Here's a new thread so we can talk about the politics of words without distracting anybody who is looking for an answer to a simple (but none-the-less important)question like "How do you spell supercalifragelisticexpealidotious?" (you can answer that one in Q&A if you like twu)
OK. I'll start off.
How do folks feel about the habit of changing the descriptive terms used to describe people and conditions with which there is some political discomfort. I'll give a series of examples to illustrate what I mean.
Negro - Colored - Black - African American
Moron - Mental Handicap - Learning Disordered
Mad - Insane - Mentally Ill - Mental Health Problem
Crippled - Handicapped - Disabled
Queer - Homosexual - Gay.
Generally these terms are changed to reflect 'more enlightened' views with the hope of changing prejudices but rarely achieve this in my opinion. Are certain groups right to take on older terms and use them as proud labels? Did the 'Black is Beautiful' and 'Black Power' campaigns of the seventies do anything to establish Black as a more positive term? If they did why has african-american come into use? More generally can changing the word used to describe a condition actually change general attitudes?
The one I've been most involved with was "disabled".
The point made by the disabled people that I was working with was that "people with disabilities" was about being recognised as a person first, then as a person with a disability. Those that wanted to be called "disabled" saw themselves as disabled from society by virtue of having a disability as well as because of their specific disability.
I think that the biggest difference is who has put forward the new word - the people to whom the word would apply or others (perhaps wishing to create a euphemism). Use of the word "disabled" has been accompanied by a whole movement towards "disabled people" taking more control of their lives and being more active on committees and in charities. No more "does he take sugar".
It is such a personal subject I'm sure others will disagree.
>Are certain groups right to take on older terms and use them as proud labels?
Are we really in a position to judge this question? I think they did it after realizing that the euphemistic devices didn't help them a great deal. The latter generally flourish in times of budgetary restraint. Renaming things is still cheaper than solving a problem.
Guess I'll be the first U.S. resident to take a shot at these loaded questions. Philip, you asked "can changing the word used to describe a condition actually change general attitudes?" I will give a qualified "Yes" to this, the qualification being, "as long as you know I don't mean
quick or widespread change in attitude." Many times I have
heard individuals say, after learning of a new way of seeing
something (or someone) that they had never before been aware
of the ramifications of their old view, and that they
intended to change for the better. The phrase I used in my
first sentence is an example: In the past, I would have simply said I was an "American", with no further thought, before it was pointed out to me that there are, in fact,
people actually living in Central and South America!
I hope, optimist that I am, that gradually this change will
spread to include the majority of folks everywhere. I also
hope that more of these folks will speak up, since it seems
that the loudest voices, which are often negative, often
sway the crowd's opinions. There is an old song that goes,
"One man's hands can't tear a prison down; two men's hands
can't tear a prison down; but if two and two and fifty
make a million, we'll see the change come 'round".
Wsieber, I agree that "we" (whoever that is) are not in a
position to judge "them" (whoever they are). Not many of
us can understand another's problems with little or no
frame of reference. If I look at trying to resolve the
problem from the underdog's (victim's?) position, the main
problem seems to me that there are too many different ideas/opinions, in a lot of cases, to form one strong
"This is what we want" slogan or whatever to stand behind.
My main question to you, though, is about your "budgetary
restraint" comment: surely you did not mean that literally, to cover all situations? Could you clarify?
I am assuming (oh, here I go again, probably making an a--
out of me but not u, I hope) that when you said,
"Renaming things is still cheaper than solving a problem.",
you did not mean strictly that a lack of money is the only
barrier. Your comment made me think of entirely too many
"leaders" who essentially do nothing but rabble-rouse:
make incite-ful (is that a word?) speeches but have no
real answers or even starting points to offer. The result
of this is usually that the crowd splits into various groups, each of which comes up with a different idea, and
no one person or group has enough clout to accomplish much.
Hi Jackie,
I very specifically questioned if we are in a position to judge whether it is "right" for certain groups to take on older terms and use them as proud labels. And of course I do not think that you can solve problems with money ALONE. But those requests that cost nothing to fulfill hardly ever cause dispute..
Best Regards
Werner Sieber
I think it's precisely those requests that cost nothing that are the most difficult to fulfill. It cost nothing to talk to the person in the wheelchair instead of the person pushing the wheelchair but this simple, courteous, action if often not done, even by professional who should know better. However, coming up with a way of changing attitudes requires much thought and fundamental changes in education. These changes may involve relatively cost but require much drive and leadership to overcome the social inertia. It's a lot easier to suggest you spend money on making physical changes. Of course, for people like me, who have disabling mental illnesses or impairments the only changes that help are changes to attitudes.
I noticed, with some dismay, the comments about mental illness 'care in the community' programme. My experience both as a giver and receiver of psychiatric care is that from an individuals point of view care in the community has had little effect on quality of life. Some chronically ill people now wander along the streets rather than along the corridors of psychiatric asylums but I don't see much actual difference. What putting the mad into the community has done up to now is to emphasis the fear of madness that is now coming to point where the UK government is considering forcing medication onto a wider group of people (as opposed to offering support - including medication). However, in my opinion, that care in community will eventual result in more positive attitudes to the mad given time, educational support and a wider introduction into all sectors of the community (not just the inner city and seaside grey ghetto towns).
It's just this sort of response and the time that such changes take that leads to groups being frustrated into trying to speed up changes in attitudes. In this words can be very powerful campaigning methods. Queer is much more forceful than gay. Mad is more forceful than 'mental health problem' There is, as yet, no great effort to put peoples attitudes to disability more in their face. (Ian Dury's anthem Spasticus Autisticus was a notable exception) but I'm starting my own campaign called 'We're not mad, we're mad!'
Philip--
>It cost nothing to talk to the person in the wheelchair instead of the person pushing the wheelchair<
This is EXACTLY the kind of "speaking up" that I said
I hope people do more of! I like your slogan, too.
I think Martin Luther King said words like "Don't look down on anyone unless you're helping them up"
This came up in discussing the kind of UK papers where the best crosswords are found. There is a wonderful list of the kind of people who read UK newspapers but in the meantime, here are few definitions from a frequent traveller to assist (???) inter-cultural understanding.
I always find definitions of political words interesting.
Political Party
In the UK – A political party is defined by its core beliefs. Of the two largest parties, the Conservative party is regarded as being broadly right wing. The Labour Party is regarded as being broadly (nowadays very broadly) left wing.
In the USA – its traditional base of supporters defines a political party. Within each party are far right and centre right factions, there is no electable party which represents a left wing viewpoint.
In US politics the UK Conservative party would be left wing and the UK Labour Party would not exist.
In the UK - liberal = warm, gentle person, prone to wearing woolly jumpers and thinking kind thoughts about people, the environment and animals.
In the USA – liberal = someone who engages in left wing political activity, the sort of person you would be embarrassed to have round to dinner because of their weird thoughts about social spending on free healthcare for all.
In the UK – socialist = warm, gentle person, prone to wearing woolly jumpers and trying to do something to help people, the environment and animals.
In the USA - socialist = someone who engages in left wing political activity and is active in encouraging a Russian invasion of the United States, the sort of person you would be unlikely to meet, let alone have round to dinner because of their weird thoughts about social spending on free healthcare for all and other communist structures.
All this written with my tongue firmly in my cheek!
Please reply and say that this isn't correct!
I'm not so sure about the woolly jumpers.
Anyhow ain't woolly jumpers some strange crossbreed between kangaroos and merino's.
Phillip - I'm sure you have drawers full of them!
Can I be semi-Liberal? (I actually vote Lib Dem - the third option!) And while I enjoy being warm, gentle et al, I am a firmly carnivorous animal and am still not sure if I can be bothered to take a strong stand on fox-hunting, one way or the other.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
Oh, Jo,
Thank you so much for that list of explanations! No
wonder I haven't understood references to the Labour
party and socialists! (Aside from being an ignorant U.S.
citizen, I think politics are the most boring thing in the
world, second only to economics, so I have had NO incentive to enlighten myself in any of these matters.)
Speaking of enlightenment--I have no desire whatsoever to
learn what Philip or anyone else has in their drawers!!!
> I think politics are the most boring thing in the
world
That's why we're dumping all that stuff over here, so it doesn't take over the other postings and you can be left in (relative) peace.
Funny how words and politics are inseparable though, isn't it???
As I'm sure Mrs Slocombe would have said "the content of my drawers is not for discussion " (accept in the several other threads where I have mentioned it)
>Please reply and say that this isn't correct!
Jo, the distinction is actually sooooooo simple:
CONSERVATIVE, n.
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
[credit to Ambrose Bierce and The Devil's Dictionary]
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
I knew that someone would have a much clearer definition.
By the way, I have been assured that Philip has no woollies anywhere. I've been advised (by a secret admirer of his) that he looks rather like Che Guevara. These days he prefers to lounge around in his pied a terre in his smoking jacket a little like Noel Coward.
Interestingly, Che Guevara spell checks as "cheap Guggenheim"
Shanks also does not have any woollies - sharp suits yes, woollies, no.
Ah Shanks
That would be "the third way".
It isn't necessary to be a vegetarian or to have strong feelings about fox hunting, merely to have kind thoughts about animals from time to time. If you need time to practice this, start with Corgis.
Since a socialist seems to be a strange wild animal not seen in the states those interested can find a picture of me actually looking like Hannibal 'the Cannibal' Lecter at
http://www.castlesontheweb.com/members/philipdavis/author/author.html There is another of me eating potage prior to assisting at the execution of King Charles.
My life is now entirely modeled on the Noel Coward song "Mad Englishman and Dog" (The dog's picture is online at
http://www.castlesontheweb.com/members/philipdavis/author/jan.html)
If anyone would like to add a photograph of themselves to the site this is a useful piece of new technology
http://www.magicwebcam.com/webcam2/
Well, Jo,
Are you revealing a heretofore(nearly)hidden side of your self? I have had one previous experience w/ technology
such as this. I must say, the likeness was not very like.
Jo, I tried your hotlink (congratulations!) and there must still be some bugs with the technology; all I saw was a picture of you....
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
Well, Tsuwm, you were a braver man than I.
I thought as much. Perhaps others might have
better luck w/ finding it in proper working order.
I will wait for confirmation before going there myself.
Jo has pointed out to me that, while badly out of focus, the photo I saw was definitely (much to my chagrin) that of a male....
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
Hmmmm... Interesting. Does this also make the NAACP redundant?? Must they also change their name to something more inline with the universally adopted African-American coign?
Personally I admire the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's hold onto it's title. I think that this show a commitment to real change and not to a superficial change that a change in term often is.
In the UK the Spastic Society held onto it's name for a very long time and thus put the word Spastic onto charity shop fronts and through letter boxes, which I felt was a good thing in that it would have changed attitudes to cerebral palsy and physical disability general over a long period. However, they have, for some reason, changed their name to the meaningless SCOPE in the last few years.
I heard that Native American was out of date and we are meant to say Indian now - is that correct?
American Indian... or maybe today it's Native American Indian.
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
This is response to the discussion over on the PC thread about the way the press reports these issues. I’ll put it here, so those who don’t want to discuss the underlying politics can be left in peace.
We are told in the UK that we are lack one key instrument of civilisation - a Freedom of Information Act. We are also told that the UK gutter press is amongst the worst in the world (although now the shops sell the National Enquirer, the case is arguable).
France is regarded as having a much clearer line on privacy with legal intervention to maintain the privacy of public figures (either that or the French people live on a higher plain and prefer not to gossip as much as English speakers). One has the impression (possibly incorrect) that in Paris the cafes of the Left Bank are full of people discussing philosophy, rather than caring too much about the private lives of their politicians and public figures. The press had known for years that President Mitterrand had a “love child” but hadn’t thought it important enough to be mentioned until he decided to tell the nation about it himself in 1994. Such a silence is inconceivable (forgive the pun) in most English speaking countries.
So does Freedom of Information stretch to Freedom of Thought and is that the issue here? America went through the era of McCarthyism and fought off ideas emanating in other countries which did not seem to be appropriate for America (that is a charitable interpretation). The approach to ideas which emanate from a more left-wing perspective is to set up a new committee on Un-American activities, it worked last time didn't it? This time the committee isn't in parliament behind closed doors. It is in the pages of the newspapers.
The discussion on these pages is part of the big picture. We are in the days of the kangaroo court. Sentencing is no longer the prerogative of the courts. (Perhaps they never did work in isolation of public opinion.) Instead, we have trial by media. In the same way that case law feeds back into the legal system, the reaction to press reports feeds back into the public consciousness. Is this justice? Maybe not. Is there a better solution? Maybe not.
Which is why I started with press regulation. I don’t have experience about the press in other countries of the world but I know that here in the UK the situation is far from straightforward. In used to live close to (broadsheet) journalists reporting on parliament. I became aware that they have a huge amount of information about politicians and public figures which they choose not to use until there is an issue that brings the matter into the public interest. With the Conservative party in the nineties the issue was “sleeze”. The press did not start revealing the (minor) secret love affairs of ministers until after John Major’s “Back to Basics” – family values message had hit the streets and war had been declared on single parent and other “state scroungers”. On the other side a Labour politician only had his promiscuous homosexual tastes revealed when he was arrested by police on Hampstead Heath and tried to pass the whole affair off as a (highly improbable) robbery. Others who have conducted their affairs in private (and some, not so private) have survived. The UK still has a Foreign Secretary, despite “dumping” his wife at the airport just as he discovered that his long-standing affair was about to be revealed. The United States have allowed their own President to continue to the end of his term, despite an impeachment which in earlier times would meant a certain end to the presidency. In the UK the potential marriage of the Prince of Wales is still debated in the media. I suspect he will marry at the time that public opinion (already mellowing) no longer cares.
I think that the attitude of the broadsheets (“quality papers”) to ordinary members of the public is the same. They don’t go for the innocent college lecturer on the first utterance of a sexist term. They only publish stories about the college lecturer who has got away for years with anti-whatever sentiment. (I haven’t seen any reports of teachers making jokes at the expense of English children in Scottish schools but it is certainly prevalent.) I trust the tabloids less. I think they go for whatever makes a “good” story, they take more risks and cause more personal misery for those involved in the process.
The next question is “Do we get the press we deserve?” I’ll leave that up to you.
The short version of this long posting is that our wrath at supposedly silly cases where individuals are pursued by the press for non pc utterances is part of the process modern day McCarthyism. The press play the part of the accuser and we, who buy or don’t buy the papers are the jury. If the story “sticks” it’s a modern day guilty verdict and passes into case history in that same way that a radical new judgement does in the courts. We are supposed to be appalled at some of the press reports because that is how, these days, we vote and small shifts in public opinion come about.
In looking up some references for this I found a transcript of the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in South Africa. One of the speakers talked about the conspiracy of silence that had existed in South Africa. A whole nation had accepted that some people were of less value than others, based on the colour of their skin. In Hitler’s time, many people knew about strange disappearances of large numbers of people but were silent. Woodward and Bernstein tried to pursue the truth of what happened in the Watergate building.
We have lived through a time when press silence failed us. We may now be living through a time of too much freedom of the press. There doesn’t seem to be an acceptable alternative.
Any thoughts?
Whoa! And I thought the other thread would open a can of worms! (By the way, when I first saw PC, I thought
"personal computer"!)
OK--I think Americans as a whole are fervent in believing in individuals' rights. This extends to freedom of the
press.
I have thought for years that the media have far too much influence. I am absolutely convinced that everything from widespread coverage of murders, to movies that portray murder as a natural response to an irritation, have played a
major role in why our society is so much more violent today than it was a couple of generations ago. (Of course, our
Right to Bear Arms makes catastrophic violence so much easier.)
As individuals, we all have the right to choose:
NOT to own a gun, or NOT to read certain newspapers, or NOT to go to or allow our children to watch violent movies.
Even if we do all of these things, we still can choose whether to let our behavior reflect them.
My concern is with the insidiousness of the media. Many people are in fact influenced by it without being aware that they are. AND--for all but a very small percentage of the things the media presents, there is no authority at all to say what they "ought" to do. A parental disciplinary role-player, in other words: someone saying, "Gee, let's think about the ramifications of this".
I suppose some editors try to act in good conscience, but if the bottom line is sell, sell, sell, why then they choose to go with what sells, never mind the ramifications.
And I can't really advocate putting a parental figure in charge--what if they allow something I don't approve of?
(In other words, there'd be no pleasing all of the people all of the time.) One person's quality news is another
person's trash.
I agree very strongly that the media constitute a kangaroo court. The real courts here do at least make an effort to have trials (at least major-impact trials) free of the influence of the media. Prospective jurors are asked to avow that they have not read/heard about the case, and
sometimes cases are moved away from the locale of the crime, due to news coverage.
So--MY bottom line is that each one of us ought to do the right thing in making our choices, BUT...I am not at all sure that enough of us are going to be able to overcome our
"go with the herd" inclination, to make a significant difference.
the "mass media" (read free press) is certainly a popular "whipping boy" these days. but we need to remember that the popular historical alternative is "managed" media (see China, USSR, Nazi Germany, etc., ad nauseam).
[by the way, a whipping boy was a boy educated with a prince and punished in his stead, a rather apt analogy for blaming the media for all our ills.]
isn't it a beautiful thing about democracy that people choose things they shouldn't?
>>blaming the media for all our ills.
I thought I ought to have made that clearer! I did say that sometimes people have been influenced by the media without really being aware of that fact.
This is one of the things I was thinking, but didn't write, that we can choose to do: consciously think about what we
allow to control us.
And william, yes it is beautiful--but with every privilege comes responsibility, darn it!
Interestingly enough, I have never heard anyone (criminal or otherwise) complaining to have been influenced HIMSELF/HERSELF by the media. It's always "the others'" misdeeds that are "explained" in this way by well-meaning third-party commentators. Is there a tendency to credit others with less free will than oneself?
>>. Is there a tendency to credit others with less free will than oneself?
Yes, I think there is--and I think that particular aspect comes under a much more generalized category: that we see faults in others quicker than we recognize the same faults in ourselves. Do you know very many people who say they are bad drivers? Thought not. And just think of how many people complain how awful it is when someone monopolizes the conversation, but do the exact same thing themselves.
Though I will say that there have been a couple of times in the U.S. that a teen-ager (usually) states that he or she was influenced by the media into a criminal act. I cannot help but feel that we wouldn't have had so many tragic high-school shooting sprees if it weren't for the news coverage of the earliest ones.
We are all so different in so many ways, but we are all alike, too, in others. This Board is teaching me that people are the same the world over, in wants and needs--never mind the petty differences. Fantastic!!!
wsieber,
i agree with you.
people who warn of the media's dangerous influence often seem to be magically immune to that influence. i doubt if most of us are much different.
i don't think it's necessarily about finding fault in others, jackie. i think we tend to misplace influences, even our own. we give reasons for our actions that are often juvenile, not to mention completely wrong.
the question of why people kill others in schools is incredibly deep. the copycat theory is just too simple. if it were true, everyone would copy.
the answer to the question "why did you have a cup of coffee?" may be answered:
"because eveyone else is"
"because i needed a caffeine fix"
"because i always have one at ten a.m."
"because i just saw a great nescafe ad"
but do those reasons satisfy us?
they are just empty quotings of vague influences.
the best answer i can think of is:
"because i felt like it"
isn't it possible that there are deeper passions behind our decisions?
yet we refer to pictures, as if they make us decide.
william, I do see what you're saying, and I think you are right, about the majority of people. But I still think that some people, especially youngsters, are likely to see something and then say, hey, I'm gonna do that, too.
In other cases, I suspect people have had a vague idea of doing something criminal, and seeing it in the media acts as the catalyst for them to decide to go ahead.
Hope I'm wrong, 'cause there sure is a lot of evil thrown at the kids these days. And for the ones who have no one to
tell them that what they are watching is in fact the wrong thing to do, then woe betide their peers and future colleagues.
I was a journalist for 20 years. Left the profession, for all the above reasons y'all mentioned. Now jaded and unconvinced.
jackie,
this must be the big one.
once you decriminalise information, you can't take it back.
it's now possible to see almost anything on the internet, and no one knows if the user is an adult or a child.
it's scary to think how much children can "learn".
the big one is, as we free information, how does it affect the youngsters you mentioned?
>>, how does it affect the youngsters you mentioned?
Oh, Honey--I really don't want to get all depressed right now. If anyone else wants to take this one, go right ahead.
I'll give it a shot later.
>>isn't it possible that there are deeper passions behind our decisions?
William,
Only rarely, I'd say. Many acts (I hesitate do say decisions) in our well-cared-for life arise from sheer boredom and a general drive to do something. Animal research has shown that if e.g. a bird has had no insects to peck at for a while it starts pecking at the empty ground, an instinctive movement, not because it is hungry.
Only a short timespan, in evolutionary terms, separates us humans from the epoch where we needed to be constantly active during waking hours, simply to survive.
>>Only a short timespan, in evolutionary terms, separates us humans from the epoch where we needed to be constantly active during waking hours, simply to survive.
how do you know that?
the bird doesn't peck because it read a newspaper article, but because something tells it to. science calls it instinct, but what does science know about the mind of a bird?
boredom can't be the answer, because everyone gets bored, but everyone doesn't do the same things!
In reply to:
boredom can't be the answer, because everyone gets bored, but everyone doesn't do the same things!
Doesn't necessarily follow. An instinct can express itself in all sorts of different ways. Take sex, for example. We all have a sex instinct, but the way it shows itself can take all sorts of different directions in different people at different times in their lives and in different circumstances depending on our environment in the womb and afterwards, up to and including who or what is available at the time.
Bingley
>>Only a short timespan, in evolutionary terms, separates us humans from the epoch where we needed to be constantly active during waking hours, simply to survive.
So that's why I'm so restless all the time! Thank you, Dear! I always love to find rational reasons for
behavior.
I will also point out that one way we know this is to look
on television or just open our eyes where we are, and see that there are people all over the world who still have to "be constantly active during waking hours, simply to survive." There are lots of jungle tribes living right beside us, right now. And some of those jungles are in modern cities. Those of us with education and lifestyles that allow us the knowledge to write on this Board, and have the luxury of free time to do it, are extraordinarly fortunate.
>>Now jaded and unconvinced
Unconvinced of what, Dear? Clarify, please?
william--
As I re-read your posts in this thread, I came to the conclusion that you are actually wanting to know why we (and other creatures) behave as we do.
The bottom line, but nonetheless supremely unhelpful, answer is: because of something we are born with (nature),
or because of something about the way we were raised (nurture).
Scientists have been studying the nature vs. nurture aspect for ages (that is how they do in fact know what goes on in the minds of birds). They have made a great deal of progress in some ways (I'm thinking of the recently-developed ability of the FBI to do quite accurate profiles of criminals they have not caught), and very little in others (studies of identical twins raised apart and unaware of each other have shown remarkable similarities in the two, but nothing conclusive has been learned).
It seems to be human nature to want to know the "why" of everything. I know I do! But each person's history is
unique: even identical siblings raised together are not raised identically, nor are their perceptions of how they were raised identical. Each will perceive, correctly or incorrectly, that they or the other was more favored or less favored. This will have effects on their behavior, in either subtle or obvious ways.
This provides a nice lead-in to your question of how children who have no one who cares enough to teach them right from wrong come to behave. We all do whatever we think will result in getting our needs met. Infants cry when they are uncomfortable, and hopefully that will bring a caregiver who will provide relief. We continue that pattern all our lives, in some way or another. Kids who are raised without enough attention being paid to them, by and large are going to find ways to secure that attention.
As they become teenagers and are more able to get around on their own (though some don't wait that long), these attention-seeking behaviors tend to escalate into very destructive acts, both to themselves and others. That always hurt me so much to watch that, because I knew they were acting out in pain from the circumstances they were in,
and I knew that 99 out of 100 of them were only going to be in more painful circumstances as a result. Many times, I just felt like shaking the kid's parents and yelling, "Just love him/her, that's all they're asking!".
And then I would realize all too often that the parents were maybe in just as much pain, and for whatever reasons truly didn't have anything left to give the child.
The kids who somehow (here I am thinking of nature, as in born with a strong personality) become successful adults
despite horrendous childhoods are the lucky ones. I define successful here not as accumulation of wealth, but as simply being able to survive without being destructive to a debilitating degree. Children born with naturally self-effacing personalities, or who have had standing up for themselves literally whipped out of them, are the unlucky ones, unless they are fortunate enough to find someone who genuinely cares for them.
Jackie,
This last post of yours is really impressively deep and relevant. It has to be founded on personal experience.
There is no need for me to ad my grain of salt (or drop of vinegar). Just a recent anecdote: At lunch, I was complaining to a colleague about my current work situation. In the course of my lament, I said : It takes a lot for me to be angry at somebody. - "Oh, I believe THAT", said my colleague - and it sounded as if he had said: that's the problem with you...
Thank you very much, I appreciate that.
Bingley,
so we have a sex instinct and it manifests itself in different actions in people according to their character and experiences. i would say that means it's not just the instinct at work.
instinct doesn't make our decisions for us. that must be obvious, or people couldn't abstain from sex, eating, drinking. the decision to do something (even something instinctual) is separate from the influences we can identify.
my point is that it's facile to say the media causes us to buy, kill, hate, vote and so on. each decision in these areas comes from somewhere inside the mind of an individual. if you could open that place up and look, it wouldn't contain a newspaper.
Jackie,
thanks so much for the long and fascinating post.
there is so much here.
i've seen some shows on genetics and identical twins, genetics and super intelligent people, on the tv. what always puzzles me is how genetics can be responsible for people being both the same and different! i guess i don't really follow it.
i don't agree that scientists know what birds think. we can only understand in terms of tests we give them. being a bird and thinking bird thoughts would be an experience no scientist could predict or understand. what kind of success rate do psychiatrists have? do they really understand our minds?
your stories of neglected children are kind of gut wrenching. as you put it so well, the parents are often suffering just as badly. when families go wrong it must be so difficult to have any positive influence. and of course it's not just families that go wrong.
when i was a teenager (and still optimistic about the world) i had a realisation that jails don't help anybody. if we really want to help criminals (and society), we should provide programs that actually rehabilitate them. now i think about it, the same goes for a lot of our institutions: schools, companies, government. these are things we can do something about. children who have terrible experiences at home, as you said, go on to look for love in other places. i don't know about other schools, but you couldn't have squeezed a drop of love out of most the teachers at my school if you ran 'em individually through a wringer.
i guess we could all start by following your example, jackie. your comments ring like bells across the internet, kind and full of hope.
Thank you, william. You are sweet to say so!
In reply to:
my point is that it's facile to say the media causes us to buy, kill, hate, vote and so on. each decision in these areas comes from somewhere inside the mind of an individual. if you could open that place up and look, it wouldn't contain a newspaper.
I would say you might find a newspaper or TV or whatever plus a whole load of other stuff from that particular person's history. I would definitely agree though that it's facile to point to just one cause for anything as complex as human behaviour.
Bingley
>I would say you might find a newspaper or TV or whatever plus a whole load of other stuff from that particular person's history. I would definitely agree though that it's facile to point to just one cause for anything as complex as human behaviour.
i would say you might find some kind of image of a newspaper and whole lots of mind images as well, plus some kind of decision mechanism. but of course finding this would be like placing the start of a river.
I noticed that Bridget mentioned the "P" word in another thread - here is a much quoted listing of British Newpapers:
The Times:
Read by the people who run the country.
Daily Mirror:
Read by the people who think they run the country.
Guardian:
Read by the people who think they ought to run the country.
Morning Star:
Read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country.
Daily Mail:
Read by the wives of the people who own the country.
Financial Times:
Read by the people who own the country.
Daily Express:
Read by the people who think that the country ought to be run as it used to be.
Daily Telegraph:
Read by the people who think it still is.
The Sun:
Their readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's happy to pose topless!