Oh yes, your point about some people ending up on the street no matter what, MIGHT be true...but still, that seems like saying that because some people will always engage in life-threatening activities (extreme sports, drugs), it should be legal to murder.
Poor jaym, having to defend a religion that becomes more ridiculous with each passing generation...as we keep evolving morally and scientifically, revealed religion just gets more and more preposterous. I feel for her, i truly do. A lot of this isn't her fault...science is discovering genetic predispositions to liberalism and conservatism.
I was tempted to put you on the spot, on whether you thought jesus was a communist. I think jaymie has convinced herself that jesus wasn't political (Using the narrowest definition possible - did he run for office? No? Then he wasn't political! Never mind that the non-mythological jesus was a claimant to the throne.). But if jaym can convince herself he wasn't political, she can avoid the staggering contradictions between christianity and capitalism. She's painted herself into this horrible corner. I mean, the sermon on the mount, not political?? Jesus (or his mythological version) was the original wide-eyed commie hippie.
You continue to wonder (as do we all) how much of our behavior is humyn nature. Here are two books i'm about to read, "The Blank Slate", by steven pinker, and "Evil", by roy baumeister. The upshoot seems to be that selfishness is humyn nature, but so is a sense of justice. Evil isn't "evil", it's just a social coping mechanism that can get wayyyy out of hand in inflated, impersonal societies.
Oh yes, i think many of the founding fathers were aware of (and conflicted by) the slavery issue. I think they even tried to deal with it, but gave up and passed the buck to future generations.
Sure, work ethic is important...but we've long passed the point where anyone needs to work a forty-hour week. Our technology and agriculture are so advanced, that no humyn NEEDS to work more than a fifteen-hour week. We're just stuck in this rut of unbounded greed and economic exploitation. To live as i live, seeing the halls of the uber-rich, then walking among the homeless...it's just staggering the amounts of denial and absolute lack of compassion still in us. And the saddest part is that most rich people aren't patent assholes...in fact, many of them are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But that only underscores the incredible amounts of rationalization going on.
love,
Poor jaym, having to defend a religion that becomes more ridiculous with each passing generation...as we keep evolving morally and scientifically, revealed religion just gets more and more preposterous. I feel for her, i truly do. A lot of this isn't her fault...science is discovering genetic predispositions to liberalism and conservatism.
I was tempted to put you on the spot, on whether you thought jesus was a communist. I think jaymie has convinced herself that jesus wasn't political (Using the narrowest definition possible - did he run for office? No? Then he wasn't political! Never mind that the non-mythological jesus was a claimant to the throne.). But if jaym can convince herself he wasn't political, she can avoid the staggering contradictions between christianity and capitalism. She's painted herself into this horrible corner. I mean, the sermon on the mount, not political?? Jesus (or his mythological version) was the original wide-eyed commie hippie.
You continue to wonder (as do we all) how much of our behavior is humyn nature. Here are two books i'm about to read, "The Blank Slate", by steven pinker, and "Evil", by roy baumeister. The upshoot seems to be that selfishness is humyn nature, but so is a sense of justice. Evil isn't "evil", it's just a social coping mechanism that can get wayyyy out of hand in inflated, impersonal societies.
Oh yes, i think many of the founding fathers were aware of (and conflicted by) the slavery issue. I think they even tried to deal with it, but gave up and passed the buck to future generations.
Sure, work ethic is important...but we've long passed the point where anyone needs to work a forty-hour week. Our technology and agriculture are so advanced, that no humyn NEEDS to work more than a fifteen-hour week. We're just stuck in this rut of unbounded greed and economic exploitation. To live as i live, seeing the halls of the uber-rich, then walking among the homeless...it's just staggering the amounts of denial and absolute lack of compassion still in us. And the saddest part is that most rich people aren't patent assholes...in fact, many of them are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But that only underscores the incredible amounts of rationalization going on.
love,
wrob
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