But this is neither moral nor consistent, especially in the ectopic pregnancy scenario. Instead of allowing one death that is going to happen anyway, they are prepared to let two deaths happen.
The rape/incest scenarios are more complex morally, because as you say the pregnancy is not a punishment and the foetus is not “to blame” for the rape/incest, but I have to say that my compassion for the pregnant victim trumps my compassion for the foetus.
Again, I can’t imagine feeling/thinking any other way.
What I can’t understand are those people who say they believe in God, and yet do things they know are gonna leave them burning in Hell for all eternity.
You believe in God, and yet you commit adultery anyway. What, you think God was distracted and wouldn’t notice?
I can understand the desire to commit adultery. But you keep your adultery secret from your wife, because you don’t want her to know. You wouldn’t drop your pants and start boning your girlfriend if your wife was in the same room, would you? Because she’d, you know, notice. So how can you imagine God doesn’t notice?
It’s not like they got caught up in the moment and forgot God was watching. I can understand how that can happen, like a guy gets drunk and takes a swing at cops because they forgot that the cop will beat the crap out of them and throw them in jail…they just weren’t thinking straight when they swung at the cop. They forgot. They didn’t try to punch the cop but keep it secret from the cop, if they could think that clearly they wouldn’t do it. But if you’re together enough to keep your adultery secret from your wife, how can you pretend God doesn’t see? I can understand wanting to smash the windows of a cop car, but you’re not going to do that if the cop is standing right there to arrest you, are you?
Do people who believe that God sees everything somehow think that God’s not watching you smash that window?
Isn’t there a convenient opt-out clause if you confess or repent?
I agree. I live in a nominally religious country where the commandments are not just broken but pulverised by most of the faithful. If it was supposed to be about social control, it ain’t working.
How they work it all out in their heads is a mystery to me.
I do not understand people who feel the need to control what other people do in their private lives. Who they have sex with, how they have sex, what they eat or drink or smoke or shoot into their veins, what they watch on tv, what they jerk off to, how often they clean or don’t clean–there is just no end to the completely harmless decisions regarding personal life that some people feel the need to legislate, control or deny. Dammit, if it occurs behind closed doors and isn’t hurting anyone but the person involved, get the fuck out of it!
I do not understand people who are constantly angry, who must apportion blame for every real or imagined infraction, who carry grudges and take offense constantly. Damn, isn’t it just a lot more simple and easy to just let it go? Who’s being helped by this kind of mindset? The people that have it don’t seem too happy and it sure as shit makes the people around them miserable–let it go!
I do not understand people who endlessly make the same mistakes over and over again but never seem to learn how to avoid them in the future. Is your brain missing?
I don’t understand addicts. I know how it works and I’ve had a few things come close to hooking me, but people who can NOT give something up no matter how much it fucks them up baffle the hell out of me. I guess I also don’t understand people who think self discipline is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. It seems to me that there is a lot of satisfaction to being able to control one’s impulses, especially ones with negative consequences. Being disciplined leads to being able to trust oneself–how can someone go through life without being able to trust that they’ll do the right thing?
Fundie Christians freak me right out–especially the hellfire thing. I ask these people if there’s anything one of their kids could do that would make them punish the child by forcing their hand onto a red hot stove, and I always get a shocked and repulsed “NO!” Yet these same people believe that their all loving, all knowing heavenly father not only will punish in this manner but will do it for eternity with no reprieve and will feel glad about it and expect all his followers to share in the joy… Wow, that’s just so many kinds of dissociative fucked up I can’t begin to list them.
Because I suppose I have some of the mindset of the child in me. I enjoy such movies, they’re entertaining, they make me laugh, they make me feel good, I have fun watching them. I typically leave the movie feeling better than when I went in. The highest form of contribution anyone can make to another human being is to make them feel better, and I thank the makers of such movies for making that contribution to me.
And here’s the mindset I can’t understand. Watching a movie that’s a “slice of life”, or filled with angst or death or depression or that is supposed to enlighten me to the human condition? Watching fictional people slowly destroy their lives? None of that is enjoyable or entertaining. I leave the movie feeling worse than when I went in. I haven’t been contributed to, I’ve had some of life’s enjoyment sucked out of me.
I don’t and never will understand the mindset that there is some sort of objective criteria for judging art. The mere fact that it is a judgement makes it based on opinion which makes it not objective. There is absolutely nothing factual about the statement “Picasso is a better artist than Kinkade”, and it completely boggles my mind when I encounter someone who believes that it is a fact, as factual as that the sky is blue. Art is not devalued, nor is the greatness that you might see in a Picasso diminished, by ackowledging the simple truth that it’s all subjective.
Well what do you expect? It’s fairly well known that in 1647 our ancestors were still shit flinging apes.
On the abortion front, the pro-Choice fanatic mindset can also be annoying. People who won’t admit that even a first trimester embryo really IS more than a “clump of cells”. I’m pro-Choice and I see a major difference in a 5 week embryo and a 3rd trimester fetus, BUT let’s make no mistake here: that is, even if it’s the size of a pea, a living thing that will be a human if allowed to gestate and abortion is killing it, it’s not just preventing it. Now while personally I don’t feel that it’s murder, it’s also not a casual matter, and I think some pro-Choice people are just as unbending in seeing it as a black-white ethical issue as Pro-Lifers. (A friend who was a counselor in abortion clinics says that this was a major topic of conversation/debate at conferences.)
Amen! And I find that these emotional fascists usually have some unresolved issue they’re refusing to confront that’s making them truly miserable beneath their facade.
I’m an electrical engineer. I became an EE because I love electronics. When I was a teenager I used to tinker with electronics all the time, repair stuff, build stuff, etc.
During college I roomed with six other EEs. I was the only one who chose the major based on a passion for electrical/electronic theory. Everyone else couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it. They were strictly in it for the virtual “guarantee” of making $XXK per year after graduating. :rolleyes:
Still don’t get and never will get why people care if gays are allowed to marry. It’s not like we’re making YOU marry someone of the same sex. It doesn’t affect you, so why do you care? Marriage does have a lot of religious stuff in there too - but not for everyone - and when it comes down to it, marriage is just paperwork filed with the government.
People who boast that they don’t read. Is that supposed to make you cool or something? Books are awesome and you are stupid. Go watch some more MTV.
Another vote for my body is my own. If I feel the need to have an abortion (likely won’t happen because I am smart and take precautions, but who knows) I’d like to have one. My body. If someone wants to look at porn, as long as the actors in the porn are legal and consenting particpants, that’s their deal. It’s not hurting you. Etc.
People that don’t give two shits about their apperance. Not saying you need to wear makeup and a dress to go to the grocery store, or a tie to go to Walgreens, but geez doesn’t it make you feel better personally that you put more than two seconds into yourself before you leave the house? The only time I get dressed for someone other than myself is when I’ll see my boyfriend - and that’s only because I don’t see him much. The rest of the time, I don’t look like shit for myself. Looking good makes me feel good, at least. And no I don’t “dress up” or even wear makeup very much, I just take care of myself and wear decent, well fitting clothes.
People that don’t believe mental illness is real or that medications help at least some people. Go take Psychology 101, see some real patients in a clinic, see their pain and their families’ pain and come back here and tell me it isn’t real. I think they’re just smug that they are not currently affected or are in denial that they are.
Because the makers of “movies clearly intended for children” figured out a while ago that most children do not pay for their own tickets and go to the movies alone… and adjusted the movies to play to children and their adult accompaniment.
There is no necessity to escort a child to enjoy the movie as aimed at adults… and there’s no necessity to be a child to enjoy the parts aimed at the kids, for that matter, as RoadFood has pointed out.
Hey, good for you. That’s actually a much more reasoned and enlightening response than I expected. That’s pretty cool, but I still can’t get into that mindset even if I force myself to.
Personally, I find it necessary to ground myself regularly by taking in a lot of food for thought. I watched Half Nelson in the depths of my own depression and debt problems. I could identify with the anti-hero, a schoolteacher hooked on crack who had a real connection with one of his students and made a frustrating effort to keep the kid out of the world of drug dealers. He’s a loving, complicated, troubled, awful person who struggles to understand the ramifications of his actions. I loved that. Loved it. It made me feel like shit immediately afterwards, but it got me thinking, and I felt like I left it with a better understanding of my world. YMMV. I imagine that if you were depressed and in debt and watched that movie, it would only make you feel worse in the long run. Just a difference in, well, mindset.
I will never understand the mindset of someone who puts down, belittles, and insults other people simply because they don’t value the same things you do. There is no objective reality in which “books are awesome” is a truth. You value reading, others don’t. That doesn’t make you a better person. And you said the above right after you said this:
I don’t understand the mindset that doesn’t see the irony in the juxtaposition of those two statements. I’m sure you’ll be able to explain how the two are different, but I’ll still never understand how one person can hold both beliefs.
More often than not, I’m glad I live in a world where people are different. But it is still frustrating sometimes to try to get my head around the way other people think. I just cannot, in my wildest imagination, comprehend how anyone could derive enjoyment out of a movie like you describe. We clearly are different; I have no trouble getting grounded, I get it all the time by reality. I find it necessary to regularly be entertained and laugh. A schoolteacher on crack doesn’t do that; talking cars do.
Women who think they are owed a living because they are married/have reproduced. Worse are the ones who are resentful because their husbands dont earn “enough”. Haysus. Get a job (or a better job) yourself then. I don’t understand this mindset.
If I, in a non-obnoxious way, have mentioned that I don’t enjoy a certain type of food, I don’t understand why it is some people’s mission to convert me. I do not like seafood. I have tried lots of kinds of seafood. I continue to try at least one kind of seafood every year, because I don’t want to be one of those people that had a taste of something once and will not try it ever again for all eternity. Really, I still just don’t like seafood. But I will go to a seafood restaurant with a seafood-loving group and eat the rubber chicken and not complain.
So why do you feel the need to tell me that I don’t like seafood only because I haven’t had Key West tuna steaks/Lake Erie perch/conch/really good shrimp/any other obscure thing? Why do you try to force me to try it? Why do you care? Does it cause you pain that I am eating the chicken? Leave me alone already!
Unlike most things in this thread, this one has nothing to do with a mindset. It’s in the taste buds (or the palette, or somewhere). Seriously, Darryl, there’s nothing to understand here. If I don’t like the taste of something, then I don’t like the taste of it. It’s not a choice; I did not decide that I don’t like the taste of fish, I did not wake up one day and say to myself, “Hey, I think I’ll gag every time I eat cheesecake.” It’s a physical reaction, there’s nothing mental about it, and there is no way that I could change a mindset and come to love the taste of wine. Believe me when I say that I truly wish that I could derive pleasure from adventuresome eating, but fifty years of experience has repeatedly shown the (to you narrow, I’m sure) range of foods and tastes that bring pleasure (or even just the lack of gagging) to my palette, and the (broader) range of those that cause rather unpleasant reactions.
Is there honestly nothing that you could put in your mouth that you would not enjoy? How about eating sand? Chewing on aluminum foil? Drinking paint thinner? I know, those are not generally considered foods, but my point is that if there is any substance that causes unpleasant reactions in your taste buds, how can you not understand that other people experience a similar unpleasant reaction, just to different substances?
