I have often wondered what inspires me to blog. Some will blog on the political events of the day. Others will blog bout their everyday lives and family. Whatever is written by each of us seems to have a following whether small or large but as writers we are just happy that someone enjoys our words. Many friends are made and I think it applies to even those that may disagree with us.
It is often said that when an author writes he reveals a part of himself to the world and I think that be true. It is almost as if we invite the world into our living room for a cup of coffee with each post we publish. We turn our favorite music on and chat up a storm with those we have never set eyes on nor even think we will ever meet in person.
And as the room fills you see something just amazing. You see people of every kind in that room and from the farthest corners of the world. Some come and say nothing. Others come and say thank you in their own way, but they come. There is a kindred of spirit throughout, people just being people in a world that seems to be always in chaos. All wanting the same thing but each has his own road to follow in order to get there.
They say that politics and religion are two topics that should be avoided yet it seems as if those topics are the very ones people prefer talking about above all. Why? I have no idea except maybe that it is in man's nature to fight even if the weapons to be used are only words. And if it isn't politics or religion then it is money that we fight over, especially if it be the money belonging to another.
Blogging seems to mirror the web itself. Think of a topic and you probably can find someone blogging on that topic. Bloggers have another thing in common. They not only seek to inform but they seek to be informed. Its as if blogging can be used as a form of self-education.
I know I have been rambling on here about something that most would not care about but to me it is a very interesting time in history. For the first time man has been able to sit somewhere in his own home and converse with someone just next door or half way around this planet of ours. Maybe it is most interesting to people like me who have seen this technology practically born in his lifetime and can remember the day of the multi-party telephone lines, the radio was the media everyone gathered around not television, of Hudsons and Packards. For you youngsters, these are cars of yore. A time, if you came home with a black eye, your father's first question was not who you had a fight with but whether or not you won the fight.
A time when if a kid had a nickel in his pocket he was the richest kid in town. If he had a penny he was from the middle class of town and each shared the coke or piece of candy with the one who was too poor to buy his own without thinking twice about it. A time when you asked a girl out for a date it was to the movies and it cost you $0.75, $0.35 apiece for the tickets in and a nickel for the bag of pop corn. And you knew you better get the girl home right after the movie because you knew her dad was sitting up awaiting her. And you knew he would use that shotgun laying across his lap if you got her home a minute too late.
It was a time when you got your milk and cheese at the front door every other day and you placed the empties out so the milk man knew how many to leave and maybe even a note to whether or not he even has to leave. There were still more bars than churches in them days and you could tell that there many a hang overs on Sunday by the number of men holding their heads at church services when the organ blared out with each hymn to be sung.
Some will say that those were the good ol' days when life was not as complicated as it is now. We still had our problems just as people do today. The big difference, in my mind, is that in those days we were expected to deal with those problems ourselves. It was just a part of growing up. Maybe that is why it seems so complicated these days. We have delegated that responsibility to others and no longer know how to solve our own problems these days. Or if we do try to solve it in our own way people see it as the wrong way to solve problems.
Are we better off as a society? I don't know but I do have to wonder if we have become a society of better persons. But, as I said, these are but rambling thoughts of a man who has been fortunate enough to have lived in both worlds.
WELCOMES YOU to his little home in cyberspace.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
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32 comments:
I do it for the hell of it Griper :D
To piss off the moonbats and the little phisers.
It's good now I get to see skeet shooting where as before in the days of old I was forced to watch boxing and 4 sec of the other sport I enjoyed more.
I am sitting out on my deck enjoying the 90 deg weather going in to the AC and coming out to defrost again ;)
ahhhh as he offers her a banana milk shake. of course it be laced with a bit of kaluah in it, just to add a bit of flavor.
I wonder if when they delivered milk in glass bottles, the ice man came twice a week, the radio was the most recent new tech and I was a wee one...I'd have been a little more nimble-minded in approaching the vargaries of the doggone computer. Lessee here, combine two generations and:
http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/Divco/ ..yup, there's the ol milk trucks alright. :)
he chuckles, yup, looks just like the milk trucks i remember too, bb. not only glass bottles but pasturized, not homogenized with the layer of cream at the top. you could either shake the bottle up to mix the cream in or scoop it off the top if mama wanted to use it in something else.
As a child I milked my grandparent's cows, Griper. I don't remember any milkman. :)
Why do I blog? Sometimes I wonder about it myself. It takes up a lot of our time and doesn't pay anything at all, and I'm not half the writer or philosopher that you are. I think I blog mainly to fight the liberals. That's why I started blogging and it's become a habit. Still, this is probably a very good time to be fighting the liberals, don't you agree? :)
he laughs at gayle. the milkman was for city folk.
"Still, this is probably a very good time to be fighting the liberals, don't you agree? :)"
i'd rather fight liberalism as it is promoted today. but yes we agree. and remember we are fighting for our kids future not for ourselves. you and i would enjoy the benefits they offer but it will be our kids that must pay and pay dearly.
"piss off moonbats".."fight the liberals"..t'aint a blog..its a
combat zone! :)
awwww bb, we'll be careful not to shoot you. lol
It's just perspective..
Q: How do you tell the difference between a liberal and a conservative?
A: Easy. Watch a man drowning fifty feet offshore.
The conservative will throw out 25 feet of rope and shout "swim for it!"
The liberal will toss out 50 feet of rope, drop his own end, and go off to do another good deed.
he sits here laughin,,ahhh very good, bb, a perfect joke.
I have been blogging in one form or another since 1999 when all we had at my house was a 56K modem, I have stopped and started over the years until I finally decided to start up my own space because to me, I wanted to contribute towards the election in some way. After the election, it will be because I am a news junky and love politics.
I am not sure whether society is better off these days then it was 50 years ago. I was a big fan of mythology when I was in middle school and spent most of my time in the library but to me it seemed like men had greater honor many centuries ago. They had principles whereas these days to make progress in the world you are required to be ruthless, do things you don't want to do. I don't like it but it is inevitable.
I do think society is better off with all this technology otherwise how would I have ever found Gayle's blog or your own blog. How would I be able to dial any of my best friends in Mass. for a cent a minute and have crystal clear quality? The world is closer these days, people mix more and I think society is better off for it.
Forgot to include this, great joke BB :)
Crian,
Technology only makes things easier or faster, and it should have no effect on a society in the ways that be important. they are only the tools we use. mankind has always used tools to make things easier. it doesn't force people to be ruthless or do things we shouldn't do.
principles still apply today as they did yesteryear. but i will admit that honor is no longer the guiding principle behind people's actions.
all you are saying is that society has accepted that "the end does justify the means." in fact, you advocated that once to me as a personal basis of action.
I love this blog and that Tramp cartoon was a delight.
Thanks for the memories
You have hit this one directly on the head Griper... I like reading here. You are correct about some of us learning. I have learned lots of stuff from Gayle with the politics. I am still not real good with them but I have learned its part of who we are as Americans..
ty, throwin stones. hope you visit again and that my posts continue to meet your standards.
tweety,
you're a good listener and being a good listener is better than being a good talker any day of the week.
Hey Griper, the ruthless remark was in reference to the values in society today and not linked to technology.
Technology does make things easier and faster but it is through this ease and speed, it has changed society. Technology is a tool but certain technologies like mp3 players make it easier to entertain yourself but they have changed society in the 1st world so much so that every person you meet has some sort of mp3 player.
I remember advocating the ends justify the means, I am torn on the concept but I think generally speaking that is how the most succesful operate?
That catchy phrase "the end justifies the means" has the attributes of absoluteness..as opposed to say, modifying it with
'sometimes' 'when desperate'. It was sometimes used to describe Marxism, [*] but my favorite example was the Japanese general in early WWII, who offered, when explaining the 'Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere' as one asian country after another fell to the
invading Japanese..."Sometimes it is necessary to choke the dog to
give it medicine."
[*]Encyclopedia of Marxism--
"'The End justifies the Means' is a maxim which originated in an accusation made by Protestants against the Jesuits. Although few would openly proclaim such a cynical maxim, it is clearly the conception which justified the atrocities of Stalinism and the use of terror by some who claimed to be pursuing the socialist objective." One might suppose that
to discredit the concept as utilized by one political philosophy while embracing it for their own would be hypocritical.
..but that brings us back again to the misty gray areas of consequentialism. :)
Crian,
"...I think generally speaking that is how the most succesful operate?
it is also why our prisons are filled to the hilt. no goal(the end) is in and of itself wrong. it is we go about reaching that goal that makes the difference.
if a person needs to cheat and lie to reach that goal, he may reach that goal successfully but has he reached it rightiously?
look at your own posts. how many of them deal with how someone or something went about reaching their goal? your post on the oil companies was one. you were implying that the oil companies were making their profits partly by cheating the government out of their due taxes.
your post on the five thhings we need to know is talking about the means. and i don't believe you think those means are justified means to use or else you wouldn't have posted on it.
bb,
"..but that brings us back again to the misty gray areas of consequentialism. :)"
is the recognition that there are both, benefits and consequences, that can result from any action or reaction either of which may result "consequentialism?"
Dunno, Griper. Don't you suspect
'end justifies the means' is as simple as assigning morality to
'cause & effect'? For example,
a desperate father can save a dying child by robbing a bank, or
the surgeon can save a life by
amputating a leg. An example in my experience comes from the world of business. Making money is the end.
Advertising is the means: add water to the product, lowering its production cost. Then for the frosting: advertise it as 'new and improved and raise the price. LOL, consequentialism at its most ludicrous. The concept is ancient:
"exitus acta probat" leading to
"caveat emptor" :)
bb,
cause and effect is the basis of the philosophy of determinism or predestination not free will. morality cannot be assigned to determinism. for morality to have any meaning, free will must exist.
and one of the arguments against the war in Iraq is the charge of it being an immoral act.
and it is also a factor in the argument of the meaning of representative when considering the concepts of the will of the people vs conscience.
but i'll go along with your examples. and from them we can see that morality deals with the means rather than the end. and any assignment of morality to the end is the result of the assignment of morality to the means.
I definitely don't advocate the ends justify the means on a personal basis and that is probably why I was never any good at business.
The post on the means are some points I read from a MoveOn email, the video is also from that email. I thought they were pertinent hence I posted them. They are a counter to the means currently used by Fox News, conservative bloggers to smear Senator Obama.
If were politics were cleaner, I don't believe such means would be needed but for the longest time the democrats have fought back in a lackluster fashion, the means advocated by MoveOn may not be the best way to win, but maybe its the only way.
Yes, I liked BB's joke too.
I'm still trying to figure out why I blog. My blog keeps changing. Sometimes, I feel really determined to have some kind of an effect on my world. Other times, I get discouraged and just blog to blog or I let some time go by while not saying much of anything and sometimes this happens because life itself can be so distracting.
I don't really have the time and energy to say everything that I could say, so I hope I make the right choices when I do blog.
Crian,
Business has become more cut throat because they teach it that way in economy and business classes. The bottom line is all that matters and there is no consideration for how any of it effects other people or society. This is only "inevitable" if money is what you care about.
Griper,
I agree with your response to Crian. I guess when I do agree with you, I ought to make note of it. I pick on you a little too much and then wonder whether or not you hate me for it.
Crian,
"Ends justify the means, I am torn on the concept, but think generally speaking, that is how the most successful operate."
That depends on your definition of success. There are other things that have worth besides money. I don't think that the ends ever justifies the means.
BB,
What you're talking about sounds like situational ethics.
Griper,
Oophs! I guess I do disagree with something. "Cause and Effect" does so have to do with Free Will. If we make bad choices, there are consequences. The Cause is the Bad Choices and the Effect is the Consequences of those choices.
we cannot be our own cause, lista. we act or react. as per your example we would be both, the cause and the effect.
you can't, in reality, separate the self from the decisions that the self makes.
we can be the cause of the effects on another or we can feel the effects as caused by another and from that laws can be constructed to punish the cause but not the effect.
cause and effect can be best summed up in the saying: treat others as you would have others treat you.
free will deals with the cause and the cause alone, from a philosophical point of view.
I thought that you said that we have free will. How than can we not be our own cause? The Cause is what we do. The Effect is what happens to us as the result due to the laws of nature or whatever.
"Free will deals with the cause and the cause alone."
Ah, but the Effect, or at least the expected Effect will influence our decisions. Thus Effect, does in fact, deal with, or at least influence, free will.
Another way to look at this is that the Cause results in an Effect and then the Effect is the Cause of another Effect and on and on it goes. It could be seen as more of a continuous motion, whether than any single isolated Cause.
We can also choose how to respond to an Effect.
free will is the recognition of possessing choices of actions or reaction.
cause does not allow for choices of action. with cause, the objects acts in only one way, the way the cause dictates.
a rock rolls down a hill. the cause is gravity. that rock has no choice but continue rolling until another cause stops it.
we roll down the hill but we can stop ourself by choice and at any time.
cause and effect deal with the laws of physics thus determinism.
think of free will as a counter force to the laws of physics.
free will has never been defined yet so as to clearly separate it from determinism. it still is a mysterious force.
in fact it is like God, a belief unproven.
determinism can be measured, free will cannot. determinism can be declared in absolute terms, free will cannot.
Perhaps the word cause is really not entirely accurate. When there is free choice, than all that really exists is influence, not cause. Cause exists in the physical world, yet in the human world, there is only influence and not cause.
There is an interesting verse in the Bible that goes like this.
"6) That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7) Marvel not that I said unto thee, 'Ye must be born again'. 8) The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit." (John 3:6-8, KJV)
I guess I don't have the time right now to fully explain all that this means, yet one of the things that is implied by these amazing words of Jesus is that when we invite the Spirit of God into our hearts, we are given extra power to CHOOSE to do the right thing, whether than just being controlled by cause and effect, or more accurately, the "Influences" of the effects on our "Human Nature".
we are in total agreement on your last comment, lista.
science presupposes determinism when studying the behavior of the universe. and from this it can be declared in absolute terms because it can be measured. and it is the laws of physics that allows the absoluteness of measurement.
theology presupposes free will in man's relationship to each other and God. and while man's behavior can be measured it can only be measured on relative terms not absolute terms.
Amazingly, a lot of human behavior can be predicted. This is because those who lack strength in their spirit live according to the laws of their flesh, "Human Nature", and lack the strength to make decisions that transcend Human Nature. Here are a few other verses.
"13) For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if, by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14) For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God." (Romans 8:13-14, NRSV)
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17, KJV)
And
"And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." (Romans 12:2, KJV)
Once again, I may not fully explain everything that is meant by these verses here, yet what I am going to say is that we have been given the power to transcend the laws dictated to us by the natural human tendencies of man ("the flesh", or "Human Nature").
yes it can be predictable but not on the individual level, lista, only on the group level and that prediction is relative not absolute.
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