Just found out the US bombed Iraq. The Ebola pandemic is now an international concern. Hawaii is about to get hit by two hurricanes. Small restaurants are giving discounts to Christians who pray before they eat. And people wonder why I don't want to bring children into this world. At least it's giving me a lot of inspiration for my slightly post apocalyptic book.... Sigh..
Just found out Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. 1941 The Spanish flu is now an international concern. 1918 Pompeii is about to get destroyed by a volcano. 79 Restaurants are refusing service to black folks. pre-1970 There are always bad things happening. Sometimes it takes our kids to make the changes needed.
That Iraq situation is pretty awful, though. It's kind of slipped under the radar because of Gaza and the media attention focused there. And the ebola virus thing is very worrying as well. The world does seem to be a scary place today.
Probably more accurate is that there is radicalized religions in our world. That would take care of both, since the bombing is a result of radical Muslims wanting to create a caliphate and convert people to Islam at gunpoint. The Christians, well, I see a lot of prejudice and discrimination by them, but I generally don't give them the TOD either. I'm thankful they aren't as large scale militant as what we're seeing in the ME. IMO, I think Islam is going through its deaththroes, like Christianity did, but the big problem is we have small arms, munitions, aircraft and nukes. Things we didn't have back when Christianity was losing its political grip.
I'm going to regret this, I know I am because I don't want to start some kind of debate, I just have to ask- what's so terrible about giving discounts to people who pray? It's not like they are refusing service to those who don't or charging them extra. I saw a sign for a bar recently that offered a discount on your first beer if you ordered it in the voice of William Shatner. I fail to see any difference. I mean, you might not agree with it, and you are perfectly within your rights not to, but I really don't see how discounted meals warrant a place on the list with two natural disasters, an epidemic, and a war. :/
I do believe I said TODAY, meaning all of these things are happening in one day, whereas all of those things happened in different years. Yes, there are always bad things happening, which just makes me want to have children even less. But thank you for the history lesson.
The US did not bomb Iraq, it bombed some very dangerous religious fanatics who have chased a religious and ethnic minority group into the mountains, with the intent of causing their genocide. Ebola is nothing compared to the plagues that have wiped out millions in human history. Hurricanes are a natural phenomena that have occurred for billions of years. If they stopped occurring it would mean we truly have messed up the ecosystem. Not sure what your point is about Christian and restaurants, other than they may be guilty of discrimination. The chances of any children you bring in to the world surviving are substantially higher than at any other time in human history.
No heated debate coming from me. I respect others opinions. I think my issue with it is that the restaurant is saying that being Christian entitles them to something -- like they are better than the rest of the population and deserve a discount. If a restaurant gave discount to people who wore Pentacles or stars of David into their establishment, I have no doubt that the Christian community would be up in arms. Ordering in a funny voice or dressing up as a cow to receive a discount is available to everyone. I know there are discounts for children and the elderly. And I'd like to have a reason why I think that is okay but this isn't, but I don't... Something about it just rubs me wrong, I guess.
Having the world's news available every minute of the day can become truly burdensome and depressing. We're made to feel like everything is happening close to us, and that we should be doing something about it. This is disheartening when we can't, or feel as if we can't. I don't want to live my life in a bubble—la la la la la— but too much information on too many topics can also cause overload, followed by indifference. I guess it's just striking a balance between engagement and distance that we need to work on in today's media-dominated world.
Yes, definitely. I typically don't watch the news anymore, because it's so depressing here. Back home, my favorite news station always made a point to air positive stories, like what people are doing to help the community and whatnot. But here, it's all about gangs and shootings and VA fighting for LGBT rights (and the people who oppose it). Now my Facebook is blowing up about misogyny and the new Facebook Messenger app violating people's rights, and of course, Ebola and war and genocide and everything. I'm not saying that all of the things that have happened in the past are less important or less traumatic than the event occurring today. It's just sad that we haven't learned from our mistakes and haven't been able to cure cancer and Ebola and all of the other diseases that plague the world. There's just so much death and discrimination and negativity in the world. And it truly breaks my heart.
Yes, but the complex situation in that part of the world is worrisome to put it mildly. Exactly, this is mostly news media hype. Yes, it's serious, but on the scale of things, people need to calm down. It's not even another Iniki. It's more news-as-a-commodity hype. The multiple moves to infringe on women's health care options in the US is a lot more worrisome than this.
I guess I could see taking an issue with it if they are truly doing it out of entitlement, but I can only guess at their motives without actually speaking with the owners of the establishments. Again, I'm not quite sure why you think this. I obviously can't speak for all Christians, and maybe the one's you've had the most direct contact with are less tolerant, but the vast majority of the town I grew up in was Christian (I'm Catholic, but there are several other denominations with churches there) and I can't imagine anyone in my parish or anywhere else freaking out about Stars of David. Especially not if the owner of the establishment was Jewish, which is entire possible, since there was also a decent-sized population of Orthodox Jews there as well. In fact their synagogue was just a couple blocks from where I went to church. The case with the Pentacles I might have to give you though. I don't think the younger crowd would care much, but there is at least a chance that some of the older, more traditional members of the community might raise a stink over it if that ever happened. Back on topic for the actual thread though- I wish the news around here did the same as your station. Unfortunately, good news doesn't sell as well so things generally look pretty bleak. It's pretty depressing when all you see out there are people today making the same mistakes that people did a hundred years ago, who made the same ones as people two hundred years ago, same as three hundred years ago, et cetera; it just goes on and on. Sometimes you just have to take a step back and actively go looking for a little positivity. Humans do get a few things right on occasion, and fortunately they are often (not always, but often) cumulative- which means things are generally better today than they were way back when.
What is this, the One-Up game? Death is death, discrimination is discrimination. It doesn't matter to me what form it takes, it's all horrible. No one event should be more or less "important" or "terrible" than another. It's still awful, no matter how you spin it. So this "yeah, that's bad, but this is worse" thing is tiresome. A life is a life is a life.
All these things are nothing compared to the disturbing truth about our society, which I've recently been reading about :O
Would a nihilist place such pejorative values on something, or just accept them as just another meaningless incident? I do not practice, nor have I studied much on nihilism, but it seems that labels of good and bad are irrelevant.
Whatever subjective opinion a nihilist may have of what is 'good' or 'bad', 'evil' or otherwise, is not really much of a point. Just because you are a nihilist, doesn't mean you can't feel feelings, you just think there is no objective 'good' or 'bad'.
If you know (believe) there is no ultimate good or bad, why would you feel that some things are good or bad (or even better than others)? I don't know how the tone in my writing is perceived here, but I am not being confrontational, merely curious.
Don't worry about tone, I know you are curious. Well, I think you base your morality on reason I guess, and bad things are bad because they are unpleasant. I don't like seeing kids dying on the news, to me that is 'evil' because if it's an example of human suffering. Humanity, and life is all I think we have, so our only good and bad is subjective, self-directed, and entirely 'selfish' - if I can be excused for sounding like Ayn Rand for a sentence or two. You don't need an ultimate power to tell you what is going on in somewhere like Gaza right now is awful, in fact I find that line of thinking that you do is insulting to the human spirit. I don't expect some cold and objective alien to see the awful things we do on this planet as 'good' or 'bad', and I don't get the impression nature does either. From my own observations. We think things are good and bad because we are human - and only human.
