Category: the Rant Board
Hey everyone.
The topic I’m posting is actually going to be many different topics, and I’m doing this rather than creating new topics pages for each and every board, as sometimes I find it difficult to know where to post certain things. I’ll have my first few posts which are actually going to be copies and pastes from a few different topics pages. I’ll have the first one out tomorrow, so watch for that. I’ll be posting different posts in the form of what are basically monologues, then of course I’ll be replying on this topics page to whoever gives me comments. So I hope you enjoy.
James
Monologues? You ever thought of just self-publishing your manifesto instead
of wasting our time with it?
Report me to the god damn admin and have them disable my account if you don't fucking like what I say you nihilistic little punk! You chose to read my posts, so you only fucking have yourself to blame if you didn't like what I had to say, as you've known for days now what my views on things are.
oh shit.
Aww, did I touch a nerve? That's so cute.
if he's going to rant, shouldn't he be on said board? just saying...
Come on you Zone meanies. He can say his peace.
Laughing.
This is open discussion.
Of course, you'll receive feedback, some you'll like, some you won't, but post your thoughts, opinions.
I'll be reading. It is all interesting to me.
If it's basically monologues, with some replies thrown in, then yes, this should probably be on the rant board, so I'll move it there now. It's difficult to know where to post what at times, so this is nothing personal, but if a board is basically someone saying their piece on one or many things, the rant board seems like the best fit.
Thanks Anthony. I probably should have put it there to begin with. Thanks for moving it there.
Thoughts on the Sunday Shootings
Burning leaves
Turn to ash before my eyes,
Crushed my dreams long gone.
Burning leaves
Dead branches reach to the sky,
The flame within me is gone.
“Burning Leaves”
Ensiferum
Time is not a linear march towards a final end point either good or bad. It’s not a walk on a path to a sun-lit utopia of any sort. It’s a series of cycles of light and dark, hope and despair and life and death.
For the victims some of whom were injured, others who were killed on Sunday, June 12, 2016, at “The Pulse Night Club in Florida, they’re lives have moved from a cycle of light in to one of darkness and one of which they’ll have questions of why this happened, why their loved ones are now dead or for the ones who are hospitalized, they now have pain and the uncertainty as to whether or not they’ll survive and what kind of lives they’ll have if they live again.
The lines above from the song “Burning Leaves” performed by the group Ensiferum show the anguish of a life that’ll never be the same, as well as the feelings that come when one’s world will never be the same again. Like the character in the song, the victims both dead and alive are no longer in a world they used to know. They’re in a world now where hatred of Muslims will grow worse, where self-serving politicians will continue talk of gun control laws that like hate-crime laws will only feed the growing and ever-expanding Prison Industrial Complex by way of most likely imprisoning people in for-profit prisons by way of codes in the laws which would allow for extended and harsher sentences for gun crimes, rather than making laws and policies which examine the root of these violent crimes in the first place so as they can be prevented.
The new world for them will also consist of well-paid motivational speakers and other people who confuse hollow platitudes with deep and well-thought out advice that when given to the victims and their families, will dismiss their pain and anguish should they continue to grieve longer than a few weeks or months as them allowing themselves to be victims, them keeping themselves down and them allowing the killer to win. Their world has been forever changed and for them, they’re dreams and the dreams of their loved ones for them have been crushed long gone with the flames of their own lives now gone. For us to fight against this evil in any way that will help and be meaningful, we will have to understand the rage and desperation of people such as the man who murdered some and injured others. We will not prevent these horrors from happening all the time and even when we do, it’s not going to be because we do what we’ve been doing throughout human history, it’s not going to be because we answer his bullets with our own or give these murderers extended sentences that only keep alive and feed The Prison Industrial Complex. These problems will be solved not only by us understanding and helping people with the rage that drives them to go on to commit these crimes, but also by us turning to solutions that do not place us on the same moral level as terrorists and killers to do to them exactly as they’ve done to others, and to the people in the night club in particular. The ways in which we deal with crimes committed by these people will in the end, come only when we turn to these solutions and away from projects that call on us to play God, such as “The Christian Right Movement, The New Atheist Movement and like-minded movements and individuals. Effective help for all this will come when we learn to truly reach out to the stranger, the outcast and those in despair which easily can turn to rage.
James
Reach out and do what precisely? You haven't presented anything here.
You've basically just given some shitty poem I could have bettered in fourth
grade, then said that our current system is broken, and that we won't fix
anything til we fix it? Well how do you propose to fix it? What do you propose
we do if not put murderers in prison? What do you propose we say when we
reach out to these people? Again, as I've said in another board, you set yourself
against something, in this case multiple things, against for-profit prisons,
against right-wing christians, against atheism, against islam, but you haven't
placed yourself as being for anything. You're just against. But you can't make a
personal identity out of negative space. Being against something isn't an
identity. I don't particularly like liver, it doesn't mean that I love every other
type of meat there possibly is. So, likewise, we as your readers can't assume we
agree with you or disagree with you, because all you've done is set yourself
against something. wE could both be against it, but I could also be against
whatever your plan is. Or do you not actually have a plan at all and just want to
be against something for the sake of being against it?
I don’t have anything against Muslims and I have no idea how you even remotely read that in to what I said. The only way I think you could have even figured something like that is when I talked about further hatred for Muslims coming about early on in my post. The hatred for them because of this murderer’s actions is going to come most likely from the typical right-winged bigots who want to demonize Muslims because of what this guy did rather than try to find out what caused him to do these murders in the first place so as to find ways to reach out to these people and help them before their despair turns to rage which could possibly drive them to do what this guy did. How you got out of that that I am against Muslims is beyond me and if you read the post carefully as I’ve encouraged you to do with all of my other postings, you’d know that it’s not Atheism with which I have a problem, it is specifically “The New Atheist Movement” with whom I have a problem. Furthermore, I never said that murderers should not be in prison for their crimes, they absolutely should, so long as it’s not done for the enrichment of the prison system as it is, which is The Prison Industrial Complex. If you think murderers should be fried, why not just say so to me rather than give me more of your useless pedantry?
It just seems to me based on every single solitary thing you’ve had to say to me from day one of you posting at me, that you just don’t want to take the time it takes and do the hard work it takes to understand and investigate what I have to say nor look at other ways of managing society that doesn’t involve black and white thinking. Also, I’ve met some rather crass and cold people in my life and you definitely fit that mold and then some. I give my thoughts on a horrible thing that happened and it’s a murder spree that could have easily been prevented as most of the other mass shootings could have been if people would have only taken care of these people before-hand. I give through my words the understanding of the sadness of this whole event and all you do is show how hateful and what a cruel and heartless human being you can be, and in the end, you’re not worried about details right down to the last micro-detail of how we would put in to place what I propose, you’re not worried about murderers being punished in any real form and you’re not worried about the care, health and safety of others in any true way that affirms life. In the end, you’re only worried about serving the typical selfish ideas and system of said ideas as well as bringing hate and nihilism to others who choose not only “The Moral Life”, but a life in which people are helped and treated as people and not reduced down to hunks of meet to be burned alive with electricity at the declaration of the state as well as reducing people who deserved to be mocked and abused because they choose to see the nuances of life and everything within it down to whatever word you’d use for us. Perhaps wimps, jelly fish or limp-wristed softies is what you’d like to call us? I choose this life for myself, this life where I don’t allow myself to see bad people as abstractions who deserved to be killed, tortured or ripped apart, but to be helped whenever that is possible. Even people who I don’t truly like, I still wish no harm on, but such a system of ethics is clearly as unknowable to you, as it is unknowable for me to have a left foot in place of my prosthetic leg. Though you’ll most likely mock what I have to say here as well, I hope one day you do understand and that you choose more for your life than selfishness and egoism that you call your morality.
James
Ok, I'll try again. Taken care of them how? Reached out and helped these
people how? Name a mechanism here. Platitudes are all well and good, but
mechanisms are better. I agree with you that we should be proactive in this, but
what I don't know yet is precisely how you feel we should be proactive. Do you
mean that we should help these people by ending our emperialist tactics?
Should we stop buying oil? Should we pass the equal rights act? Should we melt
down every weapon ever made into peace symbols? Should we mount fifty
caliber machine guns on every possible target of a shooting so we can get the
bastard before he gets his victims? What is your mechanism?
As our Imperialist projects in The Middle East have been illegal especially with the wars in Iraq, yes we should end those, what do you think I was saying when calling out the groups I’ve called out when they’ve cheered on what we were doing over in that country, and let’s not forget that Sam Harris on his own ideas has done this by way of podcasts and his book “The End of Faith” as well as Pat Robertson on his platform. They both have different reasons for doing this, but the end result of dead and maimed people from that area is the same and it’s only The Military Industrial Complex getting rich off this, so that should tell you why we have these wars in the first place. If our government was truly worried about helping these oppressed people over in those places which is their excuse for what we’ve done over there, then why haven’t they not only done that, but why are the solutions always implemented through violence that kills not only the people they want dead, but people who did nothing wrong and the “Casualties of War” excuse isn’t going to fly with me.
These wars are waged for nothing more than profit for our Military Industrial Complex and not for any humanitarian reason, but that’s just the point, any system that attempts to implement morals and ethics by which we protect people, as well as the people who advocate said system, have nothing to say to us. If I’m attacking in my posts, the things I’ve yelled about, especially the people I’ve spoken out against, then you should be able to infer maybe not what I’d like to see happen, but that I at least don’t want to see good brought to people by means of a bullet when it doesn’t have to be.
As for your question about if I wanted to see the “Bastards” taken out before they kill others, why don’t you take a guess as to what my answer on that is going to be, for to give you the answer on that when you can easily grasp what it would be by way of reading my posts, would be for me to hold your hand through this. So try reading them carefully not just so you can debate with me, but really read them, then you should get the answer, but because you clearly live in an intellectual universe where people are us or them, right or wrong or some other binary way of thinking you do, I guess you won’t get much out of what I have to say. You’re clearly one of these people who believes that America can do no wrong and that when it does, it’s just a couple of bad people in an otherwise caring system and while it is some of the time, that doesn’t change the reality that we have for-profit systems that incarcerate criminals, deny people healthcare, imprison kids with acting out problems and wage wars that are illegal, all for making money. So that’s my answer and anyone, you included can read and do with it whatever you choose.
James
You've really gotta get that chip off your shoulder. I can assume a lot of
things. I rightly assumed you disagreed with the wars and wanted to stop those,
and rightly assumed that you wanted to not put heavy weaponry on rooftops;
that's what is called sarcasm to prove a point. My point was that you hadn't laid
out an actual plan, and that there were many possible conclusions to reach from
your posts.
That's the thing. You post these platitudinal manifestos thinking that everyone
will agree with you because they've made the same assumptions as you. But
you're wrong in that assumption. If you want us to agree with, disagree with, or
acknowledge your ideas, you need to first have an idea. So far you haven't
actually laid out an idea. you've laid out stances, but stances are not ideas. So
what are your ideas?
I remember after 911, I was on a message board where everyone was absolutely verbally decimating all muslims based on the actions of those extremists who perpetrated the attack. I voiced my concern that the muslim people as a whole would be punished for that act. I was called a coward, and a sympathizer. I’ve never forgotten that. I’m sure people did the same thing with the Germans because of the Nazis. Blanket condemnation never sits well with me. I’ve said time and time again that that whether one prescribes to religious belief or not, their actions are individual and should be taken as such. That said, ideology and dogma of one’s own beliefs or those whom they surround themselves with does play a part in the shaping of one’s beliefs. And so in part, one’s interpretation of Islam, or Christianity, or Atheism … really any belief system does play a part in their actions. Like with Christianity, Islam is a multi-fascetted religion. Unfortunately, like with Christianity, it has a truly dark and sadistic side which some find very appealing. The real question is, what do we do about it. Whether you approve of Cody’s delivery, he does ask an important question: what exactly are we supposed to do about it? You say reach out to these people before they strike. But how do we do that? How would you suggest peacefully intercepting someone like the Pulse murderer? I’d rather not try dysecting the shadows between your words in order to get that answer. I’d love to see individuals get the help they need, preferably without a bullet. It’s a waste of life. Instead, the man threw his life away and took many others with him. And for what? Perhaps time will tell us more about his motivations. The problem with Isis and other extremists is, sadly, more than with the individual. It’s with the collective mindset. Ideally, your borders and immigration policies could be strengthened in order to weed out such extrmists, as Donald Trump suggests. But the problem there is is there a reliable way to do that? What about all the other muslims who live in America or migrate here for completely legitimate reasons? Or those who were born here? They will inevitably suffer, not because they had anything to do with what happens, but because they happen to be one of the same nationalities or religions as the enemy, just as Modern day, peaceful Christians still get reminded of the past and present atrocities perpetrated by our own monsters.
I agree with everything that silverlightening has to say. To the original poster of this topic you should've put that poem in your 1st post instead of wasting space. And that's what it is a poem. And you shouldn't get upset if someone disagrees with your views. People have different views what ever it is and everyone should respect them. I thought that this was going to be a juicy rant but I can't even call it a rant because its not.
A bit off topic, but Was it the disagreement that was the issue, or the way in which the disagreement was delivered? Some people can't help but feel slighted when spoken to in such a manner as is custom from some on this BBS. Especially after such delivery from some is consistant. I'm not saying giving it right back makes the situation better, mind you.:)
As to the shooting.
It was a gay club. I fault the owners for not having proper security.
Like it or not, gay people will be targeted from time to time. The owners should have had security measures in place in case of any event.
I doesn't matter who the person, or group was, if the club had security, a couple guys armed and trained, the shooter wouldn't have been as successful.
Religions are not inherently evil, and of course it is the interpretations of said religions, and while there are violent passages in both The Bible and The Koran, we just have to decide whether or not we’ll follow them. As to how to do that, it does come down to choice, we just stop doing it. We stop listening to the easy answer types such as Trump who actually does not have a point in anything that he says. When he says that we’ll have to check Muslims so that we can screen out the bad ones, he is operating from the premise that it’s okay to destroy or shun people and furthermore that innocent people will inevitably have to be caught in the cross-fire in order so that this may happen. That right there is the mind-set of a utopian.
No Remy, Cody does not have a point. If he’s truly concerned about any of this in any meaningful way, rather than make me hold his hand through this whole thing, he’d be attempting to come up with solutions for how to do this. As to how we reach out to these people before they do what they do, we never raise them to believe the things they believe to begin with. We teach them to care for “The Other” and outcasts as well as “The Stranger”. As to how we would stop the killing that’s happening on either side, the side of the killer or on our side when we wage the wars we wage, I’ll give you the answer. We stop feeding in to what the terrorists and killers want. For example, when Ben Laden talks about this being a war waged by Ala or whatever crap he’d come up with in his videos, people believed him and talked about how we had to make sure that Islam didn’t win. As a result, Muslims were and are still being demonized by people who call themselves Christians. This further inflames the problem, so how do we stop this, by not giving in to them and by not fighting the war they say they want to fight. How do we do that, it’s very simple, we just don’t do it. Frankly, what it’s all sounding like on here to me with the questions and I truly don’t mean this as an insult, but I’ve heard questions worded similar by people in my family who are addicts. They’d sit there shaking and going through withdraws from either drink, drug or whatever the substance was to which they were addicted. They’d claim to want help and when anyone of us would tell them about rehabs and various other programs that could help them, they’d say stuff like: “Yeah but what about this, and that?”. It got to the point that they’d question and question to the point that nothing got done. So the point, they kept doing what they did until they either got help or died.
This is sounding similar to that. I say the what of this thing, which is what the roots of the problem are and people dislike that answer. So I say that we should turn away from projects that tempt us to play god such as projects taken on by “The New Atheists” and “The Christian Right”, but then that’s answered with how do we do that. I’m then asked how we would get the wars to stop and so to clarify that further, I will say that we need to get the money out of them and back in to social programs that could help the down and out of our society thus sparing them the chances for falling in to the despair that could easily mutate in to rage which would drive them to commit the crimes of which the shooter from Sunday is guilty. We could do this by getting the money from the wars back from that and in to the creation of social programs to help these people before they get on to that road and we just do it by simply doing it, but we have to face the uncomfortable truths in order that we may do that in the first place. The questions and the answers you guys pose to me start from the premise that there is no neo-liberalism fueling the various for-profit models on which our wars are based. The unwillingness to face this is the biggest thing to hold us back from fixing these problems, but because we with a few exceptions in this country refuse to look at what unfettered capitalism has done, then these problems will not get fixed. Though you guys raise the questions you do, that still does not change the fact that Islam is not evil to its core, Christianity is not evil to its core and Science with reason are not evil to their core. It’s people who are willing to believe themselves to be little more than God Players who use this to their own advantages that are the root of the problem and unless we understand and accept this for the truth that it is, then we’ll only continue the cycle.
When Joseph Mengele without anesthesia, cut open the abdomens of his victims in Germany when Hitler was in power, was the scalpel inherently evil, did it put itself in his hand and through impulses unknowable to human minds, physically move Mengele’s arm and cut these people? No it did not. We didn’t declare a war on any kind of knives including scalpels because of what Mengele did and kill all doctors back then, so why are we doing this more or less same thing to Muslims. Why are we acting as if their book to its core is evil and we’re acting as if it has some force that could harm us just by a reading of even one word of it? We’re just going to have to turn away from our fear and stop giving those who we don’t understand or of whom we’re afraid the power to make us do the amoral. How do we do this? We just simply stop doing it. Though complex in terms of the cultures, it’s in certain ways no different than someone who smokes, you want your lungs to be better, your blood not to be at risk for turning to clots in your body and your voice box not to be ripped out so you can talk like Terrie Hall, the woman who was on the anti-smoking adds until her death two years ago, then just stop. How do you do this you may ask, you “Just Stop Doing It”, and that’s just how it is.
Just because one is afraid of the people who are of the mind-set to harm us, does not give us the right to place ourselves on the same moral foothold as murderers, torturers and thugs. What Trump offers is the externalization of evil on to a whole population because of what a few have done. These people have become terrorists far more because of the political systems that have enslaved them that our government in certain ways have helped. Islam is just simply the excuse for this. How would we reach out to these people before they could become radicalized, we stop the neo-liberalism that allows our Military Industrial Complex to exploit their countries for oil and money. How do we do that, we slowly over time stop supporting them. We then stop cuddling up to these oppressive governments in the name of getting profit thus worsening the problems. All this will have to be done with the understanding that our country’s government when talking about helping these oppressed people every time we go to war with one of these Middle Eastern Countries, are really in it for either oil or money, or probably both and that it isn’t about helping anyone that isn’t for reasons that aren’t utilitarian and as such for our side and not these countries with whom we go to war. We also have to come to the understanding that any system that proposes help to others by way of violence, as are the wars we launch in the name of ending oppression where not only the targeted are killed, but innocent men, women and children are killed as well, that these utopian ideas have nothing to say to us. The deaths of these people are not regrettable necessities of wars that are meant to protect and help, they are covers for abuse, greed, murder and exploitation. How do we stop doing this, we learn the realities of this. We do this by turning off the corporate-controlled media such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and other corporate-controlled media that give us the official narrative as to why things are the way they are. We turn this off, get back to talking to each other again in order that we can form social networks on which the outcasts can rely when they are in times of despair. We read the histories of the people who society labels as the ones who were the evil ones, such as Muslims, the Japanese, GLBT people, Native Americans and various others, as well as reading the authors such as Howard Zen who understood this same thing along with authors such as Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges who grasp the reality of what’s going on. As for how we turn off all our electronic hallucinations such as the news stations I just mentioned as well as the emotionally charged news we read on the net, well, if I have to say how we turn off all that, then I know we’ll be in trouble, for that should be as simple as how I turned on my music player just a moment ago to put on the music I’m listening to while writing this.
To be quite honest, I almost didn’t post this. When I read the posts, the ones close to the end of this thread, and the one where Pink Strawberry said that what I wrote was basically a poem, I should clarify something about that. Last time I checked, to intermingle a couple of lines from either a poem or other writing in to what you’re writing in the main body of your work isn’t making it a poem and as for the lines above what I wrote in the original post, the lines from the song “Burning Leaves”, lots of people who write things may put a couple of quotes down before they begin what they themselves are about to say, sometimes you see this in fictional books and nonfictional books. Yet when Pink Strawberry and Cody misread that in my doing the same thing, it’s dismissed as a poem, as well as a couple of comments dismissing me as being upset with people disagreeing with me, that’s when I more or less saw that you really aren’t serious about any of this. I’m mainly at this point, posting this particular monologue for those who never have read what I’ve written on here to read to get a different perspective that’s not the status quo.
James
But that won't stop them from doing anything. It might stop us from lashing
out at them, which I fully support, but it won't stop them from doing anything.
Even if we went back to an isolationist mindset, which is impossible, they're still
going to hate us, at least some of them. So you're happy go lucky lets all hold
hands and buy the world a coke mentality just ain't gonna cut it. Its wonderful
in theory, but it just doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of reality.
And, the funny thing is James, I'm not the only one saying that your ideas are
hidden behind much ado about nothing. Other people have said it on here too,
and I promise I didn't pay them to say it. so, you think for one second you
might want to proofread a bit before you post something if you're gonna be
flickin' off manifestos on here? Try going through some logical analysis to make
sure you're arguing something before you expect us to dig through the muck to
figure out what you're saying? Or is that too hard for you too?
and wayne, they had security. No one's really sure how he got passed them
as far as I've heard
They were sloppy. The dude has an AR15, that's hard to hide.
just think they said they had security to cover ass.
If they had security, why does he get to shoot 50 people, hurt 50 more, and when the cops get there retreat inside the culb to fight?
Cody, I clearly addressed Remy and Pink Strawberry in my post as well to which you're now replying. So I've explained further, so I don't know what to tell you.
James
Oh, and "happy go lucky and let's all hold hands and buy everyone a coke?". Funny.
Yeah, cause I'd rather replace what I've railed against with the masses having rotten teeth, Type-2 Diabetes, Hypertention and shortened life-spans. Oh, you're so cute when you perform reductionist arguments. Sam Harris would be so proud of you.
James
Its a music reference james. Its called, rather unimaginatively, I'd like to buy
the world a coke. Really, that chip on your shoulder is really not helping you.
Wayne, I don't know if the security themselves were armed. Details are fuzzy
about it that I've seen.
The following is something I copied and am pasting here from the board called "Not All Arguments are Equal" or something like that. The post itself isn't titled. It's when I first got back on The Zone the week before last on Thursday to be exact.
Hey everyone.
Let me make this really simple for you. First off, I think and have come to think for a long time that when we who disagree with the whole “The Bible says it’s wrong to be gay.” Argument, all we’re really doing when telling people not to hate on gays because of what they think their religion says, we’re actually playing right in to their hands in that we are, whether we know it or not or whether we like it or not, actually giving them a ready-made excuse with which they can be bigoted towards people who are GLBT.
In other words, what we’re saying to them about how we disagree with their religious views that being gay is wrong, then that could easily make them more inclined to cling to those excuses. The reality of the situation is, The Bible doesn’t make them believe that homosexuality is wrong and while it seems like they come to believe that in a vacuum, that’s not usually how it works and that people usually unknowingly subconsciously get anti-gay arguments with which they agree from certain messages from society or because they themselves are gay and don’t want to face it and admit it to themselves as well as the fact that they might not be comfortable admitting it to others.
So when we feed in to their arguments by trying to fight them and tell them that they’re wrong because of letting themselves follow what The Bible says about homosexuality being wrong, then not only are we inadvertently handing them an excuse they can hold on to and become even more anti-gay than they already are, but we’re also looking at the wrong issue and not addressing the real root causes of their anti-gay bigotry in the first place.
This is really no different than people believing that 15-year-old Jonny killed people because he was listening to too much Death Metal. When looking harder at the hypothetical Jonny’s life, it’s usually brought to light that he was being beaten by either his parents, kids at school or other family members who didn’t give a damn and to not make an effort to understand the roots of his rage he takes out on to other people and put it on a music label, is quite frankly to be complicit in his worsening psychological state and to delay him getting the help so he doesn’t do further bad things, or that could prevent him from taking out his rage and pain on others or himself in the first place. So this is really another part of the same issue and so I no longer call these people homophobic, for to call them as such means to say they have a phobia and given that a phobia is viewed as a disorder for which there’s little you can do to treat or even cure it, then are we not actually saying that these people are not fully responsible for their actions? Let’s finally learn to do what the author Thomas Szasz suggests and just call this for what it is, just people who are afraid of what they don’t understand and so they’re being anti-gay bigots using religion as their excuse to justify their fear and then eventually their hatred and let’s stop giving them further abilities with which to use this excuse by way of us not engaging them on that level. And yes, even the seemingly loving and gentle anti-gay bigots need to be called out as such. I’m of course talking about the ones who say things like: “Oh, I would never disown my kids if they were gay, and I’d still love them, but I just wouldn’t agree with their life choices.”.
Those are the ones who are all the more dangerous, for they can easily cause their child’s psychological torment to be added to with what they’re saying, because not only does the child have to already be in psychological torment because of trying to figure out if they are still a good person while being gay, but they now have the confusion on top of it in that they hear the anti-gay things their parents are saying, but it’s said in a loving way with the language of love mixed in, which could cause more confusion for the child with them having to question if their parents still would love them at all and how the parents could love them and not be understanding and supportive of who they end up loving as their partner, thus compounding the child’s questionable psychological state even further and only raising the child’s risk for self-harm or harm to others. It’s time to take seriously the ideas set forth in Dostoyevsky’s novel “Demons” in that we have to make sure we do right by the young and make sure the ideas we teach them will lead them to lives of good and not ones of danger and lives lived based on moral nihilism and other related dark aspects of life.
James
The following was taken from my board "Blindisms, Another form of Bigotry".
Blindness of the Intellect
While we’ve had sighted who believed that they know how to teach the blind and because they believed that the blind never need any help at all, they’ve externalized helplessness on to the blind, giving the impression that absolute independence will make everything better. Some of the sighted who think and act this way come out of the various schools for the blind and similar places. They believe that when they push blind kids to be completely independent with no help given at all, then these kids will be able to progress to a sun-lit utopia where they’ll never need help from anyone. Those who continue to need help, who can’t grasp how to do certain steps of a task completely on their own or who choose not to conform to this non-reality-based system are shunned, abused and cast aside. They’re treated this way, because this is what utopians do, they believe that negative traits whatever those might be are within whatever group they claim to oppose and that if we just convert, silence or eradicate said group, then the ones who believe in the utopian vision along with its leaders can all progress to their wonderful utopia.
For The Christian Right in this country headed up by Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham, the utopian idea is for a Christian United States where The Bible is the supreme law of the land. They believe that all who are not saved should be saved. People such as women with jobs, liberals, homosexuals or anyone in The GLBT Community or people of different faiths should be either converted, silenced or eradicated. This happens because this group has externalized evil with the belief that because they have their utopian visions by which to live their lives, that evil is external and not within them. Given this outlook, they now have taken on the characteristics of those who they oppose.
On the other side, there’s The New Atheist Movement headed up by the late Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet. Christopher Hitchens wrote the book “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Sam Harris wrote the two main books The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. Daniel Dennet wrote the book Breaking the Spell, then Richard Dawkins wrote the book entitled The God Delusion and these books all put together form the ideas of the movement. This movement doesn’t have the frightening and well-financed systems of indoctrination put forth by television and radio as do The Christian Right, but they do have well-worded arguments that certain people of the public, most of whom are disgusted with the religious chauvinism of the right have flocked towards.
The agenda of The New Atheists is disturbing. They believe that our road to collective salvation is through reason and science. They believe that morally, we are progressing away from evil acts such as murder and other acts. They believe that if we put our trust in reason and science, and that if the religious are converted, silenced or even eradicated, then we can progress morally as a species. When they speak of religion, they attack it as being backwards, irrational and dangerous. Sam Harris in his book The End of Faith calls for attacks on The Muslim World that could have been easily said by any fundamentalist Christian pastor. In one passage Harris says: “Some ideas and propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for even believing them.”. Then he goes on to call for a possible nuclear first strike against The Islamic World, saying that it would be unthinkable, but that it may be the only course of action we have given what Islamists believe. Harris mistakes a few small subgroups and groups of criminals and terrorists for the whole Muslim population of the world, no different than a racist who mistakes a couple of black criminals for the whole group.
These arguments by Harris and similar ones made by Hitchens not only endorse our illegal wars in Iraq, but they are also anti-intellectual. They also call for violence and murder as a way to remove roadblocks on the road to human progress. These New Atheists call for using education to reason people out of their religious belief, but because they do not accept human limitations and the fact that evil is within all of us and not just terrorists, then this education for which they have such love, is in the end, indoctrination. Though Dawkins is different in that he doesn’t support the imperialist projects lead by us that are going on in The Middle East, he still gives the belief that those who are religious whether moderately or completely are backwards in their thinking, are uneducated and probably evil. In his book The God Delusion, he describes God in terms that are as anti-intellectual as any Christian Right member ranting against homosexuality. Dawkins gives the following: “The God of The Old Testament is the most unpleasant character in all of fiction.”. He goes on to say that the god of the Bible is racist, homophobic, a malevolent bully, misogynistic and megalo-maniacal among other insults. Dawkins proves blind to his anti-intellectualism of which he accuses his opponents. He also through this ignorance, shows that he has little to no understanding of how the real world actually works and the seduction of evil and that even the most well-intentioned can be the most evil, for when they believe in the myth of inherent goodness as well as the belief that this can be educated to all, then there’s no end to their horrors and vanity.
In The Blindness Community such utopian visions flourish and have caused problems for the blind of the lower classes. Whether or not they rock, either to music or without, press on their eyes regardless of the reason or move their head from side to side or whatever the direction may be, all these are, rather than investigated by the blind or sighted, they’re just dismissed as what are called “Blindisms which is the term used for some of these mannerisms. The excuse given for this, is that as this is primarily a sighted world, then the blind should all conform to it. This once taken to its logical conclusion puts the responsibility for what anti-blind bigots may do or say to us, on us and takes it off their shoulders. The token blind people of this ideology when confronted with the truth of a blind person who rocks regardless of if it’s to music or not go on to make at homonym arguments that these blind people probably don’t shower or probably dress like slobs. These are no different than bigots who when they find out that someone is gay, automatically make arguments about whether or not the gay person is a child molester, rapist or has countless sexual partners.
Should a blind person rock in the course of a conversation regardless of whether or not music is playing and should the other person have trouble hearing them with the constant motion of their voice then simply asking them to sit still for the remainder of the conversation usually helps. Further work on teaching them to not rock while on a job interview or at a job by having conversations with them about ways they can reframe from doing this may be key, but the goal would be to have these conversations as an on-going thing that takes in to consideration that we all have oddities some of which are benign, some of which can be intrusive rather than one conversation and that’s it. Instead, the blind are told that they’ll never get ahead in life rocking or pressing on their eyes and as for eye-pressing, it’s usually never investigated to see whether or not their eyes hurt and them putting pressure on them is what they think might help whatever the pain might be. They’re talked to about these mannerisms in ways that are as anti-intellectual, cruel and abusive as any sighted bigot uneducated about the blind. These token blind people, usually in positions of power and authority in the upper-classes of the blind, have externalized oddities and other physical movements not within the mainstream on to the lower classes of the blind, no different than how The Christian Right or The New Atheists externalize evil on to people who don’t share in their utopian ideologies. These token blind people believe that if we just do everything we can to not look blind provided that we can’t actually get complete vision given some of the eye conditions from which some of us suffer, then we must be broken and reshaped in the image of “The Perfect Blind Person. Ones who don’t conform to this idea, are silenced, cast aside or ignored, as well as abused verbally, emotionally and probably physically in so far as it’s these people who act this way as first these same kids when at schools for the blind who would possibly bully the lower classes of the blind. Once these non-conformed lower classes of the blind are either forced to conform or are cast aside, then we can progress on to our sun-lit utopia of human perfectibility for the blind. These ideas are not rational. Within these utopian visions, these token blind people forget, assuming they were ever taught that sighted have some of their own motions they make, such as swinging from side to side in a desk chair while thinking, rocking slightly or outright to music or if they’re nervous, talking while waving their hands about and gritting their teeth. Yet through all this, we do not go on witch-hunts and crusades nation and even world-wide to convert or cast aside these people in The Sighted Community, nor do we call these mannerisms Sightisms and tell these people that this is or at least we want this to be “A Blind World”, so there for they have to never do these Sightisms, for they would look odd to us and should anyone in our movement want to be bigots to them, then this idea by implication would make any bigotry visited upon them their fault and we will have thus, shirked our responsibility for how we treated them, just like what’s being done to the lower classes by the upper-classes of The Blindness Community, as well as by some of the close-minded of The Sighted Community in the name of progress and conformity.
So in the minds of the blindness utopians, abuse of the lower classes of the blind is now justified. They speak of how this is a moral good to beat up on their own and they speak as if this is acceptable. Is this truly rational, is this moral? While at the school for the blind here in Ohio, I stood by boys who were told in front of everyone by sighted teachers and sometimes by other fellow students in ways and in words that could have been said by any ableist bigot, that no one would ever want them in the real world when they grew up if they didn’t stop the rocking or pressing on their eyes. I sat along-side other boys who were actually told by the youth leader of the dorm I was in my first year there: “I’m not happy with some of you guys and how you’ve been washing yourselves, so if I see any more uncleanliness with you guys, then I’ll start taking you in to the restroom and you’ll shower and I’ll watch every minute of you doing this to make sure you’re getting clean. You’ll be dressed in just swim shorts so you’re covered in certain ways, but I’ll watch you shower.”. Then there were boys who I saw screamed at for things that they should have probably been punished for in some manner and these things were ones that you would reprimand any kid, blind or sighted for, but they were still screamed at literally to the point that the anger didn’t even fit the scope of the situation. So what is the moral difference between any of this? I do not see one. Going back to what the youth leader said about showering, does that sound rational? Does it sound like something us blind people be we kids or adults should let someone do to us? Were that man to have been a closet child molester, would he have not been secretly getting off on watching us shower had he gone through with his plan? For kids among our group who might have been being molested at the time at home by who knows who and with them most likely not saying anything to any including us, would this act of his not have brought up for them periods of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Even if this man wasn’t a secret child molester and even if he had no feelings of sexual desire for young boys or any children, he still was prepared to commit if not legal transgressions by invading our personal space in such a fundamental way, then he was prepared to commit a moral transgression in that he was fully willing to scare us and make us possibly go on to have problems with how we viewed our bodies for the short term, or for all time after that event had he carried out his demented plan. This is a perfect example of what happens when people become utopian in their thinking, for there is no lengths to which they’ll go, especially depending on the situation to get what they want. We’ve seen this over and over throughout human history.
Utopian visions is what drove the evil and death Adolf Hitler brought to Germany when in the search for “The Perfect German Person”. It was present in the white people who enslaved blacks and who still discriminate against them in the form of The Prison Industrial Complex and it was present in the white settlers who came here and slaughtered The Native Americans. All were non-reality-based, all were utopian and all were evil ideas. Yet we continue acting as if those horrors are in the past, as if time is in a straight line to some final end point be it good or bad. For The New Atheists, it’s an end point to a world made better by reason and science along with the conversion or eradication of religious people, for The Christian Right, it’s an end point arrived at by the conversion and or eradication of GLBT people, people of different or no faiths, as well as it arriving in the form of believing in The Bible, Jesus Christ, signs and miracles and for The Blindness Utopians, the end point will come in the form of complete equality and a world free from what they consider to be Blindisms and blind people who need help in certain situations and this will come through abuse, the eradication of the need for help as well as casting aside the lower classes of the blind, at least those in the group who either can’t or won’t conform to such a dark utopian vision. Time and history are not linear, and if anything, our lives and life as a whole operates rather than linearly, it operates in cycles of light and darkness which the Greeks understood. The past and what came before is important. The Nazis and the horrors of which I spoke earlier are not evils that are beyond human understanding that once past, will never happen again and aside from the small murder here and there, we’re safe from evil. The evil and amorality which drove these horrors is as alive around us today as it was back then. This is the real danger in the belief of inevitable human progress. We discard the wisdom of the past at our own detriment and unless we begin listening to the voices of the past such as Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Tolstoy, Poe and Conrad, and unless we take to heart their lessons, then we kill ourselves first by what we do to others, then to ourselves. We do this physically to us and them, if not morally. Either way, unless we give up utopian visions of a perfect world and whichever group through who’s elimination we can make this world come about, as well as learn how to deal with issues by way of building systems of ethics that are realistic and take in to consideration, our limitations of being human, then we’ll collectively no longer have a future, at least one that is life-enhancing and life-affirming.
James
This is a second part to the previous posting from the same board.
Committing Collective Moral Suicide
One other point that may be implied in my previous posting just before this one might be seen, but if not I’d like to explicitly state it here.
While some of The Blindness Utopians may not be actively cruel to fellow blind people who are in the lower classes, they’re still detrimental by virtue of the fact that while sighted people who want to be anti-blind bigots, if they see how The Blindness Utopians are treating fellow blind people of the lower classes, they can point to them and ask: “But what about you guys? You want to accuse us of bigotry and discrimination against you guys when you’re doing virtually the same to some of your own people.”. If not that, then the discrimination from the sighted in the form of non-accommodation and other methods can and does still happen for the simple fact that they get away with it, as The Blindness Utopians who can easily use their power and authority an deep ways to stop this are busy trying to mold the lower classes or middle class of the blind in to perfect carbon-copies of themselves and by extension, of the sighted so thus, they’re ultimately dangerous to us, as they in that regard, end up aiding the sighted peoples’ discrimination of us they sought to prevent.
James
And? You've already posted that. Why are you posting it here completely out
of context? you don't even have commentary on it, or further discussion, or a
question. Are you just posting to see yourself post?
Right Cody. I'm interested how it all comes out.
I've been to some nice gay clubs, and due to the problem they even have an attendant in the bathrooms.
They don't search you, but they give you a visual look over before you inter most clubs of any kind, unless there low rent.
Even these, the bouncers carry, if they are known trouble spots.
I'll stop posting on this. I'm messing up his board.
Sorry about that.
Hi ForReal, you don't have to stop posting. You're not messing anything up. Feel free to continue to post.
James
I mean, some say that he was the security.
I think that all these things that James kept copying should be moved to the writers block. Because like silverlightening said he's just posting to see if he could post. About the incident in that nightclub of course it shouldn't have happened but anywhere that you go and some thing big takes place, we all say there should've been this or that implemented. There were security officers at that nightclub but when things get out of hand they blame people. Good thing and bad things happen for a reason. What? I may not be able to give an answer. I always say not everyone is going to die in a bed sleeping. If you die by accident then that's how its supposed to be. I didn't mean to bring religion in this but everyone has their own beliefs on how people die. Sometimes you could prevent things from happening but not all times. That's the way life is.
Just because he borrowed a couple lines of poetry doesn’t consign him to the writer’s block. Though that place “is” oversaturated with poetry, not to mention posters posting writing that isn’t their own. Anyway, I don’t see the problem here. He’s just stating his opinions, just like the rest of us do. And he was very clear in his first post just what sort of topic this was going to be. Hell, I can’t even accuse him of posting for the sake of creating drama yet. If nothing else, at least one can comprehend his writing style, which can not always be said around here. So far I’ve only seen him lash out in retaliation. Personally, instead of arguing about his purpose in posting, or whether or not he’s being poetic, I’d love to see some more real discussion.
I myself haven’t said much because, to be honest, I’m not very interested in politics and sociological issues, and the philosophies of the left and the right and the in between all tend to give me a headache in one way or another. But whether James has ideas on how to fix things, these are genuinely important issues which we all – especially you in the country of origin will have to contend with at some point, especially if things keep going on like this. It doesn’t help that there is a lot of nit-picking and squabbling going on around here.
As for this night club shooting, it’s horrible, terrible and tragic. People can trade blame until we even start blaming ourselves, but it’s not going to change the fact. Fifty-one people lost their lives. The fact that a lot of those fifty were gay shouldn’t enter into it at all. But that matters a whole lot to people. And honestly, that’s friggen fantastic! I’m so incredibly tired of the whole gay rites issues, not because I find them annoying, but because I find them a no-brainer, just like disability, racial and gender equality. I absolutely LOVE how everyone’s been so supportive of all these families. I love that people are considering this a hate crime. I love how the LGBT community is, very slowly beginning to live free among us, with the same rights. I love how, despite this travesty, so many people have come together worldwide. One need not look far to see the positive aspects of this, though of course, that doesn’t lesson the sting for those friends and families of the victims. I’m not trying to make light of it; I think it’s horrible what happened. But if our society can make progress in, not tolerance, but genuine acceptance and equality; if we can push forward in standing up against destructive hatred, then these fifty men and women may not have died completely in vain. It’s terrible that it sometimes takes destruction or violence to bring people together like this, but there’s no denying bad things do sometimes have a initing effect.
I agree with you remy. But This isn't the poem board its the rant board. and if he had written it out to be a rant because this is the board for it then he wouldn't be getting so many negative comments from us.
I don't mind the poem. It was amateurish, but harmless. But what was the
point of copy and pasting from other boards? He didn't even give a reason why
he copied those things. I can't even tell how they're related. So I'm just
wondering why.
He's not relating anything, just saying his say.
I guess we can post on the says we have an opinion on.
This is still a thing? The poem was two lines from another artist to emphasize a point in his own personal opinion. heck, he even quoted the source - go figure. The rest was colorful language, but still a topic for discussion. It's no different from what many of us have done time and time again. As to why he copied and pasted from other boards, James, forgive me for speaking for you, but was it not to consolidate your topics into one general area? Hey, at least that doesn’t saturate the board? Pick apart his arguments as you all love to do. But this nit-picking is a little silly, isn’t it?
No, because one does not usually consolidate disperate topics into one book.
It would be like Mark twain throwing all the chapters of his books together. it
wouldn't make sense. Like, is this board about the shootings in orlando, or
about blindisms, or about occupational discrimination, or the price of tea in
china? Who knows, because we're all just throwing stuff at the board to see
what sticks.
Well, I'll admit, that was the problem I had with the board about blindisms, but this one, he did state what he was going to do.
On the teaching of the blind.
I don't see it any different from teaching anyone.
It isn't special, it is just the blind need to be taught specific skills related to blindness.
Some teachers of the blind do a wonderful job at it, others collect the money, and aren't good at it at all.
Next, you have the person. You can try to teach someone something, but they just don't pick it up well.
That isn't the fault of the teacher.
You have blind people feeling they don't need to learn things, because, well, I'm blind.
How not to rock is a great example.
Just don't challenge his ideas or views, guys. Rather than considering what you have to say, he'll cherry pick the 5 percent of the post that he can do anything with, and ignore the rest, even if it means contradicting himself and his values to get the job done.
If we just accept this is a rant topic, made up mostly of abstracts and platitudes, and come in to it with little to no expectation of logical or rational thought, we'll be OK. I think the topic name "What I have to say" basically explains it all, and his conduct on other boards on this system backs up the idea that he's just looking for an echo chamber. At least this time around, its presented in an an Intellectually honest way.
Now that I've laid out what this topic is actually about, I'll probably most likely respect his safe space.
sex
Okay, well lots of activity on here tonight. First off, this isn’t a book Cody and last time I checked, a loaded weapon wasn’t jammed in to the base of my scull with someone who sounds like Tony Soprano telling me to keep each topic on its own board or else while he cocks the hammer back and presses in harder. Secondly, there was the charming AgateRain who on the public chat a few minutes ago said: “Yeah, and the way you’ve been acting lately around here, you could use it up your ass.”, in regards to a comment I made about my dislike for Gay Porn. I want people to say that they agree or disagree with my views, then as I’ve been challenged to do, they give their views as to how certain things should be done so that we may have an exchange of ideas, for as Remy correctly pointed out, the younger among us on this site will have to deal with the messiness of political and social issues sooner or later and easy answers will get them nowhere fast, and it doesn’t matter whether the answers are contained on the left or right.
What I will not tolerate is comments such as what AgateRain made that I just mentioned above. You guys keep that shit the hell off this board and if I do see anything like that, then I’ll be keeping a record of it and once enough has been collected should there be any, then I’ll be making sure that admin knows about that and given our social and legal attitudes about someone being given harassing comments based on sexual orientation such as what AgateRain did in public Chat, the outcome may not be good should that shit get started on here and should it continue, and if it starts and or continues in some form especially if the ignore feature doesn’t effectively put a stop to it, I can’t really guarantee that anyone making such comments won’t be dealt with by admin, then if serious enough, then some area of the legal system. So watch your step.
James
As to Jack Off Jill's comment, nicely done. I like that, just one word and to the point, LOL.
James
Thanks for the laugh James. If you think Admin are going to do anything to
anyone with comments like that, you're fooling yourself. I'm not saying it was
appropriate, but you can collect all you want, you won't get anywhere. but, you
have fun with that.
Oh, and as to 570 calling this my safe space, yeah, you would say that wouldn't you.
James
You're right Cody, it was not appropriate and you wonder why I don't have any regard for the likes of you and that little gay-bashing creep and by that gay-bashing little creep, I am of course talking about AgateRain.
James
What do you want me to do about it James? I'm not Lakeria's master. she's an
independent woman and can do or say whatever she likes. Though I think
calling it gay bashing is going a bit far, but I still don't think it was an
appropriate comment.
I would, because you've proven it.
Your post history speaks for itself.
Your words and actions contradict.
You make arguments and points that largely can't function because they rely on logical fallacy and sudo Intellectual tripe. And your response to people questioning your opinions has been you violating your own expectations about how you want to be treated, by judging them in return.
Don't think anyone's going to take your definition of morality seriously when you are so quick to jump to Hypocrisy. If even you aren't capable of holding yourself to your own standards, what right have you to hold others to them?
In my opinion, none of your actions on this sight have warranted attacks on your sexuality, but considering the lack of civility displayed by your own posts, I'm not completely shocked that this is how people have responded to you on the internet.
Well, I'll post my stuff on here as I said I would, and you all fight it out at this point. To those who find useful what I have to say, good and to the others who choose to use reductionism and think that that's intellectualism, then that's their outlook.
James
As for the shootings, I’ve been hearing a lot of speculation lately that the killer was gay. Admittedly I don’t know a whole lot about Islam, but I believe extreme radical Islam holds that being gay is a big Bo-zo no-no. Maybe it’s better in conservative Muslim circles because they don’t, for instance, blindfold anyone caught being gay, lead them up to a building and then throw them off, but maybe this guy was gay all his life, discovered it in his teens, was afraid he’d be thrown out of his family and couldn’t handle it. I daresay that the fear of ostracism and being disowned is probably what led him to his day of doom. And if I’m right, it was his day of doom, albeit he took about fifty people with him. It took a very, very long time for mmost Christians to reach the point where they treat homosexuality with relative cosmopolitanism in comparison to the way they treated it even thirty years ago. If I’m right, it’ll take an equally long time for Islam to evolve in much the same way, largely because Islam is, by comparison to Christianity and Judaism, a relatively young religion. It hasn’t had time, in the grand scheme of things, to mature. Maturation doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t often happen without some bloodshed or even minor pain.
Speaking just for me, and confining myself largely to the topic of the Orlando tragedy and perhaps some of our other present troubles, I don’t know that there is an easy solution to what happened last Sunday, or for that matter, some of our other problems. People these days tend to want easy,, quick fixes, and I think perhaps that plays a very large role in our current discontents. There aren’t any, and people are frustrated by that. So, I propose that there have to be several fixes that in the end may hopefully lead to a better world.
First, let’s ban the weapons that guys like this were and are still able to use to wreak such havoc.. What do you actually need them for except for killing people? You don’t hunt with them; you don’t even have to have them for self-defense. Reserve them to the military. Even Reagan said outright that we should ban them for civilian use.
Next, right now more and more people are disenchanted with our present government and the way it responds to problems. Right after the San Bernardino tragedy,, 54 senators refused to disallow people on the terror watch list from being able to buy handguns, even though the vast majority of the public supported such a measure. At present, we cannot even get a Supreme Court justice appointed simply because of partisan politics. Toxic partisanship has to stop, and that has to be done at the top with our politicians being true patriots who do things for the love of country rather than merely looking after their political careers. And we as citizens should not only vote, but participate on a greater level than we do in our political system. And I myself am as guilty as the next individual, because when was the last time I called my representative or senator when I disagreed with him or her and the way they acted or, in many instances, did not act? Instead, we tune out. We sit in front of our computers or the idiot box or simply turn away because there are bills to pay, there’s work to be done, and everything is too complex for us mere peasants to have any control over anyway. Hopefully I’ll stop doing my part in doing nothing,, but sometimes, admittedly, I don’t even have all that much faith in myself. Besides, like many of you, I have a job to do. There are still debts to be settled. I want to attend the ACB convention, have fun, maybe meet someone special, get away from things for a time. And I’m losing faith in the present system’s ability to make a difference, just as many others, probably some on these very boards, are now. If we did do some of the things I described, how far would we get? But then, doing nothing is not a solution, and it has to start somewhere.
Finally, at least for the sake of this board topic, if this guy was indeed gay, let’s stop focusing so mmuch on a person’s sexuality as the be-all/end-all of whether they’re a moral person. Stop equating gay with evil, and accept it as a fact of life. If it goes against scripture of whatever faith, then let’s re-examine whether those scriptures should any longer serve as moral truth, particularly when they serve as justification for familial ostracism, societal bigotry or murder. Cuz the Bible tells me so should no longer serve if the results are toxic and bring only pain to those of us who never wanted to disappoint, never wanted to bring shame to anyone, but wanted simply to live our lives being true to ourselves. Let’s simply tear down the closets so that nobody ever has to come out of them in the first instance. Believe me, it’s easier than growing up the way I did,, ultimately denying myself in ways that I’m still trying to live down.
This list is hardly comprehensive, and maybe there’s a lot to disagree with here. Also, nothing gets done overnight, and nothing gets done without some pushback or conflict. But Cody is indeed right. If you see a problem, propose a solution. Maybe, just maybe,, it’s the wrong solution, but maybe, just maybe, it could be the right one. And at the risk of sounding egotistical or arrogant or whatever, I felt I had to say my part because it seems to me that a lot of nothing has been said thus far with a whole lot more words than necessary. Makes my head hurt!
I’ll have to say.
Telling someone they need some sex or to get laid because there to uptight is not a legal matter.
Sure, she was quite descriptive, but that was what she meant.
If you use the ignore feature, you’ll never see anything she says at all.
Check all the boxes, and nothing she post will be viewable.
You should see some of the things that have been said about me, and to me.
Laughing.
I do find it interesting a person can call the dozens, as it’s called, but get mad when someone calls the dozens on them.
Sure, it was in defense, but it is still the dozens.
Yes, yes, I know some are sensitive, but in a public form, your toes are going to get stepped on if you have strong views.
Why, oh why, why isn't there an applause button on here. Like one that, when
the poster of the thing you're applauding opens the board back up to check,
their computer erupts with applause, and tiny little faeries come out of their
screen to give them a foot rub. Why don't I have that button, for John, I would
hit that button five or six times for that post. That was fantastic. I applaud you
wholeheartedly my friend.
Be careful what you ask for.
Laughing.
That is not what I meant Wayne, but ok...
Thank you Cody, you just saved me a couple minutes in replying to John's points. Excellent post.
The Easy Answer States of America
In our country today, we seek easy answers. Some look to The Christian Right for their collective and individual salvation that they’re assured will come in the form of Jesus, The Bible and miracles. For The New Atheists, it’s reason and Science that will save everything in the end. These beliefs are held, because they allow people to believe in utopian ideas and that’s what these beliefs are, utopian and disconnected from reality.
Both The Christian Right and The New Atheists believe that Islam must be defeated and that all Muslims should if not be killed, than at least be converted. For The New Atheists, they must be converted to believe in Science, reason and Western Society. For The Christian Right, they must be forced to believe in Jesus Christ, The Bible, signs, wonders and miracles. These two groups both endorse The War on Terror as a means by which to rid the world of Muslims, at least the ones who will not convert and conform to their rigid standards. Both groups who believe this, no longer know what it means to be human, for when one believes that murder, abuse and exploitation of others is if not a good thing, but either a regrettable or even necessary thing in order that people may be safe, then that is almost always the core sign that they have given in to utopian ideas.
Sam Harris who argues in his book “The End of Faith” for defending torture, defending the possibility of a nuclear first strike against The Islamic World and killing people for so much as even entertaining the possibilities of certain beliefs is the typical utilitarian. He believes that murder, torture and nuclear annihilation will keep us safe and even with these beliefs, he claims that reason and Science will save us. He argues that we must become more reasonable and more understanding of others, but because he either can’t or won’t see his own moral depravity, then all talk of rationality and reason is really meaningless when in his hands, for it serves as an excuse for moral depravity and for amorality. The destruction of Muslims will not bring about a utopia in which we all can collectively progress towards either a world made better by reason and Science, or by the second coming of Jesus Christ, signs and miracles. The destruction of these people whether it be by violence, or draconian laws will only fuel the death spiral in which we have found ourselves as a world when we created The War on Terror.
The shooting last weekend will only cause certain people in our country to continue and become even stronger in their call to destroy Muslims because of what the shooter did. The demonization of Muslims will not stop, it’ll only continue and where this might lead, can’t be said for certain, but if history of the past 15 years is any indication, then it suggests that more murder, torture and violence against The Islamic World will be unleashed. The War on Terror as well as hate-fueled rants by the likes of Donald Trump will only continue and as a public, angry, cynical, as well as fearful will with a few exceptions most likely flock towards these easy answers, which will see many people shunned or possibly killed as well as imprisoned in our black sites. These people who seek out easy answers fail to grasp that once they begin yelling for the destruction of others, they kill themselves, for when they turn to the demagogue for his or her easy answers and after the demonized group or groups have been destroyed or cast aside, then that’s when the demagogue will turn on the people who once supported them. This happened in Germany back when Hitler was in power. Once he began The Final Solution for all the people who were murdered in the death camps, he began giving rations on food and other essentials which caused the German people who once supported him to be treated little better than the people he claimed to despise. This was all for the good of their land, he assured them. Some saw through the lies though, some people started making jokes about the leader and the government, while another man when hearing the beginning of one of Hitler’s speeches on the radio said something to the effect of: “Oh look, he’s going to speak to us again.”. Another person in another house when hearing a speech begin, simply walked to the radio and switched it off, then went and sat back down. These people were now coming to understand what was happening and what they, through their inability to think for themselves as well as their need for lies had supported and brought to their society. They were also coming to understand that what a utopian will do to one group of people, they will in the end, do to all in the name of a better world.
Donald Trump, The Christian Right and The New Atheists are such people. They believe that evil can be cast aside and eradicated so that we can progress to our sun lit utopia. This, they assure us will make us happy and safe. These people are idols, they ask us to bow down to them and believe their lies and to play their games and The Bible warns us over and over again, of the danger in worshiping idols.
A Christian, Muslim or Atheist who understands that there will never be a victory over evil and that easy answers and utopian ideals will not save us but who hate the evils of the world, are honest people, for this is an honest struggle. Atheists who see the world as it is and who understand that there will be no perfect society at the end of the path and that we all have a dark side are intellectually honest. These Atheists might not like words like Sin and they might not like the forms in which stories warning of sin in The Bible are told, but they have accepted this reality of life as it is. The same goes for certain Christians and Muslims. It is these people who if listened to, will save us not from what we have unleashed, but from the danger of things worsening because of what we started thanks to neo-liberalism and The War on Terror. The danger isn’t within Atheism as what Sam Harris and his followers practice, nor is the danger any of the religions, or what The Christian Right or Isis claims passes for religion. The danger is in these people who have taken these ideas and have utopianized them for a cause that for all their passion in, and love of, is in the end morally and spiritually bankrupt. They support these utopian projects and it is our responsibility as a society and as humans to turn away from these projects that tempt us to play God. It is our responsibility to build systems as well as to fix these problems by way of methods and ways that take in to consideration the fact that we cannot perfect ourselves through ideas spread by Isis, The New Atheists or The Christian Right, and that the limitations of being human as well as the dark side are always going to be within us no matter our belief system. Finally, we must listen to the voices of the past and understand that the violence that went before to create a better world is the same violence we’re doing today. The Machines of death and the weaponry may be different than in the past, but the results are still the same. These utopian ideas when we look throughout history are ones we’ve seen before and they’re the same today, but with different words and language, but they are still ones we must fight.
James
James, a tip, if you want to come off as intelligent, which by your writing style
I think you do, you should avoid using absolutes. To say that all on the right, or
all new atheists, want to do anything is ludicrous, and easily defeatable. I can
easily defeat half of it by simply pointing out that I don't want to destroy islam,
and I'm a new atheist, or at least that is one of the things that I am. Sam Harris
is one of the most disagreed with, and even the most loathed, of the four
horsemen, and yet you roll him out as if he represents all atheists. This makes
your argument foolish, because you are dealing in absolutes. Only fools deal in
absolutes. An intelligent mind knows that nothing is absolute. No entire group of
ayone does one single anything. NOt all right wing christians want to destroy
islam, I'm sure you could find examples of that on this very site, and not all new
atheists want to destroy islam either, which I myself am evidence of. So please,
before you start pointing fingers and saying that one group wants to destroy
something or someone, perhaps examine your claim a bit closer. After all, the
only person I've seen on here calling for condemnation of any whole group, is
you. So, whose closer to the mindset of terrorists; me who thinks that
education and the freeing of women will overtime solve this problem, or you
who thinks that condemning two entire groups you disagree with will do
anything in your favor?
Well Cody, I’ve read other postings of yours on other boards in the past few days, and I’m not just talking about my own boards I’ve created. I’m also talking about postings you’ve put on other boards that belong to other people, both the boards and posts. You’ve been just as intellectually chauvinistic, intolerant, cynical and confrontational towards them as you’ve been with me. On one board, when a woman asked about if whether or not a few more weeks or another month in the womb would have any effects that might be positive on the baby you immediately started implying as to whether or not she knew how a gestational period in a mother’s life actually works, rather than showing any consideration for her point of view. In another posting on another board, you give the absolute that there are no shades of grey, and let’s get the comments on this board about there being fifty of them, LOL.
Seriously though, it seems to me that all you’re really doing based on all these posts to others, is just acting to them in the ways of which you accuse me. There are shades of grey in life whether you like it or not and it’s important to know when to see the issues as they are and when to see the shades of grey within them, should there be any to be seen. The New Atheists and The Christian right are beholden to ideologies that make them unsafe in that they propose ideas the results of which could cause more harm than they could prevent. Are some in both movements wanting to kill people, of course not. What you’re dismissing, assuming you have even taken it in to account, is that Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens and others within The New Atheist Movement as well as Robertson and others in The Christian Right don’t just come out and say: “Time for those Muslim Mother Fuckers to die!”. They wrap their language in ideas of what’s necessary and they often use euphemisms. An example close to such movements is when people were back in England when The Tower of London was being actively used as a prison, death house for capital punishment and for certain areas of it as housing for the royalty. When prisoners were brought in for interrogation for whatever they were suspected of doing, usually it was crimes for which the punishments were far more harsh than was warranted. When brought to the tower, they were taken down to the basement and brought to the room in which the rack was housed. The rack for those who don’t know, was an instrument which was made up of a wooden frame that rested on the ground horizontally like a bed. The prisoner is placed on it on his or her back. Their hands are manacled and held straight out behind their head. Their legs are put in restraints and ropes are then slowly turned on their arms and legs while long poles are pulled towards the people doing the operating of the device. One person stands at the head of the prisoner turned towards them as if to look down in to their face while the second person stands in front of the prisoner’s feet facing them and the poles are pulled towards the body of each person using the machine. The result is that the prisoner’s arms and legs are pulled slowly out of place and dislocated. Some people have even died on the device due to their bodies eventually succumbing to the effects of the torture. Others who survived are reported to have looked an inch or two taller once lead out of the torture room due to what the device had done to them.
When prisoners were brought to the tower and were told that they’d be interrogated and when the public heard about the authorities taking people in to custody, it wasn’t called torture, it was called “being put to the question”, the euphemism for torture. It’s this manipulation of words that if not The New Atheist members and Christian Right members themselves use, than at least the leaders of said groups use them and they do use them. This allows the members to follow the movements to the extent that they don’t know how to think for themselves in any effective way, and some of them already have an inability to think for themselves for whatever reason and others, overwhelmed with the jargon put forth as well as the slogans and euphemisms put forth by the movements’ leaders may easily be inspired to go along with some of the far more dangerous ideas of either Pat Robertson or Sam Harris.
You Cody, also seemed to have missed the part in the previous posting, assuming you read it, in which I state clearly that atheists as well as religious people who understand the dangers of utopian ideas and who understand human limitations are ones in whom morals and ethics of value can be found, and that there’s really nothing of real moral value to be found within the ideas set forth by “The New Atheists” or “The Christian Right”. So in saying that I’m generalizing implies that I believe that all movements regardless of degree of belief are bad and that’s clearly not what I said in that posting. While I do have respect for you wanting to find solutions and ways to fix problems rather than keep things as they are as you’ve stated on other boards to others, the problem comes in when you refuse to deal in complexities and nuances. You talk in one post in response to something ForReal said about him trying to figure out which problems to deal with in the world and which ones to leave to others to deal with and you in the response after a few sentences dismiss him as not taking a stand or doing anything about what’s going on. It’s no different than you dismissing my educational journey as me not doing all that I could for myself. These issues are not black and white no matter how much you want them to be. People can be pushed to breaking points. People can finally snap. People can emotionally and sometimes physically shut down and unplug from situations to the point where it becomes beyond their control and no dogma about if they’d just do this or just do that is going to change that reality of the world in which they live. I truly am glad that you’ve been able to lift yourself out of whatever was going on back then in your life and I always want to see people be able to have better lives, as I’m trying to make mine better now, but just because you’ve been able to lift yourself out of the hardships of your life and be in a better place now in the present day, does not give you the right to dismiss other peoples’ stories as them just choosing to not live their lives or be victims and not do the hard work it takes to survive as if you truly know that they just chose to be lazy. It also does not give you the right to place yourself above others as though you have literally all the answers and absolutely no one below you does. Such thinking leads nowhere fast and that attitude is one of a few things that has us as a society and as a country where we are today and I hope that one day you learn some humility and learn to truly deal in nuances and complexities.
James
Ok james, can you perhaps cite some of these calls for death wrapped in
language you speak of? One imagines that you could have simply done that
rather than wasting all your time giving the ins and outs of an analogy. I look
forward to seeing your evidence.
Okay Cody, I’m going to say this and I know that JAWS can at times be bad at communicating the intent of what someone has written, so I’ll make it as clear as I can here. So I’m not going to site anything about anything. I’ve already explained how and why these movements have the potential to be dangerous to others, then to us as a nation and as a people. So that brings me to my point.
I’m shutting this down with you and I. I am this time, no matter what points you want to bring up that I could respond to. I’m not talking about shutting it down as in using the ignore feature, for that really wouldn’t fix anything and you’d just go on to act this way to others who don’t share your black and white view of the world, but what I am talking about is that you’re free to continue to post on my boards, not that I have any desire to stop you. You can continue to do that and I’ll post my stuff and since I’ll no longer be engaging with you in any dialogue or debate, that’s why you’ll see future postings from me that look as if I’m ignoring you, because I basically am in that in my future postings, I am, but without the blocking feature available to us on the site.
I’m refusing to engage with you altogether at this point, for this is getting us nowhere and nowhere fast. I’m ultimately trying to just give my thoughts no different than someone on a blog and while there will be comments submitted both for and against the argument, there is a difference between that and what you’re doing. You debate virtually every single detail of what I have to say and when that doesn’t work, you attack my educational skills in the form of you accusing me of having no reading comprehension skills when you’ve never looked at any records within my educational file that would show if I have any reading skill issues or not. You also attack which words I use, whether it be “I” or “We” as well as resorting to comments like the one where you said to go to the little kids table and let the adults talk, and that was on my own topics page. With all that and with me responding to all of the debating you do about issues that really have nothing to do with the original postings to which you object, this is getting us nowhere and so it’s for those reasons again, that I’m shutting it down between you and I. There is of course, the issue that when you attempt to give any ideas about how to deal with things blindness related, you give me the usual ideas that it was only I who caused issues to happen and that gives the impression that Vocrehab is completely innocent. Then you give some example in a posting about you folding a pocket square, it’s on The Blindisms Board. That’s also the reason I’m shutting it down, because I tell you the realities of how it is for the lower classes of the blind and rather than use your power in any meaningful way or discuss with me any ways we all could do this that don’t involve blaming people for their own problems, you talk to me about a god damn pocket square. So this is done between you and I and you just continue to post when I do and I’ll do my shit and none the two will shall meet.
James
Hmm. Okay Lake.
Grin.
I find it rather telling that the thing which made James shut down his
conversation with me is that I asked him to cite some evidence. Anyone who
refuses to cite evidence either has none, or is lying; I'll leave it up to anyone
who reads this to decide which one they think James is guilty of.
For myself, here is what evidence I could find. This is sam Harris on torture.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-
torture_b_8993.html
TLDR: If we are willing to wage war by dropping bombs which cannot avoid
killing innocents, we should not be afraid of turturing the guilty to make the
number of innocents killed by our bombs as low as possible. Not saying I agree
with him, but there is the argument James talked about. As for the rest of
them, I have no idea what James is talking about. He even slanders the name of
my hero, who never advocated killing or destroying anything but ignorance.
Thanks for those good thoughts, guys; but truthfully, I really, really don't like my feet being touched (lol).
Not even by magical computer faeries?
Um, no. Now, a seven-course dinner with some fine wines, a hot redheaded guy? Or blond? Or brunette? Or Native American? Or -- hell, I'm not particularly picky at this point.
Hmm, I bet we could bribe the faeries to provide that instead.
Well, they are -- err -- fairies. Um, not politically correct, right?
I hadn't thought of that, but sure, I don't see why not.
at least the FDA is finally making moves to ban the electro shock devices used at places like the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center. I'd heard about that institution from a close friend a few years back who had a friend who was forced to attend.
That place, and the people who run it are utterly fucked in the head.
Probably wouldn't google the name of that place unless you're ready for some hard reading.
oh, shit. wrong board. Sorry about that.
Don't worry about it, I was going to post something about that on here soon anyway. Yeah, those people are fucked and it's definitely hard reading about that place.
James
Damn, I thought electroshock therapy was a thing of the past in North America at least. I'll have to read up on that...
Nope. I witnessed someone having the shock therapy, as I passed a room, in 1998. It's not widely used, and I think it's re-"volting."