I’ve run into this case scenario a lot. There is a guy and girl couple. The guy is having a perfectly normal day and thinks everything is fine. However after the first few moment of the day it turns out that the girl is very very upset at said guy. The guy can’t figure it out. He runs through his head to see if he did anything wrong, and low and behold he can’t think of anything. Well nothing to justify this level of anger. Since this guy is very concerned about this girl he keeps asking what is wrong. Finally, still angry mind you, she tells him. He cheated on her (wow that is horrible you should feel ashamed!). In a dream she had that night (say what? what?Me confused, me no understand, me go start fire now with sticks and rocks.). After telling him this she is still mad, and still feels justified in the way she feels; for a dream. Let me say that again for a dream. You know dream a thing that didn't actually happen.
The female of the species has always been a mystery to me. I want just say that this is string of isolated incidents but the more couples I meet, the more of this dream cheating anger I have encountered. The odds of such an event seem to go up exponentially if the couple is married. I know of one case where the dream event got so out of hand that when the wife woke up she punched her husband. I’m starting to believe that this is some kind of general trend. I always wonder how come women don’t have dreams where their other cooking, washing dishes, and mowing the lawn. Does the effect work in reverse? When a woman has a dream that is really nice about her other does she feel really good about him for at least the day? Even though he never really wrote a wonderful peom about her and sang it to music he wrote? With flowers even.
I know that people are entitled to feel how they want but it seems odd to hold something against someone for something that was not their fault at all, a creation of your own, and most importantly never happened! When I talked to some women about the issue they could give me no good reason why the anger/madness towards the partner was justified. However they didn’t seem to have any sense of remorse over it. It was like saying to me, yeah I know I’m crazy, but you’ll just have to deal with it. From my experience men don’t have these types of dreams often. When they do they seem to have a different kind of reaction.
I wonder if this is a topic I will just never understand.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
You Kant Make Me
Lately on a work outing I got to catch up on some “good” reading. One of my co-workers happened to have a copy of the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals (“GMM”). This surprised the heck out of me considering the group that I run with at my job. It got me thinking about some of the old philosophical questions I use to contemplate before I said to heck with it.
The work GMM is itself a very dense reading. Immanuel Kant is considered one of the most difficult reads in the area of ethics. GMM I think is the easiest of his works to digest. He takes a purely logical view of ethics, which leads to some strange conclusions.
One of the concepts discussed at length when talking about GMM is free will/autonomy/choice. I really don’t want to get into the formulation of the categorical imperative, because I’m just too lazy to write that much. But the last post about Charles Xavier gave me some thought about compulsion. It is generally accepted that if one is forced to do something one is not morally accountable for it. That is to say if I held your life in my hands and forced you to do something that would normally be considered immoral you wouldn’t be held accountable for it. A corollary of that is if one didn’t choose to do something then one couldn’t consider the act a moral one, it was just an act that happened. So moral action for the most part; are not mistakes they are choices with deliberate thinking at some stage in the decision making process (the some stage part is for all those consequentialist that have a default action scheme).
The topic of being forced to do something against one’s will is an old topic. Another less old topic that for some reason came up in my mind was that of temptation. There are some prevailing ideas that surface when it comes to being tempted and being held morally accountable. In most Christian sects that I have experience with there is this notion that God will not allow a situation to arise where you cannot resist the temptation. In our system of law we have the notion of entrapment. These notions lead me to some interesting questions. If God won’t allow you to be in a situation where you cannot resist the temptation, there has to exist some situations where you can’t resist the temptation. What would suffice to be too tempted? When you throw in the mix of human autonomy it looks as if God is putting a very severe restriction on it with this line of not being tempted too much thinking. Then again there is always the line of thinking nothing is undoable with God on your side. But that idea sort of makes the “temptation exemption clause” sort of a meaningless statement. In society we seem to have an understanding if someone was tempted by things.
I could probably come up with a clear line of logic based on all those questions but I gave up doing things like that a long time ago.
The work GMM is itself a very dense reading. Immanuel Kant is considered one of the most difficult reads in the area of ethics. GMM I think is the easiest of his works to digest. He takes a purely logical view of ethics, which leads to some strange conclusions.
One of the concepts discussed at length when talking about GMM is free will/autonomy/choice. I really don’t want to get into the formulation of the categorical imperative, because I’m just too lazy to write that much. But the last post about Charles Xavier gave me some thought about compulsion. It is generally accepted that if one is forced to do something one is not morally accountable for it. That is to say if I held your life in my hands and forced you to do something that would normally be considered immoral you wouldn’t be held accountable for it. A corollary of that is if one didn’t choose to do something then one couldn’t consider the act a moral one, it was just an act that happened. So moral action for the most part; are not mistakes they are choices with deliberate thinking at some stage in the decision making process (the some stage part is for all those consequentialist that have a default action scheme).
The topic of being forced to do something against one’s will is an old topic. Another less old topic that for some reason came up in my mind was that of temptation. There are some prevailing ideas that surface when it comes to being tempted and being held morally accountable. In most Christian sects that I have experience with there is this notion that God will not allow a situation to arise where you cannot resist the temptation. In our system of law we have the notion of entrapment. These notions lead me to some interesting questions. If God won’t allow you to be in a situation where you cannot resist the temptation, there has to exist some situations where you can’t resist the temptation. What would suffice to be too tempted? When you throw in the mix of human autonomy it looks as if God is putting a very severe restriction on it with this line of not being tempted too much thinking. Then again there is always the line of thinking nothing is undoable with God on your side. But that idea sort of makes the “temptation exemption clause” sort of a meaningless statement. In society we seem to have an understanding if someone was tempted by things.
I could probably come up with a clear line of logic based on all those questions but I gave up doing things like that a long time ago.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Marvels of the Universe
I’ve always considered myself a fan of the Marvel Comic book universe. It’s not that I didn’t like the DC Comic book universe, I just always preferred Marvel. As I like to think long, hard, deeply about things that have no real importance in life, I pondered if it was still true that I preferred Marvel over DC today and why.
My initial Marvel Universe is better notion came from the contention that Marvel characters were more complicated and interesting than the DC counterparts. There was the whole notion of the anti-hero; you know the good guy that is sort of bad. A variation on that theme was the good guy with a shady past. You had the Punisher, Wolverine, Ghost Rider; heck even the Silver Surfer fit this class of hero. These guys, and some gals, were complicated; things were never simple for them. On the DC side you had Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. The closest thing you had to a complicated anti-hero was Batman. Even then his shady past wasn’t so shady. And while the Bat was a vigilantly he always maintained his role as an augmentation to the system of justice already in place.
My premise I think is flawed, or incomplete. After further evaluation I think that it is the world of Marvel that is complicated and the characters simple, while the world of DC is simple and the characters complicated. Say what? Let’s take a look at the respective flagship characters from each universe, Spiderman, and Superman. What is Superman’s conflict; Kryptonite right? Wrong, Superman’s true conflict is the temptation of power. In every alternate universe for Sup he is a tyrant. His true test isn’t how he can overcome such and such problem, but how much should he help such and such. It becomes easy for anyone to always have things done their way when given the power to have it done that way. It is this constant struggle between how much should Superman help vs. advancing the good that he can do that makes Superman interesting. No matter how much the world changes ultimately he is always left with that temptation/choice. So what is Spidy’s deal? When you think about it Spiderman’s interest is in his problems not his powers. For instance will Peter ever get with Mary Jane or will he opt out and go for Felicity. Sure Spiderman has a bit of power but that isn’t what makes him so cool. Spiderman is cool because he has trouble talking to girls, everyone either hates or loves him, and he decided to damask himself because of the Super Hero registration act. In Civil War it is the conflict between the heroes that choose to damask themselves and the ones that don’t that makes me have any interest in the characters. By and large the conflicts of Spiderman are generated by the world that he is in, not because of who he is.
Another great example would be the X-men. If people would just get over their problems with mutants most of the interest in the X-men would evaporate. Now DC had made attempts to capitalize on these kinds of dilemmas with the problems in recent (relatively speaking) Justice League stories. I do have to admit the conflict between the JL and the Justice Lords was great. However it did sort of hinge on the whole Superman power thing I already mentioned. And face it whatever Superman wants goes in whatever league he is in. Well unless he is in my Starcraft/Halo/GhostRecon League, then he’s just a newb that needs to know his place.
So what conclusions have I drawn from all these new thoughts? If you’re asking that question you don’t know me very well or haven’t read my blog, but all six of you should know the reward is not the answer but trying to generate one.
My initial Marvel Universe is better notion came from the contention that Marvel characters were more complicated and interesting than the DC counterparts. There was the whole notion of the anti-hero; you know the good guy that is sort of bad. A variation on that theme was the good guy with a shady past. You had the Punisher, Wolverine, Ghost Rider; heck even the Silver Surfer fit this class of hero. These guys, and some gals, were complicated; things were never simple for them. On the DC side you had Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. The closest thing you had to a complicated anti-hero was Batman. Even then his shady past wasn’t so shady. And while the Bat was a vigilantly he always maintained his role as an augmentation to the system of justice already in place.
My premise I think is flawed, or incomplete. After further evaluation I think that it is the world of Marvel that is complicated and the characters simple, while the world of DC is simple and the characters complicated. Say what? Let’s take a look at the respective flagship characters from each universe, Spiderman, and Superman. What is Superman’s conflict; Kryptonite right? Wrong, Superman’s true conflict is the temptation of power. In every alternate universe for Sup he is a tyrant. His true test isn’t how he can overcome such and such problem, but how much should he help such and such. It becomes easy for anyone to always have things done their way when given the power to have it done that way. It is this constant struggle between how much should Superman help vs. advancing the good that he can do that makes Superman interesting. No matter how much the world changes ultimately he is always left with that temptation/choice. So what is Spidy’s deal? When you think about it Spiderman’s interest is in his problems not his powers. For instance will Peter ever get with Mary Jane or will he opt out and go for Felicity. Sure Spiderman has a bit of power but that isn’t what makes him so cool. Spiderman is cool because he has trouble talking to girls, everyone either hates or loves him, and he decided to damask himself because of the Super Hero registration act. In Civil War it is the conflict between the heroes that choose to damask themselves and the ones that don’t that makes me have any interest in the characters. By and large the conflicts of Spiderman are generated by the world that he is in, not because of who he is.
Another great example would be the X-men. If people would just get over their problems with mutants most of the interest in the X-men would evaporate. Now DC had made attempts to capitalize on these kinds of dilemmas with the problems in recent (relatively speaking) Justice League stories. I do have to admit the conflict between the JL and the Justice Lords was great. However it did sort of hinge on the whole Superman power thing I already mentioned. And face it whatever Superman wants goes in whatever league he is in. Well unless he is in my Starcraft/Halo/GhostRecon League, then he’s just a newb that needs to know his place.
So what conclusions have I drawn from all these new thoughts? If you’re asking that question you don’t know me very well or haven’t read my blog, but all six of you should know the reward is not the answer but trying to generate one.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Parents Just Don't Understand
Because of the nature of my job right now I find a lot of time to read periodicals. I try to avoid the gossip magazines but alas I succumb to them. So that should let anyone know that I read almost anything. On the way I’ve been pleasantly surprised and not pleasantly surprised. So in my quest to find interesting and useful reading I ran across a copy of “Outside”. The cover looks like it targets the “Men’s Fitness” crowd. I figured what the heck maybe I’ll learn about a new spot on the planet I can visit or learn some skills when it comes to being outside. One article was amazingly good. It was in regards to what has become of Mt. Everest. Another article was so, so regarding being alone in the outdoors with nothing to survive with, except a knife and a couple of knick knacks. However I’m not going to talk about those as neither effected me drastically in any way.
There was an article that bothered me to no end. It was titled “Demerit Badge” “Is Boy Scouts of America doing enough to keep kids safe?” There were some valid points in the article. One was that the BSA doesn’t share its accident data with other organizations. Another was that the BSA has fostered a culture of not taking responsibility. Another was that the BSA does not train its leadership enough when it comes to outdoor survival issues. Another yet was that the BSA leadership makes bad decisions. Now you can debate the truth of these claims. Fact is that the BSA can do better when it comes to ensuring the safety of the children that it has stewardship over. That’s not what bothered me about the article.
When making the point the BSA doesn’t train its leadership enough the author (Annette McGivney who teaches journalism at Northern Arizona University) points to a defense the BSA raises to that issue. The author paraphrases Frank Reigelman, “it’s hard to enforce requirements in a volunteer organization with 47,000 troops across the country.” Now the author replies with this statement. “That argument would be more convincing if they didn’t manage to exclude gays and atheists from all BSA chapters.”
Now the argument itself I can see. The BSA does manage to enforce some requirements in its organization. But why do you have to drop the gay and atheist card? You could have said the BSA doesn’t allow felons to be in its organization. The BSA also makes sure the leaders are all adults. But these requirements are of a different kind than Outdoor safety requirements. The BSA does enforce some level of training when it comes to say water activities and such, but the statement of Annette McGivney were more than just an argument. It was an underlying statement that the BSA is a non socially desirable entity cloaked in an argument. That what the BSA stands for is sort of stupid.
This bothers me to no end. I have mixed thoughts about the wisdom of the BSA having a ban on gays in its leadership. More and more religious sects are accepting openly gay individuals in their church leadership. As the BSA is a religious organization that accepts nearly all religions I think it is unwise to establish this excluding policy. But you never hear about how stupid the Orthodox Greeks are and how silly and stupid their ways are. The BSA makes an easy target. While I welcome the arguments as I feel that they give new perspectives on the organization, I could do without the condescending nature of the arguments. As for the atheism comment yes that bothers me to no end. The BSA is a religious organization. Atheism and the BSA are two mutually exclusive forces. Anyone who was halfway involved with the BSA or bothered to understand the organization on any level would understand this. I think the atheism card diminishes the argument that the BSA could perform better controls. It also smacks of the condescending tone that in prevalent in attacks against the BSA. I don’t know why people just don’t say what they really mean, “I don’t like what the BSA stands for and the lifestyle that it tries to advocate.”
There was an article that bothered me to no end. It was titled “Demerit Badge” “Is Boy Scouts of America doing enough to keep kids safe?” There were some valid points in the article. One was that the BSA doesn’t share its accident data with other organizations. Another was that the BSA has fostered a culture of not taking responsibility. Another was that the BSA does not train its leadership enough when it comes to outdoor survival issues. Another yet was that the BSA leadership makes bad decisions. Now you can debate the truth of these claims. Fact is that the BSA can do better when it comes to ensuring the safety of the children that it has stewardship over. That’s not what bothered me about the article.
When making the point the BSA doesn’t train its leadership enough the author (Annette McGivney who teaches journalism at Northern Arizona University) points to a defense the BSA raises to that issue. The author paraphrases Frank Reigelman, “it’s hard to enforce requirements in a volunteer organization with 47,000 troops across the country.” Now the author replies with this statement. “That argument would be more convincing if they didn’t manage to exclude gays and atheists from all BSA chapters.”
Now the argument itself I can see. The BSA does manage to enforce some requirements in its organization. But why do you have to drop the gay and atheist card? You could have said the BSA doesn’t allow felons to be in its organization. The BSA also makes sure the leaders are all adults. But these requirements are of a different kind than Outdoor safety requirements. The BSA does enforce some level of training when it comes to say water activities and such, but the statement of Annette McGivney were more than just an argument. It was an underlying statement that the BSA is a non socially desirable entity cloaked in an argument. That what the BSA stands for is sort of stupid.
This bothers me to no end. I have mixed thoughts about the wisdom of the BSA having a ban on gays in its leadership. More and more religious sects are accepting openly gay individuals in their church leadership. As the BSA is a religious organization that accepts nearly all religions I think it is unwise to establish this excluding policy. But you never hear about how stupid the Orthodox Greeks are and how silly and stupid their ways are. The BSA makes an easy target. While I welcome the arguments as I feel that they give new perspectives on the organization, I could do without the condescending nature of the arguments. As for the atheism comment yes that bothers me to no end. The BSA is a religious organization. Atheism and the BSA are two mutually exclusive forces. Anyone who was halfway involved with the BSA or bothered to understand the organization on any level would understand this. I think the atheism card diminishes the argument that the BSA could perform better controls. It also smacks of the condescending tone that in prevalent in attacks against the BSA. I don’t know why people just don’t say what they really mean, “I don’t like what the BSA stands for and the lifestyle that it tries to advocate.”
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