I thought that to! Great minds!
Well. Thanks for the link. Of course, not everyone fit the definition of male or female.
But enough people fit the description of male and female. That is a useful “descriptor”.
The Economist has several interesting articles on both sides of the transgender debate recently published as a kind of “here are a lot of different perspectives”.
It also helps a bit that most of the contributors are European / British and so there isn’t quite the degree of polarized thinking typical of what would be a similar US based debate.
The only problem is that you’re not going to be able to read them all without a subscription (or spending several days between your limited free articles).
This parses to “I was wrong but I wasn’t wrong.” Just sayin’.
I had a far out biopsych professor who believed that people that didn’t fit the general mold, whether it be gender or sexuality, generally gravitated to positions like shaman or other religios authority, where their difference were seen a mark of spirituality. In ancient times.
An interesting way for societies to deal with this issue. It was a way to accept people that were different without really needing to accept them.
What about farmers? Or cops and other conservatives?
Apologies if this was brought up earlier in the thread: I read a portion but not all.
For context, my beliefs are across the board, liberal, libertarian, moderate, conservative depending on the topic. My wife is from Eastern Europe, and has a far more conservative bent. The thing she criticises most about liberals is the PC thing. Certain topics are just not considered without resorting to an approved script, and real communication ends. If somebody is off script, they are often attacked, without considering the content of what they say. Of course both sides have this problem. On the liberal side, these topics are centered around issues that might negatively effect other people, like racism, war or poverty.
She says that life is cruel and sometimes the greater good must be met, even if somebody gets hurt. She says that survival and success have always been earned, in large part through competition, and that this is not inherently wrong. There are always winners and losers, and sometimes losing is based on deficiency rather than blind luck. This is natural. It is worthwhile and necessary to examine, recognize and reject traits of failure.
Woo boy, pretty clear all the ugly places where that can lead, and probably gets to the heart of the Trump presidency. I’m not sure she is wrong though.
Quick edit: we have had plenty of fights about conclusions, especially when it comes to those based on culture or race. End of day though, these fights have helped both of us grow and we are still married after a lot of years.
Those aren’t easy fights to be had, and I glad to hear that you both are still together!
My mother being Dutch and my father being American created a lot of arguments when I grew up with my father having to defend the US, even when he didn’t always agree. It didn’t help that he personally had lived overseas since the 70s.
Things like the death penalty, the lack of universal health care, the poor treatment of the poor, the lack of vacation or protection for workers, the increased tax burden on the poor and middle class instead of the wealthy. You name it, it was argued. She likes to visit her grand kids in the US, but she wouldn’t be able to live here.
Especially when we drove through some of the hardest hit places in the US. A lot of it just doesn’t exist in the Netherlands, at least not to the same extent. It just broke her heart.
This ignores the social constructs that human beings have developed. In Nature there are no ethics. The sick, the old, the injured get left behind for the predators so the others can survive to eat another day. That’s just how Nature works, it’s not in itself cruel. It’s a biological process. (While I say that intellectually I’ve had to look away when those behaviors are shown in nature documentaries.)
And sure, human beings are biological creatures, and the only goal for biological creatures is to reproduce, even if it means removing competition (like lions killing cheetah cubs.) But human beings have qualities that place them outside these biological imperatives. We can reduce everything to a zero sum game (winners and losers) or reduce decisions based on cost-benefit analysis (e.g. “it’s cheaper to kill criminals than keep them incarcerated.”) Modern medicine has largely removed natural selection from the human species. According to your wife, not only is that wrong because the weak have been allowed to live, it’s even worse when they reproduce.
Not really sure how you can understand the ugly side of that position but conclude she’s not wrong.
I assumed he was referring to the below. Which I think is a fairly fundamental view/assumption of classic conservatives (and libertarians), which the Left quite dislikes.
My view is the Left emphasizes bad luck/circumstances over personal effort/deficiency, while the Right goes to the other extreme. If I have to choose one extreme view (on this particular issue), I’d choose the personal-responsibility-over-all-else one.
My view is that in the absence of a debate about whether to blame poor people for their poverty, the left wouldn’t bother affixing blame, they’d just want to do something to help poor people. The debate about who to blame is advanced by people who don’t want to help poor people, which is to say, people on the right.
After all, only people who are not poor think poverty is the fault of the poor, that it is some kind of failure of personal ambition and responsibility.
Emphasis, or simple acknowledges? Keep on mind, social mobility in the US has slipped behind most Western European Nations in the last decade. I only bring that up because of the American Myth of pulling yourself up by the boot strapes that many in the US cling to.
My view on the issue of personal effort is based on my own family’s experiences within the US, and years of experiences outside the US in countries with much weaker social safety nets. The poor everywhere have an ability to lift themselves up relative to where they started. The degree of change may be unsatisfying relative to effort. It certainly is harder or easier in different places due to policy and the local economy, which affect willingness to try. In some places there are also clear cultural differences that can also affect that willingness.
Note that I’m not against programs to help make that effort more worthwhile. In my above post I said which extreme I would choose, if forced.
Given we’re talking about policy in a democracy, that matters.
Both sides are (probably) thankful policy isn’t quite so one sided in democracies.
Yes, that’s almost certainly what’s wrong with the view. Anecdotes make for poor policy proposals.
This is so spectacularly wrong it makes me wonder where you had your years of experience overseas. Switzerland?
Sure, but some views are wrong. It’s nice that people get to air wrong views in a democracy - I’m for that! - but it doesn’t make the views right.
Policy matters, and decades of policy aimed at reducing the rich man’s unwanted tax burden have basically entrenched everyone else in a downward spiral.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/04/21/science.aan3264.full
That’s the trick isn’t it? Took a lot of growth on my part. The threat of breaking up an otherwise loving family is a compelling motivator, and the same efforts to understand were made by her.
Policy details matter, but the point to the post topic I wanted to highlight was what conservatives dislike about democrats.
Ignoring the existence of zero-sum’ish competition is a major one. Of course, we must rise above all that, and the constitution helps there, but not all players will, and best not shy aware from being prepared if you are forced to play that game.
edit: “ignoring the existence” probably isn’t the best phrasing. “Shying away from a discussion of and taking into account when setting policy” is probably better.
I don’t think that can be the right description. It isn’t that one side knows there are always winners and losers and the other doesn’t. Liberal policies to help the losers is an explicit acknowledgment that there are always losers, not an attempt to ignore it.
Hah! For the record I edited the post for that verbiage a good bit before your reply.
As an example, how well does it go over when a conservative says that a person is homeless because they are lazy? Not well. Understandably. Communication will pretty much deteriorate there.
Would there be the same reaction overhearing a parent tell their kid who refuses to lift a finger to help clean the house that they need to work hard in this life if they don’t want to be homeless?
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t total employment lead to spiralling inflation and wreck the ecomony? If that is the case, than we have an obligation to take care of the unemployed, since without them, our system would crash and burn.
Textbook-wise, there’s a trade-off between the inflation rate and the rate of unemployment. This is called the Phillips Curve.
Practically, this has got a bit questionable lately, after the financial crash. But it’s sensible to imagine you need at least some unemployment at any period of time, so that the labour market has some fluidity! (That doesn’t mean those people have to be the same unemployed people through time.)