the burden of being modern

historicism... most people don't get it...

sadly, some people who think they are clever... aren't.

i might just be doing this to move up josh's list...

actually. i'm studying for the bar right now. on august 16th i'm having a party. that is a saturday. i guess i have to start sending "take time off on that day" emails. i really want many of you to visit and just chill that day for old times sake. not much i'd love more than some impromptu softball... a lot of beer... and more conversation and joking. maybe i should buy a pool table between now and then... but where to find the money...

there is a correlation between your relationship and my lack of involvement

leaving all of us sitting in the moment
ok. i know someone, who created a list of what love is. this i find interesting, even though i'm a little outdated in addressing it. i want to criticize this as an idea, or as a description of an emotion. the original list is posted at zigjackofalltrades.blogspot.com. the assumption i'm making here is that it is a description of legitimate, moral, and healthy love--whatever this may truly be, but we can generally agree on what it is not.

my first criticism revolves around 2. no human being is worth taking life for, with the single exception of protecting the lives of others. but as a general rule, this isn't an indication of love of an individual. maybe its a social obligation, but protecting others isn't love. and taking of life for other reasons is unacceptable. it is far from clear to me how this relates. you kill for ideas maybe, like the survival of freedom, but out of anger or any other motivation is not a reflection of love in any legitimate sense.

generally the list makes no sense. i noticed that some people believed that it was some deep expression of emotion. to be honest, much of the non-list material was an expression of a deeply held emotion, and i'm not criticizing that. i'm more interested in defining this emotion.

but these two parts are inconsistent. love tells you to abandon your dreams for someone else yet makes you want to pursue them more by becoming the best that you can be. this is very much the moral of both sections.

further, it is troublesome the proposition that love requires the sacrifice of everyone but the loved person if that loved person needed it. first, this is troublesome because of the "unselfish" nature of love inflicting a very selfish cost. second, it is troublesome that a position is described by a situation that should never occur if it is love, which implies that it is a meaningless statement. third, this implies that there can only be one love at any time, or at a minimum, only one most important love, like one ring to rule over them all.

all of these statements are ultimately meaningless. for instance, you can never share "anything...with no negative repercussions." if this were the case, then no one is in love. there are certain things that you do not to or share with someone you love because you value their enjoyment of whatever experience over your lack of enjoyment. you do things you don't want because the other person wants you to, and they enjoy it, and you do not want to hurt them by telling them otherwise. if you told them, and they got angry, then this statement means that they do not love you. no one does, can, or should share everything they think or feel. if you do that, then you are being selfish. nor do you want to be totally honest with anyone. this might be the worst advice of all. sometimes love is lying. everyone lies. you have to.

you can never accept anyone unconditionally either. things change. circumstances change. here's the problem, this is like a photograph of love. of course you accept someone unconditionally now when you feel a certain way, but the test is do you accept them when they are different? the answer is maybe. what if they took a position you morally oppose? what if they betrayed you? unconditional acceptance isn't an option, and may even be, in some occassions, morally questionable. effectively by definition, unconditional love cannot be restricted to a set of specific circumstances found in a given moment.

it is simply not possible to feel strong and weak in any real sense. it sounds very pretty, but the two are mutually exclusive, other than in the general sense. and used in this general sense it is meaningless. it offers no guidance, many circumstances reverse a person's specific level of confidence and assurance without being love. and you can never feel strong and weak, yet totally secure around someone. because feeling secure and better about yourself is not feeling weak, and it sounds an awful lot like feeling strong.

he might be pretty close with his statement that it is wanting "to be around them, even at the worst of times."

the description i'm criticizing attempts to be pretty. there is nothing pretty about definitions. love, like all complex ideas can only be described in simple, virtually meaningless ways. i can explain all "love" behaviors through self interest and the social order and its larger welfare. its not pretty, and no women are going to write on here how deep and warm this is, and no one is going to want to meet me because of it.

love, as an idea defies its simple sound and easy definition. it is an inadequate term to describe a broad range of emotions. but i will try. love is non-exclusive. love is a genuine concern for the well-being and enjoyment of another living thing. love is adding an additional weight to their well-being and enjoyment in comparison to society in general and to your own [although these two are not equal]. love is wanting to be around another living thing. notice i am excluding love of inanimate objects, but including love for all living things. love is not some amazing, powerful force for good. it's caring. it describes no course of action that can be applied to every circumstance. it's listening, forgiving, leaving, staying, ignoring, lying, honesty, sharing, excluding, including, knowing, forgetting, its everything that living things do to one another when they do those things considering the interests of the other living thing. often, it is being moral and doing the right thing, however you define moral.

we are social creatures. and love is a social emotion. and even our perception of it will change as society changes.

i'm sure most people will fail to find this idea romantic, or interesting, and will generally prefer the other list. but the truth is, no one is perfect. nothing is perfect. we should all strive to understand one another, and how we are imperfect is a real part of this process. no fairytale ideal of human emotion is accurate, fair, or healthy. we are all broken, and that is ok.

oh. and this title is just interesting to me, and a comment i made to a friend. and i was listening to "you and a promise" by howie day. and the two ideas kind of meshed in my head. but, even that story is a statement about love, and what it actually is, and how broad of an idea it is that the list failed to do justice to. also, as a post script to the original author, no offense is meant by this criticism, and i appreciate that you gave me something to think about on an otherwise boring day.

and the celebration had begun

to many, the world serves as evidence of god. but not to me.
i look around at the cruelty of nature, and recognize that it speaks volumes.

i was looking at images of bombings.
and i was thinking of what a horrible thing bombing is.
and how we should seek to forever avoid it.
then i thought about the middle east.
and religious fanaticism both abroad and here.
and the future of warfare.

it should be the goal of some of the smartest people in our society to discern a way to engage our new enemies in a manner that minimizes suffering. it seems to me, that thus far, we have dramatically failed in such an endeavor.

the dreams in which i'm dying

hello.
i want to talk about dreams. often i've had de ja vu experiences. this can be simply explained however. first, you only remember striking experiences, not the hundreds of times that your dreams did not correlate to your experience.

the second point i want to make is of personal interest. most people have dreams that are interesting, fantastic things. mine, however, are not. they are bland and boring. i dream about a dining room with cheesy fake flowers. i dream about standard types of people. i dream about everyday conversations. this is why i often have these experiences. because the vagaries of my dreams fit so well with ordinary life.

this experience, is consistent with another emotional experience, or more appropriately, eccentricity that i have. i don't feel things in a standard or typical way. i'm not excited, i'm not even really sad. i'm always kind of neutral. i'm pretty good at imitating some emotions, but i'm poor at taking good news or bad news. this has resulted in some unfortunate experiences.

this is my next goal, to learn how to seem excited at good news or compliments. then fewer people will have their feelings hurt in personal exchanges.

i apologize for this.

conspiracy theories

ok.
so.
i just want to express concern about the prevalence of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
man, we've just debunked jfk, and now this...
ugh.

asleep on a shoulder that i've never met

ok. here's a good start. read this article at the discovery institute's website, here's the address... http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=4154&program=DI%20Main%20Page%20-%20Article&callingPage=discoMainPage

sadly you'll have to cut and paste that...since i haven't figured the whole link thing out yet. i'll summarize as i go though.

the article itself is about the michael vick incident. however, it attempts to explain why we are so upset by it. as a friend of mine said, "i hate dogs, and even i know that's wrong." i'm motivated to write about this article for two reasons, one being that i disagree with its reasoning, and second i object to the idea that human beings are creatures of special creation or of a higher nature. actually there's a third, their argument relies on some questionable assumptions.

1. "But few are asking why, exactly, we are so upset. For example, do we contend that the dogs acted wrongly by fighting each other to the death? Of course not. Only human beings have the capacity to understand right from wrong."
--here is a quiet assumption, that is important later in their argument. its a rhetorical trick. immediately we are assuming that human beings can make a distinction between right and wrong. now, i won't argue that human beings do not make distinctions between actions, but i think that it is difficult to claim that animals do not do the same, and it can be argued that most human beings make the distinction between right and wrong for the same reason that animals do. human beings are socialized and trained, i have yet to be convinced that there is an innate moral sense. if there is, it is the desire to have a place in the world, which is a result of our social nature. our dogs have the same sense of right and wrong as a child, displaying guilt and occassionally even weight cost and benefit of breaking the rules. now, this may just be imparting human conceptions onto animals; however, i think that one can argue strongly that social animals respond to these stimuli. their point in starting at this point is to end closer to their ultimate point, that we are creatures of special creation with special responsibilities.

2. "Then are we furious because, as animal-rights activists would have it, the victimized dogs had a "right" not to be treated in such a brutal fashion? No. Animals don't have rights. They can't even understand the concept."
--you do not have to understand rights to have them, this isn't in the definition of rights. otherwise, mentally ill and handicapped individuals would not have rights, by definition. this argument fails.

3. "Indeed, for rights to be true rights, they must apply universally."
--also, this is not in the definition of rights. it is for some, but not for others. for instance, you do not have a universal right to life or to free speech. rights are defined by the duties that they impose. you have the duty not to take anyone's life unlawfully and the duty not to commit slander. but technically, the duty not to take life, and the right to life, do not apply universally. you have the right to kill the other side in a war, or to act in self defense. you also have freedom of speech, but it is not universal, it is limited in scope by truth (slander) and obscenity laws.

4. "Yet anyone seriously asserting that a lion violated a zebra's right to life by hunting it down would be laughed out of town."
--this is a favorite argument of the religious right, and groups such as the discovery institute. this is an inappropriate metaphor. no one would argue either that a lion violated a person's right to life by hunting them down. this statement sounds compelling, but demonstrates nothing. it does not prove that there is no right to life for animals, or that animals do not have rights, only that lions have no duty to protect the lives of zebra's, or humans, for that matter.

5. "By treating helpless animals as if their pain did not matter, by engaging in such blatant cruelty, they not only inflicted inexcusable suffering and terror upon helpless, sentient beings, but, even worse, they besmirched the higher nature and noble calling of the human race."
--i completely agree with this sentiment up until the higher nature part. indeed, we do have a noble calling, that we are largely ignoring in many ways.

ultimately, i agree with the sentiment of this piece, that causing suffering on another living thing for entertainment is wrong. but i do not think that animals should not, or do not, have rights. i would argue that all living things should have rights as much as is tenable. the authors are right that human beings can recognize suffering and empathize, although i contend with the statement that animals do not recognize suffering either. to an extent they do, especially the social animals. i have seen enough animals mourn and respond to the suffering of others that i think that it may well be a rebuttable presumption that animals are not that aware of other creatures. but i do believe that human beings, as creatures capable of rationalizing and constructing moral visions have a unique responsibility to mitigate suffering wherever possible. we have philosophy, religion, and socialization to construct and communicate a moral vision.

but none of these positions require that human beings are products of special creation or of a higher worth than the lives of animals. the suffering of all creatures at our hands should be restricted as much as is possible.

btw...later i will discuss why i think that eating is an argument against design and god.

thank you for your time.

eulogy...rebirth...so long...wish you well...show us how you weren't afraid...

hello.
this is the reintroductory post.
we are going to try this again.
i think this time around i'm going to strike out against some of the ideas out there that i object to. i'm going to begin a tirade aimed at religiofascism and the general rejection of reason.

and slowly, you will learn what i am all about.


let's play.