What about Talvezestan, Aquistan, Aquinostan, Tampocostan, and Nosesiestan. The countries where the lost people live. At least, Aquistan is where the lost people live, I guess.
On the flip side some chose so because they feel there are enough children in the world already, and would probably have children if the "unfit" parents would stop.
I don't know if you subscribe to that idea or not, but it doesn't make any sense to me. Here's why:
There are a lot of people in the world. If Jerky and Satana McSmackhead have 13 kids and you have 0, then the world just got worse as a whole. If they have 13 and you have 13, then the world maintains its balance of smeggers and nice children.
Note: I am not condemning those who choose not to have children. I merely perceive a flaw in that idea, and am pointing it out.
you're not mature and informed enough to deal with a minor choice that'll affect you for maybe 2-3 hours at most.
You HOPE it will affect you for 2-3 hours at the most. The parents of the poor kid you run over on the way home will probably see to it that it continues to affect you for as long as possible.
The choice to join the armed services is one usually taken very seriously, counseling with wise loved ones, weighing costs and benefits. Can you imagine a frat boy and his buddies going down to talk it over with their parents, pastors, and school counselors before grabbing some brewskis? "Mom, Dad, I've been thinking pretty hard about this, and I've decided I want to get loaded."
Then there's the looming specter of alcoholism, which from what I've heard doesn't like to let go.
Add to that the fact that I've seen more damage done to families by addiction than by military service.
On top of that, allowing young men to join the military is clearly beneficial to the country. Letting dinks get liquored up and shoot highway signs is not.
I'll bet that last paragraph is a giveaway to what size of town I grew up in!
That sounds like a sarcastic question, but how does one achieve that sort of relaxation: the relaxation of muscles that most of us don't know how to control consciously. While I was waiting for my night class to start, I decided to try to change the focus of my eye (I took off my glasses and closed one eye), and I could make it worse but not better. I thought about what you had said, and noticed that I could not relax past a certain point.
I have not seen any studies proving homosexuality as either a choice or genetic thing.
I don't think we need a study. If a man has intercourse with a man, he was either choosing it, or he was raped. That's not genetic, so it is either a choice or a rape. Granted there might be other factors that might effect a man's decision, but it finally comes down to his choice.
As to the rest of your post, about irrational and moral, I think you make some good points. I've often thought about that. I've often wondered what kind of control the brain really exerts over the body. People with good attitudes seem to heal better and faster, no? People give up and just die from time to time. I wonder how far that goes. Still, I have to be careful not to go to far. Hmmm.
There is so much to discuss here, and I feel like I am not doing the subject justice.
Thank you for clarifying, however, I think your gun-to-the-head test is flawed, in that if they really need the gun-to-the-head test, then there is still something wrong with them. Let me see if I can explain my reasoning here: If a kid is in class, and CAN pay attention to his spelling test, but only when the teacher is standing right next to him and prompting him, then this kid needs help (not necessarily medication, but that's another discussion). If the only way an addict will stop doing drugs/reading porn/gambling is when you're sitting on him or following him around, then he needs help, real help. Now I don't think that addiction is really a disease, so maybe I agree with you more than I thought I did. Hmmmm.
Thank you very much for an interesting post and an interesting discussion.
Have you tried cutting ALL caffeine out of your diet? Perhaps you only think there is no problem with your concentration or memory because you have never experienced anything better?
I have no problems with anxiety, but I DO have problems concentrating, and I don't drink caffeine at all. No coffee, and very, very rarely do I have a Dr. Pepper. Hardly ever any chocolate, either.
I am just wondering if you have experimented with this or not, and what was the outcome.
No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right?
I disagree. I don't think that Anxiety is labelled a "bad" thing, but an undesirable thing. The people I know with anxiety disorders go get help not because they think they are sinners or cursed or "sick," but because they are experiencing something over which they seem to have no control, and they don't like it. It's getting in the way of the life they want to live. So they go get help.
To address the delusion example you gave, that sounds really simplistic to me. I have a hard time believing that "delusional" should include religion. Not even religions that aren't mine!:) Why not? because the people who 'suffer' from the 'delusion' feel good about it, and they still live a full, rich, and happy life. This belief, or systematic bias, doesn't get in the way of anything.
I would think that any definition of disorder or "illness" would have to include something about how it iterferes with life. It's like my eyes. There's nothing that makes my eyes bad, or ill, or evil, or anything else, I just don't see well, and no amount of squinting will control it. My eyes are just that way, and they have been for a long, long time. But they get in the way of the life I want to lead, so I have them dealt with through glasses to reduce the bad effect they have on my life. Can't we compare this with other disorders? Maybe it's the way we are, and there's nothing wrong with it until it gets in the way.
Eyes may not be a good example, because eyesight is not a behavior. Let's look at addicions maybe. If someone is addicted to porn or drugs, there are multiple reasons for this behavior, but people aren't going to get help until they realize that it is getting in the way of the life they want to lead. When they realize that, they can get help or really watch their behavior, and they can stop the addictive, self-destructive behavior.
With ADHD or ADD in children it would be similar, except that it is up to the parents and teachers to be responsible enough to look at the direction in which the child is going and take steps to ensure the kid gets the help he needs.
You can probably tell that I am not a psychologist or anything of the sort, but I think these are still good points. I would appreciate any enlightenment you could give me on this. Am I understanding you correctly? As I reread our posts, I think I have gotten a little outside what you were talking about. Still, I would like to know what you think.
I have a brother who is a Major in the Air Force. He is a scientist. He told me, though, that he has accepted the possibility that any day they could hand him a rifle and send him to the front lines. He says if they ordered him to, he would do it. That's part of what he signed up for.
Change weapon purchase/development from AK-47s to IEDs, mortars, grenades, and bomb belts. Etc.
The reasons that so many guerilla movements use the AK-47 are because it is cheaper than any other gun (of similar effectiveness), it is easier to maintain (they are notoriously rugged), any idiot can fire one (if I can do it, how hard can it be?), and they are everywhere. You make it sound as though they had a purchasing department. I would be very surprised if they did.
I realize that not all of the potential enemies we might face fall into the guerilla category, but that seems to be our enemy right now.
Yeah. I see a lot of that, too. But I believe that those are the visible ones. There are also many who are poor who raise polite, well-adjusted children.
We could also talk about what poor means, I guess, but I don't know where to start.
That should be modded funny, no? My grandpa had 10 kids in Mexico and US border-towns during the 20s and 30s, and he fed them all, they all grew up to be responsible, and most of them went to college. This man was a hard worker: a carpenter (when there was work) and a traveling salesman. Any one of us can have kids. It's just a question of whether or not we are willing to go without a few luxuries to have them.
I know people with children who live in small trailers. Good, smart, clean kids, too.
"Having children is for people richer than me, just something I'll have to do without."
You must be poor indeed if you can't afford to do something that the poorest people have been doing for countless years. Perhaps what you really mean is that you can't afford kids AND other stuff you want. Kids are not some fun luxury. They are a part of life. Look around. Look at who can and can't afford kids. Then look at who is having them.
Have a kid. You'll realize you can't do without him.
Re:This is why you have monopolies.
on
Pay vs. Happiness
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I disagree. Microsoft might be a slave to stupid masters, but they still rely on them. That's why they try so hard to keep us where we are: they know that we will dump them on a whim. They know that customer is king, so they keep the king dependent on them so they don't get fired.
I was a tele-hustler in college. Best paying college job I could find, but it sucked bigtime. I hated that job, and instantly dropped it the second a lab assistant position opened up.
That's kind of a blanket statement. I think it is true that many times people use "national security" as a kind of buzz-word to take our freedoms and to protect those in power, but many times we must take freedoms away in the interest of national security.
Freakishly extreme example:
I am probably not allowed by law to create nuclear explosive devices (I think that's a safe bet, though I haven't read the law). This is an infringement on my freedoms, no? This is clearly a case, though where my freedoms must be cut in order to protect national security.
Less-extreme example:
In World War II, there was serious censorship going on. People had severe restrictions placed on what they could print, and soldiers had severe restrictions placed on what they could write home to their families. This is clearly a case where our most basic freedoms (freedom of the press, and the freedom to correspond with our loved ones) had to be curtailed in favor of national security.
Normal Example:
I have been sitting here thinking of a way I could breach national security, and I just can't think of a way I could bring down the wrath of the government upon myself for "compromising our national security." This means that a: I don't have enough imagination, b: the US is not really interested in unreasonable encroachments on my freedoms, or c: some other reason I haven't thought of (see a).
Okay, so will the cost of the new taxes really be higher than the cost of the gasoline and roads, and will the new transportation system sufficiently decrease the need to build, maintain, police, and brovide medical infrastructure for all the accidents, and will the land use go down enough to make it worth it?
I wish my organization would switch to some kind of inexpensive standard. We are starting to feel pressure from problems caused by running different versions of Word, or upgrading from OS9 to OSX and wishing they could take their license with them (without running in classic mode), or some people don't think it's worth the money to switch from AppleWorks (which sucks, by the way) to Word, and then we have to try to read documents in ClarisWorks (which also sucks) format in Word and vice-versa, and we are getting SICK OF IT! And I only work in an elementary school!
1. Will the cost of the new taxes really be higher than the cost of the gasoline?
2. Aren't mass transit systems in Europe commonly struck by worker strikes? (Struck by a strike. You like that?) That would lend a lot of weight to the "mass transportation won't allow them to go where they need to when they need to" argument.
3. I think the main thing here, though, is the idea that I dump money into my car, and know where it is going, and who's putting it there. I can monitor it myself and plan ahead for any problems. If my car breaks down, I already have backup plans in place (ride from a buddy, borrow my wife's car, etc.) but if there is a strike or a derailing or something like that, I don't know what you could do. Even 1 mile is a mighty long walk sometimes.
Item #1 is a serious question.
Item #2 is another serious question. I am not looking for an argument here, I want to know if this is as big an issue as I have heard it is in Europe, and if you have factored that in to your thinking.
Item #3, though is what I think lies at the heart of the situation. Even in LA, where traffic stinks mightily, people still drive everywhere.
Disclaimer: I live in an area of about 100,000 people, unlikely to have to deal with this problem anytime soon. My short time in LA did not give me any experience with this issue, as the subway was finished about a month or so before I moved out, and everyone used cars anyway. I moved out of LA in 1996.
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Why do you think they said, "the most portentous team-up since Butch met Sundance?"
What about Talvezestan, Aquistan, Aquinostan, Tampocostan, and Nosesiestan. The countries where the lost people live. At least, Aquistan is where the lost people live, I guess.
So I guess you're saying that fewer people is better?
I don't know if you subscribe to that idea or not, but it doesn't make any sense to me. Here's why:
There are a lot of people in the world. If Jerky and Satana McSmackhead have 13 kids and you have 0, then the world just got worse as a whole. If they have 13 and you have 13, then the world maintains its balance of smeggers and nice children.
Note: I am not condemning those who choose not to have children. I merely perceive a flaw in that idea, and am pointing it out.
You HOPE it will affect you for 2-3 hours at the most. The parents of the poor kid you run over on the way home will probably see to it that it continues to affect you for as long as possible.
The choice to join the armed services is one usually taken very seriously, counseling with wise loved ones, weighing costs and benefits. Can you imagine a frat boy and his buddies going down to talk it over with their parents, pastors, and school counselors before grabbing some brewskis? "Mom, Dad, I've been thinking pretty hard about this, and I've decided I want to get loaded."
Then there's the looming specter of alcoholism, which from what I've heard doesn't like to let go.
Add to that the fact that I've seen more damage done to families by addiction than by military service.
On top of that, allowing young men to join the military is clearly beneficial to the country. Letting dinks get liquored up and shoot highway signs is not.
I'll bet that last paragraph is a giveaway to what size of town I grew up in!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to buy Parmalat.
That sounds like a sarcastic question, but how does one achieve that sort of relaxation: the relaxation of muscles that most of us don't know how to control consciously. While I was waiting for my night class to start, I decided to try to change the focus of my eye (I took off my glasses and closed one eye), and I could make it worse but not better. I thought about what you had said, and noticed that I could not relax past a certain point.
Anyway, I am serious about these questions.
I don't think we need a study. If a man has intercourse with a man, he was either choosing it, or he was raped. That's not genetic, so it is either a choice or a rape. Granted there might be other factors that might effect a man's decision, but it finally comes down to his choice.
As to the rest of your post, about irrational and moral, I think you make some good points. I've often thought about that. I've often wondered what kind of control the brain really exerts over the body. People with good attitudes seem to heal better and faster, no? People give up and just die from time to time. I wonder how far that goes. Still, I have to be careful not to go to far. Hmmm.
There is so much to discuss here, and I feel like I am not doing the subject justice.
Thank you very much for an interesting post and an interesting discussion.
I have no problems with anxiety, but I DO have problems concentrating, and I don't drink caffeine at all. No coffee, and very, very rarely do I have a Dr. Pepper. Hardly ever any chocolate, either.
I am just wondering if you have experimented with this or not, and what was the outcome.
I disagree. I don't think that Anxiety is labelled a "bad" thing, but an undesirable thing. The people I know with anxiety disorders go get help not because they think they are sinners or cursed or "sick," but because they are experiencing something over which they seem to have no control, and they don't like it. It's getting in the way of the life they want to live. So they go get help.
To address the delusion example you gave, that sounds really simplistic to me. I have a hard time believing that "delusional" should include religion. Not even religions that aren't mine! :) Why not? because the people who 'suffer' from the 'delusion' feel good about it, and they still live a full, rich, and happy life. This belief, or systematic bias, doesn't get in the way of anything.
I would think that any definition of disorder or "illness" would have to include something about how it iterferes with life. It's like my eyes. There's nothing that makes my eyes bad, or ill, or evil, or anything else, I just don't see well, and no amount of squinting will control it. My eyes are just that way, and they have been for a long, long time. But they get in the way of the life I want to lead, so I have them dealt with through glasses to reduce the bad effect they have on my life. Can't we compare this with other disorders? Maybe it's the way we are, and there's nothing wrong with it until it gets in the way.
Eyes may not be a good example, because eyesight is not a behavior. Let's look at addicions maybe. If someone is addicted to porn or drugs, there are multiple reasons for this behavior, but people aren't going to get help until they realize that it is getting in the way of the life they want to lead. When they realize that, they can get help or really watch their behavior, and they can stop the addictive, self-destructive behavior.
With ADHD or ADD in children it would be similar, except that it is up to the parents and teachers to be responsible enough to look at the direction in which the child is going and take steps to ensure the kid gets the help he needs.
You can probably tell that I am not a psychologist or anything of the sort, but I think these are still good points. I would appreciate any enlightenment you could give me on this. Am I understanding you correctly? As I reread our posts, I think I have gotten a little outside what you were talking about. Still, I would like to know what you think.
I have a brother who is a Major in the Air Force. He is a scientist. He told me, though, that he has accepted the possibility that any day they could hand him a rifle and send him to the front lines. He says if they ordered him to, he would do it. That's part of what he signed up for.
The reasons that so many guerilla movements use the AK-47 are because it is cheaper than any other gun (of similar effectiveness), it is easier to maintain (they are notoriously rugged), any idiot can fire one (if I can do it, how hard can it be?), and they are everywhere. You make it sound as though they had a purchasing department. I would be very surprised if they did.
I realize that not all of the potential enemies we might face fall into the guerilla category, but that seems to be our enemy right now.
We could also talk about what poor means, I guess, but I don't know where to start.
All I can find for $15 is dial-up around here.
My dad can now afford to have kids, but he's 75.
That seriously makes me laugh.
That should be modded funny, no? My grandpa had 10 kids in Mexico and US border-towns during the 20s and 30s, and he fed them all, they all grew up to be responsible, and most of them went to college. This man was a hard worker: a carpenter (when there was work) and a traveling salesman. Any one of us can have kids. It's just a question of whether or not we are willing to go without a few luxuries to have them.
I know people with children who live in small trailers. Good, smart, clean kids, too.
"Having children is for people richer than me, just something I'll have to do without."
You must be poor indeed if you can't afford to do something that the poorest people have been doing for countless years. Perhaps what you really mean is that you can't afford kids AND other stuff you want. Kids are not some fun luxury. They are a part of life. Look around. Look at who can and can't afford kids. Then look at who is having them.
Have a kid. You'll realize you can't do without him.
I disagree. Microsoft might be a slave to stupid masters, but they still rely on them. That's why they try so hard to keep us where we are: they know that we will dump them on a whim. They know that customer is king, so they keep the king dependent on them so they don't get fired.
I was a tele-hustler in college. Best paying college job I could find, but it sucked bigtime. I hated that job, and instantly dropped it the second a lab assistant position opened up.
I guess I could look it up myself...
Freakishly extreme example:
I am probably not allowed by law to create nuclear explosive devices (I think that's a safe bet, though I haven't read the law). This is an infringement on my freedoms, no? This is clearly a case, though where my freedoms must be cut in order to protect national security.
Less-extreme example:
In World War II, there was serious censorship going on. People had severe restrictions placed on what they could print, and soldiers had severe restrictions placed on what they could write home to their families. This is clearly a case where our most basic freedoms (freedom of the press, and the freedom to correspond with our loved ones) had to be curtailed in favor of national security.
Normal Example:
I have been sitting here thinking of a way I could breach national security, and I just can't think of a way I could bring down the wrath of the government upon myself for "compromising our national security." This means that a: I don't have enough imagination, b: the US is not really interested in unreasonable encroachments on my freedoms, or c: some other reason I haven't thought of (see a).
Okay, so will the cost of the new taxes really be higher than the cost of the gasoline and roads, and will the new transportation system sufficiently decrease the need to build, maintain, police, and brovide medical infrastructure for all the accidents, and will the land use go down enough to make it worth it?
I wish my organization would switch to some kind of inexpensive standard. We are starting to feel pressure from problems caused by running different versions of Word, or upgrading from OS9 to OSX and wishing they could take their license with them (without running in classic mode), or some people don't think it's worth the money to switch from AppleWorks (which sucks, by the way) to Word, and then we have to try to read documents in ClarisWorks (which also sucks) format in Word and vice-versa, and we are getting SICK OF IT! And I only work in an elementary school!
2. Aren't mass transit systems in Europe commonly struck by worker strikes? (Struck by a strike. You like that?) That would lend a lot of weight to the "mass transportation won't allow them to go where they need to when they need to" argument.
3. I think the main thing here, though, is the idea that I dump money into my car, and know where it is going, and who's putting it there. I can monitor it myself and plan ahead for any problems. If my car breaks down, I already have backup plans in place (ride from a buddy, borrow my wife's car, etc.) but if there is a strike or a derailing or something like that, I don't know what you could do. Even 1 mile is a mighty long walk sometimes.
Item #1 is a serious question.
Item #2 is another serious question. I am not looking for an argument here, I want to know if this is as big an issue as I have heard it is in Europe, and if you have factored that in to your thinking.
Item #3, though is what I think lies at the heart of the situation. Even in LA, where traffic stinks mightily, people still drive everywhere. Disclaimer: I live in an area of about 100,000 people, unlikely to have to deal with this problem anytime soon. My short time in LA did not give me any experience with this issue, as the subway was finished about a month or so before I moved out, and everyone used cars anyway. I moved out of LA in 1996.
I try to. Just not all of them.
I agree absolutely. We really need some more accurate definitions of liberal, and Fast!