Author Topic: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable (Read 5009 times)

AGelbert · « **Reply #135 on:** May 27, 2018, 07:58:09 pm »

Quote from: Surly1 on May 27, 2018, 07:12:31 pm

Quote from: agelbert on May 27, 2018, 03:31:41 pm
Quote from: Surly1 on May 27, 2018, 03:21:11 pm
Quote from: Karpatok on May 27, 2018, 01:43:19 pm
I will be 81 in September. When my grandfather died at 75 I was about six years old and I lay on the floor looking at the ceiling and promised myself I would try to get to 100. His wife, my dear grandmother, made 96. That's only one side. The other side, not so lucky. But I do hold to the Meditteranean diet. Ten or even twelve vegetables per day, lots of Caucasus kefir, no red meat, and lots of vitamins. Eschew the confined animal cruelty. Pray and have reverence for a higher power, as AA says. Have respect for life and be part of the natural world. Respect the ancestors who have come before and shown the way. Do not throw away their wisdom for a mess of lentil soup.

There is every chance that you just might make it, particularly with that dietary regime. I hope you do.
But I don't understand what's wrong with lentil soup? I regard a good lentil soup as a thing of beauty.

It's a metaphor about Jacob and his brother. Jacob conned Esau into selling him his inheritance for a bowl of ~~matzo ball~~ lentil soup.

Of course.

Your honesty and noble humility have always been aspects of your personality that I admire greatly.

You sir ✨ , are certainly NOT a dumbass! You are gettin' old, just like the rest of us.

AGelbert · « **Reply #136 on:** May 28, 2018, 03:17:46 pm »

Agelbert NOTE: This is part of a series of posts involving the correct action by Surly to delete a hate fullied post by Palloy.

Quote from: Surly1 on May 28, 2018, 11:15:59 am

Quote from: Eddie on May 28, 2018, 11:12:49 am

If Surly had, he would have owned it and explained why he was doing it, I think. Not sure about RE. He's drugged out of his gourd at the moment, so who knows.

I have made inquires to both RE and Surly about the missing posts. Not sure what happened, but I question whether it was a mod at all. Occasionally comments do disappear completely on this platform and reappear months or even years later.

It was me. One comment was a vicious trolling of RE, and another was ad hom disparaging a poster's religion. Well beyond the bounds of taste and decorum, and I own it fully. With no regrets.

Quote from: Surly1 on May 28, 2018, 12:16:36 pm

Quote from: RE on May 28, 2018, 12:09:49 pm
Quote from: Eddie on May 28, 2018, 11:19:41 am
Thanks.

I'm not second-guessing Surly. I have his back. If he says a post was in violation, I believe him. However, it helps for moderators to give some explanation when they feel the need to delete a comment. Otherwise, things can get confusing.

This is a double-edged sword. To acknowledge you deleted a comment is to invite commentary on the deletion process to begin with. Then you get into the "free speech" debate and "censorship". It also costs you time and energy to defend your reasons for the deletion. The whole purpose of doing this is to NOT get into such debates, they are off the topic at hand. They derail the topic.

I didn't see this posting, although I could go look for it in the DNF file. Once a Mod chooses to delete though, I have no interest in it. It is no longer up for public consumption, for whatever the reason was that the Mod made this decision.

RE

I remain loath to delete any post. And I will tolerate a great deal of opprobrium directed at me. But I hate gratuitous bulling, and cruelty from any vector. And have decided I'm not going to put up with it any longer.

What those who like to snipe never, quite deliberately 😈, want to understand is that First Amendment Free Speech is NOT a libertine's license to hurl gratuitous insults at a person.

The reason for that is that the MOTIVE of said insults is ALWAYS, though the clever person hurling the insult will deny it in perfect sophistic form

, to undermine the credibility of the messenger, NOT to claim disagreement with the message.

THIS is the CRUX of the free speech argument. IF you are disagreeing, it's fine and dandy to say so. BUT, if you are claiming the argument is flawed because the one delivering the argument is an ****, you are NOT exercising free speech and deserve to be DISAPPEARED from civilized discourse.

I have tried for many years to get you, Eddie, to see the difference. I think you do but sometimes you don't want to deal with it. But, at least you are honest about it.

Insults, UNLESS they are blow off "insults" to the person doing the insulting , DO NOT edify those communicating or advance the dialogue, Eddie!

As to certain others here who play the objective saint 😇 some days while refusing to even address their occasional descents into bold faced attack the messenger mode, I am done even addressing these sanctimoneous cretins when they are in attack mode.

Arrogant lack of humilty is not simply unChristian, it is prima facie evidence of IRRATIONALITY. These people LACK objectivity. Listening to said people is stupid.

There are many reasons to keep the destructive poison said people spew from public disourse and NO reason whatsoever to protect their customary hate filled invective. These are people, as Surly indirectly stated in a recent comment, that never grew out of the childish tantrum/playground bully stage.

Everyone knows that the best way to deal with a spoiled brat is to censor their behavior. Some brats grow up and learn to stop that heinous conduct. Some don't. That's their problem.

Allowing them to continue this anti-social destructive critcism rewards this heinous conduct and encourages MORE OF IT!

As a Christian, I often have to remind people that turning the other cheek does not mean feeding a SICK NEED!

AGelbert · « **Reply #137 on:** May 28, 2018, 07:31:32 pm »

TruthDig

MAY 27, 2018 TD ORIGINALS

Teaching ‘Les Misérables’ in Prison

By Chris Hedges

SNIPPET 1:

I spent the last four months teaching Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Misérables” at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey. My students—like Hugo’s main character, Jean Valjean, who served 19 years in prison—struggle with shame, guilt, injustice, poverty and discrimination, and yearn for redemption and transformation. The novel gave them a lens to view their lives and a ruling system every bit as cruel as Hugo’s 19th-century France.

“Les Misérables” was wildly successful when it was published, including among Civil War soldiers in the United States, although Hugo’s condemnation of slavery was censored from Confederate copies. It was American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs’ favorite book—he read it in French. The socialist British Prime Minister Lloyd George said “Les Misérables” taught him more about poverty and the human condition than anything else he had ever read and instilled in him a lifelong ambition “to alleviate the distress and the suffering of the poor.” Hugo’s novel, however, enraged the ruling elites. It was panned by French critics. Copies were burned in Spain. Pope Pius IX

put it on the church’s list of banned books, along with “Madame Bovary” and all the novels of Stendhal and Honoré de Balzac.

SNIPPET 2:

The decision by the bishop to lie on behalf of Valjean triggered an intense debate in my classroom.

“Who would do this?” a student asked.

“No one,” another student answered.

Several students dismissed the scene as improbable.

And then from the back of the room a student, speaking in emotional undertones, told this story.

“I came back to my bunk one day,” he said. “There was a new Bible on it. Inside was a letter. It was from my victim’s sister. She 🕊 wrote, ‘I forgive you. Now you must forgive yourself.’ I broke down. I could be more than a criminal. I could change. She made that possible.”

My students will spend their lives condemned as felons. They, like Valjean, will never completely wash away the mark of Cain. Transformation, even when it occurs, will not free them from the criminal caste system. Transformation must be carried out not for what it will achieve, for often it will achieve nothing, or how it will be perceived, for most of the wider society will not perceive it. Transformation is about making peace with yourself. It is about obeying your conscience, which Hugo equates with the divine. It is about never living at the expense of another. Transformation is about rising above the hatred many feel, with justification, for a society that has betrayed them.

“If you are persecuted for virtue, why be virtuous?” a student asked.

“Those who have nothing need other people,” another student said. “We can’t survive alone. The more we sacrifice for those around us, the more we reduce our collective suffering; the more we recover our humanity, the more people reach out to us when we need help, and we all need help. Goodness is contagious.”

And yet, as my students know, this internal battle is hard and fierce within a society that denies the poor dignity and respect.

“Obscurely he perceived that the priest’s forgiveness was the most formidable assault he had ever sustained,” Hugo wrote of Valjean, “that if he resisted it his heart would be hardened once and for all, and that if he yielded he must renounce the hatred which the acts of man had implanted in him during so many years, and to which he clung. He saw dimly that this time he must either conquer or be conquered, and that the battle was not joined, a momentous and decisive battle between the evil in himself and the goodness in the other man.”

Hugo was aware that there are some who cannot be redeemed. They are incapable of empathy or remorse. They are driven by greed and ambition. They take a perverse joy in inflicting suffering on others. They are capable only of deceit. These people must be kept at bay. In the novel they are represented by Monsieur and Madame Thénardier, “human creatures which, like crayfish, always retreat into shadow, going backwards rather than forwards through life, gaining in deformity with experience, going from bad to worse and sinking into even deeper darkness.”

This cold reality, nevertheless, proved to be a painful one to digest in the classroom. Several students argued passionately that everyone, no matter how depraved, could ultimately be redeemed, and yet the reality of prison, my students conceded, amply illustrates that there are human predators to whom one can never show vulnerability or expect mercy. Fyodor Dostoyevsky described hell as the inability to love. These predators inhabit this hell. This internal hell, a barrenness of the soul, is exemplified in the police inspector Javert, who hounds Valjean throughout the novel. Hugo wrote, “The Austrian peasants believe that in every wolf-litter there is a dog-whelp which the mother kills, because otherwise when it grows larger it will devour the rest of her young. Endow this dog with a human face, and you have Javert.”

Full EXCELLENT article:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/teaching-les-miserables-in-prison/

AGelbert · « **Reply #138 on:** June 08, 2018, 04:37:06 pm »

Quote from: Eddie on June 08, 2018, 03:08:53 pm

Frankly Scarlett, I never liked Charles Krauthammer much. But his story is fairly amazing. Very interesting karma.

He just announced he's got terminal cancer and expects to live only a few weeks. I found this letter he wrote to be extremely courageous. I wish him good luck in his next life, or wherever he's headed.

June 8, 2018

I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months. I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decide on a different course for me.

In August of last year, I underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in my abdomen. That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications which I have been fighting in hospital ever since. It was a long and hard fight with many setbacks, but I was steadily, if slowly, overcoming each obstacle along the way and gradually making my way back to health.

However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned. There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict.

My fight is over. I wish to thank my doctors and caregivers, whose efforts have been magnificent. My dear friends, who have given me a lifetime of memories and whose support has sustained me through these difficult months. And all of my partners at The Washington Post, Fox News, and Crown Publishing.

Lastly, I thank my colleagues, my readers, and my viewers, who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work. I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.

I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life, full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.

Charles Krauthammer

Quote from: Surly1 on June 08, 2018, 04:08:52 pm

Quote from: Eddie on June 08, 2018, 03:08:53 pm
Frankly Scarlett, I never liked Charles Krauthammer much. But his story is fairly amazing. Very interesting karma.

He just announced he's got terminal cancer and expects to live only a few weeks. I found this letter he wrote to be extremely courageous. //

I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life, full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.

Charles Krauthammer[/i]

Me neither. But I agree with your assessment.

Who among us can say that they truly lived the life they intended?

I disagree that a person should feel pride because they lived the life THEY intended (see the Sinatra song: "I did it MY WAY"

).

The only life worth living or being proud of is the life GOD INTENDED for us. Everything else, especially the lack of regrets, is egotistical false pride.

Krauthammer is an erudite person with a good vocabulary who, instead of using his extensive knowledge of human nature to combat injustices, has served evil causes all his life.

His fight, the only fight that actually matters, is just beginning for the remainder of his time here. If he does not repent of his evil, he is HELL TOAST.

AGelbert · « **Reply #139 on:** June 09, 2018, 08:25:03 pm »

I Believe.

https://youtu.be/HMm83YR9cQg

AGelbert · « **Reply #140 on:** June 15, 2018, 06:06:18 pm »

Az:

Quote

McPherson Calls It, Extinction Sept. '18

Quote from: azozeo on June 15, 2018, 01:25:33 pm

https://youtu.be/cFJwkTJuB6I

Az, McPherson is wrong. It Can't be September '18! Superman died on November 18!

Quote from: azozeo on June 15, 2018, 03:27:45 pm

You know someone's come to end of their leash when they start throwing dates at doom.

Guy's gone complete Harold Camping

Guy has often talked about suicide, though he claims he would never do it. However, the fact the he harps so much on his claim that there is NO HOPE, may ultimately cause him to off himself. I hope and pray he does not do this. I hope he just keeps practicing what he preaches about being good and kind to those one cares about.

I've listened to and watched many of his presentations. He tries to be, oh so calm about the threat of extinction (that he thinks is a sure thing). However, I detect an undertone of raging anger at the stupidity of mankind, particulaly TPTB. Guy is VERY angry, though he pretends it's all like water off a duck to him. I don't believe that for a second. It eats at him.

Also, he has a confirmation bias problem that, when these dire predictions DO NOT come to pass on Guy's timetable, might cause him to resist having to admit he was wrong due to excessive pride in his intellectual and analytical powers.

Shutting himself off from any potential solutions is a sure way to get clinically depressed, and dangerously suicidal.

Where there is life, there is hope. Unfortunately, McPherson claims that is not so, due to Confirmation Bias.

AGelbert · « **Reply #141 on:** June 16, 2018, 03:34:43 pm »

Quote from: Eddie on June 15, 2018, 07:39:22 pm

Quote from: azozeo on June 15, 2018, 01:25:33 pm
https://youtu.be/cFJwkTJuB6I

I can believe it will come in September, but I don't think it will be this September.

"It" being an event one could clearly tag as being "the end of industrial civilization".

And even if it is this September, we sure as hell won't be able to confirm that it WAS this September by the first of October, as Guy seems to think.

The collapse is clearly ongoing and incremental. Waterfall events will surely occur that make it more obvious, as time goes on.

As usual. Guy is guessing. He used to be guessing human extinction by 2030 if I remember right. I can believe that more readily than I believe that industrial civilization will collapse this September.

Another case of confirmation bias.

I find myself in the position that I have often found myself over the past few years. I agree with most of the data that shows that collapse is imminent, and that real catastrophic climate change is imminent. But I disagree with Guy's take on timing. And the take of others who think economic disaster will come this year. It is coming, but we have a bit longer to wait.

Not the worst thing, for most of us.

Quote from: azozeo on June 15, 2018, 07:43:51 pm

Well said, however with earth changes on the up tick, we could be in for a bumpy rest of '18.

It appears that there is a lot more human displacement currently. If the hurricane season is huge than
who knows.

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Author Topic: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable (Read 5009 times)

AGelbert

Re: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable

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Re: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable

AGelbert

Re: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable

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