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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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| flakfizer wrote: |
| To those arguing that life is great now because lockjaw is not a big problem, you are aware that there are still huge problems with hunger, poverty and disease, right? If anything, I think you are showing that many aspects of life have been improved because of technological and medical advances. I think all would agree with that. Past generations had an excuse for watching millions die-they lacked medical knowledge. The fact that millions still die every year from malnutrition shows that our probelm today is not lack of medical knowledge, but lack of concern and selfishness. Advances in medicine have certainly improved the lives of people, but despite these advances and plenty of food to go around, there are still millions that never seem to get what they need to survive. |
I would argue that there is in fact more concern for other people today than previously. Certainly the rise of the international human rights movement over the last century is one shining example of this. And fewer are dying of malnutrition today than fifty or one hundred years ago, to address your example. (And just for the record, the argument is that life is better, not that it's great. I would argue that it is good, though, at least for me.)
There are more, to be sure. I can't summarize Easterbrook's book here, and in any case, his ultimate concern is with the paradox of stasis in happiness in the dace of material progress. But his chapter entitled 'Practically Everything Getting Better' has the following subtitles: Crime, The Environment, Public Health, Virtue (!), Brainpower, Equality, Domestic Economics, Global Economics, The Globe (by which he's referring to international politics). I don't think the improvements in all these areas can be attributed solely to technological advance, though that has played a role. The larger cause, I think, has been people, working on these problems because they care about them. And they care about them not for some abstract reason, but because they care about people.
I'm not pollyanna-ish, nor is Easterbrook. Certainly, as you point out, problems remain (but perhaps, as John Gardner suggested, we should see them as opportunities). Two chapters in his book, 'Changing Our World' and 'Changing Their World' look at some of these issues in the American/Western and 3rd World contexts and how we might begin to address them. One of Easterbrook's points is that these problems are solvable. Another is that working on these problems in a spirit of generosity to others and gratitude for what we do have, will increase our individual happiness.
But yes, overall, things are bettter, and are continuing to get better around the world.
| flakfizer wrote: |
| And what was meant by the "If you look for wickedness in people you will find wickedness in people," quote? Does that mean you find wickedness that isn't really there? Does that mean that by looking for wickedness you will somehow cause wickedness to appear? or does that mean that there is wickedness there, but you have to look for it to find it? |
My comment was a response to your statement:
| flakfizer wrote: |
| People have always been and always will be wicked. |
The problem here, as I see it, is that this comment suggests that wickedness is the central property of people. A better formulation might be, 'People are both good and bad, but mostly good'. And in that sense, yeah, going looking for this wickedness will bring it out. I quoted Henry Stimson in the other thread I alluded to and will repeat the quote here:
| Henry Stimson wrote: |
| The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust. |
Looking for it may also create it where none was. If someone approaches you witth good intentions, but sees that you are only in search of the wicked in them, they may figure that they should just as well fulfill your expectations.
I'll say it again. People are basically good. Things are getting better. We have more work to do. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:18 pm Post subject: |
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Satori:
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| It says a lot about you and your own fears and obsessions ( powerful independant women are scarey huh? ). |
So, in order to qualify as a powerful, independent woman one must be promiscuous if not an outright *beep* and talk like a sailor on shore leave? I beg to differ and so would many other strong women. Oprah Winfrey, for example, comes to mind.
Stop meditating for awhile and smell the roses. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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The people promoting this are generally social liberals who are very capitalistic in nature and think morality as long as it doesn't interfere with lining their pockets, they simply don't care. They have to compete with each other to get racier and racier. Just like the fast food restaurants don't care in many cases that they are killing more Americans than the Iraqi insurgents by adding more and more calories to desserts, the main course. People just don't care that they are exploiting each other for the money. When you talk about morality to some extent, you are talking about general welfare. However, so many people who bring this up are against universal health care. It seems hypocritical. I am for universal health care, asking the fast food restaurants and big chains to all list how many calories you're eating, have food labeled as containing GMO food, promote more family oriented television, reduce the promotion of the gangster type hip hop of the likes of 50 cent and M&M who glorify the degradation of women, and you have M&M cursing his mother and we hold them up as our heroes.
I often hear about how Koreans are rude. In some visible ways many of them are quite rude. You don't hear them say excuse me when they bump into you. However, fewer and fewer Western people remember to say thank you, send thank you e-mails or cards, open doors for one another, show some gratitude to their teachers, and act like the teachers are just some babysitters to be harassed. England, America, and Canada have become quite selfish societies in comparison with the past. And if you believe that ranking I post, Canada is a few steps above both of those countries. |
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huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Satori:
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| It says a lot about you and your own fears and obsessions ( powerful independant women are scarey huh? ). |
So, in order to qualify as a powerful, independent woman one must be promiscuous if not an outright *beep* and talk like a sailor on shore leave? |
You obviously haven't seen the show. Samantha is the only character I'd label as promiscuous. Although Carrie certainly earned herself some unflattering labels. Charlotte and Miranda are anything but promiscuous, much less *beep*. |
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Anyong Bluth
Joined: 22 Jun 2006
Location: Robbers' Roost
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:42 pm Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Anyong:
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| Yeah, Koreans in particular are way too sophisticated to get caught up in WWF. Japanese can't stand pro-wrestling either. |
Both are viewed on their own sports channels and have high ratings. I saw the 5 minutes I could bear of WWF on a Korean channel with Korean announcers and subtitles. So much for that notion, eh? |
Ok, Steve, for your sake, let's go slow.
Your point was that the rest of the world looks down on Western Culture for its idiocy. One of your examples was Pro Wrestling. I (sarcastically) pointed out that, in fact, this was actually a low-brow entertainment favored by those in the Far East as well.
This point went straight over your head.
VROOOOMMMMM!!! |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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Someone may have mentioned this, but Public Enemy were not Gangsta Rap. They are far away from gangsta rap. I read the OP and I'm on the fence. In these situations i tend to focus on something I do know alot about. Then I tend to think along these lines,
" If he thinks PE are gangsta rap, then how much of the rest of his argument is weak?"
I'm going to go with alot.
Last edited by JMO on Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:10 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:08 pm Post subject: Re: NEED PROOF OF THE DEGENERATE WEST? |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Sometimes I turn on my TV to the satellite stations to channel surf and I invariably come across things that force me to realize why so many traditional cultures regard contemporary Western cultures with such disdain.
First off, a CNN International segment about a brother-sister's legal fight in Leipzing, Germany to legalize incestuous relationships in the Bundestag. Their lawyer and support group contend that they are causing no harm to society by getting married and having children. Never mind that half their children are mentally impaired in some way, or that doctors have long since known this. That the German Supreme Court will even hear arguments for this sick moral transgression is sufficient indication of the degree of social depravity in the West. |
The freedom to be heard, even if it sounds outrageous, is nothing degenerate. It is just that a few individuals are. Not a society as a whole.
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Then you've got the ACLU in the U.S., which has provided free legal assistance to admitted pedophiles fighting for the legalization of sexual relationships with minors. |
Free legal assistance is an undeniable right, even to the greatest criminals. How can you even ponder on such a thing?
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Sex in the City airs as reruns in the West and in East Asia with the sluttish quartet chronicling their most recent sexual exploits masked as feminist independence. The veneer of legitimacy from the clever dialogue, chic clothes and restaurants, and fancy boutiques is stil unable to conceal what is glorified raunch and sexual obsession. And any critics are immediately accused of being prudish or puritanical or, worse yet, chauvanistic. |
So people are not allowed to express their sexuality, even if it runs against your own, or mine, principle.
You really need to learn something about why so many people died for the freedom we enjoy today. even if it is "abused". I am forgetting the exact wording of a quote which was like. even though i do not agree with you, i will fight to the death to give you the freedom to say what you want to say.
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
In another venue, I turn to WWF and listen to inane insults, comic-book like action figure men taunting each other like schoolyard bullies, and tens of thousands of screaming fans egging them on, many if not most actually believing that the matches they're watching are real and not staged. I imagine millions of more viewers at home--whole families--tuned in to this media-hyped pseudo-sport comparing the relative strengths of these dimwit titans. Then I shudder to think how many of them are voters and hope most don't bother to go to the polls. |
Maybe you should start your own political party that advocates limited perspectives on life.....
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Finally, as if I needed more proof, I turn to a Reality TV program copied after The Bachelor, except without even so much as a feeble attempt at decency and decorum. Yes, it's Flavor Flav and his self-serving show Flavor of Love where foul-mouthed street sluts and aspiring bimbos compete to have dates with this raunchy, sexist, proudly ignorant pimp daddy who looks like Mugabe's younger brother and talks like Mike Tyson. VH-1 comes up with a reality TV idea with a black protagonist and selects the degenerate, ex-gangsta rap "star" of Public Enemy to be its host. Yes, let's reinforce those ghetto glorifying images for impressionable young black youth as if they don't get bombarded enough with this swill. |
The people get what they want, not what they need, from television. Television is a consumer product, and as long as there are buyers for the limited quality show(s), there will be broadcasters.
Who ever said that TV was the drug of a nation?
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Fast forward to Cairo or Riyadh or Islamabad or New Delhi or Beijing or Jakarta or San Salvador or Havana or Ankara or Nairobi and is it any wonder why it's so easy for people viewing or reading about these stories at the very least look askance at what Western pop culture dignifies these days? |
Places where expressing that you are different might get you killed? You truly do not understand that if we are to give people freedom of expression that some people will abuse it, but isn't it better to suffer that abuse then to have no freedom of expression at all?
Take a little, take it all. There is no inbetween for freedom, you steal a little you steal it all.
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
I can turn off my TV set but that won't make the growing problem go away. |
What prolem? You are only looking at the exhaust pipe, ofcourse your perception is skewed, but you haven't realised that yet?
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
And all the good things in traditional Western culture: aesthetic objects, music, art, literature, legal codes and the like that constitute an admirable civic culture get shunned to the shadows in the glow of so much bling and appeal to the lowest common denominator from Hollywood and New York and London and Paris and Berlin and Amsterdam. |
Not everyone is as naive as you and believe what they see on tv is cose to the truth, sorry to be come so personal, but i really do believe it is better for you to walk outside of your comfort zone and see that with certain choices we make, we have to take the bad with the good.
TV aspires to fullfill every desire of the lowest common denominator, that is one reason why i do not watch TV anymore. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Anyong:
| Quote: |
| Yeah, Koreans in particular are way too sophisticated to get caught up in WWF. Japanese can't stand pro-wrestling either. |
Both are viewed on their own sports channels and have high ratings. I saw the 5 minutes I could bear of WWF on a Korean channel with Korean announcers and subtitles. So much for that notion, eh?
Spinoza:
The key word in your post is "reasonable," which posters like twg and woland and yata boy have great difficulty recognizing from their juvenile detention center. |
You guys are like the middle class people who yell at lack of "decency"!
History has a lot of these poeple, but in the end they are always rebutted. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Woland wrote: |
Easterbrook goes on to point out that despite this progress, the average level of happiness of Americans hasn't increased in fifty years and many people put forth laments of decline like the OP's. His book is an exploration of this seeming paradox.
Serious enough for ya, Steve?  |
Hapiness has not much to do with wealth and progress for one. Maybe you should read "Status anxiety" from Alain de Botton, it is an easy read, but clarifies certain points.
The decline is alone to be seen in popular entertainment, "high" art as one might see it is still thriving, it is just that tv junkies don't know about it and probably never will.
People are unhappy because they can't get what other people got. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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| djsmnc wrote: |
| If only people would marry within their race, choose only one partner to bang for the rest of their lives, eliminate divorce, have two children maximum, eat healthy foods, exercise, read books a lot, only watch tv for news and information, recycle everything properly, drink no more than one alcoholic beverage per day, eradicate smoking, carpool, clean up and wash their hands and bodies, work hard, follow a government mandated zoning law and not try to own anything more than everyone else, serve in the military, and send their mentally challenged and handicapped children to secure and top secret reservations....we could have a perfect world! |
BORING |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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I know that the wingnuts on this board are slow, but there is a magical button located both on the TV and on the remote control. This magical button is usually called on/off or power.
Use it, please.
And for the tool who said we need a Pol Pot, head to Cambodia and say that you used feminine hygene product of a human being. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 12:05 am Post subject: |
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| Juregen wrote: |
Hapiness has not much to do with wealth and progress for one. Maybe you should read "Status anxiety" from Alain de Botton, it is an easy read, but clarifies certain points.
People are unhappy because they can't get what other people got. |
That happiness is not directly related to wealth and progress is now solidly in evidence. Your third sentence contradicts this point, suggesting that if people could get the things they want, they would be happier.
I have de Botton's Status Anxiety, but haven't started it because 1) I have other things ahead of it in the cue and 2) I read a bunch of de Botton's early works before he decided to become a pop philosopher and found them initially charming and later, very repetitive.
Work in positive psychology suggests that we can increase our happiness by taking steps to make our lives more meaningful and making them regular practices in our lives. In particular, evidence suggests that we should practice both gratitude and forgiveness more if we wish to be happier. Simple recipe, but it does require attention. |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 12:23 am Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
I know that the wingnuts on this board are slow, but there is a magical button located both on the TV and on the remote control. This magical button is usually called on/off or power.
Use it, please.
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 3:17 am Post subject: |
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| Juregen wrote: |
| Woland wrote: |
Easterbrook goes on to point out that despite this progress, the average level of happiness of Americans hasn't increased in fifty years and many people put forth laments of decline like the OP's. His book is an exploration of this seeming paradox.
Serious enough for ya, Steve? |
Hapiness has not much to do with wealth and progress for one. Maybe you should read "Status anxiety" from Alain de Botton, it is an easy read, but clarifies certain points.
The decline is alone to be seen in popular entertainment, "high" art as one might see it is still thriving, it is just that tv junkies don't know about it and probably never will.
People are unhappy because they can't get what other people got. |
There is high art on tv. The Wire and Deadwood comes to mind. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 5:13 am Post subject: |
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| Woland wrote: |
| Juregen wrote: |
Hapiness has not much to do with wealth and progress for one. Maybe you should read "Status anxiety" from Alain de Botton, it is an easy read, but clarifies certain points.
People are unhappy because they can't get what other people got. |
That happiness is not directly related to wealth and progress is now solidly in evidence. Your third sentence contradicts this point, suggesting that if people could get the things they want, they would be happier.
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Okay you are right and i am right
Because for me being unhappy has other sources then being happy.
We make ourselves unhappy by the fact that we want what others have, making us believe we want it too. This has nothing to do with getting it or not . So the material factor does not matter, the believe matters.
I firmly believe that we do not create hapiness thru material stuff. |
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