This is the simplest clearest explanation of the sub-prime mess we are in that I have ever seen. It also happens to be hilarious in a sad, sick, and twisted kind of way:
http://www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/
If you read this and don’t get pissed off, there’s gotta be something wrong with you.
So… I made the near fatal error of listening to the news the last few days. It’s a wonder I’m still around. But todays news and the news late last night particularly annoyed me.
You see the topic of discussion was the so called Wall Steet Bailout bill and the refrain of the day was “what went wrong?” and “how could it not have passed?”, and “who screwed up?” and the likes. People called it a “failure of leadership”. And they attacked all the people who voted against it.
And that’d all be fine, EXCEPT at the same time they would say how public opinion is OVERWHELMINGLY against the bill. The stories would speak about how representatives would get phone calls, letters, and emails from their constituent and 99% of those were AGAINST the bill.
So here’s the obvious question… if a democracy represents the will of the people, and the people are against the bill and the bill fails, how exactly is that a failure of the system!?!?!
It seems to me that that’s by definition representative democracy of work. If the representatives listen to the phone calls and letters and emails of their constitutents then they are in fact doing their jobs! If they don’t, then they are presuming that they know better than their constituents and arrogantly making policy independently of the whims of the people who just happen to have voted them into office.
The news programs though seemed to see things differently. They asked the question “how could leadership fail to convince the public of the necessity of the bailout?” A sort of who screwed dialectic. Isn’t that interesting? The very wording of the question presumes the truth of it. That the bill is necessary. That it is a good plan and that we can’t come up with anything better. Assumptions that, most Americans apparently don’t agree with.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not endorsing or rejecting the bill personally. I’m saying that even if the bill is the best thing for the economy if the people don’t believe it to be so, the bill ought not be passed. The economy can take a hit. Even if we all suffer as a consequence, the principles of democracy ought to supersede any particular crises of the moment. If they do not, then at the first sign of danger we might as well turn our government over to the nearest maniacal dictator and wish our problems away.
The goal of leaders ought not to be to “convince” their constitutents to agree with them, nor should it be to act renegade against the will of their people. Rather the goal of the leaders ought to be to educate the public of the facts and let the people come to their own conclusion. Then once the people have come to a conclusion, their job should be to *implement* it.
Anything less is an oligarchy of fools. And the jokes on us.
I’m an introvert most definitely. When I take personality tests I usually score around 100% introverted. I’ve written about my introversion in the past too on this blog so I won’t belabor the point too much. To put it simply I require long periods of time by myself, locked in my room, or sitting in my car somewhere, or at the office when my boss is not around. Doing these things re-energizes me.
Am I OK with being this way? Well yes mostly. I think extroverts are kinda weird. But there are substantive disadvantages. For one thing society seems to favor the extrovert considerably whereas introverts are encouraged generally to change who they are, to “go out and talk to more people” and BS like that. Generally people assume that when you are introverted you are depressed, have a low self-esteem, cowardly, and the likes. And yeah that annoys me since all of those things vary independently of introversion. If you are an introvert and depressed, cowardly, and having a low self-esteem, and someone makes you change to become more extroverted you probably wont’ become nay less depressed, cowardly, or having a low self-esteem. Indeed, more likely the constant effort to be someone you are not will make you more depressed, lower your self-esteem, and leave you constantly afraid of letting your guard down and revealing your true introverted self.
There are two other disadvantages of introversion that come to mind. One happens when people the introvert interacts with notice the introvert pulling away, they sometimes incorrectly consider it a judgment against them. That is an extrovert might think that the introvert is annoying them or avoiding them or doesn’t like them, or just might get mad at the introvert for not giving them enough attention. When the reality of course is the introvert is just trying to preserve his or her alone time so that he or she can act normally around those other people when he or she does spend time with them, for otherwise, being an introvert it would drive him or her insane to be perpetually socially on. This can result in numerous conflicts that sometimes lead to disastrous outcomes if both parties don’t acknowledge their fundamental differences and learn to bend a little.
The last disadvantage of introversion is the ironic opposite over compensation. This is when extroverts recognize someone’s introversion and in order to be understanding and give the introvert space end up fully isolating or avoiding the introvert and never engaging the introvert in conversation. This is a misunderstanding of introversion as the need for perfect solitude all the time or a desire to not have friends or companionship whatsoever. But that’s not introversion at all. Introverts are still human and humans still very much need social interactions same as everyone else. IT’s just that they *also* need alone time. Being an introvert does not necessarily mean you want to be a total loner.
Anyways, despite these disadvantages I’m happy with being an introvert. I would never give up my peaceful moments alone to think and wonder and dream. I need my time away from the chaos of people’s insane ramblings about meaningless nothings. If I were to be otherwise, I wouldn’t be me. And I like me. So introversion it is. For now.
I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!
One of the most damaging moments in any friendship is that moment when one friend is in need and the other… just isn’t there. Whether the person misses their friend’s need because they were busy, or they were too lazy, or they didn’t know, or they were going through their own problems, or they were angry about something doesn’t matter. When you’re going through something very hard for you and you are casting around for a life line and you look toward your friends and find them… absent… it can be a hard thing to forgive. You tend to feel so alone. You tend to get angry and resentful.
But underlying the anger and regret there is a deeper hurt. When your friends aren’t there you tend to start to question your friendship with them. You think: are we really friends? Did this person really ever care about me? And then you start to think of the times you were there for them and you start to feel used. You start to think, how can we be friends if I am there for you but you are never there for me?
But you have to remember that a moment of need is actually remarkably easy to miss. It could only last a moment. There could be a single night. A single moment when a person finally breaks down and casts around them looking for help rather than trying to do it all on their own. And that one moment… you might miss the phone call. You might not be in. You might not be able to ask the questions or say the words that get your friend to open up. It’s very easy to fail in being a good friend. Friendships, real deep friendships anyway, aren’t easy. They require vigilance and hard work and struggle.
And as with anything hard, when you try to be a real friend to someone you have to be prepared to fail. Sometimes you won’t be there. Sometimes you won’t even notice. You’ll have had too much on your mind. Too many of your own problems. And you’ll have to look back and recognize your failure and apologize. And try to do better. To try to be there for your friends again, starting now, as best you can.
Perhaps even harder though is the other side. Where you have to learn to forgive your friends for being absent when you needed them. When you have to learn to let go of the hurt and pain and give your friends another chance. Can you do it? Or will the hurt just fester forever? If the latter your friendship will not survive.
Just keep in mind that when your hurting over some sense of abandonment chances are just as good your friend is feeling exactly the same way about you.
So ultimately the solution to damaged friendships is for each party to decide how much the friendship matters to them. They have to decide whether or not they care about and respect the other person enough to continue it. And if they both decide it does matter, that the other person is worth it, than they need to talk it out, to not judge one another, to apologize, and to forgive. And if they don’t think it’s worth it, they might as well just stop pretending. Nothing is more damaging to one’s emotional security than struggling futilely to preserve a false friendship.
If you’re a normal person living in the US and you happen to be listening to the news you’re probably completely confused about what’s going on in the economy. You’ve heard people screaming gloom and doom but you personally don’t see anything different. If your economic status has sucked before it sucks just as much now and if you were on the up and up you’re still on the up and up unless you’re one of the unlucky ones who worked for Lehman Brothers. Maybe you monitor your 401k like a hawk and see it spiraling downwards, but mostly you’re thinking huh? what? who?
That’s normal. We’re not all economists and even our economists don’t really understand this monstrous economic system we are stuck in the grips of.
But we’re afraid. We heard the horror stories of the depression and we keep hearing that word come up again and again on the news and we imagine where our future lies? Will we be in soup lines? Will we all be out on the street? Will prices skyrocket? Will this last years?
Well that scenario is unlikely. Prices will rise as will unemployment, but probably, hopefully not like the depression. I don’t believe there is, amongst normal people, nearly that much of a lack of faith in the economic system to bring about that outcome.
However, there is a big problem it’s just that people aren’t explaining it to you very well. Here’s a quick and easy explanation: Nobody has any money.
You see it went like this salaries kept reducing relative to inflation, jobs kept being lost, and those jobs that were created weren’t making anything of particular value to anybody in the world. We were very productive at making this nothing mind you, our productivity has been on the rise, but there wasn’t any value behind our frantic activity. The one thing we made A LOT of is houses. We made way too many of those.
So then to keep up our standard of living we took out loans. In other words businesses sold us more nothing and we bought it with credit cards and mortgages and complex things that don’t make any sense. And all these loans had interest rates of course. So as time went on we owed more and more and more. In some sense we were over-exuberant arrogant money wasters. But in another sense we *had* to because the our salaries by and large weren’t increasing and yet our essential expenses – housing costs, energy costs, and educational costs were skyrocketing. Even the price of food has been on the rise. Most people can no longer afford to pay their bills. OF COURSE you take out loans if they are available and pray that things turn around eventually. It’s better than starving and being out on the street right? And maybe if you pay for your kids to go to an expensive college maybe they’ll have more luck than you. It’s the wishful thinking approach to personal finances.
Eventually that taking out of debt caught up with everyone and the big businesses started realizing all these loans they’ve sold actually aren’t worth very much at all because the people who have these loans can’t pay them and probably never will be able to. And the physical assets lying beneath most of these loans, the houses we built were dropping in value too because we built too many of them.
In effect Wall Street realized that a lot of businesses who said they had lots of money actually had no money. Because their money was intrinsically tied to yours and mine. And so Wall Street started to take their money out. So what happens to the businesses if they have no money coming in from stocks? They collapse. Unless they ask or beg for help. But who do they ask? The federal government of course! They’ll save us! They assume that the government will be so afraid of an economic collapse they’ll have no choice but to step in. It’s wishful thinking again.
But here’s the problem…
The federal government has no money either.
Not really. Because just like the businesses it’s wealth is dependent on the wealth of yours and mine. So it too has been going deeply into debt to fund a bunch of social programs, tax breaks, incentives, bale outs, and a war or two on top of all that.
In effect the entire economy is sort of going Bankrupt. We ran up a debt too large for us to pay. And when that happens for individuals the solution is, take control of the individual’s economic decisions, sell off assets to provide the creditors as much of their investment as possible forgive the remaining debts so the individual doesn’t end up stuck in an endless loop of increasing interest. And then the individual starts over. Only with everyone well aware that the person filed for bankruptcy and hence unlikely to loan them any more money for the ten years or so the bankruptcy remains on their record. And then the individual has to work his or her ass off to make a living and build a life for themself. Hopefully they’ll be able to take advantage of a number of programs to help out people going through hard financial times. If they don’t, or if they aren’t lucky and can’t find job(s), then they are totally screwed. They end up on the street or filing for bankruptcy again before you know it.
So what do you do when a nation size economy goes bankrupt? Apparently you randomly give 700 billion dollars of tax money to all the companies in trouble, no strings attached, and then cross your fingers and hope the problem goes away. I read somewhere that that’s about $2000 per American tax paying household. $2000 we don’t have. Because we have no money. Oh and by the way in the process we’ll just give the treasury secretary near unlimited power over national finances. Don’t you just love wishful thinking?
People say this is a surprise. How could this happen? Right? But how come I’ve read numerous people over the years who have warned over and over again that things were going badly. That the economy is on the wrong track. That the system we have is untenable. But nobody had any incentives to alter their behavior, least of all the wealthy investors and executives that were making out like bandits, and our government didn’t have the will to implement laws (and eliminate laws where necessary) that would create incentives for people to alter their behavior. So sure there’s a lot of blame to go around, but ultimately this is a failure of government.
And that’s how we fix it. Ultimately we need to become a more productive wealth building nation again. Not a debtor nation. That means we need to do whatever we can to stimulate our economy. To encourage new businesses. To encourage more jobs. But that’s not enough either. We’re already in a big big growing hole as rates increase and while that’s hanging over all of our heads how can we focus on being productive? We can’t. So government needs to divert a great deal of money to bailing out our debts. Not just that of big banks and investment firms but that of individuals. Mortgage rates can be frozen and renegotiated. Individual debts can be forgiven too. It’s not that we don’t have enough people to live in all the houses we
built, we just don’t have enough people who can afford them. Prices will drop sure, but we also have to make it so individuals can afford the investment and compete over the houses that exist causing prices to rise again.
We need to bring troops home and stop intervening in other nations not just because that’s expensive but also because people have more confidence when they feel they are safe and when they are surrounded by their loved ones. Also the military employs a great many productive and hard working members of our society, whose expertise would be better put to use at home, improving our infrastructure and creating wealth.
I’m not saying stay out of global affairs, far from it, but intervene more cautiously and more fairly. Use military force only as needed. If we can hardly afford to prop up our own economy how can we afford to prop up several other nations?
People need to believe they actually have a chance in hell of GETTING a job so that they start searching. And they have to want to do their job and do a good job at it. They have to believe it matters. They have to believe there is a point in trying and that there is hope for a better economic future for everyone. Not just here but everywhere in the world. That way they start employing their energy and creativity and wit and skill for the betterment of humanity, rather than deciding to stay in their parents basement and play video games until disaster strikes.
Every policy we implement should be focused toward those ends. Every choice the government makes should be made with thoughts of how does this make individual Americans more wealthy and more confident? That’s how you build confidence in the big institutions too, by building confidence first in the little guy. And confidence is the force that can propel our nation into a new future.
But without that kind of investment, the only result of any bale out will be throwing more money into a black hole. It’ll be just like the individual who can’t get a job. No matter how many times he or she files for bankruptcy it won’t help them. People will still not be able to change their economic fate without having a means to earn money. Businesses won’t thrive unless people have money to spend. That’s all there is to it.
I have a weird mixture of arrogance and low self-esteem. Actually I doubt that’s all that weird at all really. Many who find some aspect of themselves or their lives fundamentally lacking tend to compensate for that by stressing and showing off those other characteristics, however few, that they feel are praiseworthy. In other words if you are arrogant outwardly chances are you don’t have a really strong sense of your self-worth. If you did, you wouldn’t need to brag.
No, where I differ is in perhaps my self-awareness of these facts that consequently at times enables me to catch myself and head off my natural inclination to start telling every random stranger on the street how brilliant I am. Of course, it helps that I don’t like talking to people too. But even in my blog, I often find myself forcing myself to revisit what I am saying for fear that I will show off my true colors as a self-obsessed prick.
And likewise I find myself compensating on the other side, that is trying hard not to let slip those areas in which I see myself as falling far beneath the norm. It hardly seems fitting to ramble on endlessly about my flaws and foils for that too will drive many a reader or listener to madness. Again, it helps that I don’t like talking to people.
As a consequence perhaps I can appear somewhat neutral by virtue of the value of sheer silence. Nah, most likely I alternate between the two extremes as my guard slips on one side or the other.
But even when my compensation regime is effective, there are still consequences that transcend my appearance to the outside world. Being arrogant and having a low self-esteem also immediately naturally results in me being a person quite capable of getting extremely jealous.
Only I don’t react to it by getting competitive or getting enraged or wanting to break something or becoming more boastful or mean (well maybe a little of all of the above) . Rather, mostly I just get depressed. I close further in on myself and drown out the world. All the while I’m telling myself that feeling this way is pointless and achieves nothing. And yet reason does not seem to allow me to control my emotional states but only to control my outward displays of it.
And the latter I am quite good at.
Bleh. I was tagged by DarkAngelKat00 and purplepixiepoo. Apparently this means I’m supposed to engage in a twisted ritual of revealing 15 things about me that you probably don’t know hence giving all youreaders power over me! Guess I’ll do it. I’m bored anyway. But no way am I tagging anyone. I don’t like the obligatory feel that tagging creates. Nor do I like things that feel like chainletters. I’m weird like that. However if you are a friend of mine and you read this and want to do your own list of 15 things, be my guest! I’ll happily read your list.
1. At one point when I was in High School, I had read every Dragonlance book ever published. Then they kept printing more, curse them!
2. I’ve been playing D&D since I was 12 years old I think only I’ve barely ever played. I’m really still a novice.
3. I finished at the top of my class in High School, it was the biggest high school in the state, a public school and some of my teachers said our class was the smartest class they’d had in years. Like any of the top 12 students wold have been valedictorians in any other year or something like that. But I didn’t really deserve to be Valedictorian because I purposefully bombed my Creative Writing class but my bad grade mysteriously disappeared! O_O!?!?
4. In college during every year but freshman year I skipped something like 75% of my classes. I was totally depressed most of the time for all 4 years and unmotivated. But I still graduated. My GPA was ass but I graduated. The funny classes were the ones where I got a good grade even though I never showed up! 
5. The college I attended was ranked the 4th best school in the country by Forbes, but none of you have ever heard of it. Neither has any interviewer I’ve ever talked to when applying for a job. Go figure.
6. Soon I will probably be moving into a larger apartment.
7. I have a scar on the side of my nose that I have no clue where it came from.
8. I ABSOLUTELY hate and despise POKEMON. If I could rid the world of it I would consider myself as having done the planet a good deed worthy of my legacy.
9. I’m flat footed.
10. I’ve never to my knowledge been drunk, intoxicated, buzzed, stoned, or high. Drinking a red bull or too much coffee makes me want to throw up. However I guzzle down normal sodas at an alarming rate.
11. My reading rate has declined so much in recent years that it takes me about 55 minutes to complete a single volume of a manga!
12. I have a garguntuan Magic:The Gathering collection. Online and offline. It’s worth a lot of money too and I’m seriously considering selling it. My collection started in High School when one of my then best friends who was a kleptomaniac stole some cards and gave me some of them.
13. My car has a huge dent on the side that has been there for like 4 months and I never bothered to even get an estimate on how much it would cost to fix. It’s a fully paid off 2006 Mazda 3. I got the dent when I had an unfortunate run in with a inanimate wall. That wall was out to get me I tell you!
14. I have psoriasis that covers my entire head. It drives me near to madness on a regular basis. I just got insurance but the insurance company won’t treat it cuz it’s a pre-existing condition.
15. When growing up we had a family cat a big fat black creature with eerie green eyes who was as mean as could be. But the cat liked me best and would always fall asleep in my lap letting me pet him and rub him. Recently I saw a grey cat lying on the steps to my apartment that looked exactly like him. My friend suggested that maybe it was the spirit of my old family cat coming back to check on me. The grey color was because he was insubstantial. The thought made me shiver.
There you go.
Gender Selection and Abortion | TheTheologiansCafe’s
Xanga Site – Weblog
The above links to a thread that began a discussion about if and when it is OK morally to have an abortion. The question was: “Do you support a woman’s right to abort an unborn baby in order to select a baby’s gender?”
I want to analyze a tangential point. In a number of comments in reply to this issue people brought up the idea that you can’t be Pro Choice but still feel that abortion for the sake of gender selection is wrong. That to believe both makes you morally inconsistent. I came across this side argument through reading my friend’s blog that has a discussion about it here: Morals or not? | DarkAngelKat00′s Xanga Site – Weblog She talks more about the specific idea of gender selection and moral consistency.
I don’t really want to get into depth about the abortion topic itself. Honestly I’m on the fence about this particular instance of abortion rights. It strikes me as wrong not because the abortion itself is wrong but because of the sexism it reflects in that society. I can also as a thought experiment imagine a crazy society where gender selection abortion makes sense. Say for example if in the far future some crazy person invents some virus and unleashes it on the atmosphere that makes it so that all males born in the society during a certain time period are born with numerous physical deformations, mental illnesses, and are forever in agonizing pain throughout their lives, and further more increases their capacity for violence and decreases their compassion and understanding. I would say then that gender selection abortion is fine. So I don’t want to make a blanket statement against it. Culture and circumstances differ and some scenario I might not have thought of might make it make sense in a particular circumstance. But yeah in general I find the idea unsettling for much the reasons that Katie describes in her blog.
No, what I really want to talk about though is not that, but my vehement objection to what I see as a VERY flawed form of argument. This idea of moral inconsistency arising from your objection to abortion in this case but your support of it in general. I think it’s crazy
This isn’t the first time it’s come up. It happens far too frequently in fact. Basically what happens is that Pro-Life people argue that Pro-Choice means that you must support a woman’s right to choose abortion under every circumstance. That that’s what “choice” means. If you say you are pro-choice but under certain circumstances women shouldn’t choose abortion, then the argument goes, you aren’t really pro-choice at all.
Here’s the argument in the words of one of the commentators on TheTheologiansCafe:
“Anyone anyone anyone who makes the absurd claim that they are “ProChoice” must defend to the last the right to abort a baby for any reason…uh…that’s what ProChoice means. If you claim to be ProChoice and then start speaking about poor
choices – whoops! Your ProLife all of the sudden! You better start
voting Republican you disingenuous, don’t know what you stand for,
flipflopper!!” -AliasUndercover
And you have to admit it sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds right. Choice is choice after all. How can you be against some but not others. Flip flopper!!
But is this really true? If you believe abortions are ok some of the time but not all of the time are you morally inconsistent?
Actually it is not.
The problem here is one of argument “framing”. Here the pro-life side has defined pro-choice in the terms that it desires it to be. It has painted the idea of pro-choice as an absolutist principle. The reason to do that is rather obvious really. When you frame an opponents position in terms of absolutes it becomes rather *easy* to argue against it. As we see here. I can say: “Hey you do you support aborting a baby at 9 months because you suddenly decide you’d prefer a child who has naturally slightly curlier hair than this baby is genetically inclined to have? No? Well then you’re not Pro-Choice! Ha! I WIN! W00T!!”
But that’s just patently absurd. Whoever said that being pro-choice meant you had to support every case of abortion!?!?
And in reality if you look at national poles you find that that’s quite clear. People who self describe themselves as pro-choice by and large DO NOT condone abortions under any and all circumstances. What they are, for the most part, opposed to is having a nationwide law that outlaws abortion in general and makes it a crime akin to murder.
Still having trouble understanding the pro-choice position? Does it still seem inconsistent to you? Think of it this way:
I don’t believe there should be a law or prohibition against lying in general. I think it’s an individual’s right to choose when to lie and when not to lie. So in a sense I could be said to be “pro-choice” with regards to lying. But does that mean that I think lying is never morally repugnant? No! Of course not! There’s been PLENTY of times I’ve seen people lie and thought they were doing something terribly wrong and morally reprehensible. But there have also been times when I think a lie was the right thing to do. I would not want my right to lie restricted on a blanket level by constitutional law. That would be ridiculous.
And to take it further I am even not opposed to outlawing lying under certain circumstances. We have laws for example against lying under oath that can land you in prison or get you impeached if you are the President and whatnot. You aren’t allowed to lie to an officer of the law either. I’m not opposed to rules against lying. I’m not opposed to non-government based social punishment for lying too. I expect teachers in schools to punish children for lying frivolously. I expect churches to teach against lying as if it were a sin and a thing to be avoided in general. And I expect businesses to frown upon employees lying to further the aims of the company. And yet… I’m definitely pro-choice with regards to lying. Try to make a law against lying in general and I will take to the streets in protest. The right to lie is an important individual right for me.
Abortion is the same. I’m pro-choice. It ought not be the original principal of the government that all abortion is fundamentally wrong and illegal. I can see certain cases of abortion being illegal and the people who exercise it in those cases being punished, within reason, commiserate to their crime. As to what that punishment should be, is a matter for a great deal of social debate and analysis of the specific cases involved. But I would rarely think that an abortion should be treated on the same level as murder in the first degree.
Interestingly though that brings me to another classical argument “framing” example ironically on the other side of the aisle. It’s not uncommon for pro-Choice people to “frame” the argument of pro-Life people as believing that any and all abortions should be treated as First Degree Murder cases. That the women and the doctors involved should all be locked up for life and/or executed!
But of course most pro-Life people aren’t nearly that extreme. Most people’s morals aren’t that cut and dry. Rather most self-proclaimed pro-Life people believe in shades of gray. They believe that most abortions are wrong and they believe that this “wrongness” needs to be enshrined and protected through the law. But they might think a certain case is not as bad as another, is more understandable and should be afforded leeway. Most don’t think most abortions should be treated as first degree murder trials. Rather they just fear that without legally outlawing abortions people will begin to do them frivolously. That there won’t be any controls whatsoever. They fear that no one will protect the rights of unborn children who cannot speak for themselves. These positions should not be trivialized and turned into the assumption that all people who are pro-life and blood thirsty zealots ready to execute every doctor or mother who ever made that tough decision to abort a child.
Don’t get me wrong. There very well may BE people who think like this. Just as indeed there are people who really believe that a fetus should be accorded no rights or recognition or protection prior to its birth because it is not a living or sentient entity but just a “thing”. It’s just that most people’s positions aren’t nearly that extreme. And we shouldn’t let those extreme views dominate the debate.
Note how even with something as fundamental as murder morals have shades of gray? Not all cases are treated the same by the body of the law or the implementation of those laws! We have different statutes. We have various degrees of murder. We have complex sentencing procedures. And not all killing of human beings is considered murder at all. Why? Because the people’s morals are ALWAYS gray. There’s no such thing as absolute inviolable principles. That doesn’t mean we all are corrupt entities, lacking in morals, rather it means that life is surprise, surprise, actually pretty damned complicated particularly when it comes to matters of morality.
The problem with the abortion debate has always been one of argument framing. Both sides believe so passionately about their positions that they frame the debate in terms that paint their opposition in the darkest light possible by stressing the most extreme sides. It enables them to focus on and stress differences in opinions between the sides, many of which in actuality don’t really exist between most individuals.
Of course as some politicians have started to assert, including a certain Presidential candidate I am voting for, it makes far more sense for us to cast aside these childish arguments and focus on those areas on which we can, most of us anyway, agree. If we stop playing stupid argument framing games we’ll find that quite often most of us agree in terms of what is right and what is wrong on far more than we disagree. Of course, irony of irony, this Presidential candidate also happens to be the one who has been vilified as a monstrous baby killer in the media. Framing in action yet again. grrr
But do yourself a favor and read through the comments on that entry of theTheologiansCafe. What you’ll find as you find in a great many of specific abortion debates that almost everyone who commented has said pretty much the same thing.
We aren’t nearly as divided as you think we are
Powered by ShareThis
Two come to mind of late within the last year. In some ways they’re both more weird than good.
1. “I think you’d make a great Dad or maybe an Uncle” o_O
2. “You’re like Tomoyo-chan” O_O
I just answered this Featured Question; you can answerit too!
One of my favorite authors in recent years is Jacqueline Carey. The books of hers that are my favorite are called Banewreaker and Godslayer but that’s only because she wrote both of these books in a completely unique style that I loved. They were all like: “Boros, Storm Bringer forged the great sword Light Smiter and hid it deep within the Whispering caverns where Merlos, third-born did find it and brought it forth to smite the followers of darkness.” OK that’s an absolutely horrible pathetic approximation of her style in these books. But then she’s about a bazillion times better a writer than me so no surprise there. But it should give you an idea anyway. The prose in these books is just plain beautiful.
Anyways, those are my favorite of her books, but her more popular books are in two trilogies wherein all the titles have the name “Kushiel” in them. Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Avatar, Kushiel’s Justice, etc. These are more traditional high fantasy… Only different.
The cool thing about these books is that they describe a fascinating society of a people called the D’Angelines. The D’Angelines are all descended from fallen angels, basically. Not devils exactly, but angels who chose to walk the Earth in human guise following Elua who was the son of Jesus or something like that (technically, born when the blood of the crucified Yeshua ben Yosef, the son of the One God, mixed with the tears of the Magdalene and then was quickened by Mother Earth, for those sticklers out there).
But what interests me about the D’Angelines is that I’m pretty sure that society is a pretty close approximation of where modern societies are heading thanks to changes in social perceptions, traditions, and the development of modern technology. You see the D’Angeline society has the following benefits:
Obviously when you combine the physical advantages with the cultural traditions of accepting and not placing restrictions on how people express love, you get an exceedingly open and liberal society by modern metrics. Much that has been taboo in America and other parts of the world is not only allowed but allowed *openly* and institutionalized in the culture.
And yet their society does not descend into a hell of unrestrained debauchery and self destruct. Huh. Go figure.
Now D’Angelines aren’t perfect. Many of them are arrogant, prideful and unforgiving. It’s sounding more and more like modern day America every minute isn’t it? But they also support a kind of wage slavery or indentured servitude that is, to me at least, rather disturbing. Especially since it applies to children and orphans. But no one is treated badly. And they are fundamentally in principal opposed to traditional slavery without the possibility of earning your freedom. Elua taught against it or some such.
Well you can see why I think we’re going to be a lot like this society in the far future right? Technology will ultimately enable us to match 2 and 3. And maybe even do better than 3 since in Carey’s books the women have control over whether they can get pregnant. But we can imagine nano robots being injected into all human beings so that men AND women can turn them off or on as they will to determine whether or not they are able to create life. Or less sophisticated just increasingly effective and full proof methods of birth control on both sides of the spectrum becomes more and more universally available.
Beauty is hard to judge since it’s subjective, but genetic engineering and cosmetic surgery, plus mass media indoctrination can allow 1 to come true too. Well we have a fast food and obesity issue standing in the way of it to some extent but I don’t doubt those problems can be solved too.
So that leaves 4. Well people are stupid. So I think 4 will take a long long long time. People don’t want to let people do what they want. Power comes from imposing restrictions. But thankfully since we DO live in something resembling a democracy, ultimately as 1,2, and 3 occur you can pretty much expect 4 to become the defacto standard as popular opinion and basic human logic causes people to adopt it. People really WANT to be able to pursue their own joy and happiness. They surely aren’t going to adopt principles that restrict their ability to do that when there is no good logical reason to anymore. So they’ll eventually just let people “love as thou wilt” so that they themselvs can too.
And you know, all of this is already happening in fact. Albeit slowly. Actually not that slowly. Compare today to 20 years ago and you can see we’re *much* more D’Angeline as a whole than we were then. Where will we be in another 50 years? Maybe even far beyond D’Angeline in social openness.
Now I don’t think these books cover everything. And it’s easier for this society because they aren’t built out of more restrictive traditions. Meaning there is no social guilt or generational barriers to tear down for them. So the people don’t go through shock and social angst and guilt like people in modern society often do when they transcend old behavioral barriers that are in the process of being torn down. And also not enough in the books covers how children are raised in that society. Which is of course one of the trickiest issues facing modern society as we grow in openness and acceptance. How do you instill values at the right times without overwhelming kids with more than they are ready to handle? How can you ensure that children retain a time of innocence and have time to be “kids” while still having a society that is open, non-secretive, and virtually all allowing.
Interesting thoughts and questions to be sure. But they do not detract from the quality of what is underlying all of this just a great traditional story of high fantasy, magic, and adventure. It’s basically just a good story even if you just think of it as a silly imaginative society that could never exist in the “real” world.
One of my favorite character in these books has a favorite saying it goes like this:
“All Knowledge is worth having”
I think about this all the time and I think I’ve always sort of believed in this. All Knowledge is worth having. And a natural corollary to that is All Experiences are worth having. Or at least all NEW experiences are worth having. Since you can’t help but learn *something* from them.
But in spite of my belief in knowledge, I don’t think I’ve been much inclined to seek out new experiences. Quite the opposite I’ve had more of a wait and see kind of approach. I let experiences come to me. I don’t rock the boat. That’s had some advantages for me. For example it’s because of that that I have enough money to help people in spite of being somewhat reckless with my expenditures. I don’t do anything risky enough to really cut deeply into my expenses. Still, I wonder sometimes if the lack of knowledge isn’t the greater risk and the deeper loss.
Well the great thing about knowledge is that you can always find more of it if you look. The question is where to look next?
I know where you should look next. If you haven’t read any of Jacqueline Carey’s books, you should. Right now! All experience… all knowledge is worth having. And reading these books is an experience I can bet you won’t regret!
