Help me - I'm confused by racial labels
POSTED BY: pizmobeach
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 16:59
VIEWED: 9570
PAGE 12 of 15
Kathy,
My world view is pretty consistent. Sometimes I'm more down on humans than others, but I was reacting to this liberal fantasy that human nature was all fluffy granola bars.
I think they're right on the granola bars, that's a pretty decent example of a natural human diet. But people do fight wars, and so do apes.
I never said that humans were evil, or that they needed supervision, or laws. I think that people, sure, look out for #1, it's a survival instinct. But they also look out for each other.
It's just a dumb idea to ignore that humans are also going to look out for each other in groups, or themselves, or that there are people who will always be looking to angle to get power over others, and usually such people have a deep biding trust in the greater good, and in themselves, and their teachings, and this is the recipe for the greatest evil...
BUT, and this is important, it is those most structured societies that let these people with the machiavellian structure I just outlined, the ones who think they know better, and believe in the greater good, and then find that such good is so essential that almost any measure is acceptable if it provides for this, it's THESE people who profit by a rigid power structure.
The neocons never, in half a century of actively trying, were ever able to get decent numbers to support their agenda, and those few hundred thousand that did support them, did so because they sincerely believed that they were *helping* people.
But your attack is pointless, since I had already just posted above my own most vicious comment about humanity from one of those threads:
The truth of the world is cats eat mice.
As for your fantasies of mezoamerica, no. That's it. This is fantasy. My cousin is an expert in the subject, and not the only one I've ever met, and I had studied the whole field in some detail myself. This is not the mezoamerican story. The story is at times very brutal. The absurd fantasy is that Caral fell to random natural disasters, and not their own practices and the devastating effect that had on the local environment. I'm not attacking Mezoamerica, I have a lot of respect for it, like ancient egypt. I would never build such a society. It simply did not have enough respect for its own environment, and neither do we.
The fact is that liberals have a fantasy that something in human past is going to justify their social engineering. It won't. This is never ever going to happen, unless you lie to yourself, or continue to lie to yourself, in this case.
But that doesn't make humanity evil. It just makes large mechanized societies a bad idea.
The reason is that the masses really can't do a damn thing about it. What we know about the city states that directly descend from Caral is that they were oppressive, imperialistic, and very similar. All that happened was they destroyed their environment and had to move on, and the same people started many other civilizations over the next couple thousand years and we have a detailed recorded history of it. Yes, we owe a lot to these civilizations, they made a lot of advances in food. They also left large deserts is latin america.
You simply can't socially engineer. The story you're telling is not one of peace and bunnyrabbits, sure they had peace, because they were the first advanced society in the area, there was no competition. But that doesn't mean that the people were all a hippie commune.
I'm sorry, this is a silly idea, and no, it has nothing to do with the the Maya, who were really quite eco-friendly, and much more intellectually minded and less imperial. Not a judgment call, but I'm tired, and this is another post that needs editing.
Caral is a story of cats eating mice, and mice eating cheese until there was no more cheese the end.
Or would be if their descendants didn't then go make the near-identical error a hundred or so more times.
This is why people need individual liberty, and group organization, and the right to do so, and secure this *for* *themselves* and not be
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Rue: Is it a herniated disk? I have (had? don't feel it too much now) one. That's not fun.
Although could be worse things too.
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Hey DT, I think I saw an article somewhere on the fall of the Mayan Empire. You want a go at it? I could find it in short order.
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Byte,
You're very on target with the Linux Open Source community. This is the sort of society that will evolutionarily defeat the current top down govt'l structure, regardless of how the smaller units are internally structured, or who they are made up of.
I personally think it's best if those separate small societies are radically different from one another in the way they operate and/or the fields they study, as it would lead them to different thought processes and create a greater diversity of ideas. I support maintaining a wide variety of cultures for the same reason.
Also I've noticed a critical mass for nations, around a few million. past that, social efforts become too self absorbed and concerned with maintaining empire and running state affairs. Me and a friend did some studies of various societies and we came up with a fairly consistent 140,000 or so were contributing towards progress. Of course, a nation would have to be larger than this because it couldn't be 100% scientists, someone has to provide it with food, etc, but a couple million people running a decent percent would do it.
I'm intrigued by Pirate News' twitter story. I think that a society that is its own rescue and defense force would be interesting too. I'm beginning to think that the last need for overarching power structure is gone...
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It's all thanks to the internet.
Here's the article, if you're interested: http://www.postchronicle.com/news/science/article_212257742.shtml
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Byte,
Sure
Kathy,
A couple of thoughts, one is glucosamine with either chondrointin or a chondrointinase, the latter being probably more effective.
Next, there's a nerve cluster under your armpit that's involved in this, and you can damage it if you get stabbed in the underarm, this just happened to my sister, she slipped and the crutch went through her armpit
slipped disc is always a possibility
Another one is pulled muscled. This usually is notable as a knot when it happens, and bengay is the only thing that i've found that helps.
other than that, there are stretching exercises, physical therapy, but don't do that until your doc determines that it's not a slipped disc or something that could be exacerbated by exercise
oh, a herniated muscle also, caught in the spine.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
The answer is pretty simple: severe, unrelenting back pain which has escalated over the last few months into stratospheric levels.
Oh.
Oh dear, ouch - being in constant, chronic pain myself, although thankfully not often of that level, I can imagine your frustration right now, especially what with most doctors being so terrified of the DEA and the "War on (some) Drugs" that they dare not use all methods to treat pain due to a justified fear of the jackboots.
Lemme think on this a bit...
-F
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I'm going to advise against pain killers. The pain is telling you where the problem is, and if there's something delicately out of balance, and you exacerbate it you could end up with a far more serious problem. I'd hold off any pain medication until I had concluded that it was purely neuropathic.
Certainly if it's arthritic, herniated, a sliped disc, or a fractured vertebrae, something physical, you want to treat it directly, and not the symptom.
It could be a parasite of some sort, but statistically, the most likely thing is probable arthritis, but check all options.
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Quote:
One thing that myself, Frem, and I think Dream have in common is that we LIKE the small scale as a standard mode of operation. Everything is easier to manage. That's the social system we like to propose.
Quote:Good luck on that. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient, the general "drive" will be towards larger and larger systems. History is a good indicator of this trend. There ARE countering forces... primarily, disasters which force systems into smaller, self-sufficient units (with large loss if life, given our history of breeding past environmental/ technological carrying point!) but that kind of corrective factor is intermittent and stochastic.
I personally think it's best if those separate small societies are radically different from one another in the way they operate and/or the fields they study, as it would lead them to different thought processes and create a greater diversity of ideas. I support maintaining a wide variety of cultures for the same reason.
So, in sum: I don't think it's gonna work. It's not economically favorable.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Mangolo:
I take it from a brief skimming that none of you are African American or any minority group?
Racial labels are comprised of two components:
1. Self Identification
2. How society looks at you and judges you (prejudice)
1. I am Arab American by most definitions of the label, but I don't identify with Arabs. My family is from Syria originally, spoke Arabic originally, but now we have no connection to Arab culture. My family is also Jewish and though we are not religious Jews, I do identify with our culture and history, so I call myself Jewish American. So, that's self identification.
2. Here in Hawai'i, I'm a ha'ole. It literally means "a person who cannot chant their genealogy", but locals use it as a catch all for anyone with lighter skin color and non-Asian features. They don't differentiate between light skinned people. We are lumped together. Irish, Italian, Greek, Anglo, Swedes, Slavs, etc- any background that might have a cultural or racial separation on the mainland all are 'ha'ole', everyone else is either 'local' or 'Hawaiian' except the Portuguese. They've been here so long they are separate.
Another example of #2 is some of my Hawaiian friends went to university in California and Oregon. There, many of them were seen as Mexican by both people of color and whites. Latinos would come up to them and immediately speak Spanish to them and whites would sometimes ask them about Mexico or say disparaging things about Mexicans at them.
The third most disturbing aspect of #2 is racial profiling. Because of our name (Hajim), my family was harassed after 9/11. You ever been pulled into second or tertiary inspection by the TSA/DHS? For three years, every single flight we went on, we were searched. My kids too. Six flights a year. Six times to secondary. You ever had to watch a stranger take your little kids most treasured items and have to watch your kids cry while a bunch of strangers in uniform take apart their favorite stuffed animal? Try going through that kind of thing 20 times or more. Once we had our luggage pulled off the plane by these guys. Missed the flight. The reason? No reason given 'cept our Arab sounding name is kind of like some on the extended terrorism list.
Racial profiling is much worse for other people than we've ever experienced.
Hope this helps.
I like this post and agree with Mangolo 100%
I'd also like to add that as an outsider, Obama just seems like an american. As a descendant from a Kenyan, and a member of a racial, once (still?) persecuted minority, it was very exciting that he be running for president, let alone elected. Symbolically, that felt important for a lot of people. A bit like (but not quite as exciting) when Thatcher came to power. Now I hate Thatchers guts, but I still found it significant when she was elected.
Now he's in office, he just has to do the job - nothing else matters.
I'm horrified that the concept of 'lower blood' is still kicking around - where are we, Europe 1930?
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