Just Answering

[pk.sax]

Have you given thought to the notion that the laws of entropy work on human behaviour?

As we progress in so called civilisation, so must we regress in other aspects of civilisation. There is no win win, its always win-lose.

 

[raven19]

Not at war, not bombing the shit out of each other, not making laws discriminating against people of a certain colour, gender or sexuality, not boldly lying through our teeth for our own benefit, not basing every decision and action purely on financial profit, not ******* up every bit of natural history around us and basically not being a prick, arsehole or **** by default (or at least being aware of and accepting responsibility for being said appellations).


It's a start, anyway.

I look forward to meeting you in person one day fella.

 

[Rina]

Not at war, not bombing the shit out of each other, not making laws discriminating against people of a certain colour, gender or sexuality, not boldly lying through our teeth for our own benefit, not basing every decision and action purely on financial profit, not ******* up every bit of natural history around us and basically not being a prick, arsehole or **** by default (or at least being aware of and accepting responsibility for being said appellations).


It's a start, anyway.

You really are a teenager

We do have those laws that make it illegal to discriminate against people. And they do 'work' http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/bolt-los...0928-1kw8c.html

Anyway this thread has confirmed that Victorians are bleeding heart liberals (in the American definition).

 

[jlm]

Have you given thought to the notion that the laws of entropy work on human behaviour?

As we progress in so called civilisation, so must we regress in other aspects of civilisation. There is no win win, its always win-lose.

I don't see that that notion being particularly relevant to human behaviour (it is of course subjective.....now we're gonna get philosophical and shit, where's lecterfan?). I think the ideas manticle put forward could be embraced without having to revert to barbarism (even though the idea of dressing up in Man-o-war garb and starting fights in town does appeal to me) in whatever it was he didn't completely cover there.

 

[manticle]

You really are a teenager

We do have those laws that make it illegal to discriminate against people. And they do 'work' http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/bolt-los...0928-1kw8c.html

Anyway this thread has confirmed that Victorians are bleeding heart liberals (in the American definition).

Yep. A 36 year old balding teenager. I'm handsome too.

If living by the mantra 'don't be a ****, don't be an arsehole' makes me a bleeding heart liberal, then get the mop because I just made a mess of the floor.

As for that link - it's pretty hard to differentiate between my disdain for people like Andrew Bolt and my disdain for people like Geoff Clark but I was talking about human society as a whole, not just the legal framework in this nation. Not sure how shithead 1 no longer having carte blanche to write vitriolic garbage about shithead 2 fits in to my reply to bum about the ingredients for a better society but I'm a flexible guy.

Don't bomb, kill, discriminate, exploit = bleeding heart? Cool.

@Raven: Cheers.

@practicalfool: An interesting question philosophically perhaps but I don't accept it. We can simplify things, we can treat others and our environment with some modicum of respect or we can be lazy and self serving. Simple decision, up to the individual and not ruled by entropy or civilisation. Your question also presupposes that civilisation/progress is entirely linear which I don't believe it is or ever has been.

 

[Lecterfan]

I don't see that that notion being particularly relevant to human behaviour (it is of course subjective.....now we're gonna get philosophical and shit, where's lecterfan?)

:lol: I just replied to about 3 posts and deleted it, this is no place for me to spout off...I've been busy emptying my rhetoric bucket which is full to the brim...

All I'd say about many of the ideas put forward is this: nothing, absolutely nothing, in our shared lifeworld/factical reality (please don't reply with pre-Heidggerian ontology to this comment and expect me to acknowledge it) exists in a value/judgement/contextual-vacuum, but we tend to make decisions based on transitory or temporal events that are entirely contextual as if they were specific and freeze-framed moments of absolute objective truth. And then if you throw in the psychological personal perspective twist then we really get crazy interpretations on things...especially regarding notions of social inequality.

Bleeding heart? Hardly...just someone who agrees that "Americanisms" are unwelcome, and that includes the ignorant discourse of personal liberty and rights without an understanding of the transcendental vs. immanent origins of said rights (and reciprocal responsibilities that exist within the identical notion).

I do have a lot of ideas about many of these issues, but...meh, BEER!

I love beer. Drinking Leffe Radieuse at the moment.

 

[Lecterfan]

'don't be a ****, don't be an arsehole'

HA! I will PM you an amusing story where I invoked this very idea (when I can be bothered). Forget having a ribbon day, or mchappy day or this or that 'day/week/month' which is the equivalent of people turning on their conscience for 24 hours and then returning to consumerism aftewards; just spend 365 days of the year not being a **** and see how the world magically improves...

 

[bum]

(please don't reply with pre-Heidggerian ontology to this comment and expect me to acknowledge it)

And AHB crashes with the sudden rush of users simultaneously hitting the edit button...

 

[raven19]

I love beer.

Win Lecter.

 

[pk.sax]

Well, his wish list looks to me the exact things people have lost respect for with things getting easier in life in general.
Let's take a 15-16 year old for example, in ages past, if you quit school early and went into the workforce you could not generally expect to make much of a career that would lead to 'being rich'.
A parent will always be encouraging (and other means) thei kids to study further so they can get ahead in life. And the social strata you ended up in due to your life choices would be greatly linked to you commitment to learning early in life. Always something for the others to desire and want. Targets and goals in modernspeak.
Today, a Kid starting off in KFC or another retail job can afford almost nearly everything they'd want at that stage. How long you save for and wait is much shorter than what it would've been back in some day. The entire modern ethos of standardised wages etc actually destroys the incentive for working harde and smarter. Mind you, these incentives still exist in more professional jobs but considering what you can make in unskilled and semi-unskilled jobs the incentive for working harder actually goes way down. There was a threw a while back about how the quality of tradesmen has nosedived, partly because they make truckloads changing lightbulbs and taps. As I was saying, everything has a follow on effect. In creating the 'fairer', all inclusive society we have today, a lot of considerations for how people behave in reality seem to have been ignored. I'd say we all need a leash, different lengths. I say that as someone that has a major problem in life with rules, I'm always redefining them, sometimes much to the anger of people that find it very annoying to keep up with changes.

All that being said, it was an example. Entropy in itself isn't a force or a cause. It is a symptom of the phenomenon that changes are caused in nature due to things we do and then nature returns the favour.
I'll take Australia's great reliance on mining income atm, putting money into the hands of people downstream from that, in retail, services etc obviously has an effect. If it is no longer a requirement to be a nice person to be able to make more than minimum wage, you raise a generation of pricks.

 

[leiothrix]

As far as prices go I think that's a bit of BS. Mainly talking about housing prices -- they used to be around 3x annual wage, now more like 6x or so.

That's a consequence of women in the workforce and housing prices expanding to fit a couples wages rather than that of one person (and for the record, women are equal, blah, blah, blah), but it makes it pretty hard for one person to buy a house on their own.

The other thing is the standard Socrates quote -- the whole "kids these days" thing. The point is kids are always a PITA, you just forget about what you did growing up when you get old.

 

[pk.sax]

When I was a kid, my parents could point and say you don't want to end up like that and it had an effect. This is parents that didn't believe in hitting.

Today, smart arse kids come back and tell parents that they can make more money than they do doing less. lots of bad examples and the reasons are not always in control of a parent trying to set their kid right.

 

[manticle]

For those who think things are so much worse/different today than they were a generation ago or another one before that etc, just remember that the last century brought us 2 world wars (including the holocaust), the atomic bomb, the cold war, appartheid, the stalinist purges, vietnam and Korean wars, mcCarthayism, widespread environmental destruction, white australia and fascism.

Smacking people and making them join the army ain't going to make humans stop being fuckwits. If the young kids of today are such a problem stop ******* breeding them: especially if you can't be arsed trying to teach them anything (or are incapable of doing so without slapping them upside the head)..

 

[bum]

For those who think things are so much worse/different today than they were a generation ago or another one before that etc, just remember that the last century brought us 2 world wars (including the holocaust), the atomic bomb, the cold war, appartheid, the stalinist purges, vietnam and Korean wars, mcCarthayism, widespread environmental destruction, white australia and fascism.

Twilight.

 

[manticle]

Mate, those little bastards have inflicted the wiggles, Rhianna, excessive vocoder use and bad eyebrow acting (aka twilight) on all of us so they don't get away scot free.

 

[leiothrix]

For those who think things are so much worse/different today than they were a generation ago or another one before that etc, just remember that the last century brought us 2 world wars (including the holocaust), the atomic bomb, the cold war, appartheid, the stalinist purges, vietnam and Korean wars, mcCarthayism, widespread environmental destruction, white australia and fascism.

Um, that shit all still happens. We just don't hear about anything unless it involves one of the "good" countries.

 

[yardy]

For those who think things are so much worse/different today than they were a generation ago or another one before that etc, just remember that the last century brought us 2 world wars (including the holocaust), the atomic bomb, the cold war, appartheid, the stalinist purges, vietnam and Korean wars, mcCarthayism, widespread environmental destruction, white australia and fascism.

Smacking people and making them join the army ain't going to make humans stop being fuckwits. If the young kids of today are such a problem stop ******* breeding them: especially if you can't be arsed trying to teach them anything (or are incapable of doing so without slapping them upside the head)..

how many kids do you have manticle ?

 

[manticle]

@leothrix: I know it still happens. That wasn't my point. My point, quite simply is that whinging about the new generations having no respect and believing that national service and corporal punishment is going to make a difference is delusional.

Scroll back and see what I'm responding to.

@Yardy: I don't have any kids. That's a deliberate decision based partly on what I've written above.

If I did have kids, I wouldn't think hitting them and making them do drill is going to replace me taking responsibility for their behaviour which is what is lacking today in parents and why so many kids seem to be such brats.

I was smacked as a kid and I'll guess you were too but that was not what taught me respect and a good work ethic. My understanding of those things came from elsewhere - being smacked just made me scared and confused until I was older and tougher and it no longer hurt. I know people close to me (no need for more detail) who left home as teenagers due to physical abuse. What does that teach? I'm absolutely in favour of discipline and kids learning respect as they seem, in my old man's eyes, to have none. I just don't think you can point to the golden era when they did and say - 'we hit them and made them dress up in khakis and march and that's what's made the difference'.

The difference is people taking responsibility for themselves and having kids requires taking responsibility for them until they are old enough and smart enough to do it themselves (which should have been taught to them during that time).

 

[leiothrix]

I was smacked as a kid and I'll guess you were too but that was not what taught me respect and a good work ethic. My understanding of those things came from elsewhere - being smacked just made me scared and confused until I was older and tougher and it no longer hurt.

I'm sorry if you were abused as a child (that's what it sounds like anyway). A lot of people manage to conflate smacking with abuse though. An open handed slap on the bum today does not generally work its way into a punch in the face tomorrow.

Parents seem to have gone from using a smack on the bum to using nothing as discipline.

If your kid is running towards a road and you yell "stop" you want them to bloody well stop. They have no idea what a car can do to them, but they do know that a smack on the bum hurts, so they'll stop.

You can't argue with a 2-3 year old. Reasoning doesn't work, because they are not reasonable. The whole point of a smack is that is a reasoned response. If you hit your kids because you are angry or upset, then you are doing it wrong.

 

[manticle]

I wasn't what I would call physically abused. Wouldn't want to give that impression. I am close to someone who was and have seen the effects though. Not pleasant.

The discussion was originally about corporal punishment as a means of punishing criminals and seems somehow to have got onto physically punishing kids.

My own belief is that there are some circumstances where a short slap (as you say - very young kid running onto road or eating Cold power or somesuch) may be more effective than anything else. On that point I agree. What I didn't agree with, very simply, was that society would benefit or somehow improve massively from the (re) introduction of corporal punishment and/or conscription.