Firstly, I'd like to start the post off with a commemoration of 9/11. I can't believe it's been nine years since that day, because it is still so vivid in America's memory. What happened that day and through the following weeks was unbelievable on every level, so horrific, with such acts of heroism, and such unity of the country, truly a day that shaped the future of America and the world.
The Myth of Bipartisanship:
The Democrats have been calling for bipartisanship recently. The thing is that this bipartisanship, in their minds, means that they still get to do exactly what they want to, which is expand the role of the government. They're calling for the Republicans to come over to their side without giving any significant concessions to the other side, and even if they did, it would be at too great an expense to the overall republican ideology to pass the bills they want passed. Essentially what it boils down to is that Obama and the Democrats' idea of bipartisanship, one which they so aggressively call for and criticize others for not following, is that they will do exactly what they want, only a little bit slower. That's ridiculous.
Voting:
I hear all this talk about person versus party. Do you vote for the person or do you vote for the party? Neither. You vote for the outcome. That means you vote for whoever has the best chance of improving the country or the state. That means that you don't vote for someone solely because they seem like a good person. You don't vote strictly party line no matter what. You don't vote for third parties unless there is an overwhelmingly good reason. It means you get involved early and intensely to get your candidate chosen, and this might be the most important thing you can do. Primary voting is often overlooked and is incredibly important. Then, during the final election, you vote for the best outcome. Chances are you might not like either candidate, but you vote for the outcome. There was a great South Park episode where Stan wondered what the point of voting was if it was "between a douche and a turd," and the reason to vote is that voting is your way of shaping the future of the country, it is your input into what will be the outcome, and the politicians are just the middle man in that step, you could say, using a pun I have used before, that they are just tools. They are not a higher class of people and should not be treated as such, and you don't vote for the person you like best or who deserves the most respect except to the extent that that person may be more likely to get the policies you want done.
The South:
I'm increasingly perplexed as to why the rest of the country wants the South to be a part of America. It is always belittled, ridiculed, and spoken of and portrayed in a derogatory manner using nothing less than bigotry and stereotypes. Nothing complimentary is ever said about any of it except perhaps the food which is supposed to be tasty but unhealthy. Politicians (especially on the democrat side but on both sides) go out of their way to minimize the South's influence and push Southerners to the periphery of their parties, trying to distance themselves from that region of the country. So why did we fight a war to keep it in? What reason could you possibly have at this point if the South decided to secede again? I actually want an answer here.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Quran Burning ...
So there's this one florida pastor who has a congregation of fifty people in a small church that more resembles a barn in Florida who has announced plans to burn the Quran on September 11, 2010, and no one else in the country agrees with his actions, but for some reason this is the biggest news story of the day.
Obama called for Americans to unify as "one nation under God" (man, who knew he knew the pledge of allegiance?), and said there would be increased violence in the Middle East toward our troops if this occurs.
Mayor Bloomberg of New York said that he had the right to do it, but that it was "distasteful," which is exactly the response people wanted regarding the ground zero mosque.
Hillary Clinton said that it would inflame tensions in the middle east and endanger muslims abroad.
Robert Gates said pretty much the same thing.
General Petreus said that it would put US troops at increased risk.
The FBI got involved, visiting the church and collecting information relating to his plan (if only they'd done the same for the Ft. Hood shooter ... )
The response wasn't even limited to the governments of the US, state and federal. Nato even chimed in, its secretary general condemning the act, calling it "disrespectful," and saying it would have a "negative impact" on the security of troops in Afghanistan.
So did the Vatican! They called the plans "outrageous and grave." They also said that “Each religion, with its respective sacred books, places of worship and symbols, has the right to respect and protection." This prompted some to call them hypocritical in light of history, something which seems to be a recurring theme in this post.
Then, after a discrepancy in which it was briefly believed that both the Ground Zero mosque and the quran burning were going to be called off, neither was and the mosque's imam said that moving the mosque now would send the wrong message and cause violence in the muslim world (as if he was going to move it before, or didn't realize that it was not a good idea when he announced plans to put it there).
Finally, muslims from around the world threatened violence if this one man went through with his plan.
Let's put this in perspective. This is one man who no one had ever heard of before. Not only does virtually no one else agree with his plans, and not only do the plans pose no direct threat to anybody, but it is not even a widespread occurrance (which really doesn't matter, as the government is not there to tell citizens what to do as long as it doesn't hurt other people directly), and yet it has made international news and the highest authorities in the world have gotten involved?
Pastor Jones, himself, said there was a double standard for burning Bibles and American Flags and Qurans, and he said some other stuff but I couldn't find it just now, but essentially the world is trying very hard to prove him right.
I guess the difference is that radical Christians burn Qurans and radical Muslims burn people.
Lastly, I would like to make it perfectly clear that, if there are violent protests and innocent people, including our troops, are killed or put in harms way because of this incident, it will absolutely not be the fault of the pastor or the country. I came to the conclusion a long time ago while reading about the nazi occupation of Poland in WWII, in which the preferred way of keeping order was to kill innocent people when crimes were committed in order to keep the country in line (to the extent that when the Warsaw Uprising occurred, rather than fighting the fighters, the nazis spent most of their time emptying hospitals and churches and killing their occupants), that threats and intimidation do not in any way put the blame for an action on the person being threatened and intimidated. The fault for killing somebody lies with the killer, and submitting to threats and intimidation is unacceptable.
Obama called for Americans to unify as "one nation under God" (man, who knew he knew the pledge of allegiance?), and said there would be increased violence in the Middle East toward our troops if this occurs.
Mayor Bloomberg of New York said that he had the right to do it, but that it was "distasteful," which is exactly the response people wanted regarding the ground zero mosque.
Hillary Clinton said that it would inflame tensions in the middle east and endanger muslims abroad.
Robert Gates said pretty much the same thing.
General Petreus said that it would put US troops at increased risk.
The FBI got involved, visiting the church and collecting information relating to his plan (if only they'd done the same for the Ft. Hood shooter ... )
The response wasn't even limited to the governments of the US, state and federal. Nato even chimed in, its secretary general condemning the act, calling it "disrespectful," and saying it would have a "negative impact" on the security of troops in Afghanistan.
So did the Vatican! They called the plans "outrageous and grave." They also said that “Each religion, with its respective sacred books, places of worship and symbols, has the right to respect and protection." This prompted some to call them hypocritical in light of history, something which seems to be a recurring theme in this post.
Then, after a discrepancy in which it was briefly believed that both the Ground Zero mosque and the quran burning were going to be called off, neither was and the mosque's imam said that moving the mosque now would send the wrong message and cause violence in the muslim world (as if he was going to move it before, or didn't realize that it was not a good idea when he announced plans to put it there).
Finally, muslims from around the world threatened violence if this one man went through with his plan.
Let's put this in perspective. This is one man who no one had ever heard of before. Not only does virtually no one else agree with his plans, and not only do the plans pose no direct threat to anybody, but it is not even a widespread occurrance (which really doesn't matter, as the government is not there to tell citizens what to do as long as it doesn't hurt other people directly), and yet it has made international news and the highest authorities in the world have gotten involved?
Pastor Jones, himself, said there was a double standard for burning Bibles and American Flags and Qurans, and he said some other stuff but I couldn't find it just now, but essentially the world is trying very hard to prove him right.
I guess the difference is that radical Christians burn Qurans and radical Muslims burn people.
Lastly, I would like to make it perfectly clear that, if there are violent protests and innocent people, including our troops, are killed or put in harms way because of this incident, it will absolutely not be the fault of the pastor or the country. I came to the conclusion a long time ago while reading about the nazi occupation of Poland in WWII, in which the preferred way of keeping order was to kill innocent people when crimes were committed in order to keep the country in line (to the extent that when the Warsaw Uprising occurred, rather than fighting the fighters, the nazis spent most of their time emptying hospitals and churches and killing their occupants), that threats and intimidation do not in any way put the blame for an action on the person being threatened and intimidated. The fault for killing somebody lies with the killer, and submitting to threats and intimidation is unacceptable.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Legislating Morality ...
Ok, so recently, there have been a few controversies, one of which involves a mosque/muslim community center being built close to ground zero, and another of which involves Dr. Laura saying the n word on the radio.
I'll address Dr. Laura first. She said the n word. On radio. Multiple times. Ok, well, firstly, in her defense, she was not calling anyone an n word. She was saying that the n word gets said on hbo or something. Then she repeated herself. Then she repeated herself again. Also, in her defense, she has done a whole lot worse than saying the n word. She's been anti parent, anti woman, told little girls they weren't raped when they were. With that said, I don't know why anyone would say it at this point. It weakens your point and it offends people. To defend herself, she said that her first amendment right to freedom of speech included saying that word. Now, no legal action was taken against her, and it is other people's constitutional right to express being upset with her, including her being fired or whatever, but let's just focus on the defense at this point in time.
Now for the mosque. There is a mosque which is going to be built right near ground zero. The people building it say that they want to promote tolerance and inter-ethnic dialogue. Actually it has just upset people, 65% of Americans surveyed, to be precise. Now, why would they be upset? Because it is insensitive. It is putting something dedicated to the same thing which 3,000 people were killed in the name of right beside where they died. It's like putting an eastern orthodox church or or a serbian flag beside Srebrenica, or like putting a German flag over Auschwitz, or a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor, right after WWII. The two best responses I heard to the controversy were Greg Gutfeld's and Rand Paul's.
Greg Gutfeld announced plans to open a gay bar catering to Muslims beside the Mosque. That is brilliant on every level. There is a severe lack of tolerance in Islam, particularly with regard to gays and women. If they're going to push our tolerance, perhaps we should push theirs.
Rand Paul said that, if they really wanted to promote inter-ethnic tolerance and dialogue, the people should have donated money to the 9/11 victims' fund. That is exactly right. If you want to get someone to like you, you show sympathy, empathy, and solidarity, not rudely tell them that they should like you. It works in personal relationships and on larger scale relationships between groups. You don't tell people what to think of you, you act as the best person you can be and if they don't like you, then it's their problem.
What's the defense of the mosque/community center? It's legal. The constitution gives people the right to worship when and where they choose.
Sound familiar? Oh, that's right, Dr. Laura. Both of them did insensitive and ridiculous things, both claiming to make a point, and both making the opposite point much better than they made their own. Then both used the constitutional rights that people in the US are supposed to have to defend their actions. Of course those things are legal, but just being legal doesn't make something right. At the point where morality and legality become interchangeable, it becomes necessary to make everything which is wrong illegal, to legislate morality. That is wrong, and should never happen, but living in a free society means you have to take some responsibility for yourself and your actions. Things which are illegal should be restricted to things which directly take away other people's freedom, but for that to work, legality and morality must be recognized as distinct concepts.
I'll address Dr. Laura first. She said the n word. On radio. Multiple times. Ok, well, firstly, in her defense, she was not calling anyone an n word. She was saying that the n word gets said on hbo or something. Then she repeated herself. Then she repeated herself again. Also, in her defense, she has done a whole lot worse than saying the n word. She's been anti parent, anti woman, told little girls they weren't raped when they were. With that said, I don't know why anyone would say it at this point. It weakens your point and it offends people. To defend herself, she said that her first amendment right to freedom of speech included saying that word. Now, no legal action was taken against her, and it is other people's constitutional right to express being upset with her, including her being fired or whatever, but let's just focus on the defense at this point in time.
Now for the mosque. There is a mosque which is going to be built right near ground zero. The people building it say that they want to promote tolerance and inter-ethnic dialogue. Actually it has just upset people, 65% of Americans surveyed, to be precise. Now, why would they be upset? Because it is insensitive. It is putting something dedicated to the same thing which 3,000 people were killed in the name of right beside where they died. It's like putting an eastern orthodox church or or a serbian flag beside Srebrenica, or like putting a German flag over Auschwitz, or a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor, right after WWII. The two best responses I heard to the controversy were Greg Gutfeld's and Rand Paul's.
Greg Gutfeld announced plans to open a gay bar catering to Muslims beside the Mosque. That is brilliant on every level. There is a severe lack of tolerance in Islam, particularly with regard to gays and women. If they're going to push our tolerance, perhaps we should push theirs.
Rand Paul said that, if they really wanted to promote inter-ethnic tolerance and dialogue, the people should have donated money to the 9/11 victims' fund. That is exactly right. If you want to get someone to like you, you show sympathy, empathy, and solidarity, not rudely tell them that they should like you. It works in personal relationships and on larger scale relationships between groups. You don't tell people what to think of you, you act as the best person you can be and if they don't like you, then it's their problem.
What's the defense of the mosque/community center? It's legal. The constitution gives people the right to worship when and where they choose.
Sound familiar? Oh, that's right, Dr. Laura. Both of them did insensitive and ridiculous things, both claiming to make a point, and both making the opposite point much better than they made their own. Then both used the constitutional rights that people in the US are supposed to have to defend their actions. Of course those things are legal, but just being legal doesn't make something right. At the point where morality and legality become interchangeable, it becomes necessary to make everything which is wrong illegal, to legislate morality. That is wrong, and should never happen, but living in a free society means you have to take some responsibility for yourself and your actions. Things which are illegal should be restricted to things which directly take away other people's freedom, but for that to work, legality and morality must be recognized as distinct concepts.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Celebrities ...
So yesterday I ran across this article entitled "Ronaldo Jr's Mum is a Waitress." I clicked it and read it, apparently the kid was the result of a one night stand with a waitress in LA and he had paid her $10 Million to not reveal details and had taken custody of the kid, in a nutshell. The interesting thing, though, was the comments that came after the article. They were split into three distinct groups. One group was villainizing Ronaldo, how he had bought the baby, the baby needed its mother, if he were any sort of a decent person he would have supported the baby but left it in the custody of its mother, how it was necessarily the case that the kid was going to grow up with serious problems because he didn't know his mother, and how awful he was. The other group was absolutely in total support of Ronaldo, how this story was proof of what an amazing person he was, and how awful the mother was, really, she's just a waitress, after all, she was probably going after money, or something. The third group, which was actually surprisingly (a nice surprise) large, was saying ... "um, we care about this why?"
Now, the first thing I am going to say is, well no, the first thing I am going to say is to agree with that third group up there, "who really cares?." The second thing I am going to say is that no one knows the details anyway, and I may only have read one article, but from that article, it was nowhere near clear to me who was right and who was wrong or if anyone was right or if anyone was a horrible person or a good person or ... yeah. Unless there's a whole body of literature devoted to this subject which I have been fortunate enough to miss, no one who's making these statements of judgement on either party actually has any real evidence to support their claims.
And yet, they want to. This situation is not unique, it's been repeated time and time again, and I have quite a few things to say about it.
I do not believe for a minute in the notion that once you become a celebrity, you give up all rights to privacy. If the police catch you, it's one thing, but for the kind of spying on celebrities that goes on to go on, and maybe not particularly in this case (or maybe, I have no idea), but I'm thinking like, reporters catching Michael Phelps smoking pot by watching through the window as he was at a friend's house, there is no excuse. Publishing Kurt Cobain's diary was another one, no one connected to him wanted it published, and yet they did. Or how about Billy Mays (he did commercials for goodness sakes) and then after he died them going and publishing that an autopsy had revealed certain things about him. Who really cares? And what right do you have to that information, anyway? What right do reporters have to spy on people when they are in private residences? I can safely say as someone who has as little respect for celebrities as anyone I have ever met, that I don't think they have any right at all.
Following up on what I said above, you also don't get the whole story. There are very visible gaps in the Ronaldo story. It is pretty obvious that no one has any evidence of their claims, but even in stories which seem much more obvious, often people have no idea of what they're talking about. The fact is that everyone has moments which can be taken out of context to paint them as either better or worse than they actually are, and usually it's those moments which make the best news stories. Obviously, some things are just unforgiveable, but there is also stuff out there which people treat as unforgiveable (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the greatest action ever), when they don't know or understand the whole story.
All of that said, there are still large groups of people, the majority of the population, who really take interest in celebrity stories, largely falling into two groups, both of which are irrational.
On the one hand, there are the people who idolize and worship celebrities, and these are the people we think of when we think of the celebrity - obsessed, starstruck. They are the most obviously ridiculous people. They have so much respect for celebrities that celebrity opinions actually influence their beliefs and actions. You watch Matt Damon talk about Sarah Palin or George Cloony support Obama or Shaqira (who's not even an American citizen) talk about the US Constitution ... and you just wonder if there's anyone out there who goes "Oh, Shaqira, she's obviously an expert in politics, I am going to listen to what she says!" Actually, I think the starstruck mentality is actually slightly different from that. I've never read or heard anyone else say this, so it's purely my own speculation, though I think it's as good an explanation as any for the starstruck phenomenon as any, but I think the whole starstruck thing is wanting approval at some level. People make no secret of the fact that they are fans of certain celebrities, and it's not really a secret that people hope to meet people they are fans of, and it would be a bizarelly logical follow up to that that they would sort of, alter their behavior or beliefs on the hope that, if they ever were to meet this celebrity, the celebrity would be as impressed by them as they are with the celebrity. People do it with people they know in real life, why not with celebrities they dream of meeting? It's not "Matt Damon is an authority on politics, so I'm going to listen to him," it's "Matt Damon is so hoooooot, Oh if only I could meet him ... he would think I was so cool because I think his speech on Sarah Palin is brilliant." It's not "Ronaldo saved my life, he's a good person" it's "Ronaldo is so talented and cool, I'm siding with him, and if I ever met him, he'd know that, and that girl, ugh, she's just awful, and he'd realize how much better I am."
Pitiful, but when you think of the role star power played in the last election, it is really sickening. The repeated statements by certain politicians and their wives ... of being ashamed of or not proud of their country, the constant insults towards Americans and American voters, and you realize that that was actually probably the best thing he could have done, politically, because it had people clambering to prove their worthiness in his presence, their superiority over others. Then those people picked up on that very same rhetoric for a while, and it was absolutely nauseating.
The other type of celebrity craziness is people who want to tear down celebrities no matter what, to the point of revelling in their failures. These two types of reactions to celebrities are by no means mutually exclusive, and in fact I think you'd find that people who do the one for some celebrities are probably more likely to do the other for some celebrities. This is where you are really pleased to learn that Michael Phelps has gotten in trouble for smoking pot, for instance. Here's this celebrity who's so much more successful than you (and heaven forbid, he might be a rival of a celebrity who is actually "perfect" ... ), and, hah, look what he did! Actually, he's pretty horrible. I've never done anything that bad, so learning of this guy's failures just makes my day. Actually, it makes my month. That's a fairly benign instance, well, actually he was gone after disproportionately harshly to what he did, and it involved a horrible breach of privacy, but it wasn't anything life destroying. There are far, far worse instances which are actually really disgusting.
A good example of this (but by no means at all the only one, just the most recent and probably the most extreme. Other examples include the treatment of Bristol Palin, in which half the country teamed up to bully a teenage girl, publishing details of Billy Mays' death, and, going back a lot longer, stuff to do with Howard Hughes which is probably worthy of its own blog post, among countless others) is the recent set of Mel Gibson tapes. I have not listened to all of them, and, quite frankly, I don't think I will. With regard to the tapes, firstly, people have no idea of his and his wife's relationship up to this point. Secondly, people know full well that Mel Gibson has had an alcohol problem. Thirdly, wow, the world has to know just everything, doesn't it? She managed to tape someone in the middle of a very emotional, vulnerable, possibly fueled by some sort of mental illness or alcohol use phone call, when only she knew it was being taped and was clearly only trying to get him to say more and more, and then she took it to the press and made it where everyone in the world heard it? How awful. I don't know about anyone else, but I've always felt that going directly to the press was a really dispicable thing to do. When I have arguments with people, the one thing I can't forgive is when they bring unrelated people into the argument, or take the argument into public (obviously this is always done with the intention of making the other person look bad), and her taping an emotional phone call and sending it to the press is absolutely the large scale equivalent of that. The press is meant to be an information distribution service, not a weapon. Everyone has said things they regret saying at the height of emotion, and when people are really angry, they want to evoke an emotional reaction, and the other person's remaining condescending only increases the desire to evoke that reaction, and statements become fueled by the desire to make the other person upset rather than anything else, and she knew she was making things worse when she taped the phone call and made the responses she made. That was just horrible to listen to and really inappropriate to publicize. I even felt a bit guilty listening to what I did listen to, and yet some people are just loving it. I guess it's the modern day equivalent of attending a public execution.
Now, the first thing I am going to say is, well no, the first thing I am going to say is to agree with that third group up there, "who really cares?." The second thing I am going to say is that no one knows the details anyway, and I may only have read one article, but from that article, it was nowhere near clear to me who was right and who was wrong or if anyone was right or if anyone was a horrible person or a good person or ... yeah. Unless there's a whole body of literature devoted to this subject which I have been fortunate enough to miss, no one who's making these statements of judgement on either party actually has any real evidence to support their claims.
And yet, they want to. This situation is not unique, it's been repeated time and time again, and I have quite a few things to say about it.
I do not believe for a minute in the notion that once you become a celebrity, you give up all rights to privacy. If the police catch you, it's one thing, but for the kind of spying on celebrities that goes on to go on, and maybe not particularly in this case (or maybe, I have no idea), but I'm thinking like, reporters catching Michael Phelps smoking pot by watching through the window as he was at a friend's house, there is no excuse. Publishing Kurt Cobain's diary was another one, no one connected to him wanted it published, and yet they did. Or how about Billy Mays (he did commercials for goodness sakes) and then after he died them going and publishing that an autopsy had revealed certain things about him. Who really cares? And what right do you have to that information, anyway? What right do reporters have to spy on people when they are in private residences? I can safely say as someone who has as little respect for celebrities as anyone I have ever met, that I don't think they have any right at all.
Following up on what I said above, you also don't get the whole story. There are very visible gaps in the Ronaldo story. It is pretty obvious that no one has any evidence of their claims, but even in stories which seem much more obvious, often people have no idea of what they're talking about. The fact is that everyone has moments which can be taken out of context to paint them as either better or worse than they actually are, and usually it's those moments which make the best news stories. Obviously, some things are just unforgiveable, but there is also stuff out there which people treat as unforgiveable (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the greatest action ever), when they don't know or understand the whole story.
All of that said, there are still large groups of people, the majority of the population, who really take interest in celebrity stories, largely falling into two groups, both of which are irrational.
On the one hand, there are the people who idolize and worship celebrities, and these are the people we think of when we think of the celebrity - obsessed, starstruck. They are the most obviously ridiculous people. They have so much respect for celebrities that celebrity opinions actually influence their beliefs and actions. You watch Matt Damon talk about Sarah Palin or George Cloony support Obama or Shaqira (who's not even an American citizen) talk about the US Constitution ... and you just wonder if there's anyone out there who goes "Oh, Shaqira, she's obviously an expert in politics, I am going to listen to what she says!" Actually, I think the starstruck mentality is actually slightly different from that. I've never read or heard anyone else say this, so it's purely my own speculation, though I think it's as good an explanation as any for the starstruck phenomenon as any, but I think the whole starstruck thing is wanting approval at some level. People make no secret of the fact that they are fans of certain celebrities, and it's not really a secret that people hope to meet people they are fans of, and it would be a bizarelly logical follow up to that that they would sort of, alter their behavior or beliefs on the hope that, if they ever were to meet this celebrity, the celebrity would be as impressed by them as they are with the celebrity. People do it with people they know in real life, why not with celebrities they dream of meeting? It's not "Matt Damon is an authority on politics, so I'm going to listen to him," it's "Matt Damon is so hoooooot, Oh if only I could meet him ... he would think I was so cool because I think his speech on Sarah Palin is brilliant." It's not "Ronaldo saved my life, he's a good person" it's "Ronaldo is so talented and cool, I'm siding with him, and if I ever met him, he'd know that, and that girl, ugh, she's just awful, and he'd realize how much better I am."
Pitiful, but when you think of the role star power played in the last election, it is really sickening. The repeated statements by certain politicians and their wives ... of being ashamed of or not proud of their country, the constant insults towards Americans and American voters, and you realize that that was actually probably the best thing he could have done, politically, because it had people clambering to prove their worthiness in his presence, their superiority over others. Then those people picked up on that very same rhetoric for a while, and it was absolutely nauseating.
The other type of celebrity craziness is people who want to tear down celebrities no matter what, to the point of revelling in their failures. These two types of reactions to celebrities are by no means mutually exclusive, and in fact I think you'd find that people who do the one for some celebrities are probably more likely to do the other for some celebrities. This is where you are really pleased to learn that Michael Phelps has gotten in trouble for smoking pot, for instance. Here's this celebrity who's so much more successful than you (and heaven forbid, he might be a rival of a celebrity who is actually "perfect" ... ), and, hah, look what he did! Actually, he's pretty horrible. I've never done anything that bad, so learning of this guy's failures just makes my day. Actually, it makes my month. That's a fairly benign instance, well, actually he was gone after disproportionately harshly to what he did, and it involved a horrible breach of privacy, but it wasn't anything life destroying. There are far, far worse instances which are actually really disgusting.
A good example of this (but by no means at all the only one, just the most recent and probably the most extreme. Other examples include the treatment of Bristol Palin, in which half the country teamed up to bully a teenage girl, publishing details of Billy Mays' death, and, going back a lot longer, stuff to do with Howard Hughes which is probably worthy of its own blog post, among countless others) is the recent set of Mel Gibson tapes. I have not listened to all of them, and, quite frankly, I don't think I will. With regard to the tapes, firstly, people have no idea of his and his wife's relationship up to this point. Secondly, people know full well that Mel Gibson has had an alcohol problem. Thirdly, wow, the world has to know just everything, doesn't it? She managed to tape someone in the middle of a very emotional, vulnerable, possibly fueled by some sort of mental illness or alcohol use phone call, when only she knew it was being taped and was clearly only trying to get him to say more and more, and then she took it to the press and made it where everyone in the world heard it? How awful. I don't know about anyone else, but I've always felt that going directly to the press was a really dispicable thing to do. When I have arguments with people, the one thing I can't forgive is when they bring unrelated people into the argument, or take the argument into public (obviously this is always done with the intention of making the other person look bad), and her taping an emotional phone call and sending it to the press is absolutely the large scale equivalent of that. The press is meant to be an information distribution service, not a weapon. Everyone has said things they regret saying at the height of emotion, and when people are really angry, they want to evoke an emotional reaction, and the other person's remaining condescending only increases the desire to evoke that reaction, and statements become fueled by the desire to make the other person upset rather than anything else, and she knew she was making things worse when she taped the phone call and made the responses she made. That was just horrible to listen to and really inappropriate to publicize. I even felt a bit guilty listening to what I did listen to, and yet some people are just loving it. I guess it's the modern day equivalent of attending a public execution.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Pride and Prejudice ...
Ok, so at the recommendation of many, many people who share my taste in movies and books, I finally watched the BBC version of pride and prejudice (yes, some recommended the book, some the new movie, and some the BBC series, but I tend to like BBC adaptations, so I went with that).
Firstly, it is clear that Pride and Prejudice had an immense influence on virtually every love story that came after it.
Secondly, I didn't realize how old it was, written in 1813, and the class structure thing is fascinating.
Thirdly, reflections.
Pride and Prejudice was not meant to be a realistic love story, I don't think; it was meant to be a fantasy. Maybe that is stating the obvious, because a lot of movies and books are rather escapist in nature, but it's important to make that clear before proceeding. The thing about it, though, is that it is a much more accurate representation of that fantasy than probably any other. I don't know if this fantasy originated with Jane Austin, or if, more likely, she was simply more talented at writing a story about it, but the novel manages to create the absolute perfect representation while avoiding the problems of so many other works with the same general idea.
I will be more specific. Reading Pride and Prejudice, the single most appealing thing is Mr. Darcy. The plot in the book is minimal (and that's not actually a criticism, by the way), but what there is of it is essentially there to reveal his character. At first, he seems cold and distant, aloof, disliked, but it is ultimately revealed that he is essentially the best person in the novel, almost flawless (but not quite!). He is in many ways the ideal person, and she is the only one good enough for him. She is the person people want to be, smart, sophisticated, clever, intelligent, pretty, strong. She is superior to all of the other women in the book. She has a chance to prove this to everyone, and to him, because at first they are on adversarial terms, and she shows that she is, at the very least, his equal, and he falls deeply in love with her first. Eventually, she comes to be the only person who truly understands him, and falls in love with him, too. This is the essence of it, and my synopsis is not as well written as I'd like it to be, but it's actually a fairly broad thing. Maybe I'll come back later to clarify. It is not just Pride and Prejudice, it is a fantasy which is so popular that it has made its way into tons of other entertainment in one way or another, I mean just look at Twilight, or virtually any other love story, and you can find at least reflections of it in there. You can also see its impact in the way people act, going for the bad boy, claiming that they are the only person who truly understands someone. I mean, this is a very generalized principle, here. I'd argue that it is to the love story what the Count of Monte Cristo is to the revenge story.
I mean, it really is the core. The thing about Pride and Prejudice, itself, is that it manages, as I said, to represent this accurately, and without falling into pitfalls that many other works and people have run into. The first one of these which is common is that Mr. Darcy actually is a very good person, whereas in many such stories, the "Mr. Darcy" character is only misunderstood by the person who "loves" him, eager to justify anything he does and claim that she is the only one who really "understands" him. Another is in trying to be like Elizabeth. Elizabeth had a quick wit, but she also had the manners, care for other people, and intelligence to know that she wanted to be saying what she was saying when she said it. She was strong and had conviction, but she was not obnoxious. These are only a couple of the ways the stories can go wrong, though they're probably the most common.
I guess what it really boils down to is that ego plays a huge role in "love" stories and "love" fantasies. People don't only want to fall in love for the sake of love, they partially want to prove their worth, even their superiority, using their partner. It sounds so cynical, but it is so true for so many people.
I once heard the phrase "People often get pride and love confused." or something like that, and I was perplexed by it, but the more I see and hear, the more I think it's true.
Firstly, it is clear that Pride and Prejudice had an immense influence on virtually every love story that came after it.
Secondly, I didn't realize how old it was, written in 1813, and the class structure thing is fascinating.
Thirdly, reflections.
Pride and Prejudice was not meant to be a realistic love story, I don't think; it was meant to be a fantasy. Maybe that is stating the obvious, because a lot of movies and books are rather escapist in nature, but it's important to make that clear before proceeding. The thing about it, though, is that it is a much more accurate representation of that fantasy than probably any other. I don't know if this fantasy originated with Jane Austin, or if, more likely, she was simply more talented at writing a story about it, but the novel manages to create the absolute perfect representation while avoiding the problems of so many other works with the same general idea.
I will be more specific. Reading Pride and Prejudice, the single most appealing thing is Mr. Darcy. The plot in the book is minimal (and that's not actually a criticism, by the way), but what there is of it is essentially there to reveal his character. At first, he seems cold and distant, aloof, disliked, but it is ultimately revealed that he is essentially the best person in the novel, almost flawless (but not quite!). He is in many ways the ideal person, and she is the only one good enough for him. She is the person people want to be, smart, sophisticated, clever, intelligent, pretty, strong. She is superior to all of the other women in the book. She has a chance to prove this to everyone, and to him, because at first they are on adversarial terms, and she shows that she is, at the very least, his equal, and he falls deeply in love with her first. Eventually, she comes to be the only person who truly understands him, and falls in love with him, too. This is the essence of it, and my synopsis is not as well written as I'd like it to be, but it's actually a fairly broad thing. Maybe I'll come back later to clarify. It is not just Pride and Prejudice, it is a fantasy which is so popular that it has made its way into tons of other entertainment in one way or another, I mean just look at Twilight, or virtually any other love story, and you can find at least reflections of it in there. You can also see its impact in the way people act, going for the bad boy, claiming that they are the only person who truly understands someone. I mean, this is a very generalized principle, here. I'd argue that it is to the love story what the Count of Monte Cristo is to the revenge story.
I mean, it really is the core. The thing about Pride and Prejudice, itself, is that it manages, as I said, to represent this accurately, and without falling into pitfalls that many other works and people have run into. The first one of these which is common is that Mr. Darcy actually is a very good person, whereas in many such stories, the "Mr. Darcy" character is only misunderstood by the person who "loves" him, eager to justify anything he does and claim that she is the only one who really "understands" him. Another is in trying to be like Elizabeth. Elizabeth had a quick wit, but she also had the manners, care for other people, and intelligence to know that she wanted to be saying what she was saying when she said it. She was strong and had conviction, but she was not obnoxious. These are only a couple of the ways the stories can go wrong, though they're probably the most common.
I guess what it really boils down to is that ego plays a huge role in "love" stories and "love" fantasies. People don't only want to fall in love for the sake of love, they partially want to prove their worth, even their superiority, using their partner. It sounds so cynical, but it is so true for so many people.
I once heard the phrase "People often get pride and love confused." or something like that, and I was perplexed by it, but the more I see and hear, the more I think it's true.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Movies ...
So I've been taking a few recommendations for movies to watch recently. Most recently, I've watched Love Actually, You've Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally. I don't tend to enjoy romantic movies usually. I often feel like the values are off (I'm not talking about sex, but about how people view life and treat each other.), or that it's taken for granted that you should be rooting for a couple or a person (convince me), or that one person is far, far too good for the other, that the situation is cliche, the writing is lazy, that they don't capture real people or scenarios, or some combination of the above. Is it that romantic movies as a genre are more prone to being intolerably dull and irritating? Maybe, or maybe it's just that, when writers and filmmakers get lazy, they go to romantic movies for girls and action movies for guys, because it will sell no matter how low the quality. That said, when romance makes its way into otherwise non romantic movies, it can be even more irritating (The Great Raid.). In fact, I think the reason that I got the majority of these recommendations was my statement that I don't like romantic movies. I won't get into a review of every romantic movie I have ever seen. I'll just summarize by saying that when I am supposed to be crying, I am laughing, and when I am crying, it's because I fear for the future of a world in which these movies are made and bought.
So I got some recommendations, and, in an exercize in procrastination, I watched them.
Love Actually.
It was ... ok. The premise was decent, a movie about love, rather than about a specific group of people, the different guises love can take, the different ways it can come about, and the different good and bad endings that stories can have, with the general thesis that love is everywhere, even with all the bad stuff that goes on in the world. It could have worked, and it could have made an amazing Christmas movie, but it didn't. They took a decent premise and applied lazy writing and ended up with a mediocre movie. None of the characters were developed enough to really be rooted for, and I'm not sure if there was even one three dimensional character in the whole movie. The situations, too, were lacking in originality, the man in love with his best friend's wife, the girl who's had a crush on a guy for years, the guy who finds his girlfriend is cheating (and goes on to fall in love with someone else), the man who wants to get closer to his son. Even when they hadn't been done before, they were merely reworkings of fairly basic ideas. Granted, there wasn't time in the movie to fully develop what, ten characters? Or to pursue five complex and interesting storylines, and that's why what was in the movie had to be amazing for it to work, and it just wasn't.
When Harry Met Sally.
When Harry Met Sally was better, I suppose it gets a "decent" rating. It wasn't special. It was a little pretentious. It was a little dull. The movie seemed more concerned with stylistic matters than ones of substance, which was a problem. Neither Harry nor Sally was a particularly complex person. They were both likeable enough, but neither one had been developed to the point of being really interesting or someone you could really relate to. I also got a little annoyed with her for getting so upset near the end. I know the movie needed a climax (badum chhhhh), but I thought that was a rather poorly chosen one, or rather that it was done rather poorly. Hate was a rather harsh term, and he needed to do something pretty bad to deserve it. They wanted to end the movie with her saying she hated him but that she actually loved him, and though his acting in that scene was excellent, I don't think the scene, itself, could have worked in any movie. She didn't have justifiable reason to say she hated him, but if she did, the fact that they were in love should not have been reason alone enough to forgive him, so either way, it doesn't work, though the writers seemed to be really attached to that ending.
You've Got Mail.
Excellent. Wait what? That's right, you heard me, excellent. In fact, I'd probably have to watch the movie again in order to list off everything good about the movie, and the bad? Essentially nothing. It's true that some of the emails back and forth at the beginning were a little forced, but that's extremely difficult writing, and for it to be just "a little forced" is actually excellent. From the dream break up scene to a perfect representation of a horrible night, the movie wasn't cliche, and it didn't draw on the standard movie tricks just to sort of get its point across. It was original the whole way through and the premise was amazing. And if you're still wondering about her having closed the shop, she became a children's book author, something she could be remembered for, rather than simply following her mother, her own individual destiny, so that actually worked out for her, too. The writing was tight and well crafted, the characters were human, and you could identify with both of them, you could see why they liked each other, and the problems they faced, and their getting over them were actually believable. I can't think of another romantic movie that I think of as highly as this one.
So I got some recommendations, and, in an exercize in procrastination, I watched them.
Love Actually.
It was ... ok. The premise was decent, a movie about love, rather than about a specific group of people, the different guises love can take, the different ways it can come about, and the different good and bad endings that stories can have, with the general thesis that love is everywhere, even with all the bad stuff that goes on in the world. It could have worked, and it could have made an amazing Christmas movie, but it didn't. They took a decent premise and applied lazy writing and ended up with a mediocre movie. None of the characters were developed enough to really be rooted for, and I'm not sure if there was even one three dimensional character in the whole movie. The situations, too, were lacking in originality, the man in love with his best friend's wife, the girl who's had a crush on a guy for years, the guy who finds his girlfriend is cheating (and goes on to fall in love with someone else), the man who wants to get closer to his son. Even when they hadn't been done before, they were merely reworkings of fairly basic ideas. Granted, there wasn't time in the movie to fully develop what, ten characters? Or to pursue five complex and interesting storylines, and that's why what was in the movie had to be amazing for it to work, and it just wasn't.
When Harry Met Sally.
When Harry Met Sally was better, I suppose it gets a "decent" rating. It wasn't special. It was a little pretentious. It was a little dull. The movie seemed more concerned with stylistic matters than ones of substance, which was a problem. Neither Harry nor Sally was a particularly complex person. They were both likeable enough, but neither one had been developed to the point of being really interesting or someone you could really relate to. I also got a little annoyed with her for getting so upset near the end. I know the movie needed a climax (badum chhhhh), but I thought that was a rather poorly chosen one, or rather that it was done rather poorly. Hate was a rather harsh term, and he needed to do something pretty bad to deserve it. They wanted to end the movie with her saying she hated him but that she actually loved him, and though his acting in that scene was excellent, I don't think the scene, itself, could have worked in any movie. She didn't have justifiable reason to say she hated him, but if she did, the fact that they were in love should not have been reason alone enough to forgive him, so either way, it doesn't work, though the writers seemed to be really attached to that ending.
You've Got Mail.
Excellent. Wait what? That's right, you heard me, excellent. In fact, I'd probably have to watch the movie again in order to list off everything good about the movie, and the bad? Essentially nothing. It's true that some of the emails back and forth at the beginning were a little forced, but that's extremely difficult writing, and for it to be just "a little forced" is actually excellent. From the dream break up scene to a perfect representation of a horrible night, the movie wasn't cliche, and it didn't draw on the standard movie tricks just to sort of get its point across. It was original the whole way through and the premise was amazing. And if you're still wondering about her having closed the shop, she became a children's book author, something she could be remembered for, rather than simply following her mother, her own individual destiny, so that actually worked out for her, too. The writing was tight and well crafted, the characters were human, and you could identify with both of them, you could see why they liked each other, and the problems they faced, and their getting over them were actually believable. I can't think of another romantic movie that I think of as highly as this one.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Unions ...
I've had a growing fascination with unions recently. How can something which seems so good be so bad? They are corrupt, government lobbyists, which act for their own needs instead of the needs of the people they are meant to represent. I'd really put unions up with corporations and government as one of the three dangerous entities of modern society, getting back to my centralization and decentralization argument from a while back, one of the three major power centers. In fact, I'll probably get back to that once I finish up with my thoughts on unions in general at this point.
Unions emerged as a strong force in the 1920s in response to a specific problem. Industrial workers, miners, and probably other segments of society, faced serious exploitation, and something had to come in to stop it. There were essentially two options available. One was for the government to come in and implement certain rules and regulations to prevent this exploitation. The other was for the unions to come in and provide protection to the workers through, for instance, organizing strikes.
My suspicion is that the problems arose when both were introduced.
Acting on their own, government laws and regulations would have made it illegal to treat workers in certain, unfair ways, going against the corporations directly.
Acting on their own, unions would also have gone directly against the corporations, striking and campaigning in individual cases of exploitation.
Acting together, what has happened is that unions lobby the government for the government to force certain concessions to be made to them, or indirectly to them through the workers. They have turned into an unproductive organization which works for a profit and uses the government to help ensure that it earns that profit.
An example of this is minimum wage laws. Unions collect a fee for each of their members, and, in some cases such as the teacher's union, there is also a fee for abstaining from joining the union. Now, back in, say, the 1920s, wages were exploitively low. The unions could, and did, come in and organize strikes to help people protect themselves from this exploitation, essentially forcing factories and other companies to raise their wages. Another way of going about it would be to have a minimum wage law without a specific union entity (the minimum wage was not introduced in America, incidentally, until the 1950s). As it stands, we have unions campaigning for higher and higher minimum wages, and this reduces the ability of people who are not members of unions to compete economically with union members by prohibiting them from asking less, as they do not pay money to the union. In addition, higher wages paid to the workers (largely in order to fund a largely unproductive, if not destructive, entity), causes prices to go up, which causes the cost of living to go up, which is then used as the rationale for an increase in the minimum wage, and it is a cycle. It is pretty clear at this point why the concept of a floating minimum wage should never become a reality.
Going back to the decentralization argument, acting on their own, each would have simply acted as a check to the corporate power center, but acting together, they formed a new power center which has gradually become closer to the government power center to create an even stronger one.
I suppose the question then becomes, "Which should be gotten rid of?." That's a hard one. I think the government should take the role at this point in time, I think. The problem I see is that the unions became government lobbying organizations before, and I suspect a standard set of minimum rules, laws, would probably do more to help workers than unions would. There are problems for businesses with these rules, even if it is possible that they might not be exploiting people when the rule affects them, but unions have also caused a tremendous amount of damage to small businesses and large corporations alike.
Unions emerged as a strong force in the 1920s in response to a specific problem. Industrial workers, miners, and probably other segments of society, faced serious exploitation, and something had to come in to stop it. There were essentially two options available. One was for the government to come in and implement certain rules and regulations to prevent this exploitation. The other was for the unions to come in and provide protection to the workers through, for instance, organizing strikes.
My suspicion is that the problems arose when both were introduced.
Acting on their own, government laws and regulations would have made it illegal to treat workers in certain, unfair ways, going against the corporations directly.
Acting on their own, unions would also have gone directly against the corporations, striking and campaigning in individual cases of exploitation.
Acting together, what has happened is that unions lobby the government for the government to force certain concessions to be made to them, or indirectly to them through the workers. They have turned into an unproductive organization which works for a profit and uses the government to help ensure that it earns that profit.
An example of this is minimum wage laws. Unions collect a fee for each of their members, and, in some cases such as the teacher's union, there is also a fee for abstaining from joining the union. Now, back in, say, the 1920s, wages were exploitively low. The unions could, and did, come in and organize strikes to help people protect themselves from this exploitation, essentially forcing factories and other companies to raise their wages. Another way of going about it would be to have a minimum wage law without a specific union entity (the minimum wage was not introduced in America, incidentally, until the 1950s). As it stands, we have unions campaigning for higher and higher minimum wages, and this reduces the ability of people who are not members of unions to compete economically with union members by prohibiting them from asking less, as they do not pay money to the union. In addition, higher wages paid to the workers (largely in order to fund a largely unproductive, if not destructive, entity), causes prices to go up, which causes the cost of living to go up, which is then used as the rationale for an increase in the minimum wage, and it is a cycle. It is pretty clear at this point why the concept of a floating minimum wage should never become a reality.
Going back to the decentralization argument, acting on their own, each would have simply acted as a check to the corporate power center, but acting together, they formed a new power center which has gradually become closer to the government power center to create an even stronger one.
I suppose the question then becomes, "Which should be gotten rid of?." That's a hard one. I think the government should take the role at this point in time, I think. The problem I see is that the unions became government lobbying organizations before, and I suspect a standard set of minimum rules, laws, would probably do more to help workers than unions would. There are problems for businesses with these rules, even if it is possible that they might not be exploiting people when the rule affects them, but unions have also caused a tremendous amount of damage to small businesses and large corporations alike.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Objective Truths ...
Woohoo, 100 posts! And to commemorate it, I've come up with a name for the blog. Maybe it'll change, but, you know, I quite like it right now. I also changed the bio. I think I know more where the blog is headed at the moment, even if it's going to get there very, very slowly.
So, the subject of subjective and objective truths has been on my mind recently, particularly with regard to ethics. It's come up in a few conversations I've been having, but I also think it is a fascinating and fundamentally important topic.
At first, the idea of subjective morality is an appealing one. Broad, black and white statements, such as "murder is wrong" don't seem to capture the complexity of the subject of ethics, and, furthermore, what makes, say, polygamy, wrong if the people participating think it is right?
A little deeper, though, and it is a problematic concept.
If Hume, Firth, and the popular notion of cultural relativism are correct, then it was, indeed, wrong to be homosexual in the 1800s. Female circumcision is acceptable, because it is in keeping with the norms of the culture in which it takes place. Furthermore, honor killings are the right thing to do, if you happen to be a member of a culture which condones them.
Furthermore, there is the question of whether one culture has the right to impose its ethics on another, as a matter of morality. I've often heard the incredible brutality with which the Japanese treated POWs in WWII defended with the statement that "it was their culture. They thought that death was preferable to the dishonor of surrender."
I've equally often heard America criticized for trying to export democracy, because some cultures just don't want it (more on this later ... ).
So, not only is it a theory with many challenging circumstances to account for, it's also one which contradicts itself.
I've decided that I think the single, concrete moral truth is that you never have the right to intentionally deprive other people of their rights, except to prevent them from doing so to you or others.
Obviously, this must be qualified, too. I think it should be clear that intentionally overcompensating in your defense of threatened rights counts as an initiation of taking away other people's rights, making you morally culpable. Rights means the right to live, and to do anything as long as you are not violating the above rule. Also, any acts to prevent rights removal, defensive actions, must be aimed solely at the person attempting to take away the rights, with the sole intention of stopping those actions.
It is around that truth that everything else must be built. For instance, I do believe that people have a responsibility to help people who can't take care of themselves, but they do not have the right to force other people to do so. Polygamy only becomes wrong if any of the parties isn't knowing or willing, and honor killings only become right if the person to be killed, her(in most cases)self states that she wants that (highly likely, isn't it?).
This also has implications for politics.
I've heard this argument before, many times, but today I was reading a book about Belarus, Belarusian culture, and Belarusian politics. The author defends the authoritarian system of government in Belarus, saying that it has a lot of benefits, and that it is widely accepted. Culturally, he argues that Belarusians would rather have economic prosperity than freedom. Well, most of them would, anyway. He also criticizes western attempts to democratize the country, saying that attempts to "enlighten" the people about the advantages of democracy are misguided.
And shouldn't people have the right to be under an authoritarian government if they want to?
The answer to that is yes, but ...
The people of the government do not have the right to take away the rights of any member of the population of the country, except for defense purposes.
Essentially that means that people have the right to want an authoritarian style of government, but that government does not have the moral right to exist (unless, of course, it exists without taking away the rights of any member of the population, except for defense purposes).
(It has a lot more implications than that, obviously, and I don't advocate the west intervening in Belarus, partially because, according to the rule, that would mean that western governments were forcing their citizens to participate in such endeavors, which is wrong.).
So, the subject of subjective and objective truths has been on my mind recently, particularly with regard to ethics. It's come up in a few conversations I've been having, but I also think it is a fascinating and fundamentally important topic.
At first, the idea of subjective morality is an appealing one. Broad, black and white statements, such as "murder is wrong" don't seem to capture the complexity of the subject of ethics, and, furthermore, what makes, say, polygamy, wrong if the people participating think it is right?
A little deeper, though, and it is a problematic concept.
If Hume, Firth, and the popular notion of cultural relativism are correct, then it was, indeed, wrong to be homosexual in the 1800s. Female circumcision is acceptable, because it is in keeping with the norms of the culture in which it takes place. Furthermore, honor killings are the right thing to do, if you happen to be a member of a culture which condones them.
Furthermore, there is the question of whether one culture has the right to impose its ethics on another, as a matter of morality. I've often heard the incredible brutality with which the Japanese treated POWs in WWII defended with the statement that "it was their culture. They thought that death was preferable to the dishonor of surrender."
I've equally often heard America criticized for trying to export democracy, because some cultures just don't want it (more on this later ... ).
So, not only is it a theory with many challenging circumstances to account for, it's also one which contradicts itself.
I've decided that I think the single, concrete moral truth is that you never have the right to intentionally deprive other people of their rights, except to prevent them from doing so to you or others.
Obviously, this must be qualified, too. I think it should be clear that intentionally overcompensating in your defense of threatened rights counts as an initiation of taking away other people's rights, making you morally culpable. Rights means the right to live, and to do anything as long as you are not violating the above rule. Also, any acts to prevent rights removal, defensive actions, must be aimed solely at the person attempting to take away the rights, with the sole intention of stopping those actions.
It is around that truth that everything else must be built. For instance, I do believe that people have a responsibility to help people who can't take care of themselves, but they do not have the right to force other people to do so. Polygamy only becomes wrong if any of the parties isn't knowing or willing, and honor killings only become right if the person to be killed, her(in most cases)self states that she wants that (highly likely, isn't it?).
This also has implications for politics.
I've heard this argument before, many times, but today I was reading a book about Belarus, Belarusian culture, and Belarusian politics. The author defends the authoritarian system of government in Belarus, saying that it has a lot of benefits, and that it is widely accepted. Culturally, he argues that Belarusians would rather have economic prosperity than freedom. Well, most of them would, anyway. He also criticizes western attempts to democratize the country, saying that attempts to "enlighten" the people about the advantages of democracy are misguided.
And shouldn't people have the right to be under an authoritarian government if they want to?
The answer to that is yes, but ...
The people of the government do not have the right to take away the rights of any member of the population of the country, except for defense purposes.
Essentially that means that people have the right to want an authoritarian style of government, but that government does not have the moral right to exist (unless, of course, it exists without taking away the rights of any member of the population, except for defense purposes).
(It has a lot more implications than that, obviously, and I don't advocate the west intervening in Belarus, partially because, according to the rule, that would mean that western governments were forcing their citizens to participate in such endeavors, which is wrong.).
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
America ...
Such a cliche post, but I feel obliged.
I always went back and forth on The Rolling Stones as a band. Sometimes, I quite enjoyed their music, but others I had immense hostility to them, not just their music, but as a band. It was funny because I never really had that set of feelings toward any other band, just The Rolling Stones. Some bands I loved, and some bands I hated, but there were no other bands that I felt both ways about! Then, this summer, I was watching Pete Townshend's interview at the end of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (for which I had already adopted the name The Who's Rock and Roll Circus featuring The Rolling Stones), and he really, permanently, changed my perception of them. It was so strange. One minute, I was ranting and raving about how much better The Who are than The Stones, and how bad the Stones' performance was, etcetera, and then I saw the interview, and my opinion of the band was permanently changed, for the better. Why? Pete Townshend had done something which, quite possibly deliberately, had never really been done before, at least in my knowledge, he had really painted the Stones as individuals, as humans, who were really just like any band at the time, just sort of doing their thing and doing their best to be successful at it. And they were. They were very, very successful. They are not just a classic band, but an iconic one.
That was the problem. Satisfaction, Mick Jagger's swagger, Keith Richards' drug usage, Brian Jones, hedonism, Altamont ... those were all in your face before you even knew two of their songs. In that way, I think I would say that they were the single most successful group in Rock history. They had an image and a sound and everyone knows it. They have pretty much come to define the "darker," for lack of a better word, side of Rock Music. On the one hand, they were immensely successful, well done, and I think there is a bit of an intrigue factor with it. On the other hand, it's easy to look at the image they project and not look any deeper, and feel that you understand the band. Then, it is easy to take a band you really like and care about and are actually familiar with, and compare them on the completely different levels.
So what does this have to do with America?
I think that people tend to treat America in the same way as I treated the Rolling Stones.
Again, there are both good and bad elements, and it has all led to some sort of intrigue about America, but I've come increasingly to feel that many people sort of have a two dimensional vision of America and American culture. When they come here, they visit New York, Washington DC, and Florida (much in the same way as Americans, when we go to France, go to Paris). They see our TV and our movies, but not the good ones, just the blockbuster hits. We're rich, pushy, arrogant, loud, uncultured, and rude. We're powerful (and we always were). We're country music, McDonald's, Red, White, and Blue, and, oh yeah, we don't put extra 'u's in words. We're also a military and economic powerhouse, maybe not for long, but that's what we are.
And that's fine, I don't get offended by people thinking that. In fact, I quite enjoy some parodies on Americans, in particular, the American on Fawlty Towers, brilliant. I wanted to go to American night over here (if for no other reason than to request that the "American music playing" DJ play "American Woman" by the Guess Who ;) ). It's not just foreigners, either. I have had teachers who argued that there was no such thing as American culture, or even American heritage. That said, equating American culture to country music and hamburgers is about as accurate as equating The Rolling Stones to Altamont and Satisfaction, there's just more to it.
Actually, since being over here, I have really grown to have a finer appreciation for American culture than I did before. We do have a unique culture and a unique identity, and it's not the one that most people would give us. We're actually quite an innocent people in a lot of ways. We don't drink as much, our TV is tamer, so are our movies. We really identify with states and locations, which is not a trait unique to us, but saying which state we are from means something. We have an unnatural obsession with peanut butter, which I would actually argue is the single most American food, forget apple pie. I quite like an observation made of Americans in the early eighteen hundreds, by two people, one of whom thought it was positive, while the other did not. The general observation was that Americans were not interested in high society or high culture. They simply did their work, lived their lives, enjoyed themselves, and that was the emphasis. Thanksgiving is, apart from Christmas, our biggest holiday. As for food? Yes, we eat some hamburgers and hotdogs, but so much is forgotten. You haven't eaten American food until you've eaten biscuits and gravy. Seriously. Then there's cornbread, summer squash, collard greens, key lime pie, and tons of regional variation. Fish tacos. Lots of it has been imported and adapted from other people's recipes, but that's one of the things we do. Cajun food, jambalaya, red beans and rice, dirty rice. Oh, and don't forget creamed corn, or black eyed peas. I could go on. If you're interested, watch Alton Brown's show Good Eats, or, even better, the first and second seasons of his show Feasting on Asphalt, they're amazing. Another thing, iced tea, sweet tea, in the South, and our lemonade is lemon juice, sugar, and water, most other people's lemonade is our Sprite. Yeah, all of those have far more to do with American culinary identity than hamburgers do. We came from humble beginnings as a country and now we are something. We didn't have to be, but we are. We are a country of people trying to do the right thing, and that is one thing my middle school Geography/History teacher always said, America always tries to do the right thing. Sometimes it fails, but it always tries.
None of this means that I think that people should think America is better than any other country, I mean, The Rolling Stones are still not my favorite band, although they are great. It's just to say, whether you're American or not, because Americans do this with their own culture almost as much as foreigners do, at least some Americans do, that, well, I'm not sure, just be aware of this?
I always went back and forth on The Rolling Stones as a band. Sometimes, I quite enjoyed their music, but others I had immense hostility to them, not just their music, but as a band. It was funny because I never really had that set of feelings toward any other band, just The Rolling Stones. Some bands I loved, and some bands I hated, but there were no other bands that I felt both ways about! Then, this summer, I was watching Pete Townshend's interview at the end of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (for which I had already adopted the name The Who's Rock and Roll Circus featuring The Rolling Stones), and he really, permanently, changed my perception of them. It was so strange. One minute, I was ranting and raving about how much better The Who are than The Stones, and how bad the Stones' performance was, etcetera, and then I saw the interview, and my opinion of the band was permanently changed, for the better. Why? Pete Townshend had done something which, quite possibly deliberately, had never really been done before, at least in my knowledge, he had really painted the Stones as individuals, as humans, who were really just like any band at the time, just sort of doing their thing and doing their best to be successful at it. And they were. They were very, very successful. They are not just a classic band, but an iconic one.
That was the problem. Satisfaction, Mick Jagger's swagger, Keith Richards' drug usage, Brian Jones, hedonism, Altamont ... those were all in your face before you even knew two of their songs. In that way, I think I would say that they were the single most successful group in Rock history. They had an image and a sound and everyone knows it. They have pretty much come to define the "darker," for lack of a better word, side of Rock Music. On the one hand, they were immensely successful, well done, and I think there is a bit of an intrigue factor with it. On the other hand, it's easy to look at the image they project and not look any deeper, and feel that you understand the band. Then, it is easy to take a band you really like and care about and are actually familiar with, and compare them on the completely different levels.
So what does this have to do with America?
I think that people tend to treat America in the same way as I treated the Rolling Stones.
Again, there are both good and bad elements, and it has all led to some sort of intrigue about America, but I've come increasingly to feel that many people sort of have a two dimensional vision of America and American culture. When they come here, they visit New York, Washington DC, and Florida (much in the same way as Americans, when we go to France, go to Paris). They see our TV and our movies, but not the good ones, just the blockbuster hits. We're rich, pushy, arrogant, loud, uncultured, and rude. We're powerful (and we always were). We're country music, McDonald's, Red, White, and Blue, and, oh yeah, we don't put extra 'u's in words. We're also a military and economic powerhouse, maybe not for long, but that's what we are.
And that's fine, I don't get offended by people thinking that. In fact, I quite enjoy some parodies on Americans, in particular, the American on Fawlty Towers, brilliant. I wanted to go to American night over here (if for no other reason than to request that the "American music playing" DJ play "American Woman" by the Guess Who ;) ). It's not just foreigners, either. I have had teachers who argued that there was no such thing as American culture, or even American heritage. That said, equating American culture to country music and hamburgers is about as accurate as equating The Rolling Stones to Altamont and Satisfaction, there's just more to it.
Actually, since being over here, I have really grown to have a finer appreciation for American culture than I did before. We do have a unique culture and a unique identity, and it's not the one that most people would give us. We're actually quite an innocent people in a lot of ways. We don't drink as much, our TV is tamer, so are our movies. We really identify with states and locations, which is not a trait unique to us, but saying which state we are from means something. We have an unnatural obsession with peanut butter, which I would actually argue is the single most American food, forget apple pie. I quite like an observation made of Americans in the early eighteen hundreds, by two people, one of whom thought it was positive, while the other did not. The general observation was that Americans were not interested in high society or high culture. They simply did their work, lived their lives, enjoyed themselves, and that was the emphasis. Thanksgiving is, apart from Christmas, our biggest holiday. As for food? Yes, we eat some hamburgers and hotdogs, but so much is forgotten. You haven't eaten American food until you've eaten biscuits and gravy. Seriously. Then there's cornbread, summer squash, collard greens, key lime pie, and tons of regional variation. Fish tacos. Lots of it has been imported and adapted from other people's recipes, but that's one of the things we do. Cajun food, jambalaya, red beans and rice, dirty rice. Oh, and don't forget creamed corn, or black eyed peas. I could go on. If you're interested, watch Alton Brown's show Good Eats, or, even better, the first and second seasons of his show Feasting on Asphalt, they're amazing. Another thing, iced tea, sweet tea, in the South, and our lemonade is lemon juice, sugar, and water, most other people's lemonade is our Sprite. Yeah, all of those have far more to do with American culinary identity than hamburgers do. We came from humble beginnings as a country and now we are something. We didn't have to be, but we are. We are a country of people trying to do the right thing, and that is one thing my middle school Geography/History teacher always said, America always tries to do the right thing. Sometimes it fails, but it always tries.
None of this means that I think that people should think America is better than any other country, I mean, The Rolling Stones are still not my favorite band, although they are great. It's just to say, whether you're American or not, because Americans do this with their own culture almost as much as foreigners do, at least some Americans do, that, well, I'm not sure, just be aware of this?
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Red Lights ...
I'm driving through a four way stop today, and I see that they are installing a red light. There is nothing wrong with this four way stop. I never have to wait long, coming from any direction, and I have never seen an accident there. Still, they are installing a red light. It occurs to me that this is the perfect symbol of increased government intervention.
Stop signs are necessary. They take messy little places on the road and give people a set of rules to follow which allows everything to proceed smoothly. You are trusted to use your own judgement, knowledge of the rules, and politeness to help things move more quickly for everyone. Most of the time, a stop sign is enough.
Red lights are annoying. Sure, sometimes they are necessary, like a stop sign is not going to be sufficient to direct traffic on a four lane highway, but the vast majority of the time, it hinders traffic. Putting a red light in in this intersection (which seems to be funded by the stimulus money), and in countless others, will cause what was once a smoothly running bit of road to turn into a chaotic mess. Unlike stop signs, which give you the rules and trust you to use your judgement and follow them to know when you should and should not go, red lights tell you when to go and when not to. Instead of trusting people to decide when they should and should not go, people are forced to obey some machine programmed by some guy on the basis of standardizations and predictions. Suddenly, your twenty minute commute is now a thirty minute commute, you find yourself backed up in traffic which never existed before, and you find yourself driving increasingly dangerously to attempt to get through before the light turns red. Sometimes, you find yourself the only person at the intersection in the middle of the night, waiting for the light to turn green, wondering if the traffic engineers were vindictive or incompetent. You are wasting gas, money, and time, and releasing all sorts of polution into the environment. Pretty soon, you see the first accident you have ever seen at that red light. They took a perfectly smoothly working place (oh sure, you ran into the occasional rude driver), and, because they didn't trust people to be able to exercise their own judgement, they turned it into this monstrosity. And the red light was expensive, too!
Stop signs are necessary. They take messy little places on the road and give people a set of rules to follow which allows everything to proceed smoothly. You are trusted to use your own judgement, knowledge of the rules, and politeness to help things move more quickly for everyone. Most of the time, a stop sign is enough.
Red lights are annoying. Sure, sometimes they are necessary, like a stop sign is not going to be sufficient to direct traffic on a four lane highway, but the vast majority of the time, it hinders traffic. Putting a red light in in this intersection (which seems to be funded by the stimulus money), and in countless others, will cause what was once a smoothly running bit of road to turn into a chaotic mess. Unlike stop signs, which give you the rules and trust you to use your judgement and follow them to know when you should and should not go, red lights tell you when to go and when not to. Instead of trusting people to decide when they should and should not go, people are forced to obey some machine programmed by some guy on the basis of standardizations and predictions. Suddenly, your twenty minute commute is now a thirty minute commute, you find yourself backed up in traffic which never existed before, and you find yourself driving increasingly dangerously to attempt to get through before the light turns red. Sometimes, you find yourself the only person at the intersection in the middle of the night, waiting for the light to turn green, wondering if the traffic engineers were vindictive or incompetent. You are wasting gas, money, and time, and releasing all sorts of polution into the environment. Pretty soon, you see the first accident you have ever seen at that red light. They took a perfectly smoothly working place (oh sure, you ran into the occasional rude driver), and, because they didn't trust people to be able to exercise their own judgement, they turned it into this monstrosity. And the red light was expensive, too!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Abortion ...
A lot of people view abortion as a woman's rights issue, of whether or not a woman has the right to her own body. I don't. I view it as a question of when it is the state's responsibility to step in and protect a living being. For me, the issue of whether or not abortion should be permitted by law is solely an issue of when the fetus is a baby, of when the fetus is alive. If it is not alive, then the state has no business regulating it. If it is alive, then the state must protect it, as it does infants and toddlers, etcetera. There is a lot of black and white in abortion, like after the fetus is viable, I think that arguments against it being alive are pretty weak. Also, after it is viable, it does not need the mother's body to survive, so arguments against it benefitting the mother are fairly weak (although I do not think that that should be the criteria for when an abortion is performed, unless it is a medical reason). On the other end of the spectrum, I don't think that contraceptives or the morning after pill can justifiably be regulated by the state. There is, however, a grey area. That is the area after fertilization and before viability. Science seems to increasingly show that there are strong signs of life in the second trimester, but the first trimester is very debatable. It is in this grey area that the big question, I believe, comes, and that is whether or not the state has the right to mandate, in that first trimester, whether or not the embryo is a living being. There are two sides to the debate about whether it is or is not living, and making abortion illegal in that first trimester is taking a firm stance on one side of the issue. There can be very real, rational debate about whether or not abortion is morally or legally acceptable in that first trimester, and while I tend to believe that the embryo is alive at that point, it is possible that the state has no right to make that claim.
That said, the issue of whether or not abortion should be legal is different from the issue of whether or not it should be funded by government money. Apart from the obvious problem of forcing people to use their money to pay for things with which they do not agree, morally, there is also the fact that abortion is an elective procedure, and, in the majority of cases, not something which benefits the mother's health. This makes abortion much more akin to cosmetic surgery. If abortion is going to be paid for with government money, then so should nose jobs, breast implants, and botox. While I do not disagree with any of those being legal, none of them are the best use of healthcare money. The fact is that there is a finite amount of money which is available for healthcare, and, in a nationalized system, if one person uses it, it takes away from what another person can use, and that is one of the problems I have with that type of system. People using federal money to cover abortion means less money available to use for necessary medical procedures.
That said, the issue of whether or not abortion should be legal is different from the issue of whether or not it should be funded by government money. Apart from the obvious problem of forcing people to use their money to pay for things with which they do not agree, morally, there is also the fact that abortion is an elective procedure, and, in the majority of cases, not something which benefits the mother's health. This makes abortion much more akin to cosmetic surgery. If abortion is going to be paid for with government money, then so should nose jobs, breast implants, and botox. While I do not disagree with any of those being legal, none of them are the best use of healthcare money. The fact is that there is a finite amount of money which is available for healthcare, and, in a nationalized system, if one person uses it, it takes away from what another person can use, and that is one of the problems I have with that type of system. People using federal money to cover abortion means less money available to use for necessary medical procedures.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)