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Chomsky can be infuriating. But on some subjects, he is right on target. He laughs at the ridiculous post-modernists, for example; and in his skepticism about social "science" in general he is excellent. However, he is deeply unrealistic about the world.
Without a hint of patronising (patronisation??) that was a terrific read Doug.
Yep, we are easily shaped. I like to think humans are a bit more than a bunch of conditioned responses but I also remember reading that Fred Skinner and his wife brought up their daughter according to his philosophy (meaning his mindset arising out of his behaviourist research) and she was reported as being (at university, I think she went to Harvard) well adjusted if a little distant from people. I would think having B.F.Skinner as yer dad might have done that. I read his Walden Two and I have to say I felt a wee bit chilled. I prefered the original Walden (but I'm a wannabee anarchist).
I believe you are right on the money with how children develop. They get their sense of normality from their parents. If their parents are dissolute shit bags then that's normal to the kids. That ain't theory, I've seen it over the years. It's fact as far as I'm concerned.
Your grandchildren are learning important human values. Those values pre-date Christianity. But I am so glad they don't go back as far as the Druids. I've seen their altars (Chislehurst Caves, Kent) and it's not nice to realise they sacrifice humans to their gods.
Good, they can make their own minds up later. Bertie Russell and his "Why I Am An Atheist" would be interesting. But in the interests of balance they should also he exposed to the later writings of Malcolm Muggeridge.
Personally - don't fall about laughing - I think our kids should be taught about Aristotle from an early age (using Bruner's spiral curriculum idea) and Aristotle's ideas of human flourishing and virtue ethics (Nicomachean Ethics, ironically written for his son). We need to be morally educated from when we are very young, if we aren't exposed to that then later in on secondary English we might realise what Tennyson meant when he wrote about, "nature red in tooth and claw". If we have to introduce God then so be it. I don't have a problem with kids learning the predominant moral culture of their environment, they can make up their own minds later on (when they read Bertie).
I believe you are right on the money with how children develop. They get their sense of normality from their parents. If their parents are dissolute shit bags then that's normal to the kids. That ain't theory, I've seen it over the years. It's fact as far as I'm concerned.
Still in the job, got perhaps three to go (all being well with health and the rest of it). Sadler sounds like a good bloke. Not that unusual in the demons there (worked with a few over the years) but I bet he would never have put his hand up to go to the stick-ups with another Danny (Walsh) and of course Fish who is getting up the nose of both Spring Street and St Kilda Road alike.
I appreciate the thought but I doubt if I've been able to emulate Sadler although if I stretch my mind back a bit I think I may have stuck my hand out once or twice to do something other than grab someone's collar. I really hope I have because in 37 years in the job I want to be able to say I've made a difference and not just made a career. The latter would be an unsatisfying and empty claim.
As for nature/nurture, I agree with you. I think I over-egged culture. Just as we no longer believe in (well most of us don't believe) demonic possession being the cause of crime (just using this as an example) and accept that there are a range of causes (social, psychological, physiological etc) there are a range of causes for, in this example, addictions.
I hear the trite phrase, "addictive personality", pumped out. That plays nicely into the "you must have willpower" crowd who can conveniently blame the individual for allegedly being weak-willed. A nicely compartmentalised solution that shifts everything back to the individual and means no social programmes have to be funded and no medical research is required.
Humbug.
We are simply pieces of meat, (http://www.electricstory.com/stories/story.aspx?title=meat/meat)
our brains are made of meat, we're edible. Our brains function by electro-chemical means. We're meat machines. And it's easy for things to go wrong with us. But we don't like to admit we're intelligent meat so we build up myths about ourselves. Of all the other life forms on Earth, meat and non-meat, we are the best. We are the best because God created us in His image. Therefore we're special. That circular argument stops us from understanding that we're just highly adaptable organic forms that can big note themselves as a species. None of us have the right to aim slogans at each other when something in us breaks down or doesn't work properly.
Now I know this is all a bit metaphysical for some so I'll leave it there.
Chips - you should write your autobiography if you haven't already done so.
Fitzroy - wasn't that Squizzy Taylor's hangout back in the 1920s?
And people think The Sopranos were tough
I'll get back to you tomorrow, Dee. I'm cooking Kai and getting ready to watch the ODI in India.
I'm onto the last link I've used it before. I was being driven nuts by my academic supervisor in a postgrad degree, she was banging on about something called "whiteness". I didn't have a bloody clue what she was on about (still don't), but the jargon was impressive. So I appreciated the info in that link when I first read it. I felt a lot better about myself, I was beginning to have self-doubts (the imposter syndrome isn't confined to women).
I hate that post-modernist jargon, it's only used to exclude others from the circle. Give me clear thinking and clear prose any day.
Yes, Squizzy Taylor was born in Fitzroy.
So was Mary McKillop, my maternal grandmothers first cousin, whose father was also a degenerate drunk.
I wasn't aware she was born in Fitzroy, of course us Croweaters like to claim here because of her work in Penola.
Powerful piece of footage there Chips - I thought it was pre WWI when it opened up and then I read the notes (I always read the manual afterwards) I couldn't believe it.
And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that. Huh! Me workin' for you!"
Whoa-oh-oh
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
And the sign said anybody caught trespassin' would be shot on sight
So I jumped on the fence and-a yelled at the house, "Hey! What gives you
the right?" "To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in"
"If God was here he'd tell you to your face, Man, you're some kinda sinner"
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
Now, hey you, mister, can't you read?
You've got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat
You can't even watch, no you can't eat
You ain't supposed to be here
The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside
Ugh!
[Lead Guitar]
And the sign said, "Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down and pray"
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn't have a
penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign
I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin' fine."
Wooo!
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Sign
Sign, sign
FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND - "Signs" lyrics
It's interesting that you see the welfare state as sort of parental metaphor. I would have used the metaphor of a welcome helping hand rather than the sometimes ambiguous hand of the parent.
God wants man to live in recognition of His Lordship, but man has skewed that, because of his innate sinful nature that demands self recognition, self determination, and self control. The Crusades did indeed move Islam out of Spanish Europe, but atrocities were committed by both parties claiming God or Allah's "green light" of approval. Neither group, were operating under any "green light" but their own manmade (sic.) interpretation of what they, "wanted" their Creator to be, not what was clearly revealed in Christ via the bible.
Even a "nimrod" (may I interject that you are using this word in a disparaging sense when it means "a mighty hunter before Yahweh" - was that your intention?) of a human being can read the New Testament, and clearly see that the very nature of Christ went "counter-point" to so many of man's "in the name of Christ" manuevers (sic.), that resulted in wars, and rumors of wars.
Jesus said, "I and the Father are one". How can anyone misinterpret that? Does (sic.) the Crusades, and Jesus's 9sic.) life meld and agree? When Jesus said He was the only way to the Father, was He all of a sudden a deluded loonie? (sic.)
One
God wants man to live in recognition of His Lordship, but man has skewed that, because of his innate sinful nature that demands self recognition, self determination, and self control.
How could God have wants? That indicates that God has limitations and is not at all all powerful.
The lordship of Infinite Good, the quality that the Universe appears to be a source of all supply, does appear God like. The wise use of resources and the distribution of those resources in ways that benefit all Infinite Good's seemingly "created" sentient inhabitants seems to me to be the message that is repeated in world scripture and in the words of the scruffy Nazarene rebbi whom some would identify as a being called Christ. My reading is that Christ is a condition of extraordinary understanding of the ways of Infinite Good. Christ as a being separate from the rest of mankind is a construct of the establishment and co opting of the ideation of the "Jesus People" and the supernaturalism of the "Christ Cults" by the Emperor Constantine and his myth making mother, Helena, whom some call Saint,
The nexus of moral philosophy, objective science and pious practice (religion) is not now nor has it ever been so hidden that it is not readily accessible by a quiet and mindful observer. It has however been dressed up in "cloth of gold", lordship of man over man, and superstition. That is where we find paternalism, dominionism and the greatest sin of all, money chasing money especially in the temple.
Two
The Crusades did indeed move Islam out of Spanish Europe, but atrocities were committed by both parties claiming God or Allah's "green light" of approval.
How did you establish that bit of history. The Princes in the redoubt of Asturias and their guests, the Christian paternalist from the rest of Spain had as little mutual respect and willingness to cooperate with the rest of Europe and the rest of Europe had to cooperate with them. Islamic Spain had little need of the rest of the Muslin world in their realm of seeming toleration. They traveled and traded as they saw fit to the east. They were set upon by their fellow Muslims with by robbery, piracy, kidnap and ransom, and constant backbiting as un-Islamic and shirkers.
No. The crusades and the Reconquista of Spain, 1000-1250, may share a bit
in the way of time line, but Asturias' interests were hardly in common cause with the Crusades. The Princedom of Asturias became wonderfully rich because they traded as they chose with the Ummayad Caliphate in Cordoba. They were the center of European trade with Muslim Spain by virtue of their location behind a nearly impenetrable mountain range to their south and occupying a long east/west coast line facing the North Sea.
You seem to have such a good command of a lot of historical knowledge. It is just a bit too crafted in the way of apologetics.
Three
Neither group, were operating under any "green light" but their own manmade (sic.) interpretation of what they, "wanted" their Creator to be, not what was clearly revealed in Christ via the bible.
I must agree with what you say here. But, do understand, I accept this in absence of supernatural presumptions or other myth drenched superstition. The advanced state of Bonobo man is still one of blood lust, orgasmic play and avarice.
Why do I sign my observations with
I AM . . . ?