A argument states that any sort of theism, at least Christianity, is irrational because of the lack of evidence of a God outside of "the Bible says so." Fair enough.
It is fair to debate the form of God. whether He is a he or a she. Whether He of the nature to be refered to using capitalized pronouns. His form, size, power, limitations, and quintessential nature. Because of his apparent absence from human affairs, it is fair to debate whether he is Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Zeus, or someone else. This is up to debate like the particular color of the skin of certain dinosaurs.
To assume God's form, let alone existence, is irrational. Just as irrational, however, is atheism that assumes God's nonexistence. Or, at least the nonexistence of a force that fills the shoes of God.
*Tangential note: we can assume this force to have a conciousness because we, people, have individual consciousnesses. God needn't set out to produce specific creatures*
Dr. Albert Ellis, I believe, explained his atheism by saying the existence of a God is so improbable as not to be worth anyone's attention. Even if I am quoting him out of context, let's analyze this argument anyway. To assume the probability of the existence of an object requires knowledge of that object. Eg. The probability of a pipe leaking, the probability of a car running out of gas after a certain amount of driving. Now, we can observe the form of a pipe or gas tank. The existence of God presents a different problem. If He exists, we, in general, fail to notice him in any meaningful way.
He cannot be observed as does a pipe or gas tank. In order to consider the probability of His existence, we must narrow down something of His 'Godness.'
To compare, consider the bottle of Mountain Dew I am drinking. Whether the bottle contains urine can probably be proven. Scientists have analyzed the components of urine. If urine was introduced into the Dew during production (say, an unruly employee pees in the mixture of the drink, and the urine gets so deluted that it cannot discolor or make the drink smell or taste bad) we could find it out. Provided, however, I cannot note the urine with my naked senses, I will choose to leave the matter at faith, and continue to drink the drink. The probability is so improbable, I believe, that that it is hardly worth my attention.
Not so with God. For as long as I am uncertain about the nature of God, I should stay away from passionate declarations about the probability of His existence.
A good place to start in considering his existence would be science and related topics. Biology, Physics, Geology, Chemistry, Astronomy, other subjects, and how these subjects interact. Especially how they interact. Learning more about the world can show us its origins. Perhaps the more interesting discovery ever will be discovering the nature of consciousness. How it works, how and when and why it arrives at birth, how and when and why and where it ends at death. What changes during certain situations. How consciousness differs between individuals, and between species.
Perhaps a better understanding of consciousness will lead to a better understand of God. Without this understanding, then any belief or nonbelief in God remains faith-based.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Redbelt
Director and screenwriter David Mamet brings us the action film Redbelt, to be released May, 2008. It stars the British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu teacher who "is pressed to enter the ring for pride and profit." It sounds like the plot for about half the martial arts films since Enter the Dragon, but Mamet wrote the intense play Edmond, and Ejiofor was confident, manly, and brilliant in Four Brothers. This movie should be at least half-decent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbelt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbelt
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Corrupt Law Enforcement
The fact that an individual is a cop or guard means nothing in regard to their personality as human beings. The promise to serve and protect and whatever are only peripheral. What matters is who the law enforcement person is as a person.
Juvenile offenders at New York State The Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center get hurt. A lot. According to a January, 2006 article for the Ithica Journal, some guards at the facility use unwarranted force on an inmate.
For instance, when a guard is escorting an inmate down the hall, the guard might create a situation where force can be considered legal. The guard slows, so the distance increased between the kid and him. At a distance greater than arms length, he has the legal right to restrain the kid because such a distance can make it seem like the kid/inmate is attempting to escape, and allows the guard to use force. The law allows it, so he can do it, and get away with it though the act is morally wrong and was unprovoked as far as the law is concerned.
Now this doesn't make all law enforcement bad. In fact, some of the people making the aligations were guards themself.
And a cop killing his girlfriend over a broken relationship fails to make all cops abusers. And a group of cops beating the snot out of a guy, even though the guy is incapacited, fails to prove that all cops would do such a thing.
When a cop or group of cops commit an immoral (or moral) act, it just means that those people have committed those acts. The acts of Cop A, considered alone, fail to shine light on the acts of Cop B.
People say they dislike cops because cops "are corrupt" or something like that. What they really mean is: "We hate cops because cops can commit immoral acts and get away unpunished with the immoral act by calling the act of means of doing their job."
When a person works for a law enforcement or military agency, they promise to follow the legislation of the agency. Though they may fail to internalize the promise. Once a situation arrives that highlights this failure, the cop does something that may be considered immoral, especially if he can hide his offending act. Furthermore, depending on his understanding of the regulations that govern him in regard to his behavior, he might work within the context of these regulations to commit immoral acts, have his act discovered by those with direct power over him, and go unpunished because his act was unrecognized as being illegal or otherwise wrong. He breaks the law without breaking the law.
Law enforcement live up to the idea designated by legislature, but have the potential to warp that idea to suit their ends.
Juvenile offenders at New York State The Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center get hurt. A lot. According to a January, 2006 article for the Ithica Journal, some guards at the facility use unwarranted force on an inmate.
For instance, when a guard is escorting an inmate down the hall, the guard might create a situation where force can be considered legal. The guard slows, so the distance increased between the kid and him. At a distance greater than arms length, he has the legal right to restrain the kid because such a distance can make it seem like the kid/inmate is attempting to escape, and allows the guard to use force. The law allows it, so he can do it, and get away with it though the act is morally wrong and was unprovoked as far as the law is concerned.
Now this doesn't make all law enforcement bad. In fact, some of the people making the aligations were guards themself.
And a cop killing his girlfriend over a broken relationship fails to make all cops abusers. And a group of cops beating the snot out of a guy, even though the guy is incapacited, fails to prove that all cops would do such a thing.
When a cop or group of cops commit an immoral (or moral) act, it just means that those people have committed those acts. The acts of Cop A, considered alone, fail to shine light on the acts of Cop B.
People say they dislike cops because cops "are corrupt" or something like that. What they really mean is: "We hate cops because cops can commit immoral acts and get away unpunished with the immoral act by calling the act of means of doing their job."
When a person works for a law enforcement or military agency, they promise to follow the legislation of the agency. Though they may fail to internalize the promise. Once a situation arrives that highlights this failure, the cop does something that may be considered immoral, especially if he can hide his offending act. Furthermore, depending on his understanding of the regulations that govern him in regard to his behavior, he might work within the context of these regulations to commit immoral acts, have his act discovered by those with direct power over him, and go unpunished because his act was unrecognized as being illegal or otherwise wrong. He breaks the law without breaking the law.
Law enforcement live up to the idea designated by legislature, but have the potential to warp that idea to suit their ends.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Faith in God
I.
The existence of God remains in doubt. Either he exists or he doesn’t. Or he exists in some of kind of semi-existence, or as a creature birthed by human imagination, like the deities in Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods. Or something completely different.
The problem with the human experience of God is God’s immeasurability. Regardless of his status, it seems unlikely with our current level of technology that we can measure him/she/it. We cannot ask Him to stand with his back to the wall so we can measure His height. We cannot place Him on a scale to find His weight. We have failed to trap Him inside a room. We cannot do interact with him in these ways, by virtue of his apparent absence from our ability to sense the world.
The beautiful thing about the idea of God is that it is both apparently improvable and definitely undeniable. Yes, He could present himself to us, provided he is omnipotent and able to appear and disappear at will. Otherwise, we are left with the hearsay of the religious and their religious texts. The religious texts declare that God’s apparent absence is trivial. They would say that he exists, nonetheless, like an extrasolar planet yet to be discovered, or the ruins of Atlantis. People hundreds of years ago may have unappreciated the existence of extrasolar planets, but those planets did exist when our telescopes could only reach as far as Jupiter (or maybe God is playing a trick on us).
God is unlike the color of the sky. People can agree about the color of the sky because it is there. Outside of whether two people share the same mental concept of ‘blue,’ they will agree that the sky is blue.
Not so with God. His absence insures we cannot disprove his existence. The existence of God in an atheistic world is an example of the ultimate assumption because there would be no God at all to assume God’s existence. In an atheistic world, we made Him up. Even here, however, the assumption dies hard. The nonexistent cannot be disproven. We can disprove erroneous theories of gravity. We can disprove erroneous theories of how water interacts with fire. We fail to disprove imaginary objects and beings, however.
Besides, if he existed, he can evade our methods of detection. An eternity can pass, and humanity’s technological sources can rise exponentially, but an omnipotent God, in an Abrahamic context, has more power in His pinky than we ever could as a collective whole. If God has a pinky, anyway. Some say he does. Some say he doesn't. Some say it is sacriledge to suggest he has a physical form. For any one to state this claims, they must choose to believe in something that cannot be proven, or is yet to be proven. Even atheists need to take a leap of faith in order to say that God is nonexistant. But He could very well exist despite His absense.
II.
With or without God, we are limited creatures. Despite advances in technology, we still struggle with abstract concepts, like duty, love, and peace. Without an agreement on the physical embodiment of such concepts, we continue to live half-lives, kill ourselves, kill each other, eat ourselves to obesity, and waste time on illogical acts like Unrequited Love, and video games.
The trick of this "disagreement" goes further than broad socialculturaleconomicreligioushistorical definitions and buries itself in the consciousness of each individual. This explains why a man in a relgious society will murder his children, commit adultery at the risk of death, and why people contradict themselves, why they become hypocrites, saying one thing and doing something that contradicts the spoken word. Big talk of "Christianity, the military-industrial complex, and Hate" fail to pin down why individuals are so different from one another, and subject to behavior that works outside the bounds of accepted ethics. Individuals, rather than societies, must pin down the idea of God. And this is always the case for individuals make up societies, not the other way around. People find God and value systems for themselves.
Though generations have passed, and the dead leave behind books and books and books of information, the information remains useless as long as the young have yet to discover the information. The experiences of a past generation influence the environment of succeeding generations; but the interpretation of that experience and the interpretation of the environment are up to the succeeding generations. The succeeding generations choose a vaue system--let's say, capitalism or communism--and live their version of the value system. Great Britiain's socialist programs are different from Cuba's socialist programs. To look at this from another angle: even though a son takes after his father, the son's life will be unique from the father's. So even though the son may consider himself to have the same value system as the father, his unique experiences will insure that he interprets his value system in a manner different from how the father interprets his value system.
For example: even though different groups of Christians share the same holy book, their worshop of God differs from one another. Catholics practice in a way different from the practice of Baptists. These different groups interpret the Bible in their own way (and don't get me started about the beliefs of individual members...).
More chaos exists for economic systems, because economic systems are based wholly on theory and must be implemented before it can be accepted or critiqued with authority. Therefore, countries tend to revamp the economy and bank system only after serious economic depression. The regulating bodies of the economy were simply ignorant to the fact that a depression would happen. Experience can teach us what certain events bring about, and experience can lead us to have different interpretations of the same event. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center will produce a more emotional effect on a war veteran than a 5-year-old from Kansas. Even among veterans, the opinions will vary. Our experiences, the value systems we grew up with, and the value systems we choose to follow, are our Gods.
And this is a chaotic system, because the value systems are unfixed. They change from person-to-person, moment-to-moment. Even among war veterans, the emotional response to the 9/11 attacks will vary. In a sense, because of this chaos of thought, people live without God. At the very least, God refrains from programming us to operate under uniform and specific values...so it would seem; I could be wrong; God could be causing me to type these letters without my knowledge and/or your knoweldge. I cannot prove that God is doing this, and I cannot disprove that he is. When you get down to it, the absence of God leads to this delicious paradox.
We are left, for all intents and purposes, to fend for ourselves. And because nothing is certain, everything relating the value systems is an act of faith. When we point at the point, and say, "This side is America; this side is Mexico," we are a chain in a link of faith that began with the creation of the world, continued when the nomads from Asia settled in what is now the southern United States, continued when they themselves broke into different groups, continued when the European settlers fought with the "Natives" and kicked the Natives out to form "The United States of America, though the land is only the United States of America to anyone who believes what maps say. The only reason the border is where it is is because of an agreement between the US and Mexican governments. Nothing metaphsical, just arbitrary.
Even the effect of war can be artbitary. Though bullets often play the role of the fearsome LORD, but the truth found in bullets must still be interpreted and misinterpretation begins with an interpretation. So if metaphyiscal truth can be found in a bullet, the truth can confuse the truthseeker despite the clear effect of a bullet fired from a gun.
III.
And so when we look for that truth, we are stuck with our assumptions. Not because we want to, but because we have to. Every act is an act of faith. Our first lesson in faith arrives when we are
babies, and assume our parents continue to exist when they hide behind a blanket.
"Peekaboo! You can't see me!" "Mom? Where are you?" We paused, and looked. "Mom? Mom!
Ahhh!"
And then she lowered the blanket and revealed herself.
"Oh, Mom, there you are."
And then she again covered herself with the blanket.
"Ahhhh!"
Sooner or later, we came to assume Mom's existence, even though she was absent from the room. Our relationship with God is similar, and even more one-sided because while we can find our mother if she is physically present, an omnipotent God can choose to remain hidden despite our best efforts to discover Him. Yes, He plays the most fabulous game of Peekaboo.
Yet, we some of us assume God, even without hard evidence of His existence. We assume this as we assume that other people share our mental concept of the color blue. I wrote the first draft of this essay in a subway train in New York City. Your only evidence of this claim, unless you happened to see me, is this very sentence. I may be lying or otherwise incorrect. I am telling the truth. I can't prove it to you, and therefore, your acceptance or declining of these claims is an act of faith. And faith is an act of resignation to reality due to lack of certainty about that reality. We simply believe. Or don't
The existence of God remains in doubt. Either he exists or he doesn’t. Or he exists in some of kind of semi-existence, or as a creature birthed by human imagination, like the deities in Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods. Or something completely different.
The problem with the human experience of God is God’s immeasurability. Regardless of his status, it seems unlikely with our current level of technology that we can measure him/she/it. We cannot ask Him to stand with his back to the wall so we can measure His height. We cannot place Him on a scale to find His weight. We have failed to trap Him inside a room. We cannot do interact with him in these ways, by virtue of his apparent absence from our ability to sense the world.
The beautiful thing about the idea of God is that it is both apparently improvable and definitely undeniable. Yes, He could present himself to us, provided he is omnipotent and able to appear and disappear at will. Otherwise, we are left with the hearsay of the religious and their religious texts. The religious texts declare that God’s apparent absence is trivial. They would say that he exists, nonetheless, like an extrasolar planet yet to be discovered, or the ruins of Atlantis. People hundreds of years ago may have unappreciated the existence of extrasolar planets, but those planets did exist when our telescopes could only reach as far as Jupiter (or maybe God is playing a trick on us).
God is unlike the color of the sky. People can agree about the color of the sky because it is there. Outside of whether two people share the same mental concept of ‘blue,’ they will agree that the sky is blue.
Not so with God. His absence insures we cannot disprove his existence. The existence of God in an atheistic world is an example of the ultimate assumption because there would be no God at all to assume God’s existence. In an atheistic world, we made Him up. Even here, however, the assumption dies hard. The nonexistent cannot be disproven. We can disprove erroneous theories of gravity. We can disprove erroneous theories of how water interacts with fire. We fail to disprove imaginary objects and beings, however.
Besides, if he existed, he can evade our methods of detection. An eternity can pass, and humanity’s technological sources can rise exponentially, but an omnipotent God, in an Abrahamic context, has more power in His pinky than we ever could as a collective whole. If God has a pinky, anyway. Some say he does. Some say he doesn't. Some say it is sacriledge to suggest he has a physical form. For any one to state this claims, they must choose to believe in something that cannot be proven, or is yet to be proven. Even atheists need to take a leap of faith in order to say that God is nonexistant. But He could very well exist despite His absense.
II.
With or without God, we are limited creatures. Despite advances in technology, we still struggle with abstract concepts, like duty, love, and peace. Without an agreement on the physical embodiment of such concepts, we continue to live half-lives, kill ourselves, kill each other, eat ourselves to obesity, and waste time on illogical acts like Unrequited Love, and video games.
The trick of this "disagreement" goes further than broad socialculturaleconomicreligioushistorical definitions and buries itself in the consciousness of each individual. This explains why a man in a relgious society will murder his children, commit adultery at the risk of death, and why people contradict themselves, why they become hypocrites, saying one thing and doing something that contradicts the spoken word. Big talk of "Christianity, the military-industrial complex, and Hate" fail to pin down why individuals are so different from one another, and subject to behavior that works outside the bounds of accepted ethics. Individuals, rather than societies, must pin down the idea of God. And this is always the case for individuals make up societies, not the other way around. People find God and value systems for themselves.
Though generations have passed, and the dead leave behind books and books and books of information, the information remains useless as long as the young have yet to discover the information. The experiences of a past generation influence the environment of succeeding generations; but the interpretation of that experience and the interpretation of the environment are up to the succeeding generations. The succeeding generations choose a vaue system--let's say, capitalism or communism--and live their version of the value system. Great Britiain's socialist programs are different from Cuba's socialist programs. To look at this from another angle: even though a son takes after his father, the son's life will be unique from the father's. So even though the son may consider himself to have the same value system as the father, his unique experiences will insure that he interprets his value system in a manner different from how the father interprets his value system.
For example: even though different groups of Christians share the same holy book, their worshop of God differs from one another. Catholics practice in a way different from the practice of Baptists. These different groups interpret the Bible in their own way (and don't get me started about the beliefs of individual members...).
More chaos exists for economic systems, because economic systems are based wholly on theory and must be implemented before it can be accepted or critiqued with authority. Therefore, countries tend to revamp the economy and bank system only after serious economic depression. The regulating bodies of the economy were simply ignorant to the fact that a depression would happen. Experience can teach us what certain events bring about, and experience can lead us to have different interpretations of the same event. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center will produce a more emotional effect on a war veteran than a 5-year-old from Kansas. Even among veterans, the opinions will vary. Our experiences, the value systems we grew up with, and the value systems we choose to follow, are our Gods.
And this is a chaotic system, because the value systems are unfixed. They change from person-to-person, moment-to-moment. Even among war veterans, the emotional response to the 9/11 attacks will vary. In a sense, because of this chaos of thought, people live without God. At the very least, God refrains from programming us to operate under uniform and specific values...so it would seem; I could be wrong; God could be causing me to type these letters without my knowledge and/or your knoweldge. I cannot prove that God is doing this, and I cannot disprove that he is. When you get down to it, the absence of God leads to this delicious paradox.
We are left, for all intents and purposes, to fend for ourselves. And because nothing is certain, everything relating the value systems is an act of faith. When we point at the point, and say, "This side is America; this side is Mexico," we are a chain in a link of faith that began with the creation of the world, continued when the nomads from Asia settled in what is now the southern United States, continued when they themselves broke into different groups, continued when the European settlers fought with the "Natives" and kicked the Natives out to form "The United States of America, though the land is only the United States of America to anyone who believes what maps say. The only reason the border is where it is is because of an agreement between the US and Mexican governments. Nothing metaphsical, just arbitrary.
Even the effect of war can be artbitary. Though bullets often play the role of the fearsome LORD, but the truth found in bullets must still be interpreted and misinterpretation begins with an interpretation. So if metaphyiscal truth can be found in a bullet, the truth can confuse the truthseeker despite the clear effect of a bullet fired from a gun.
III.
And so when we look for that truth, we are stuck with our assumptions. Not because we want to, but because we have to. Every act is an act of faith. Our first lesson in faith arrives when we are
babies, and assume our parents continue to exist when they hide behind a blanket.
"Peekaboo! You can't see me!" "Mom? Where are you?" We paused, and looked. "Mom? Mom!
Ahhh!"
And then she lowered the blanket and revealed herself.
"Oh, Mom, there you are."
And then she again covered herself with the blanket.
"Ahhhh!"
Sooner or later, we came to assume Mom's existence, even though she was absent from the room. Our relationship with God is similar, and even more one-sided because while we can find our mother if she is physically present, an omnipotent God can choose to remain hidden despite our best efforts to discover Him. Yes, He plays the most fabulous game of Peekaboo.
Yet, we some of us assume God, even without hard evidence of His existence. We assume this as we assume that other people share our mental concept of the color blue. I wrote the first draft of this essay in a subway train in New York City. Your only evidence of this claim, unless you happened to see me, is this very sentence. I may be lying or otherwise incorrect. I am telling the truth. I can't prove it to you, and therefore, your acceptance or declining of these claims is an act of faith. And faith is an act of resignation to reality due to lack of certainty about that reality. We simply believe. Or don't
Friday, March 14, 2008
Pity
A man on the 1 train asked the people in the car for money. He wore a yellow coat, and jeans and was white and skinny. He spoke in a monotone, almost computer-like voice, and paced the car abd with a script that came out so easily, so quickly, it must have been practiced. He must have been doing this all day.
"I'm going to be upfront with you," he said, and told us, the other people in the car and myself, that he had just gotten out of jail, and his family wouldn't let him live in their house. He has been staying at a shelter, which he gave the address to, where others had beat him up. He didn't want to return, and needed money for a better place to stay, which cost $15 a night (he gave the address to this too). Monday, he will get his old job back. He gave a lot of detail for a panhandler telling a story (he said he wasn't a panhandler, drug dealing, etc). Two white people across the aisle from me, dug into their pockets in the middle of his speech, and gave him wads of cash. Others on my left, and I am sure others throughout the train, gave him money too. I refrained from staring or making a show of staring.
Most panhandlers I have seen in NYC are black, and I wonder if the apparent, relative success of this guy was due either to the fact it is the beginning of the spring break tourist season, when people have more spare change, or his skin color, or both, or both other elements. The skin color element would have to be tested, and also the financial situation of the donators must be considered. A single mother working as a nurse would probably give less than a real estate salesman on vacation since the salesman will probably have more money. The nurse had herself and her children to think of if she feels inclined to give money to panhandlers and buskers. When people give money, they lose money, and the choice to give or take must be considered under this light.
Should a white panhandler get more money than a black panhandler on any given attempt for money, other elements besides skin color could play a factor. The delivery of the pandhandlers' requests for money could play a factor, if the white guy gave a better delivery than the black guy. His method of dress, the believability of his story. The white man I saw today had a slightly more detailed story than most panhandlers I've come across from. His included his work status, specific dates, cash amount he needed, and why he was homeless. Other panhandlers give a brief overview of their lives, but detail always help get people to understand where the storyteller is coming from. Many simply say that they have a terminal illness, that they have kids they need to feed. But leave it at that. They don't even say how
many kids they have. The man in the yellow jacket spoke the best script of them all.
A woman panhandler who frequents the Flushing, Queens area sits Indian-style and holds a sign saying she has children, and needs help feeding them. She is white (Flushing is an Asian neighborhood) and always slumps down, looking at the ground, and I've never heard her speak or seen her lips move whenever I pass her. My first impression of her and my plain idea of her is that she is a victim. By victim, I mean she is dependant on others fo survival when she very well could take care of herself but for some reason like laziness or mental barriers, she has trouble making ends meet. This is a one-way street in regard to give and take of resources. Of course, her life is bigger than days sitting on a sidewalk, holding a sign. I am ignorant of her childhood, the pain she might have gone through,, her strengths, and what she is working to get autonomy over her life, so she can better provide for her children.
She may be unemployed, or employed. She may take more from her kids than she gives. I am unsure. I only know that I am inclined to see her as weak. That is how her posture and script are designed. The same goes for the man in the yellow jacket. They both bring to mind images of those who need to be protected. They bring to mind the desire to support children and help the needy.
Across time and cultures, protecting the week had been an action looked upon a duty. What I wonder, though, is if the desire to help is based on actually caring for others, or the tinge of pity, or other self-serving motives, like using a donation to a charity as a tax write-off. I consider actual caring to be different from pity because pity is only a motivator to help others. Without pity, a person may keep their money in the prescence of a panhandler. Pity does not exist when the needy are not present. So as long as the needy are elsewhere, donators will fail to give to them because they (the donators) don't feel like they do.
Say we come across a starving child. Malnurished, suffering from Kwashiorkor, a condition where the child has too little protein in the system and has a swollen abdomen, though suffering from starvation. We will probably buy a Happy Meal for the kid, and call the police so that authorities can place the child with those who can provide for it. If we had the money, we may even offer to adopt it ourselves. Now, this is hypothetical.
We do all this because the child is present. Now, the starving children miles away--we know of their existance, but care little because they are not present. We need to be reminded by commercials on TV asking for 95 cents a daily. Upon viewing these commercials, we are struck by pity. And pity hurts. Without pity, a person will keep their money. Givers only give because their themselves hurt, and not so the needy give comfort. If we truly cared about starving African children, instead of spending money on going to the movies, we would use that money on the kids. Instead of overeating, we would give the extra food to the poor. Instead, people need to be stung by pity before they give money and food, so that the pity will go away, not our of any sincere care for the impoverished.
Now, a person who feels pity may be sincere in caring. It is just that for a strong feeling of empathy to occur, a person must consider how bad the other person feels. Without a consideration of the feelings of others, the action of giving is only done for the giver's sake--to reduce pity--though the panhandler reaps the physical benefits of giving.
"I'm going to be upfront with you," he said, and told us, the other people in the car and myself, that he had just gotten out of jail, and his family wouldn't let him live in their house. He has been staying at a shelter, which he gave the address to, where others had beat him up. He didn't want to return, and needed money for a better place to stay, which cost $15 a night (he gave the address to this too). Monday, he will get his old job back. He gave a lot of detail for a panhandler telling a story (he said he wasn't a panhandler, drug dealing, etc). Two white people across the aisle from me, dug into their pockets in the middle of his speech, and gave him wads of cash. Others on my left, and I am sure others throughout the train, gave him money too. I refrained from staring or making a show of staring.
Most panhandlers I have seen in NYC are black, and I wonder if the apparent, relative success of this guy was due either to the fact it is the beginning of the spring break tourist season, when people have more spare change, or his skin color, or both, or both other elements. The skin color element would have to be tested, and also the financial situation of the donators must be considered. A single mother working as a nurse would probably give less than a real estate salesman on vacation since the salesman will probably have more money. The nurse had herself and her children to think of if she feels inclined to give money to panhandlers and buskers. When people give money, they lose money, and the choice to give or take must be considered under this light.
Should a white panhandler get more money than a black panhandler on any given attempt for money, other elements besides skin color could play a factor. The delivery of the pandhandlers' requests for money could play a factor, if the white guy gave a better delivery than the black guy. His method of dress, the believability of his story. The white man I saw today had a slightly more detailed story than most panhandlers I've come across from. His included his work status, specific dates, cash amount he needed, and why he was homeless. Other panhandlers give a brief overview of their lives, but detail always help get people to understand where the storyteller is coming from. Many simply say that they have a terminal illness, that they have kids they need to feed. But leave it at that. They don't even say how
many kids they have. The man in the yellow jacket spoke the best script of them all.
A woman panhandler who frequents the Flushing, Queens area sits Indian-style and holds a sign saying she has children, and needs help feeding them. She is white (Flushing is an Asian neighborhood) and always slumps down, looking at the ground, and I've never heard her speak or seen her lips move whenever I pass her. My first impression of her and my plain idea of her is that she is a victim. By victim, I mean she is dependant on others fo survival when she very well could take care of herself but for some reason like laziness or mental barriers, she has trouble making ends meet. This is a one-way street in regard to give and take of resources. Of course, her life is bigger than days sitting on a sidewalk, holding a sign. I am ignorant of her childhood, the pain she might have gone through,, her strengths, and what she is working to get autonomy over her life, so she can better provide for her children.
She may be unemployed, or employed. She may take more from her kids than she gives. I am unsure. I only know that I am inclined to see her as weak. That is how her posture and script are designed. The same goes for the man in the yellow jacket. They both bring to mind images of those who need to be protected. They bring to mind the desire to support children and help the needy.
Across time and cultures, protecting the week had been an action looked upon a duty. What I wonder, though, is if the desire to help is based on actually caring for others, or the tinge of pity, or other self-serving motives, like using a donation to a charity as a tax write-off. I consider actual caring to be different from pity because pity is only a motivator to help others. Without pity, a person may keep their money in the prescence of a panhandler. Pity does not exist when the needy are not present. So as long as the needy are elsewhere, donators will fail to give to them because they (the donators) don't feel like they do.
Say we come across a starving child. Malnurished, suffering from Kwashiorkor, a condition where the child has too little protein in the system and has a swollen abdomen, though suffering from starvation. We will probably buy a Happy Meal for the kid, and call the police so that authorities can place the child with those who can provide for it. If we had the money, we may even offer to adopt it ourselves. Now, this is hypothetical.
We do all this because the child is present. Now, the starving children miles away--we know of their existance, but care little because they are not present. We need to be reminded by commercials on TV asking for 95 cents a daily. Upon viewing these commercials, we are struck by pity. And pity hurts. Without pity, a person will keep their money. Givers only give because their themselves hurt, and not so the needy give comfort. If we truly cared about starving African children, instead of spending money on going to the movies, we would use that money on the kids. Instead of overeating, we would give the extra food to the poor. Instead, people need to be stung by pity before they give money and food, so that the pity will go away, not our of any sincere care for the impoverished.
Now, a person who feels pity may be sincere in caring. It is just that for a strong feeling of empathy to occur, a person must consider how bad the other person feels. Without a consideration of the feelings of others, the action of giving is only done for the giver's sake--to reduce pity--though the panhandler reaps the physical benefits of giving.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Lots of questions.
In any case, even if the universe had a beginning (from a big bang, or a creator God), there is still the question of what happened before creation. And the question of what will happen in the future--as in, what is the end of time? What is the nature of infinity?
Even if the universe, aa Hindis put it, repeats itself, there is still the question of how and when that repetition began, or at least the nature of infinity.
All matter in the universe could become nonexistant. And light and energy would dissapate 100%. But what would be left? Nothing. But what is nothing? It is the absense of matter and energy and anything else of substance. But am I assuming that substance and things of being have to be subject to observation in order to truly exist?
Time could go on. Forever. But what's at the end of eternity? How can time stretch out backwards and forwards? We can comprehend the nature of a regular rubber band, or a regular line, with beginning and end. But what about a line that stretches out forever in both directions? Is this even really possible? Is our experience or capatity to comprehend this too limited to answer this question?
And Physicists out there who can help with this?
God? You out there?
:(
I think it's time to increase my reading load in physics.
Even if the universe, aa Hindis put it, repeats itself, there is still the question of how and when that repetition began, or at least the nature of infinity.
All matter in the universe could become nonexistant. And light and energy would dissapate 100%. But what would be left? Nothing. But what is nothing? It is the absense of matter and energy and anything else of substance. But am I assuming that substance and things of being have to be subject to observation in order to truly exist?
Time could go on. Forever. But what's at the end of eternity? How can time stretch out backwards and forwards? We can comprehend the nature of a regular rubber band, or a regular line, with beginning and end. But what about a line that stretches out forever in both directions? Is this even really possible? Is our experience or capatity to comprehend this too limited to answer this question?
And Physicists out there who can help with this?
God? You out there?
:(
I think it's time to increase my reading load in physics.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
On Spitzer (aka Client 9)
People are fueled by passion and guided by logic. And sometimes a match ignites the fuel and obliterates the logic.
Governor Spitzer put his marriage and career in danger. For sex. Apparently, he's purchased the company of ladies several times. It makes little since that he would do this, since he has been a top figure in NYS politics for about a decade, but, well, he did. So why?
He might be a sex freak. Now, it seems that this is a weak argument. It makes little sense for a man in his position, no matter how horny he is, to risk things on illicit sex.
There is no logic involved. An experienced politician who graduated from Harvard Law-- my dream school <3 --with a reputation from cracking down on corruption. Seems to be a man guided by logic and wisdom.
However, the most important experience a person can have is in dealing with their passions. Gov. Spitzer seems to be a very smart man, but possibly has little experience in dealing with his secret passions, or at least having to deal with his in such a way that he has to deny himself certain activities. He allowed his passion guide his logic. That was his choice, I must clarify. No "heat of the passion" argument. He decided to dwell on those passions and chose to put gratification ahead of duty--that's my speculative argument. And that's how people work, and Gov. Spitzer is a human being. Quite simply human, and he had to learn a human lesson at the worst possible time.
So, oh well. He's screwed. Time to move on. Even if he wants to still be Gov, he should resign, because he will be dealing with too much drama to do his job as well as he could. Let's see how Paterson does.
PS. By the way, his short speech in response to every is full of BS. It was cute, and written in with an eye toward his duty as public servant, but his actions say that his duty is not always going to be the first thing on his mind.
Governor Spitzer put his marriage and career in danger. For sex. Apparently, he's purchased the company of ladies several times. It makes little since that he would do this, since he has been a top figure in NYS politics for about a decade, but, well, he did. So why?
He might be a sex freak. Now, it seems that this is a weak argument. It makes little sense for a man in his position, no matter how horny he is, to risk things on illicit sex.
There is no logic involved. An experienced politician who graduated from Harvard Law-- my dream school <3 --with a reputation from cracking down on corruption. Seems to be a man guided by logic and wisdom.
However, the most important experience a person can have is in dealing with their passions. Gov. Spitzer seems to be a very smart man, but possibly has little experience in dealing with his secret passions, or at least having to deal with his in such a way that he has to deny himself certain activities. He allowed his passion guide his logic. That was his choice, I must clarify. No "heat of the passion" argument. He decided to dwell on those passions and chose to put gratification ahead of duty--that's my speculative argument. And that's how people work, and Gov. Spitzer is a human being. Quite simply human, and he had to learn a human lesson at the worst possible time.
So, oh well. He's screwed. Time to move on. Even if he wants to still be Gov, he should resign, because he will be dealing with too much drama to do his job as well as he could. Let's see how Paterson does.
PS. By the way, his short speech in response to every is full of BS. It was cute, and written in with an eye toward his duty as public servant, but his actions say that his duty is not always going to be the first thing on his mind.
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