many situations, I don’t think the child would often be at all happy in this world, so I don’t think it’s a crime. In some cases, I think it is, but not always, and it would be too complicated to outlaw it. Anyway, the fact is, since different people have different opinions, I don’t think it’s right to ban it. I think it’s a personal choice. Let’s look at the anaolgy I used before. No-one knows whether or not animals have souls. You could say that eating meat is immoral if you believe they do, but your argument would be meaningless because other people might have valid reasons to disagree with you. So someone thinks meat is murder, they generally stop eating it, which is exactly what they should do because if you believe something to be immoral, you shouldn’t do it, but it isn’t at all reasonable to try to convince others to share their opinion, because they believe just as strongly that it isn’t wrong for other reasons, and regardless of the effect of the action, they do not technically commit a sin regardless of whose view is correct, if either of them is. Each person has a right to choose, because debating about it is completely meaningless. That’s just the way it is. I think most people recognize that, and even the most radical vegetarians have never tried to outlaw eating meat. I think of abortion the same way. On one hand, it would be horrible if innocent people are being killed without the killer even knowing it, but on the other, abortion, like eating meat, is occasionally absolutely necessary. In that case, if the person in question believes that animals or fetuses lack souls–or that they do but have other perfectly valid reasons, such as the fact that their baby would be miserable if allowed to live–then I don’t see any reason why that person shouldn’t.
Personally, I don’t believe in abortion or eating meat, but I’m pro-choice for both. Yes, some people–especialy when it comes to abortions–are just selfish, but others are intelligent enough to think for themselves and figure out their opinion and decide that these things are not wrong, and I believe it is very wrong to force those people to adopt your beliefs.
I believe a fetus is human (I’m not talking about souls here, mind you. I don’t know/believe much about them) at the moment it is sentient. Now. given the various theories, debunked experiments, bunked (ought to be a word) experiments, rumors, and the difficulty of performing experiments on creatures that are contained within a womb, that could be a range of anywhere between a few weeks to at birth. So I’m not going to set a time or requirement for consideration as human, and shall simply say that I think women should be permitted to have abortions, without a lot of red tape, and without having to notify their husbands- a rule I consider ridiculous.
What do you mean by “sentient”?
This is going to start a new debate in itself, but Piggy, why do you feel the need to question people if “any questions or arguments [we] direct at [you] will not be responded to in any manner”? Are you just trying to stir the pot without assuming any role in the debate, or are you honestly interested in what people have to say? We want to know what you think about these topics too.
I want to encourage logical thought, and I’m curious to see what people think of these issues. What I think is now irrelevant. I thank you for accusing me of–well, I’m not exactly sure what.
I’d just like to hear your opinions on things. If you’re going to question, you should be prepared to be questioned yourself. What do you think a sentient being is?
I’ve expressed my views before. Feel free to ignore my questions if you wish.
While it may not be necessary for there to be a law requiring women to tell the father of their baby when they get an abortion, I’d say that in most cases it’s common sense to do so. Slightly less than half of everything the baby is is thanks to its father, and I think that men have a right to know if they are fathers or potential fathers. Conceiving a child is an important event, and whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is usually a decision that a couple should make together.
It’s funny because there’s a running joke among my friends that I’m a fetus (because I’m younger than everyone else, I guess). So your opening made me laugh.
…Sorry, I just had to say it.
Provided that the couple can make a decision together without resorting to violence. In cases where the woman could be abused about her choice, she should be able to make it alone, without needing to worry that her husband would find out and react violently. If a couple can make a decision together, that is optimal, but there should be no law forcing women to ask their husbands. People should be able to get an abortion as discreetly as possible.
On the larger question of humanity and sentience, I don’t want to sound like I don’t value human life, but because I don’t believe in souls and I’m not particularly religious, I don’t feel that human life is so much more valuable than other life, and that simply being “Human”, which is still a very poorly defined concept, makes a fetuses life so much more valuable than the life of any other animal. I can’t say for sure what the definition of sentience is, but It seems to me that if a fetus qualifies as sentient, a pig, which is significantly smarter than a fetus, is also sentient. We kill pigs all the time, and don’t call it murder, but when a woman makes a choice to abort a pregnancy and save her career, her education and possibly her life, everyone cries murder. it seems to me that the only distinction between these two cases is the possible existence of a “soul” which sets humans apart from animals. Even accepting the premises that a fetus is human, which I don’t entirely agree with, I see no reason that a fetus is more deserving of life than any animal that we kill without calling it murder.
On the other hand, we can’t eat human fetuses.
Most societies frown on cannibalism.
I would say that a fetus has more value than a pig’s life because it has the potential to become a human, in this case a human being a being who has a sense of self and purpose besides survival and instinct. Mind you, I’m not saying that is what a human is, and I’m still not sure whether some animals have something besides a survival instinct, but I think the potential to become sentient outways the life of another animal.
*outweighs
Oops
I’m honestly just curious here. Why is it that you assume that most animals probably go by instinct alone and nothing else? I know you’re not sure about it, but I’ve never understood at all, so I think this is a good opportunity to ask.
(This may not be relevant to the current discussion, but what exactly is instinct, anyway? What does it mean to call behavior “inatinctive,” except that you don’t understand it?)
Personally, I think that onstinct is something someone usually has control over but is born knowing how to do without needing to think about it. From the moment a person or animal is born, it has the instinct to eat, so babies cry when they’re hungry. We aren’t born knowing what is edible, though, so we have to learn that by observation. It gets more complicated with things like migration patterns. In monarch butterflies, the animals are born knowing where to go, which we know because most only get to migrate once (correct? If I’m wrong, I might have to change my mind, but it doesn’t seem likely…). I call that instinct, but I also call that a miracle because it’s hard to see how they can keep all that information in their brain. But with animals thatlearn where to migrate by watching others and then remember it for the rest of their lives–because someone has to, or they’d all be lost–I call that learned behavior and amazing, superhuman memory. I don’t understand it, but I definitely don’t think it’s instinct.
Humans have instincts, too, like the instinct to eat when hungry, but maybe not as many because they don’t need as many. We’re intelligent and very well-off at the moment.
I understand hunger, or at least I think I do, but I still consider it an instinct. I don’t understand how squirrels remember where they buried all their nuts, but I don’t call that instinct; I call that outstanding memory. I don’t think my definition of ‘instinct’ has anything to do with that.
I’ve noticed that if behavior is driven by emotion–wanting to protect young, for example–it’s usually called instinct in animals but not in humans. I don’t agree with that. I do think that sometimes it’s instinct and sometimes it isn’t, but I don’t agree with that boundary point at all. I’m not sure where exactly to draw the line, though. I think that emotional instinct would be acting rashly in self-interest without a plan or any feelings of guilt (yes, repressed ones count), and emotional intelligent choice is thinking it out beforehand and/or self-sacrifice (preferably for someone unrelated to you, because maternal instinct is an instinct…).
When I say ‘thinking it out beforehand,’ I mean ‘at all.’ If you go with one plan, get a bad feeling about it, see it isn’t working, and try something else, I call that intelligent choice. There was a man once named Elliot whose brain was damaged so that he could still think very well and was very intelligent, but he felt almost no emotion. He was terrible at decision-making because he didn’t feel better about one thing than another. He spent hours trying to figure out when to go to the doctors office, etc. He was intelligent, but he had trouble making intelligent choices. Some very instinctual animals animals might be the same way, actually, though that wasn’t my point. You never know.
I think some bits of animal communication are instinctual, and some are intelligent. For example, a dog wagging ens tail is instinctual, like laughter, because they do it as puppies without having to watch their mother (as far as I know), but prairie dog communication, which is almost a fully-fledged language if it isn’t already (It has nouns and verbs and adjectives and productivity and everything, honestly.), is learned. Etc.
I completely don’t know why I assume that. I mean, one of the key differences between a squirrel and a human is that a human often ignores pressing instincts and urges that an animal would just do. I honestly don’t know if animals ignore their instincts. Since I don’t think they can ignore there instincts, my assumption would be that they are what guide them.
But then again, I can’t explain why an animal might seem intelligent to us. I once saw a squirrel sit in front of my families birdfeeder for a while, then suddenly leap onto it, naw at the rope that connected it to the tree, and then fall with it for easy seed. It seems like a squirrel wouldn’t know that the benefits of getting the seed outweighed the risks of falling, so that might seem intelligent, and beyond instinct. I just don’t know. (We have a chain now, by the way)
I do think that animals are more guided by instinct than we are, because they need to be. I think they sometimes ignore their instincts–they have done things that imply it–but not as often as we do.
A squirrel might have learned about the risk of falling. They do a lot of tree-climbing, and it seems like they’d realize it eventually. Then again, I don’t know how much what you learn can impact instinct. Hm.
Either way, there have been situations that don’t seem like they can really be solved that way–for example, a raven who had never seen wire before and had no way of knowing its ductility twisted it into a tool for getting food out of a bottle. If that were instinctual, other birds could do the same, and most can’t. It certainly seems like some have more reasoning skills than others, and that would imply that their reasoning skill do exist–at least in some species; I’m not claiming that, say, beetles have reason and logical thought. I definitely don’t believe that. But from what I’ve seen and read about animmal behavior, it seems most likely that very many of them aren’t only guided by instinct. I might be biased since I thought that to begin with even when I was little and had no evidence, though.
Inatinctive?
I think he meant instinctive.
Instinct: I tend to think of it as a set of innate behaviors in an animal, that do not have to be learned. For instance, if you take some species of songbird egg away from their nests before they hatch, and raise them without ever exposing them to birds of their own species, they will still have the same song pattern.
Now, there are also plenty of birds that have to learn the song pattern of their species at a young age, or they won’t be able to do it correctly and will be unable to attract mates.
There’s a lot of both instinct and learned behaviors in nature. Humans do have instincts as well, but we sometimes go the extra step and suppress them, which can result from either learning or reasoning.
As Biblio pointed out, there are also animals that can reason. Ravens, chimpanzees, both can be presented with a novel situation and be able to devise some new response–through more than just trial-and-error, even.
Can anyone explain to me why not taxing millionaires and things like that help the economy and reduce the deficit?
The theory is, roughly, that the more money rich people have, the more (1) servants they can hire, (2) businesses they can invest in, and (3) stuff they can buy. The servants get jobs and pay income taxes on their wages; the businesses can use the money to hire more employees, who also pay income taxes; the rich people pay sales taxes on the things they buy, and the businesses that make and sell those things make profits. Result: more jobs and more economic activity, and (in an ideal world) more total taxes collected and lower budget deficits.
Unfortunately, things rarely work out so smoothly in real life.
The theory is that allowing millionaires to keep high percentages of their income means that they will reinvest that money in the economy, accelerating growth and creating jobs and benefiting us all in the long run.
Well, yes, if you insist on sounding grown-up about it.
Thanks to both of you. Though I don’t think I buy it.
Yeah, I always thought that was ridiculous. I could be all diplomatic and say the theory is that the rich will spend their money and stimulate the economy, but frankly, it’s the rich people making these laws.
As for the theory behind how paying down the national debt will revive the economy — well, there isn’t one. Paying off the debt takes money out of circulation. It’s necessary in the long run, but most economists say the best time to do it is during boom times, when the economy is strong enough to handle it. Unfortunately, people didn’t do it during the last few booms, so we’re facing austerity now, under pretty much the worst possible conditions.
All, the things other people said, and a friend of mine also put it to me this way:
If we tax the rich people a lot, they move to Costa Rica and avoid paying the taxes, because they have enough money to do so. If we tax middle class, they have enough money to pay but not enough to move.
I know it’s not totally a powerful argument, but there is a fair point behind it.
I’m glad this thread is getting visited again, because I read something that outraged me in the paper this morning. Warning: possibly incoherent rant ahead.
So, the story is that under the health care law the Obama administration has to “draw up a list of preventive services for women that all new health plans must cover without deductibles or copayments.” So an advisory panel recommended that birth control, HIV tests, breast pump rentals, etc. be included in this. Which I think is a wonderful idea. What’s making me angry is the opposition: Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center For Human Dignity in the Family Research Council, says, that Americans who are religiously opposed to birth control “should not be forced to have to pay into insurance plans that violate their consciences…Their conscience rights should be protected.” First of all, I think that religious opposition to birth control is utterly ridiculous. Birth control can really help people live their lives the way they’d like. This isn’t the nineteenth century. Also, why should a small group of religiously minded tax-payers be allowed to deny funding to something that gives women reproductive rights? (Does available birth control count as reproductive rights?) Many people have to pay taxes that violate their consciences by funding the military/Afghanistan war. And they pay. I also find this sort of unwillingness to provide birth control inherently sexist, by denying women the right to choose whether she has a baby or not, if she doesn’t abstain from sex. The plan should be taken as is, and religiously minded Americans should still have to pay. We all have to contribute. Many people rely on birth control and no one should have it taken away.
This post was probably unnecessary. I’m going to post it anyway.
I agree with you. That’s a ridiculous argument.
I’m guessing/hoping that no one will take it as a valid argument and the recommendations will get added to the healthcare thingamajig anyway.
It’s even more ridiculous because these things will prevent abortions, and I’m going to assume that if anyone thinks these things are wrong, surely they’ll be against abortion, too?Whether or not either of them is bad, it seems rather obvious that abortion is worse. So even if all those things are evil–and I don’t believe they are; I’m speaking hypothetically–when it’s obvious that someone is going to do something evil, and there are 2 options, and you can influence which they do but not whether they do either, it is your responsibility to get them to choose the lesser of 2 evils. Personally, though, I agree with you that it isn’t an evil at all.
So, by the time I finish this, someone might already have posted something about this, but I’ll go for it anyway.
I’m sure some of you watched the President’s and Speakers speeches, and I’d like to see some clarification and/or opinions.
Basically what I’m hearing on President Obama’s side is that with his plan, we will cut some spending but also put more taxes on the rich because they can afford it, and therefore not have to cut even more spending. He says that the Speaker’s plan will cut things like Medicare and other important things and be a drain on the middle class.
Speaker Bainer, from what I understood, says that President Obama’s plan will put a drain on the economy by taking money out of it that will be spent by the government instead, because the rich people will not be able to afford as many jobs. He wants all tax cuts, and he is slandering the health care bill and the stimulus as wastes of money.
Did I miss anything? I don’t know many specifics or the politics of it, but I’m inclined to agree the the Speaker’s plan, as taking money out of the spending will affect American life, but hopefully we can find ways to take it out of less important things like war budgets (like air conditioning
) and put it into paying off debt. However, I will probably be easily convinced otherwise, as I’m mostly on the fence anyway.
Thoughts?
((I think it’s Boehner, but I might be wrong))
So, as I understand it, the big argument now is about raising the debt limit, and the two main budget proposals now are the one by the Gang of Six (supported by President Obama) and the one by the Republicans. The first of the two would basically mean big spending cuts in defense and some in entitlement health care, and it would reduce the deficit gradually over about a decade.
The second proposal is the Republican-led one which Speaker Boehner supports, which would mean big cuts across the board, but would mostly spare Medicare, Social Security, and defense. The thing is that this doesn’t actually raise the debt limit, because part of the bill is that before the debt limit could be raised, Congress would have to pass a balanced budget amendment to the constitution.
The thing is, the rich that would be affected by the taxes make up approx. 2% of the population, while the middle class which would be drained by Bohener’s plan makes up a much larger percentage (Don’t know the exact percentage) of the population. Also, the tax is on imcome, (I believe) not on the money people spend in their businesses (unless those are the same.
). Most of the time, the money that will being taxed isn’t doing anything- it’s sitting around in a bank vault, accumulating interest. It’s not stimulating the economy, there’s an argument to be made that it is actually hurting it.
Somewhat related to the current debate:
The results of the first partial audit of the Federal Reserve were released a few days ago. The major finding? The Fed gave out 16 trillion dollars in secret bailouts to banks and corporations around the world. That’s $16,000,000,000,000. That’s 2 trillion more than our GDP and 12.5 trillion more than our deficit. It was “loaned” out at 0% interest and virtually none of it has been paid back or (I think we can safely presume) will be paid back. This is four and a half times more money than the budget that Congress is hotly debating. And it was all decided by a small group of people who were not elected and do not answer to the citizens of the United States.
The Fed needs to be abolished. There are relatively few political beliefs which I hold as incontrovertible, but this is one of them.
Er, that should be 14.5 trillion more than the deficit. I think I was comparing the deficit to the GDP instead of the bailouts. Curse my multitasking.
And the government was set up in a way that’s supposed to keep any one branch from abusing its power. Checks and balances, and all that? Hurm.
But the Fed isn’t part of the government. It’s a separate entity that is not in any way democratic or republican.
Hurm again. (I feel like I should stop posting on this thread late at night. I’m rarely very coherent)
I did a bit of research. According to their website, the Board of Governors are nominated by the president. I’m not sure how that works as opposed to elected positions, but if they have that much power and aren’t elected by the people I’m going to agree with you. Regardless of the president’s judgement, that gives me a very bad feeling.
The President nominates them, and Congress confirms them. That’s true of a lot of high-level government jobs, including ambassadors, heads of agencies, and Supreme Court justices. Should they all be elected?
This is true. And honestly, I’m not sure about that, though it’s an interesting thought.
Because it made loans to corporations, because it deals in large numbers, or because good things would happen if it went away?
Because they’re not held accountable for their actions.
Has anyone heard of the Extinction Rider? I’m terrified. I sent a letter to someone about it (I forget exactly who, some representative I think) asking en to support the amendment that will prevent it, but I haven’t yet received a reply. Wildlife conservation is one of the things, perhaps the thing, that I am most passionate about and care about the most, and if this isn’t stopped, I will be devastated. I honestly don’t understand how anyone could have proposed it in the first place.
Could you explain what this is and what is happening? Thanks.
SO I’M NO EXPERT but I think I can give you an explanation. A rider is an unrelated bit of legislation attached to a larger bit of legislation. For example we could propose The Bald Eagle Freedom Liberty Act of 2011, which might be a mostly harmless bill that upholds 1st Amendment rights online. It’s going to pass- it’s non-controversial and 100% American. If opponents want to kill it, they could add a rider, i.e. line 608 states that “A kitten will be killed every day this law is enforced.” Nobody is going to vote for that bill! Riders can be used to sink legislation, or to slip in unpleasant compromises, in the case that the bill can’t fail.
Did that make sense?
In the past, there have been “extinction” riders on bills to limit the amount of funding that US Fish & Wildlife get to list species as threatened, and act accordingly. Why? Republicans probably want to reduce federal spending and cut back big government. I’m personally with Biblio in that it seems like a “I’ve got my fingers in my ears can’t hear you lalala” answer to a serious problem.
Hrrrrrrrmmmmmggggghhmmmmmrrrrrrrhhhhwwwwrrrrr. UGGGGGGGHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNMMMMMMMRRRRRRR. yhuhynbhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgtybfvyhnbjugfvvvhnjnbnbnbnmnmnbbvfvblgfknbzdl/;fkvb x.nmj.
I have no idea what side I am on when it comes to politics. I have no idea what’s going on and I don’t want to know.
I am neither rightwing nor leftwing. I have officially declared myself tailfeathers. (’cause of the whole bird thing…)
We did an exercise yesterday in my Civics class where one wall of the classroom was “Liberal”, the opposite was “Conservative”, and you could stand anywhere on the spectrum in response to the teacher reading the standard liberal and conservative positions on particular issues. Some of the issues were gun control, the death penalty, affirmative action, gay marriage, climate change, health care, abortion, and stem-cell research.
Another guy and I are generally considered the most intelligent/well-informed people in that class. This guy, who is really smart, who apparently has a lot of experience in debate, who is second-in-command at Knowledge Bowl after the teacher, leant against the extreme “Conservative” wall the entire time. I was always somewhere in the “Liberal” half of the room or exactly in the middle.
It’s a little strange to me that we can both be smart and knowledgeable and still come up with completely different opinions.
Please note that I’m not saying at all that there aren’t smart people with very divergent opinions. If some of you on MuseBlog have taught me anything, it’s that. I can often understand the arguments for the other side, and sometimes I even think they have merit. This is just one of the first times I’ve ever been faced with somebody who shares my interest in politics and current events and can keep up with me in a discussion about them, and he happens to be someone who thinks gay people should never be allowed to marry each other. (Since he was wearing a Jesus shirt that day, one guy who supported gay marriage called across the room, “[name], God loves all His children!”. He smiled and shook his head.) He argues for for extreme conservative positions all the time. His cell phone background is the Confederate flag, he has a full-sized version hanging at home, and his hero that he picked for the first week of class was Robert E. Lee.
Forgive me for saying this so bluntly, but how can somebody who is so smart seem so wrong, or at least so different? It’s a weird experience.
Parental approval. Desire to make an impression. Rebellion against coercive niceness. Invocation of an idealized past to ward off fear of an unknown, incomprehensible, uncontrollable future. I can think of any number of things that would motivate a young man to hang a Confederate flag in his room. In this case, I’d guess that nostalgia for slavery is not one of them — and that he hasn’t thought about slavery very hard.
Trying to understand people who disagree with you is good exercise for the imagination.
The thing about opinions is they’re not dictated solely by intelligence. Thinking does play a role, but much more important is the evidence one is presented with as they go through life. With the evidence he has been given, his opinion is the most logical conclusion. If you had been given the same evidence and the same tools, you’d have a Confederate flag hanging on your wall too.
That’s true, and a good way of putting it. I guess, then, the strange feelings I have come from imagining the sort of evidence he’s been presented with in life that would lead him to those opinions.
I’ve thought about the subject of Meow’s post myself, and you make a good point, Piggy. That’s something that I’ll try to keep in the front of my mind.
Has anyone here thought the same thing about someone with extremely liberal views?
I don’t know about on MuseBlog–I think most of us are liberal, although there are cerainly exceptions, which is fine–but I’m sure it works the other way as well. Meow’s post was actually very enlightening to me because I think I understand how people feel about me now, but in my case, it has nothing to do with politics. It’s… complicated… But believe me, it’s not just something about conservatives that’s intrinsically confusing; it’s our reaction to such major… well… The last bit of her post is key, although it’s not always intelligence that highlights differences, too.
I’m economically conservative, but liberal in the sense that I support gay marriage, etc. (but I also don’t support affirmative action). So it really depends on the social issue. Fiscally, though, I’m conservative.
So, libertarian-ish?
Hmm, I guess maybe, ish. I looked up the Libertarian Party (US) and they have some policies I don’t agree with, though. I suppose my closest affiliation would be with the Conservative Party in the UK, though. Which is more relevant since I’m actually British. That doesn’t mean to say I support everything they do, though.
I don’t support affirmative action, either; that’s one of the very few areas in which I’m conservative. I still consider myself quite liberal on the whole, though, because affirmative action’s the exception for me, not the rule. In the vast majority of areas, I’m either liberal or don’t agree with what most liberals or conservatives are saying. I think everyone here supports gay marriage, though; usually, there’s at least one person on each side of a debate, but not for this issue.
It’s odd, because here in the liberal-est part of the Bay Area (I don’t live in Berkeley, but I live in a radius close enough to get a lot of the force of the Berkeley-ness), pretty much anyone right of center can be viewed like you view that kid. My mom has been known to say, multiple times, ridiculous things like “It’s the Republican’s fault that the people I like don’t win American Idol.” Anyone actually identifying as Republican is basically shunned.
Because of that, I feel like a big part of becoming mature and independent in my part of the Bay Area is learning to accept conservative views. A combination of talking to you guys and talking with my moderate friend (talking, not debating) has definitely made me more economically conservative, I think. Which isn’t saying much, since I regularly encounter people who are in fact actual Communists, but it’s saying something.
It’s a really important skill to be able to understand and argue both sides of a debate and still agree with only one of them. I could probably argue pro-slavery, though I would definitely lose, and though I am definitely not in favor of slavery.
The annoying thing about being able to do this is that I end up playing devil’s advocate in a lot of arguments. We had one of the aforementioned actual Communists being a substitute teacher at Jew School once, and I ended up arguing the most conservative position in the room just to provide some balance. (And saying things like “actually, I’m pretty sure there was a fair amount of starvation in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China”, which is usually something I don’t have to work to convince people of.)
Anyone who thinks that “There was a fair amount of starvation in Stalinist Russia” is a “conservative position” rather than historical fact is probably as deluded as people hanging Confederate flags in their bedrooms, just in the opposite direction.
I love playing devil’s advocate. It just goes to show that you can come up with real or real-sounding evidence to support any position. For example, In one of my classes at camp, we were practicing public speaking by making three-minute persuasive speeches about a chosen topic. My group finished early, so a few of us had about a minute to think up a one-minute speech in rebuttal to somebody else’s speech. 60 seconds later, I ended up arguing “why the American eagle is a better national animal than the Canadian beaver”.
Anyway, I have a hard time forming opinions on some issues because I can very easily see both sides. The way my mind works, it’s always looking for contrary evidence, counterexamples, and exceptions. This has bothered my Civics teacher on at least one occasion, when I was up in front of the class struggling to decide whether “Machiavelli’s theory” belonged on the “dictatorship” side or the “democracy” side of the whiteboard. But in general, I think it’s a good thing.
I agree with you, Cat’s Eye, that blaming any party for what happens on American Idol is absurd.
“Both sides.” “Both sides.” *tears hair* Doesn’t ‘most any subject worth discussion have more sides than a dodecahedron?*
*to pick a shape not quite at random
We think of politics as a straight progression from liberal to conservative, but from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, politicky-woliticky stuff.
My 8th-grade history teacher drew the dichotomy in a circle. Go far enough in either direction and you wind up in the same place. Personally, at this point in timey-wimey, it’s hard for me to think of two more completely meaningless terms than “liberal” and “conservative.”
I know a lot of people who don’t fit comfortably into either party. Only a few of my acquaintances are either straight-line Republicans or straight-line Democrats.
During last election, I didn’t know who to vote for (our school did a “kids vote” ballot thing for educational purposes) because in the history books, there was always a clear right and a clear wrong. But here I didn’t know who was the right candidate to vote for since there was a mass of propoganda for and against both sides. I ended up voting for the Libertarian, since he seemed pretty neutral and it wasn’t like he was going to win anyway.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how history textbooks (at least the ones you’re likely to have encountered in secondary school) make it clear who was right and who was wrong? The people who were right were those who supported policies that led to us. The ones who were wrong supported policies that either (1) would not have led to us or (2) slowed down the processes that led to us.
It’s not so easy when you’re in the the thick of things. We don’t know whom we’re supposed to lead to, or how what we do or fail to do will get us there.
Of course, neither did the people in the history books. It’s easy to forget that, sometimes.
The messiness of being in the thick of things is exactly what I try to get across at the museum when I talk about 19th-century responses to slavery. And Agent Lightning’s comment points to one of the major reasons why I emphasize that.
I took a test to determine my affiliation at the student activities fair at Matriculation. I’m a centrist with statist leanings, apparently.
Now I need to make a politicky-woliticky detector to go ding when there’s controversy.
It can also boil an inflammatory remark at twenty paces. While it’s still inside the mouth of the pundit. Messy, that.
Wouldn’t that just ring continuously?
Started well, that sentence.
It…did get away from her, yeah.
must…stop…Blink…references…
Yikes, how could I have made such a careless slip!? You’re right, of course.
I APPROVE OF THIS COMMENT
Michele Bachmann scares me.
This.
THE EYES! THE EYES!
They look a little bit like Rasputin’s.
I find the GOP really entertaining sometimes, just in terms of pure comedy value. And then I think, one of these could be our president someday.
Entertaining, yes, but also a little scary. I don’t like how much they’re appealing to the extremes right now. A competitive general election would probably strengthen whoever becomes president, and I hear a lot of Republicans saying things that are repulsive to the center.
“Concord, New Hampshire is where the Revolutionary War started.”
Angry!Ghost!ChristaMcAuliffe: “Yeah… no.”
Okay, I’m just kind of curious what other people think. When I listen to the radio and, for example, hear about a murderer sentenced to life in prison, I just can’t believe someone would decide that. The thing is that I keep trying to conjure up a scenario for the crime in which the murderer was severely provoked, or traumatized, or emotional, or decide that the guy’s learned his lesson and will have to live with the guilt forever and that’s punishment enough, without him spending his life locked in a room.
Does anyone else consistently sympathize with the guilty? I mean, it’s not like I don’t think they should be punished, but I always think the punishments criminals are given are too severe.
If you go by the eye-for-an-eye rule, then if someone murders someone else, they are giving up the right to their own life by taking someone else’s. If you go with the more merciful (some might argue not merciful) punishment, life in prison, they at least keep their life, but in exchange they must give up their freedom. In prison, they still have a chance to give back a small portion of what they have taken away. I know it seems harsh, but try sympathizing with the dead.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” -Gandhi
Well, it’s hard to determine whether the murderer is actually hugely remorseful or if en’s just saying that. If you let the murderer loose into normal society again, how do you know whether en will really feel guilty enough to not murder again? What punishment would you suggest, then? And if you say it depends on how guilty en feels, then how would a court or judge decide that?
The law has provisions for extenuating circumstances. There are different degrees of murder; there is manslaughter (unlawful homicide without malice aforethought), voluntary and involuntary; and there is justifiable or excusable killing, which isn’t punished.
So I guess the big question here is whether any sort of killing is justifiable.
Is that a big question?
DEATH NOTE!
Sorry, but that’s an excellent manga/anime that mentions the topic. As far as I’m concerned, yes. Do you want to argue it or was that just as sort of general statement?
Robert– yes.
Bookgirl– both, I guess. I believe that killing is never justifiable and that every human has a right to life. But I was also making a general statement.
How about killing in self-defense? Or to prevent another murder? If somebody tries to kill me or (say) a child standing next to me, and I prevent it but the attacker winds up dead, should I be punished?
What if the person has (unquestionably) committed multiple murders, shows no remorse, is unlikely to ever be able to become a functioning member of society and would be a liability to imprison?
Does “a liability” mean “expensive”?
I believe I read somewhere that in the long run, lifelong imprisonment is more economically responsible than execution.
Also, Robert- in those situations I believe that the killing would be excusable. But voluntary killing- like bookgirl said- I don’t think would be.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” -Gandhi
I believe I’ve used that quote before, but it’s still my favorite when it comes to moral issues like these.
Agreed. I could have sworn I posted, actually. I said that if the prisoner absolutely must be either executed or imprisoned for life, they should have the right to choose. It doesn’t hurt anyone else for them to have that one freedom, at least, so why not give it to them?
I’m curious- what kind of situations fall under justifiable/ excusable killing?
Self-defense when there’s no alternative is the classic example.
I agree with the author of Swapping Senses in the October Muse article. In his actual book, which the article was excerpted from, he says that people have entirely the wrong attitude towards punishment. People give it in according to how blameworthy the criminal is, but we don’t think that’s the right approach. We think it should be based on the risk of recidivism and future damage to society–I wasn’t sure if it was possible to calculate that accurately, but he has good ideas on the subject. Higher risk doesn’t necessarily mean bigger punishment; it means different punishment. Some criminals have difficulty understanding the concept of rewards and punishments and negative consequences of action, to the degree that breaking rocks, for example, just doesn’t work as a deterrent.
What’s interesting is that we both came to that decision for entirely different reasons. I decided I felt that way because anything else seemed morally wrong, like more revenge than protecting society. He came up with it because he studied neuroscience and thinks it would work better than any other type of punishment–and he actually makes quite a good case for it. I recommend reading it. It’s called Incognito; there’s information on the book in the Muse issue…
I’m just going to say this, and you can completely disagree with me if you want:
I don’t actually believe in prisons, because they are just putting people with issues the we can solve in a place where we don’t have to see them, and ignore the real problems. I think that the majority of crimes fall under these categories:
1) the crime was an act of self defense, and is excusable.
2) the crime was an act of desperation (such as stealing because you don’t have enough money to buy food. I’m also including drug related crimes here, because addiction is a cause for desperation) in which case the person desperately needs help and throwing them in jail will only make them more desperate. If insted of spending money on keeping them in jail or killing them,we could use this money to help them rebuild their lives so that they wouldn’t be driven to steal or commit other crimes.
3) The crime was because of a mental illness (I believe that to kill someone for no reason would have to be caused by a mental illness. No completely sane person would kill someone if it wasn’t in self defense. I’m including serious issues with anger as a mental illness. I’m also categorizing sex offenders here.), in which case the person needs medical attention, not years locked up in a place that will likely make their mental stability a lot worse.
In all of these cases, putting people in jail is not solving any of these problems, and is not helping these people in any way. We’re basically just locking these people with real problems up so we don’t have to deal with them, instead of giving them the help that they need. We’re also harming their friends and families, and causing more of these problems from the debt that comes with jail sentences, especially if a person or their family started out in a bad situation to begin with. We aren’t solving anything or helping anyone, we’re just locking the problem away where no one has to deal with it. If we’re just putting people in jail to keep them away from society because they might be dangerous, we are admitting that we aren’t giving them help, and if we are putting them in jail to punish them or using jail as a threat to prevent crime, we are making problems worse for people who already have them. The solution is not simply removing people with problems from society, and it is definitely not killing these people rather than dealing with their problems, most of which can be fixed.
And I am entirely opposed to death sentences. To quote one of the greatest folk son writers “If a man can change then a man can live.” I understand that victims families have to go through a lot, but I do not believe in revenge, because it never ends.
I agree with most of your post. I think that all criminals must be given access to rehab and lots of it, and that prison conditions need drastic improvement so as not to increase mental instability. They’re horrible right now, and that needs to change. I don’t agree with the ‘deterrence’ argument, for the most part, because since I agree that most of the more serious crimes, like actual, senseless murder, are usually the result of mental illness, and such mental illnesses often involve failure to understand the consequences of one’s actions. This entirely defeats the point of ‘punishment,’ in my opinion; sentences such as breaking rocks are, in my opinion, morally wrong. However,I do think that some criminals need to be permanently isolated from society (aside from rehab, necessary in the case of imprisonment), which means imprisonment or death. However, now that I think about it, I don’t think court or law should decide how long someone goes to jail. I think the rehabilitater should decide when they seem ready. In that case, then, there isn’t a point in the death penalty. Hm.
I mostly agree with you too. I think that the purpose of a fair court system should be to help people with serious problems. The sentence shouldn’t be a punishment, an amount of time, It should be how long it takes for their problems to be fixed.
Punishing people still isn’t helping them understand the moral consequences of their actions. Most people with mental illnesses serious enough to kill someone have a problem understanding why their actions are wrong, not what will happen if they do kill someone. If we punish people when they commit crimes, we are not teaching them morality, we are teaching them revenge. We should be teaching people why their actions are wrong so they don’t commit crimes in the future, not teaching them about retribution.
Who do you think needs to be permanently isolated from society? For what crimes?
By the end of my post, I’d decided, actually, that yes, the amount of time someone spends in whatever they’re doing shouldn’t be predetermined; it should be improvised. So I suppose now, I think it’s useless to say whether someone needs to be permanently isolated, because we’ll find out.
Palestine’s been granted full state membership at UNESCO. The US is cutting off funding.
Is that really the most helpful reaction, America?
Politically, it’s about the only move the US could make. They can’t afford to lose Israel as an ally, so their hands are tied; in fact, their hands are legally tied as well, thanks to a law saying that the US will not fund any organization that grants the status of a recognized state to Palestine. It’s not a pretty picture for the US. If we don’t pay our dues, we’ll lose voting rights.
As for the vote itself, I think it’s a very poor move. It’s simply far too early to recognize Palestine as a state–the conflict needs to be ended first. The territory is up for grabs, the people are up for grabs–it’s like taking a cake out of the oven halfway through baking and trying to frost it. It simply cannot end well. Negotiations are going to be even more difficult to hold, and both sides are going to be more hostile. Clearly a two-state solution is going to be the only one that brings any sort of stability, but it’s absolutely not ready yet.
I understand all the reasons behind it, but thanks for the helpful summary. I know the US has to support Israel no matter what, so they can’t exactly do nothing if Palestine’s been recognised as state at UNESCO.
It just seems ironic that they’re cutting off funding to an agency that’s supposed to ‘encourage international peace and universal respect by promoting collaboration among nations.’
And I agree with you (on the Hot Topics thread? horror!) about the two-state solution; I don’t think it’s realistic that Israelis and Palestinians will ever live comfortably as one nation, and I think most people there recognise that.
On the other hand, the two sides disagree on quite a lot of things regarding borders, jurisdiction etc. and quite frankly I don’t think either side sees each other as credible enough to uphold whatever agreements they may come to, judging by past events.
So, breaking the area up into two states is the better solution, though it’s far from being ready, like what you (Piggy) said.
Hm. Someone agreeing with me. That’s a rare occurrence.
Really? Usually I’m on your side.
The Queen of Jordan made an amazing speech about the Isreali-Palestinian conflict. It’s on the Yale website or probably on YouTube.
I occasionally agree with you.
Why does the US have to “support Israel no matter what”? (this isn’t a trap or anything, I honestly want to know)
So far, what makes me cautiously support the Palestinians’ bid(s) for international recognition is that the negotiating process is too lopsided if the sides are unevenly represented in international politics. A negotiation between two recognized states seems much fairer than one where one people has all the power.
I agree. Also, I think a lot of people sent letters asking the government to support Israel or else God would curse them.
In theory, they don’t. Obviously people like me (being Jewish and all) would prefer that the US did support Israel, since not too many other countries are doing so, but the US doesn’t really have any obligations to Israel. But since Israel is the probably the only country in the Middle East that has something resembling a democracy and will never turn a blind eye to terrorist activity, I suppose that’s something worth holding on to. My best guess, however, is that there’s a big reason that isn’t being made public.
As for lopsided negotiations, the Palestinians have a lot more power than most people think, because they’re willing to involve civilians in battles, and the Israelis really don’t want that, so that’s a pretty big bargaining chip. For instance, when I was living in Israel, there were several cities in southern Israel that were getting bombarded by rockets shot from Gaza. My school ran a benefit carnival for the people in those cities. These cities were completely civilian, there weren’t any army bases or anything like that in them. Whereas the Israeli army has dropped leaflets that said something to the effect of “Get out of here, we’re about to attack the nearby [large military thing]!” when attacking stuff that’s near civilian areas. I know it sounds insane, but I saw the situation firsthand when I was living in Israel. Furthermore, I would encourage anyone who is able to go and see it for themselves as well, because it really needs to be seen to be believed.
@Bibliophile: Uggghhh, I hate it when people do that. It’s not even Jews who are sending the letters, it’s usually radical Christians who take the Bible way too literally. But it makes Jews like me look bad.
I just want to point out, with absolutely no argument on whether or not the U.S. should support Israel, that to be Jewish is not necessarily automatically to support Israel, or to consider that Israel is one’s homeland, or even to feel any connection to Israel whatsoever. In my post-B’nei-Mitzvah Hebrew School, we were required to take an elective in which we learned about Israel. However, about half the people in the class, including me, felt no connection to Israel, considered it to be pretty much just another country, and did not understand why we were required to take the class. (We made life hell for the teacher, which I’m kind of embarrassed about now.)
In addition, this year, we were taught that the three things that unite all Jews were God, culture, and Israel. For those of us who were atheists and/or felt no connection to Israel (most of whom were the same people), this was offensive and insulting. We felt that the teacher was telling us that if we didn’t believe in God, or didn’t consider Israel our homeland, we weren’t “real” Jews. This wasn’t exactly helped by the fact that he told us by the end of the year, those of us who were atheists would have changed our minds about God.
I know you weren’t saying any of this. I just like to take whatever opportunities I can to point out that just because most Israelis are Jewish, not all Jews support Israel.
True. I wasn’t really thinking about which Jews support Israel when I was writing my post, I was mostly talking about my own support of Israel, which primarily stems from my being Jewish. Believe me, I do know that not all Jews support Israel. I was actually told by one of my teachers in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish middle school that I went to that anyone who supported Israel was a heretic.
I’m sorry about your Hebrew School teacher though. I promise that not all religious Jews are like that. (I’m assuming that your teacher was religious, judging by the “I’m going to change your mind about God” thing.)
What do you mean by “support”? Are we sure that everyone on the blog means the same thing?
Well, in the case of the US supporting Israel, I meant “gives them lots of aid money and is invested in their future as a country.” In the case of myself supporting Israel, I meant “thinks that Israel is a great country, generally sides with it in the case of conflicts, and will argue against anyone who claims that it is evil, genocidal, apartheid-mongering, or the like.”
I’m just curious – What do you all think of “under god” in the American pledge of allegiance? Does it violate the separation of Church and State, or is it just a part of tradition?
Before discussion I’d just like to point out: The separation of church and state is a philosophy, not a law. “Under God” is entirely legal.
Personally, I don’t say it. I pause between “one nation” and “with liberty and justice for all”.
Were I to explain to someone (probably a Christian) why I don’t think it belongs there, I would ask them how they would feel if the Pledge instead said “one nation, under Allah” or “one nation, under Brahman” or something like that. It would make them feel uncomfortable, right? That’s how I feel when asked to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I general think that the 1st amendment pretty obviously implies separation of church and state. I’m not going to say that the “under God” is illegal, I’m just going to say that it seems like an entirely hypocritical violation of principles. My biggest problem with the “Under God” part is that it doesn’t just say “under gods” but it specifically favors one religion.
I actually have a number of problems with the pledge of allegiance. I find the whole thing to be extremely hypocritical, and I don’t think that most people realize what they’re saying when they recite it.
Lets start out by saying that you have the right not to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and it is actually a PLEDGE. If you say it, you are making a promise, and you are choosing to do so. I do not say the pledge because I do not agree with what it says, and I would rather uphold the ideals of America rather than promise my blind unconditional allegiance to it.
Now let’s look at what the pledge actually says:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,”: Here is my first problem with the pledge: It puts the symbol of the country before the country itself. This is, ironically, exactly what the pledge does.
“and to the republic, for which it stands,”: When you say the pledge of allegiance, you are promising loyalty to the government. I don’t necessarily agree. I support democracy, but I wouldn’t necessarily go do everything the government tells me to, and I protest it’s actions. If the government told me to go to war, I wouldn’t . I don’t want to promise anything to an organization unless I agree completely with everything they’re doing.
“One nation, Under God.”: Again, I have a lot of problems with “under God”, because it is obviously favoring one god, and that god is a Christian god. By including religion in a symbol of our country, we are basically establishing it as the national religion, one of the concepts that America is founded against, If someone really believes in America and wants to pledge allegiance to it, they should be able to do so with whatever religion they believe in. Even if there is no separation of church and state law, this is still a breach of the 1st amendment, one of the “liberties and justices for all” celebrated by the pledge. Also, the “one nation, under God” implies that this god favors America over other nations, which promotes racism in a way that I think contradicts the last line of the pledge itself.
“With liberty and justice for all”: My problem with this line is that it is a blatant lie. The pledge itself, while advocating these freedoms is not granting you freedom from having to listen to (even if you choose not to say it) a symbol of this country that you don’t agree with. And I don’t think that America actually has “liberty and justice for all.” To quote Phil Ochs again “She’s only as rich as the poorest of the poor, only as free as the last padlocked prison door.” There are plenty of people who do not get liberty or justice in America today, and the pledge is almost brainwashing you into supporting the status quo as part of allegiance. In short, the pledge is not advocating the kind of love for your country that I want to believe in. In my opinion, truly loving and supporting a country means working your hardest to make it a great country for all, even if that means fighting it when it makes bad and harmful decisions. This unconditional love for your country that claims superiority through religion and pledge to symbols rather than the ideals behind them is not the kind of support that makes a fair and free country for all, it is the kind that lets bad decisions go unchallenged, and doesn’t encourage people to take an active part in society. It is not encouraging people to think for themselves and work hard to improve this country, it is instead putting us in a mindset of accepting the status quo and turning a blind eye to the problems with America today. I don’t want something like this to be the measure of loyalty to our country, I don’t want loving America to be reciting an empty symbolic promise that you don’t consider the meaning of from childhood, I want it to be fighting for a better country even if that means caring enough to disagree. “Even treason might be worth a try, this country is to young to die.” thinking is the measure of loyalty for me. Loyal enough to the ideals of America and the foundations of democracy to even fight the country about them when it starts to slip. The entire Idea of pledging allegiance every day, especially at schools if frankly disturbing to me.
My school doesn’t say it. No one can make you say it, and everyone has agreed not to read it.
Sorry, that’s really long and idealistic. I’m a policy debater and I’m used to giving 13 minute speeches, so thanks if you read all that.
This. This, exactly. I never thought I’d find anyone who agreed with me, but you stated every. single. thing I strongly feel about the pledge. I would still think it was wrong if they said ‘under gods,’ though, because if you do not genuinely believe that there are gods–plural–you’d still be lying. I would like to note that many non-Christian monotheists do sometimes say ‘God’ just for convenience, but honestly, I think that’s irrelevant. I object to the ‘under God’ in the pledge, yes, but that’s not all I object to. You summed it all up PERFECTLY. In my state it’s even worse because then you have to pledge to the Texas flag, too, which is even more ridiculous. I never say either pledge, and people think it’s rude. I want to explain to them, but I don’t know how to do it concisely. But those are EXACTLY my individual objections; it’s like we have the same mind on the subject. Thank you. It’s just… nice to see your opinion written down well, especially if most people find your opinion rude.
Oh, I agree with the “gods” thing, I’m just putting that up there as an example. It would be completely preferable for it to not have the line (or the whole pledge) entirely, but the fact that the pledge so explicitly promotes ONE religion makes it even more disturbing to me.
Thank you! I’m glad that someone out there feels the same way as me, and I could help you by writing this.
I have gotten in trouble for not standing up during the pledge of allegiance (ironically, I was so absorbed in 1984 that I didn’t want to stare at a flag awkwardly for 20 seconds of my life that I could use reading.), and I wrote a 3 page essay to the teacher on all of these objections. I think that the pledge is one of the biggest violations of rights that too few people raise a stink about.
Ugh, Texas! That must be awful. I’m sorry.
Whenever someone tells me that this opinion is rude, I ask them why they say the pledge. And it’s shocking how many people shrug and say they don’t know.It scares me that people are so willing to give away so many of their rights and promise something when they don’t know what they’re even saying.
Reading your post, there is just one thing I would like to comment on. I don’t think the “with liberty and justice for all” part of the pledge is meant to be a reflection of reality. I think it’s what you strive towards, and therefore whether or not it is a blatant lie at the moment is irrelevant. If it’s that bad, that phrase is a promise to change that. True liberty and justice for all is never going to happen. Their place in the pledge is a statement of what ideals should be, and not necessarily reality.
In my opinion, this view–of it being an ideal you strive towards–also lessens the “blind loyalty” aspect of the pledge, because you’re still trying to have liberty and justice irregardless.
So, in other words, what the flag stands for is not the flawed, messy work-in-progress America that we live in now, but the finished, perfected, ideal America that we’re aiming for — and that’s the republic to which we’re swearing allegiance in the second half of the Pledge.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Even disillusioned idealists might be comfortable with a reading like that. What do other MBers think?
Hmmmm…I still don’t think that we should be pledging our loyalty to some ideal that doesn’t exist, and I definitely don’t like that “under god” should be included in that ideal. Or that you are urged to pledge to an ideal who’s words are decided on by the government, especially if it isn’t an ideal that you agree with.
But I see where you’re going…I still think that the point about people not understanding what they’re promising or that they’re making a promise still stands, since I think most people who say it don’t interpret the pledge this way,or at all.
Also, where I live, that doesn’t make much sense because then we go immediately on to a pledge that very clearly and literally says, “I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas,” and also includes ‘under God’ as well. And while I don’t expect to ever move out of the United States (not that I’m certain enough about that to pledge my eternal loyalty to them every day, even an idealized version of them), I know for a fact that I do not feel any loyalty to Texas, which ought to be fine and actually does seem to be considered fine by most people as long as you lie about it every morning. Of course, all this only applies where I live.
Also, I have to admit I’ve always had trouble grasping the flag symbolism. Even at my most patriotic, I have trouble seeing it as more than cloth on a stick. That’s just not how my mind works. Because of this, pledging allegiance even to a flag representing perfection just seems too strange. It’s good to love and honor the flag, but I can’t, and I think that should also be fine…
Actually, this is exactly the interpretation that I was about to suggest. By pledging allegiance to the flag, the symbol, instead of to the country, I pledge myself to uphold the ideals that flag represents, not necessarily what actually exists at the moment.
While reading 1984. Oh, the irony.
AGREE.
Funny…I pause between “I pledge allegiance to” and “God”.
If I recall correctly, that phrase was added during the Cold War, because Communism is officially atheist and such. But considering that the Cold War is 20 years gone, there’s not much point in keeping it in the pledge, especially since it alienates a lot of people.
Just to point something out, originally that phrase was not included in the pledge. It was added later, I’m not sure by who.
The First Amendment to the Constitution is a law, however, as is the Flag Code, which specifies the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance. It seems reasonable to ask whether the two are compatible. (Not surprisingly, this issue has come up in court cases.)
In the case of Lynch v. Donnelly, Justice Brennan opined: “I would suggest that such practices as the designation of ‘In God We Trust’ as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow’s apt phrase, as a form a ‘ceremonial deism,’ protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.” In the decision in that case, the Supreme Court also explained that the Constitution “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any,” mentioning that the same Congress that passed the First Amendment also established laws allowing for government-paid chaplains for the House and Senate. It also mentioned the tradition of giving government employees holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas off, even though they are religious holidays. Basically, as I see it, it comes down to a question of whether the legislation in question A. serves a secular purpose, and B. does not attempt to place one religion over another. For things such as the Pledge of Allegiance and our national motto, the accepted secular purpose is a historical, ceremonial, traditional one. It does not respect the establishment of religion due to its vagueness (as I understand it, an establishment of religion is a specific set of beliefs and practices, not just the thought that a supernatural being exists), nor does it prohibit the free exercise thereof (no one is prevented from carrying out their beliefs due to the lines in question). Thus, as has been held up in a plethora of court cases, phrases like “In God We Trust” and the placement of Christmas decorations on public property do not contradict the First Amendment.
((Note: My opinions, in part or in whole, may or may not be accurately represented by this post. The text of this comment is meant for the purpose of discussion, not as a reflection of my own beliefs on the subject.))
Well, personally, I’m against the “in god we trust” on money. Christmas decorations (like trees) seem less like a breach to me because the Christmas tree has become so associated with winter in general, and so separated from the actual religious story. I would object if they displayed nativity scenes on public buildings though.
Also, the pledge of allegiance bothers me especially because of the other reasons I mentioned, but the “god” in the pledge especially bothers me because the pledge is a voluntary promise that most people don’t know that they have the right no tot say, and when you say it you are voluntarily giving up your rights to not have to believe in a god.
I agree with most of that. I think it’s be fine to have nativity scenes on public buildings, though, as long as you aren’t expecting everyone to revere them like the flag–or worse, make it mandatory like “in God we trust” on money. The same goes for any other religious holiday (religious including all religious traditions here).
I think a lot of people would have problems with nativity scenes on public buildings. Christmas trees have become very closely associated with the secular holiday, but nativity scenes are very religious. There would be someone somewhere who would say that the US is unofficially endorsing Christianity.
I would rather have “In God we trust” on money than, say, “In banks we trust” or “In the people we trust.”
Here’s a related issue that came up for me tonight. I’m a part of the local teen city council, and tonight four members from our group visited the youth commission meeting of the next town over. We always start our meetings with the pledge of allegiance, but they started theirs with an invocation as well as the pledge. Is that appropriate for a branch of the city government?
What sort of invocation? I don’t follow.
With bowed heads, something like “Please God, help us get all of our business done at the meeting, and help us do good work and achieve our goals, amen.”