Respect for the Aged

[Griffin NoName]

Some of the points you made were addressed so I assume the ones you wanted addressed were not those.

One interesting point not addressed, was that I didn't appear in the Old Fart list    

[The Meromorph]

I just wanted to strut my stuff, and show off my breadth of knowledge  And nobody cared! 

Why Sibling, I think of you as A Vibrant Young Woman Old Fart now you mention it. 
Was it you or Opas who asked for a 'free farting zone' in the Monastery Garden? 

[Griffin NoName]

I've got some medicine now thank you

.....but because the medicine has worked I have to see a different specialist to get to the bottom (!!) of it

[jjj]

I'd like you to stay around, and contribute, and help us all grow and learn together.

Yes, good will from all sides is definitely the right approach in cooperation. I make sure that my intentions are exclusively positive and that automatically throws out negative speculations. The thing I thought of this morning (while painting my flat...) that I should say e.g. 'if we were...', instead of: 'if I were...'. I am also glad that I disclosed the source of my insight/ claims and so, I hope I won't be too hard pressed to deliver hard evidence. In this way it won't be to difficult to remain humble.
It's quite boring when everybody agrees all the time.
Yes, I was thinking that, too! What a coincidence! There you see, that it is only a matter of getting to each other better. Wait and see is the motto... otherwise we fall into all sorts of wrong conclusions and end up ...merely agreeing with each other. How silly!

This is a place where the extraordinary battles that wage in the outside world to "establish" oneself simply don't apply.

OK, I got it now! Sounds good. Yet, that I disclosed my age etc. was meant as a personal introduction. That's how I identify all my friends. Frankly, I value them mainly for their good traits and abilities. If I don't know you I can only go by what you say and stay reserved and insecure about its origin and evidence. But, OK... let's see how things work out. It's something new for me.

...state your case, once (important), and understand that others may not agree.

Yes, I'm used to that...

If your arguments have persuasive force, they will speak for themselves and others may well come to include some or all of what you say onto their own ideas.  They may not.  It does not matter either way, you do not need to convince us that you are right.  We enjoy the discussion and the testing of arguments (not fights BTW, argument is used here in the logical debate sense) and the interplay of different perspectives.

This is something new to me, because in other fora I had to table hardcore evidence and that's where I needed to identify/ disclose the big guns.
Example: Some people insist that talents are acquired through lots of practice and hard work and that anyone can acquire talents that way. I don't agree to that, because I have got hard evidence for it. More I'm not supposed to say... how then will I back up my counter claim?

Just try to be a bit less emphatic and try to explain the reasoning behind your views and I think you will get the hang of it.

Since my reasons are mostly gained from life experiences and pondering, that's all I have got as evidence... and so, it's hard not to draw them in to prove the point. I'll see if I can somehow circumnavigate them or speak thorough a bunch of flowers... Normally, I prefer to be straightforward in these matters and not beat about the bush.
Mates in the army 'accused me' that I have got almost infinite patience to discuss a matter/problem until it's satisfactorily resolved... I'm also a pious fanatic! When asked if I believe in God: 'I don't know if God believes in me?'  I have my personal God, called 'The Power of the Universe'... That confuses them for a second or so and then add that it's simply 'nature and its divine laws of logic'; the symbol of a scale, which indicates that we are compelled to act logically correct in order to benefit from nature's generosity or we suffer the opposite... etc.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

...state your case, once (important), and understand that others may not agree.

Yes, I'm used to that...

A good early morn to All !... jj ...I must take my leave soon ....the rear of Pappy's house is screaming at me for attention .

The cats are as well , they are most content when I go outside with them ,  they are always at the door looking back and waiting for me or a house mate to oblige them .

Also the threads and e-mails have taken so much of my days ( and nights !!!)  . The content has been of an extraordinary  quality  , I am felling such a relief the missing pieces of the puzzle were found .

I felt that the Monastery is the forum jjj belongs in . I did not forsee any of this . When all of this began to escalate I was thinking that maybe I could divert attention to Saucy Gert for the new members thread she stated .

Gertie's thread inspired me to put out the word and now here we are jjj , welcome to the monastery ! now I must ...I need to

[jjj]

Thanks again, for all the welcome flowers. I feel better now. There were moments I thought to stop stirring you up, but it was a good lesson for us all. I was a bit too anxious to spill the beans and thought to play my game as I always did and if it fails, so be it. Now that we get to know each other better, things will eventually settle down and we all won.
In the last forum (DAF) I told them that the time has come for me to pack up, for I feel having returned the share I owed nature and now it's time to just selfishly enjoy the fruits of my struggle for contentment. Then good Smooth from (ILP) and Philip (from here)  encouraged me to continue. Since it's part of my earthly mission, I guess I just belong; just like a plier belongs to tools!

[Sibling Chatty]

OK, back to the parenting and children discussion...

Yes, young children should indeed obey the advice of their parents, for it is the duty of parents to guide and protect their kids. Thus, I strongly disagree to the contrary alternatives.

OK, we've been through young children (definition of, semi-established) and inadequate parenting (an eternal problem, as far back as Eve's first grandchild/as far back as the first proto-human to disagree with the parenting of her offspring: choose your own scenario) and the simple matter is this:

EVERY parent alive has made errors. Every parent that will ever live WILL make errors. Every child that has ever lived or ever will live WILL resent the parenting to which s/he was subjected in one way or another...and will vow NEVER to do that tho their own children. They may or may not...every generation makes its own new screw-ups, and every previous generation dwells on the unsuitability of the ensuing generation to do thing "properly".

Rap and Emo are hated by people who listened to the 80's Hair bands. People who gre up with late 60's psychedelica were BOUND to be headed straight for hell, according to the Bobby Soxers who listened to the original Rock and Roll...THAT was the music that would send you straight to Hell, every preacher worth his pulpit knew that!! Of course, those ignorant fools had listened to that skinny Mafia rat Frank Sinatra, and that be-bop music and that abysmal ragtime, and then there was all that horrid waltz music, whatever was wrong with plainsong, Oh, WHY must they chant...take a trip back. Every last generation has abhored the music, the manners, the morals of the the ones before.

As to antisocial behavior..how much of what's attributed to "teens" IS teens?? Damn little. It's the barely post-adolescents (AND the almost totally unparented that hang with them) that are the troublemakers in most areas.

You can't define inappropriate behavior based on age. The 27 year old guy with the drug problem isn't a teen. He may have had the problem from his adolescence, he may not have, but then again, it may be a familial thing...there are whole cultures of abuse, neglect, addiction and worse that thrive on the desperation of low income and the lack of education that low income promotes. (Our culture seems to have it backwards. You want better educated people? Allow them to get an education before they HAVE to work to help support their families.)

As to 'camps'--A Clockwork Orange anyone?? Hey, if it works...

Perhaps the "documentary" was one of Mel Sembler's little puff pieces. After all, Ambassador Sembler's been a "good guy" for years... (And he's not at ALL a disgusting chunk of offal, not at ALL ) He WAS Bush 1's Ambassador to Australia, after all. (Probably GHWB's attempt to keep Sembler out of Florida while Jeb's kids were growing up.)

http://www.alternet.org/story/27725/

The story begins in 1976 when Sembler, who'd made his fortune in Florida real estate, founded STRAIGHT from the ashes of The Seed -- an earlier program suspended by the U.S. Senate for tactics reminiscent, said a senator, of Communist POW camps. But as the Reagan years rolled into view, and a climate of fear nurtured a Shock and Awe approach to teens, the Semblers found a new world of acceptance for an anything-goes treatment business, meting out punishment in privately run warehouses. Endorsers from Nancy Reagan to George H.W. Bush lent their names to the program, celebrating a role model weapon in the "war on drugs."

From the beginning, critics were shocked to find that the keepers freely acknowledged many of the tactics -- yet insisted they were necessary. Mel Sembler even seems to have been emboldened by painful questions about his clinics. "We've got nothing to hide -- we're saving lives," he said in 1977 after six directors quit over practices that included kicking a restrained youth. He remained closely involved in personnel management. Almost two decades later, recalling how the ACLU was furious about STRAIGHT's practices, Sembler told Florida Trend Magazine in 1997 -- "with a grin," the reporter wrote -- that "it just shows that we must have been doing things right."

And rather than clean up Florida's program, he apparently leaned on health inspectors in 1989 to go easy on it. Reports of a cover-up wouldn't emerge for four more years -- long years, for the teenagers committed to a program that wouldn't lose its license until 1993. STRAIGHT foe Bradbury, believing he'd been "brainwashed" into becoming an abusive counselor, brought the clinics to the attention of the state after years of protest. Inspector Lowell Clary of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services found that reports of illegally restrained and stomped-on teens had been swept under the rug, likely with help from Republican state senators, who went unnamed, but made phone calls urging the clinic stayed open. A "persistent foul odor" hung over this use of power, said a St. Petersburg Times Op-Ed applauding the death of STRAIGHT.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117088.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121088.html

http://www.thestraights.com/index.htm

Yep, camps. Damn STRAIGHT.

[jjj]

EVERY parent alive has made errors.

Yes... ignorant idiots; mine too! (Except my beloved Tante Mize!)
That's, because sociologists/ psychologists/philosophers failed to offer professional advice to young parents. Every TV etc. come with a user's manual. What makes us think young parents know it all without it?

As to 'camps'--A Clockwork Orange anyone?? Hey, if it works...

As mentioned, the documentary series I saw here on TV were called:
Brat Camp // Turn About ranch...
It was that good... it made me    You should have seen what their parents went through! If nothing of the sorts is done, it will simple destroy one family after another and cause endless anguish & suffering.

Now you might understand why I, after witnessing the mess of my parent's upbringing method, that I lost all credence in philosophers and  of the past and desperate tried to sort out personal problems...
and of how to end up 'a big, fat, contented cow in the green' regurgitating and benefiting from gained insight.
Please artists ...draw me a caricature! I love to add it to my books.

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

link=topic=792.msg33556#msg33556 date=1187333037]

EVERY parent alive has made errors.

Yes... ignorant idiots; mine too! (Except my beloved Tante Mize!)
[/quote]

I don't like my parents being called idiots...

That's, because sociologists/ psychologists/philosophers failed to offer professional advice to young parents. Every TV etc. come with a user's manual. What makes us think young parents know it all without it?

A person isn't a machine. You can't have manuals for how to lead your life. Every person is defferent and need a different approach. Upbringing a child isn't like setting the VCR to record your favourite show, you can't just give the parent some kind of guidelines and tell them "that's how you raise your child". Every parent has to find out by himself...

What makes a philosopher more apt to raise my child than me? He wasn't there when the child came to world, he doesn't know me, nor the child.

[jjj]

A person isn't a machine. You can't have manuals for how to lead your life. Every parent has to find out by himself...

OK... put it this way: After young parents shaking their babies to stop them from crying, causing irreversible brain damage and after beating kids under the age of four, causing irreversible psychological damage... parents finally find out. 

What makes a philosopher more apt to raise my child than me?

By offering young parents this (the above mentioned) kind of insight...

He wasn't there when the child came to world, he doesn't know me, nor the child.

Yet, he knows the problems  most parents are going to face raising  children,because he learnt from his mistakes (or mistakes of others). Why do you want repeat them and destroy a new-born life? Can you imagine what his advice could have prevented?
But no... young parents (as you seem to insist) don't need this kind of advice, because they know it all... or do they?  Tell me again. 

That's the kind of philosophy I practice... and true, past philosophers didn't mention such 'primitive' insight.

[Darlica]

First, the fact that you should not shake or hit a baby or a child, because it can end up creating brain damage is not or has anything to do with philosophy, it is neurology! That if anything discussed in these recent threads is a proven scientific fact.

And jjj I'm with Sibling chatty on the content/cow thing, and being one who refuses to be a sheep in a heard I'm not going to settle for being a content cow either...

I guess I'll just stick the goats for the time being.

[jjj]

 

... the fact that you should not shake or hit a baby or a child, because it can end up creating brain damage is not or has anything to do with philosophy, it is neurology!

Well, in that case genetics and behavioral problems have nothing to do with philosophy either! Is there anything left for us to discuss?  Sorry, mate I'm into anything that is vital to human life and concern... and in need of philosophical insight.

...I'm with Sibling chatty on the content/cow thing, and being one who refuses to be a sheep in a heard I'm not going to settle for being a content cow either...

As usual, we are given the choice to be sheep, shepherd or a happy cow/ goat. All depends on how we behave/ which roll we choose to play on turf. IMHO

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

OK... put it this way: After young parents shaking their babies to stop them from crying, causing irreversible brain damage and after beating kids under the age of four, causing irreversible psychological damage... parents finally find out.

As Darlica mentioned, I don't see how this is connected to philosophy.

And honestly, I don't need a philosopher to tell me that beating up a toddler to death isn't the right thing to do.

But no... young parents (as you seem to insist) don't need this kind of advice, because they know it all... or do they?  Tell me again.

I have never claimed that young parents know it all. Nobody does. I just say that there are no "guidelines" which would fit to every person, as you insist.

A "manual", as you put it, could damage the child even more.

Why do you want repeat them and destroy a new-born life?

You have mentioned that even your parents have made mistakes with your upbringing. Do you consider your life destroyed? I thought you were satisfied with it...

My parents made mistakes during my upbringing. Do I blame them? No. Do I think they've destroyed my life? No. Did they have any guidelines given by some philosopher, sociologist, psychologist? No. I think I've worked out just fine...

[goat starer]

As usual, we are given the choice to be sheep, shepherd or a happy cow/ goat. All depends on how we behave/ which roll we choose to play on turf. IMHO

anyone who has spent time with goats knows that there is no such thing as a contented goat. Why? the urge to explore to discover whats over the bridge (or under it) and a certain degree of personality and individualism. Goats are always worried (see fainting goats for evidence) AND inquisitive and that is not a recipe for contentment.

They may not be contented but that is not the same as saying they are not happy. Contentment implies a sufficiency (which cows get from er... eating) for the inquisitive contentment is not an option because there is always another wall to climb, bridge to cross etc. It is possible a language issue but your use of contentment as a goal gives me the creeps!

PS. Please do not bracket Goats with Cows.   

[Bluenose]

Well said Goat!

I can feel my inner goat getting all restless and wondering what's over that hill there right now!