Now your defence is that people were only ‘vaguely aware’ of problems back in the 50s? Have you considered that:
a) you were a child/teen, and therefore less aware of the worlds issues
b) before television, movies, internet, etc., news and information travelled more slowly and there was less awareness about events outside the local area
c) views of problems like gang activity, drugs, etc are fueled largely by fictional stories on TV or in movies, not real life
d) the more media violence people see, the more they believe exists in real life, regardless of the reality (cite)
Sound familiar? It seems clear to me that with television and movies available to almost everyone, a lot of people in middle-class America will be more exposed to crime stories than they were before those media forms existed.
And as for drug use, others have pointed out that alcohol is the deadliest drug in US history - and that the prohibition era was rife with the kind of problems you think only exist today. If you want to talk hard drugs, Cecil himself says that the US had, at minimum, 200,000 morphine addicts by the late 1800s - a time when the US population was only about 75 million. I don’t think the ‘evil liberals’ are trying to claim that drug abuse is okay, we’re just saying it’s not some newfangled thing.
Well, if nothing else, that does seem a rather fair complaint on her point. Yes indeed, some women do lack that upper body strength, but not all. There are women who could perform such an act (and men who couldn’t, myself for sure included). It does seem like something of a sexist generalisation, there.
I would argue the conclusion to draw from that is that is that personal experience is far from a surefire guarantee, but I think i’ve failed to convince you of that one before.
Well, there was a time when a guy would leave so you could make fun of him without him interrupting, he would actually stay away for a while. You, you’re like Cher’s Absolutely Final, No, Not Kidding This Time She Means It Farewell Tour.
We all use personal experience to guide our views and observations. There isn’t a person on this board who doesn’t do it. And people can only know what they know. Occasionally someone comes along who knows differently, and when that happens there can be a change in that point of view, provided that the new proof is persuasive. You’ll notice I didn’t argue about the existence or number of female firefighters in Kobal2’s link, for instance. Still, there aren’t enough hours in the day to research every impression we have of everything we have an impression of, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with going by experience to guide our beliefs and actions. If we weren’t the sort to do that we’d have died out long ago.
Sorry, luce. I guess we just have different ideas of what “a while” means.
Still, I don’t recall a particular reticence on anyone’s part when it comes to taking the piss where I’m concerned.
What makes you think SA was any better when he was young? He was probably like little Curtis, the 13 year old who delights in parading his ignorance in GD. Blaming the Sad State of Society on Decadent Art…
Who’s next? Be the next one to show your ignorance about Starvey’s life…step right up! First one who gets it right gets a giant teddy bear! C’mon! Say, how about you, little girl…
Actually I like decadent art. Even painted some on occasion.
True, but the key is to recognise and attempt, at least, to try and cope with that lack of knowledge when those situations come around. There’s absolutely something wrong with not taking into account our lack of knowledge, or taking it into account to a mistaken extent. I know very little about American firefighters, for example. Now, I know that there are female firefighters over here. And I know that there are women capable of feats of strength. I could use my own knowledge to conclude that it was reasonable to say that there are female American firefighters - but that would be ignoring my ignorance, which means I don’t know whether it is legal, I don’t know the differences between States, I don’t know how insurance is calculated, I don’t know pretty much a ton of things that could have an affect on that answer. So while I could draw a conclusion from what I know, it would be irresponsible of me to do so; and it would be putting my own opinion and my own experiences on a far higher pedestal than they deserve, since what I am literally saying when I say I know or believe something is that I am confident that my knowledge of a subject outweighs my ignorance by a fair margin.
I would say that personal experience is important in that it tells us, to some extent, what we don’t know as much as what we do know. And even then there’s the unknown unknowns. Add in personal bias, input selection, and just plain old mistakes, and it tends to mean that I’m extremly wary of treating my own experiences as an excellent source. They’re pretty much one of the worst.
Conversely, it can be just as wrong to assume that personal experience is meaningless, which posters around here love to do…posters who base almost all their ideological beliefs on their own experiences btw, and who only go scurrying for data to support their own beliefs when they want to try to disprove mine.
There’s an old saying: “There’s a big difference between twenty year’s experience and one year’s experience twenty times.” Experience counts for a lot, and people who have accumulated many years of it can have a pretty good idea what they’re talking about. Nobody really argues much with my main points, especially when it come to the changes that have occurred here over the last forty years. Occasionally someone will post some tidbit of contrary information under the apparent impression that the exception disproves the rule, but mostly people criticize me for the things I don’t like rather than the things I get wrong.
And now I’m gonna try to back out of here for a while. I’ve blown almost the whole day posting to these two or three threads so no offense if you post something else and I don’t get back to it for a while, okay?
In the grand scheme of things, it most certainly can be pretty much meaningless. It can be just as wrong, but it’s much easier to be. Personal experience, when applied in the terms it has been gained, may well be very useful. After all, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have any kind of skills at all. But it only works within those given boundaries. It’s far too easy to generalise; and as the generalisation gets wider, your experience gets less valuable.
That posters look up data to support them rather than the other way around is most certainly a problem too.
Really? That’s not the impression I get. My impression is that people tend to very strongly disagree with both what they feel you get wrong and what you don’t like. Why, it’s as if our personal experiences of what people say differs. And generally considering that your response to contrary information is to, rather interestingly given your dislike of total rejection of personal experience, totally reject any kind of data, poll, or statistic on the basis that they can be twisted. I would imagine that, for the most part, those who do not seem particularly willing to actually argue a point with you do so because they see you as a poster similar to, say, Der Trihs; not someone open to persuasion, with quite extreme views.
You are right, of course. I’ve said as much myself in pointing out how both women and blacks managed to get the vote and make other advances throughout the preceeding decades without turning society inside out…
Women had made advances up to that time without the rancor and name-calling and, frankly, ridiculousness that accompanies the women’s lib movement.
[QUOTE]
Starving Artist, that’s simply not true. The suffragette movement in this country and in Great Britain engendered just as much rancor and turmoil as the women’s lib movement did. Read a little history, about the numbers of women who went to prison for protesting, and the force-feeding devices used on them when some went on hunger strikes. One protester, a woman named Emily Davison, threw herself under the hooves of King George V’s horse at the Derby. From what I can read, the women of the turn of last century were just as angry and determined as their granddaughters in the 70’s. Here’s a link:
I agree we should redo the 50s. Only without the mistakes made last time, such as not cracking down on the beatniks. They’re only going to encourage kids to listen to jazz and read philosophy, and that will be the ruination of us all.
Hmmmm, random things that happened, randomly written down as they cross my mind:
The Cold War and Korean War, with Brinkmanship, McCarthyism, “oh my gawd Russians is gonna kill us all” paranoia (even had atomic bomb hide under the desk drills) .
World War 2 which gave us internment of American citizens, the Bataan death march and the Holocaust.
The Great Depression
The Roaring Twenties, with gangsters running rampant
World War 1m which gave us endless battles, led by incompetent generals, which (if memory serves) cost hundreds of thousands of lives per battle, and set the stage for That Guy later on /:=(
Civil War which split the country, along with Bleeding Kansas, draft riots, lynchings in New York (of all places), burning of Atlanta, etc etc etc
Much of European history after the “schism”, when christians fought wars against other christians, for being the wrong type of christian. And the Crusades, which even included a Childrens Crusade (what the fuck??)
The Dark Ages, the Plague, the Huns, the Viking raiders, the warlords, serfdom, etc etc etc etc.
Ancient Rome. whose economy ran off of conquest, enslavement, and the Games.
Wasn’t the biggest Suffrage movement way back during the Wilson presidency?
No. Just no. Prohibition was tried and was a disaster. It was an attempt to legislate morality, based on bullshit, and it failed miserably. It fueled corruption, graft, gang wars, bootlegging, etc. Taking a liberal view, or even a libertarian view, it’s not government’s place to dictate what I do in my own home. It’s not government’s place to tell me what is “moral”, if I am harming no one. It is not government’s place to penalize or curtail me, because someone else either disapproves or doesn’t know how to act.
And now to political correctness and “the seven words” - fuck that shit.
Addled old farts who develop unified theories, “I’ll tell you where it all went wrong…” simply found reality too hard to keep pace with, better to just cling to an outdated world view and brook no dissent. Much less frightening to the atrophied mind. “I’m old and I’ve seen stuff, don’t try and sway me with your pointless facts, you young whippersnappers.” Clinging to the past is all they got.
And I agree with Reverend Threshold, there is no point in arguing with someone who disengaged from thinking and reality some time in the 40’s.
And you know this by way of telepathy? You know that those of us who think you are full of beans have no data until we “go scurrying” to disprove your positions? Lucky us, that the facts are actually there, blind pigs in an acorn warehouse, we can hardly miss!
Your mini-sermons are fact-free and based on presumptions that only you see as solidly factual. Drug use soars because of liberal policies? Just as likely that drug use would be much more a problem if it were not for the boon of liberal policies. Where is your factual proof otherwise?
Children are raised in broken homes? If it weren’t for liberal policies, marriages might remain stable? You refer to an ex-wife, you are divorced, apparently, as are many of us. You would have been better off if there were policies in place that made such divorces much more difficult? Childen are better off in homes wherein their parents hate each others guts? You kidding? No, I fear you are not. (I’m reminded of comedienne Brett Butler, asked by her son if he came from a broken home, she replies “No, honey, our home was broken, but Momma fixed it.”)
If we make a presumption based on ignorance, and must “go scurrying” to find the facts to support that presumption, aren’t we about a full step ahead of you, who makes an ignorant presumption and cannot find any facts to support it?
When conservatives were in power, did the divorce rate go down? Drug use plummeted, did it? Kids cleaned up and started using “sir” and “ma’am”? No? Well, why not? If liberal policies make society worse, how come conservative policies don’t make it better?
The prevalance of liberal thinking is not the cause of social changes, social changes make liberal policy necessary. Now, perhaps that is a dogma, much like yours. But my dogma will hunt, and yours just lies under the porch and farts.
We need a president like Dwight Eisenhower-a man who worried about America (rather than every country BUT America).
We also need to:
-abolish the CIA. This group of clowns go around the word, involving the USA is all kinds of stuff
dissolve NATO-no need for this organization anymore
-negotiate treaties with foreign countries upon the basis of RECIPROCITY
-begin a massive program to end the importation of petroleum
