The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: Turbo Ninja on December 07, 2007, 09:37:41 pm
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LINK (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=12072007)
I hope this isn't the end of the arc(s). I was looking forward to all the shenanigans in between yesterday's strip and today's "solution."
Efited to add link, what the hell people.
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Why do people always attack the monitor? The brains are in the box!
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I'm almost never excited by the art in Achewood. It generally works well for the strip, and at times it can do surprising and funny things, but it doesn't really stand on its own. The last panel of today's strip is one of the few images I've seen that I think I would have been impressed with had I never read the strip.
Also, Cornelius and Ray seem to have one thing in common: both are constantly giving themselves treats and just kickin' it. A man who can just stroll around his own house in a smoking jacket with a martini for no special occasion at all has got a few more things figured out about life than me.
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The whomping instrument in the last panel is a cricket bat. In a previous life at a previous college I would join other men in a jeep and hunt for larger ground rodents that needed to be whomped with a cricket bat. The record was held by a young man, now graduated, who whomped a raccoon 8.5 feet on VA route 460.
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OK, never mind A-CAP's politics -- I don't know which is worse, that he beats on defenseless animals or that he thinks that a raccoon is a rodent.
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OK, never mind A-CAP's politics -- I don't know which is worse, that he beats on defenseless animals or that he thinks that a raccoon is a rodent.
I admit to no such thing. And I said they were hunting for rodents, not that a raccoon was a rodent. If anyone here other than wombat can quickly discern a small fuzzy animal from Rodentia or Carnivora orders, they know more about rodentia and carnivora than i do.
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I was hoping that the next few strips would be Cornelius taking out his rage on Nolan with that cricket bat, but since I'm sure Nolan has a subscription to dapper-ursine-authors-beating-you-with-cricket-supplies.com, it would probably lose its vengeance factor and just get creepier. Oh, well.
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I admit to no such thing. And I said they were hunting for rodents, not that a raccoon was a rodent.
So you're friends with people who can't even find proper rodents to whomp when they're looking for them? These kids today, I don't know what the world is coming to.
But as for the strip - Normally I am all worried about poor innocent Philippe but I feel like Cornelius is overreacting here. I mean, a thousand dollars to have dinner and Philippe obviously doesn't even realize the guy is probably using his letters for perverted purposes - I'm not sure I see the problem. Or is the real issue that wealth is making Philippe into kind of a jerk?
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So you're friends with people who can't even find proper rodents to whomp when they're looking for them? These kids today, I don't know what the world is coming to.
But as for the strip - Normally I am all worried about poor innocent Philippe but I feel like Cornelius is overreacting here. I mean, a thousand dollars to have dinner and Philippe obviously doesn't even realize the guy is probably using his letters for perverted purposes - I'm not sure I see the problem. Or is the real issue that wealth is making Philippe into kind of a jerk?
Look at what Philippe told Connie, dude. Connie's mind is running rampant with possibilities. Philippe's simplified statement makes it sound like he is being groomed by a pedophile. I, too, wish to see Connie rockin' Nolan's head with a cricket bat.
Also, the phrase "you've got the cash reserves of a tortilla" is pure comedy gold. I love it.
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The whomping instrument in the last panel is a cricket bat. In a previous life at a previous college I would join other men in a jeep and hunt for larger ground rodents that needed to be whomped with a cricket bat. The record was held by a young man, now graduated, who whomped a raccoon 8.5 feet on VA route 460.
This is why the world needs women. Otherwise, men convince themselves things like this are a good idea.
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I dunno... when I hung out with the dudes, worst we ever did was take stop signs down from intersections.
Note: We never actually took stop signs down from intersections.
I agree with the Mr.-Bear-is-defending-Philippe's-sweet-virgin-ass hypothesis, but I prefer to think of it as him summarily rejecting all of the stupid shit that the Internet makes possible. A five year old otter can earn a thousand dollars for having dinner with a man because of the Internet. You can send pictures of your junk to people in Sri Lanka because of the Internet. White supremacists can make money by having their teenage daughters release hate music because of the Internet. For all of the benefits of the Internet, it certainly does allow a lot of stupid bullshit to continue to exist, and indeed, to prosper.
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I love that when Phillipe comes into a modest sum of money, he immediately transforms into Louis XIV.
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You whomp the monitor, you break it in a way that Phillipe sure as hell can't fix and... that Phillipe can't so easily talk Beef into fixing for him. You know that he'd guilt repair to Beef-fixable things outta Beef in, like, two minutes.
We only took electioneering signs from lawns. We were not partisan, we considered them all equal eyesores in the eyes of The Great Spirit. And by the Great Spirit, I mean "our marijuana high".
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Phillipe's candelabreptre is so cute. Not only can he hit disloyal subjects with it, he can also use it to find his way to the bathroom at night.
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Once again, we see that Cornelius Bear is the fuck*ng man. The guy is a gentleman through and through, but if you endanger his little buddy, he will fuck*ng curb your ass.
But as for the strip - Normally I am all worried about poor innocent Philippe but I feel like Cornelius is overreacting here. I mean, a thousand dollars to have dinner and Philippe obviously doesn't even realize the guy is probably using his letters for perverted purposes - I'm not sure I see the problem. Or is the real issue that wealth is making Philippe into kind of a jerk?
Wombat, what the fuck? I'm very disturbed by your indifference here. I, for one, see the problem quite clearly, as I'm sure everyone else here does. Just imagine your own child in Philippe's place, and maybe then you'll get it.
Compared to the real problem, your hypothesis of money ruining Phillipe is piddling.
I agree with the Mr.-Bear-is-defending-Philippe's-sweet-virgin-ass hypothesis, but I prefer to think of it as him summarily rejecting all of the stupid shit that the Internet makes possible. A five year old otter can earn a thousand dollars for having dinner with a man because of the Internet. You can send pictures of your junk to people in Sri Lanka because of the Internet. White supremacists can make money by having their teenage daughters release hate music because of the Internet. For all of the benefits of the Internet, it certainly does allow a lot of stupid bullshit to continue to exist, and indeed, to prosper.
Jesus, Golfhaus, Cornelius doesn't care about making a symbolic gesture about the human condition. He wants to make sure that Philippe doesn't talk to a pedophile. It's not about the world, it's only about Philippe. It's really, really simple. If there's any second layer, it's that he's angry at himself for not being careful enough with the boy's internet access. You can bet that as soon as he takes care of Nolan, Cornelius will become computer-savvy and put all the necessary precautions in place so that this doesn't happen again.
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I believe I kinda said that, toast.
I agree with the Mr.-Bear-is-defending-Philippe's-sweet-virgin-ass hypothesis, but I prefer to think of it as him summarily rejecting all of the stupid shit that the Internet makes possible.
Yes, I believe he's protecting Philippe. But I WANT to believe that he's so pissed off at what stupidity the Internet promotes that he needed to take a cricket bat to the Internet. Or the nearest physical manifestation of said Internet.
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That's pretty much what I got from it.
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Wombat, what the fuck? I'm very disturbed by your indifference here. I, for one, see the problem quite clearly, as I'm sure everyone else here does. Just imagine your own child in Philippe's place, and maybe then you'll get it.
You know what I realized is, the deal is, this is Achewood. It's going to turn out that this has nothing to do with pedophilia but with some cartoon-cat kind of weirdness that we can't even imagine at this point. And Philippe will have lost his thousand dollar dinners for nothing.
But, I guess since Mr Bear is inside it, he can't see that. So I suppose it would be disturbing.
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The main thing to understand here is that Philippe has always been a jerk.
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The main thing to understand here is that Philippe has always been a jerk.
I feel like there is an age threshold for declaring someone a jerk. He is acting perfectly reasonably for a five year old otter.
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But perhaps this is part of the point...
Little kids are kind of jerks by nature.
They don't understand the idea that anything other than them is real quite enough to not be jerks.
They lack the perspective to not be jerks.
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I mean, I think that means that they are not jerks, then. To me, being a jerk means being conscious of what you are doing, and doing it anyway because you just don't give a shit.
goddamn, I end up having this conversation once a day for like a month now. Mostly with my friend who is really into saying that people are racist, misogynistic, sexist, anti-semitic. and it's always in situations where... the intent is not there at all. I can understand that, as a person of the Jewish faith, she is uncomfortable with public prayer. But I don't think that this means that people who support public prayer are "anti-Semitic." It's not like they're saying "man, let's mention Jesus in a prayer at school. Goddamn, I hate those Jews so much." I think that there is a difference between doing something through ignorance, and through direct intent. To her, there is not this distinction.
She is also just really big on throwing around those labels in general, which pisses me off so much. but I never know enough about the issues she is discussing to debate her intelligently on the matter. She pulls out all these statistics and shit and basically tells me I don't know what I'm talking about. She is also really big on discounting any sort of fact I can pull out because I can't cite where it came from.
I mean, I am also pretty big on giving people the benefit of the doubt. I can put up with a lot of shit from people who are doing their best and don't know any better.
As my high school Latin teacher used to say, "Ignorant" should not imply a moral judgment. It just means you don't know. How can you blame someone for not knowing something?
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Sounds like a swell person to hang out with.
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Well, just to play Diablo's Advocito here, 'Nev...
With the big problems, sometimes you kinda have to let yourself paint with a wide brush because... if you go around understanding all the sides of every issue and sympathizing with even the positions that are entirely wrong...
You never fix anything because you're too worried about hurting someone's feelings.
If a problem is awful enough, sometimes the only way to get it fixed is to disregard the feelings of the willfully ignorant and worry about that all later because the problem is so pressing.
Basically all the failures of the American Left since the middle seventies come down to being SO understanding and SO non-judgemental and SO fair and SO meaningful-dialoguey that... anyone with any ability to run a con whatsoever can slow them down for years and years, just be pretending to be hurt.
You can't be neutral on train rushing inexorably in one direction, you know.
If there's an elephant and an ant, to be "un-biased" is to be biased toward the elephant because it's a fuck*ng elephant and has nearly all the advantages to begin with.
Now, I am fairly sure that from the way you describe her ideology... her arguement comes not from understanding when to transcend nuance but rather from a naive inability to SEE nuance but... sometimes that attitude is worth more than being frozen out from real action BY nuance.
Perhaps you and her can find a middle ground, between your c*ck and her pu$$y.
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I dunno. I think a lot of it is that now that I am pissed off by it, I purposely get into conversations with her about things that I know will make her say dumb things so that I can call her out on it.
It's like poking at a cut in your mouth with your tongue.
I have a tendency to do this. This is how I made my first two girlfriends start hating me. It's a problem I have. Also, once I start thinking this way about a person, I have a tendency to misunderstand what they are saying in a way which makes them sound even more radical and ridiculous.
LFM, considering which specific girl it is, it is funny that you are saying I should pursue her sexually.
I would actually argue the opposite. I feel like the problem with liberals in this country, especially the ones who tend to be in college, is that they are really big on painting people they oppose with a wide brush. A lot of the social conservatives I know are, on some level, reacting against a movement which constantly tells them that they are racist, sexist, bigoted assholes. "Change what you think. The way you have been raised has made you incapable of not being racist." This is not a way to convince people, it's a way to brow-beat them into mindlessly agreeing with you, and then thinking that they're not racist because they support Obama or have joined in in condemning all use of "The N Word" or whatever. And then you get a bunch of douchebags reacting to this, saying "I know this isn't PC, but... (something unacceptable and broadly racist)."
It's no different from browbeating people into supporting you because you are Standing Strong against terrorism. It's no different from accusing liberals of hating America and supporting the terrorists.
I don't know. I don't think that trying to understand people is a weakness. It's really all we have. Intelligence, ingenuity, perseverence-- all can lead to destruction. Trying to understand another human being? Never.
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Understanding is the best thing. The best thing in the world.
But... inaction based on that understanding is one of the worst things in the world.
That's what I'm saying in terms of the difference between understanding nuance and being able to know when to transcend it because of the greater good.
How many times do people try to defend Christofascism, for example, by saying that respecting other faiths or a lack of faith is a slap in their face and... how many good liberals wanting to be understanding of everyone get frozen in place because they don't know how to go forward without hurting ANYONE'S feelings?
That's the whole bag behind Fox News always having a weak-willed liberal on their panels to make fun of.
It's very easy for The Bastards, whoever they are this week, to prevent or slow whatever action is against them this week by pointing out a little way that Men and Women of Good Conscience might be hurting a few people a little in pursuit of the greater good and... buying the time to create a new Bastard Lie.
Framing it so that... in Good Conscience trying to end a terrible pointless war... they point out that you might slightly demoralize the Americans that are being slaughtered by the carload in the act of getting them out of the slaughterhouse and...
Too many People of Good Conscience get stuck running circles in their minds, trying to figure out some kind of impossible scenario where everybody wins in every way and... the Bastards have bought time to evade again, to slip through the hands of justice again and et cetera.
As bad as it was that some veterans of Vietnam were ridiculed upon coming home... and as much as The Bastards point to that to defend the war against the Iraqi people... part and parcel of that ridicule was the forces that also got them home alive.
Sometimes the Idiot Firebrands get it right because... at least they're screaming, at least they're yelling, at least they're trying to get ideas out there, even if they're flawed... for the same reason why it made sense for Spock to kill himself in the warp core.
The immediate needs of the many sometimes trump the feelings of a few.
Where wisdom comes in is figuring out WHERE to be an Idiot Firebrand and WHERE to be some half-life Solomon, trying to parse out a fully-equitable solution.
Also:
I was simply suggesting that you have sex with... a girl. You mentioned a girl and so I suggested you have sex with her. Your self-destructive tendency toward overthinking matters of the heart requires some sort of action, even a half-bad action, to move forward.
Actually, it fits the same political/cultural theory I'm talking about above.
That's... that's kind of rad. I must be really awesome, despite myself.
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Can I step in? I don't want to get in the way of all the sloppy kisses, but I can't stay out of this. It's too sexy.
I think there is middle ground here. Ignorance takes many forms, some of them willful and deliberate (e.g. "those damn homos are all alike" or "Mexican men come to this country to steal our jobs and our women") and some are genuine lack of adequate information (e.g. "he's autistic? Is he going to grow up to be like Rain Man?" or "You're from Lebanon, shouldn't you be in a mosque praying right now?"). People who haven't had much exposure to people outside their own cultural groups can't be expected to be PC all the time. Their prejudices might offend people, but in the grand scheme of things, they aren't really causing lasting harm.
But I think our legislature should protect the civil rights of people who are a minority in this country, within the boundaries of those things which are actually rights and not just hard feelings. ("Rights" being things like life, liberty, purfuit of happineff, as well as those pesky trivial details like due process and equal treatment under the law.) People are going to be jerks, and jerks have a right to be here too. Besides which, some people are born jerks, some achieve jerkiness, and some have jerkiness thrust upon them. It's not our call. All we can do as enlightened people is teach our children well and try to make the jerks feel a little bad about being such jerks all the time. Legislation for the big stuff, social pressure for the rest.
But then, that's me -- big-goverment, socially-conservative freak of nature that I am -- with waaaay to much faith in humanity.
So feel free to pick this apart from both sides. I'm prepared for that.
Just...be gentle. It's been a while since I've been tag-teamed on a political debate.
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oh, no, I am saying that this specific girl was someone you told me to get the hell away from.
There is a difference between Understanding and knee-jerk sympathy. I refuse to believe that understanding what makes people tick, how they think, what motivates them, can ever be bad. This is our strength. What would the point be of "winning" if in winning we lose our understanding? We end up with a nation of people who say "there's no difference between blacks and whites" without understanding what that means-- there is no difference because everyone is different. Judging any person, of any race, based on anything other than knowing them is impossible. But do we teach our children this? To understand people as individuals, and not as members of some group or ethnicity? Not really. We've just shifted from a society that judged people based on race to one that pretends not to.
Browbeating people into agreeing with you, without attempting to understand them, without teaching them the same skill, is worthless. I would think that you, of all people, would realize this. Browbeating people into agreeing with you about Tolerance, about Love and Fraternity, is impossible. In the majority of cases, the options seem clear-- trying to understand the problem, trying to teach people, trying to further the human cause, or refusing to understand, refusing to understand-- not only refusing to understand, but painting those who try to as america-haters, homosexuals, drug-users, terrorists, and communists. Do we wage a "war on drugs" in Columbia, or do we provide treatment options for addicts? Do we put inner-city kids in jail for having half a gram of coke, or do we address the issues in society which create the "drug issue?" To me, it seems like there is only one reasonable option.
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Phillipe's candelabreptre is so cute. Not only can he hit disloyal subjects with it, he can also use it to find his way to the bathroom at night.
Either that or he's like the bishop from Battle Chess. That guy would use his flaming cross staff to set other pieces on fire.
But anyway, panel one wins.
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Judging any person, of any race, based on anything other than knowing them is impossible. But do we teach our children this? To understand people as individuals, and not as members of some group or ethnicity? Not really. We've just shifted from a society that judged people based on race to one that pretends not to.
Goodness. I don't know if it's the late hour or what, but this seems like an important realization. How many people do I know who would preface some remarkably racist thing with a comment such as, "not that I'm racist, but..."
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Wow, 187 Posts!
Whoa! Is so cool.
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No undercover cops around here, are there?
Alright then.
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If there is one area in which I think we need to do whatever the fuck we can, regardless of any sort of actual understanding being reached, it is in the case of the environment. On friday, between reading Rousseau who is telling me that all of society is based on the exploitation of the poor, writing a film paper about how greatly modern society has failed the working class, and my human ev professor giving a lecture about how fucked we are in the next 20-50 years... I decided that maybe a good use of my life would be to become an eco-terrorist. I am still not sure that that isn't the best solution.
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If there is one area in which I think we need to do whatever the fuck we can, regardless of any sort of actual understanding being reached, it is in the case of the environment. On friday, between reading Rousseau who is telling me that all of society is based on the exploitation of the poor, writing a film paper about how greatly modern society has failed the working class, and my human ev professor giving a lecture about how fucked we are in the next 20-50 years... I decided that maybe a good use of my life would be to become an eco-terrorist. I am still not sure that that isn't the best solution.
Jesus Christ. Id say something about why this is reason people think the american university system is mindwashing people into far left liberals without ever giving the other side of the story, but it would inevitably lead to LFM trying to have make outs with me in the form of a 3 page post.
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I would say that... you just said that thing.
I mean. Rousseau is one of the great minds of modern political thought. we also read Hobbes, Locke, Plato, and Machiavelli. All sides were represented. The sum of reading all of these is that I agree with Rousseau, because all of the other ones based their theories on things which I fundamentally disagreed with. They all had a lot of interesting things to say, but for a variety of reasons I agree the most with Rousseau.
The film class is specifically about Italian Neorealism, which is generally about how much life (in post-war Italy) blew, to put it bluntly. There is not really an alternative view on that. That is what the films are about, and the way I chose to interpret them was not a critical one, as I agreed with most of what they were saying.
As for the environmental stuff, it's all science. This is not a political issue. We have fucked up the world, and it is only getting worse.
In all of these cases, there is not an "other side of the story."
The other side of the story in the first case, is other stuff that we also read in that class.
The other side of the story in the second case would be, I guess, "fascism was awesome for italy, no one got fucked on that deal. Kids starving rules."
The other side of the story in the third case is "LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING!"
I mean, do you learn about how great Communism is in your economics classes?
I think maybe LFM and A-CAP and I should start a new forum where we just have three-ways. Sorry guys.
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I dunno, man, I've been a far left liberal since I was twelve... college had nothing to do with it at all. If anything, while I was attending a rich man's college as a child of the bottom of the middle class, they tried to pull me to the middle except that I did not relent.
He wants to make the world a better place, he wants everyone to hurt less. If that's wrong, man, I don't wanna be right. Good thing it isn't wrong.
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Also, i feel like the fact that college-educated people do not tend to be so very liberal belies your point.
I went to a high school where everyone's parents went to college, and none of them seemed very far-left at all.
The people in power in this country went to college, and I don't see a lot of far-left policies in effect.
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Jesus Christ. Id say something about why this is reason people think the american university system is mindwashing people into far left liberals without ever giving the other side of the story,
This isn't the most appropriate forum, but this just popped into my head and needed airing:
There is no 'Other Side' in science. There is right and there is wrong and there are controls up the wazoo so you can tell the difference.
Get your politics out of my science popular media!
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To be fair, in some cases there are legitimate alternative theories. But as far as I can tell, the "alternative theories" of this issue are complete stretches, and politically motivated. He told us, actually, that he is tired of arguing about Global Warming and whether it's a hoax by the left, and it's more productive to talk about deforestation, massive overpopulation, growing energy demands, shrinking availability of drinking water, increasing rate of extinctions, etc.
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As for the environmental stuff, it's all science. This is not a political issue. We have fucked up the world, and it is only getting worse.
I mean, do you learn about how great Communism is in your economics classes?
Greenpeace, Al Gore, and the like aren't science at all, thats politics.
No, we don't learn about how great communism is, nor do we learn how great anything is for that matter. We learn economics. Different schools will stress different things, but in the end the data are there for your own interpretation. Which is also my response to Doc.
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All I have to say is this:
it would inevitably lead to LFM trying to have make outs with me in the form of a 3 page post.
It takes two for sloppy makeouts, dude. You are getting into it at least as much as LFM. LFM's just more energetic.
If you're gonna do it, put your whole tongue into it!
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To be fair, in some cases there are legitimate alternative theories. But as far as I can tell, the "alternative theories" of this issue are complete stretches, and politically motivated. He told us, actually, that he is tired of arguing about Global Warming and whether it's a hoax by the left, and it's more productive to talk about deforestation, massive overpopulation, growing energy demands, shrinking availability of drinking water, increasing rate of extinctions, etc.
My take on the global warming thing is that I hear enough conflicting information to be left in the middle. In the end, I believe that yes the earth is getting warmer. Yes greenhouse gas levels are rising. But I think the way people are going about the response is kind of misled.
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Well, yeah. But it's politics based on science. What my professor told us were facts and figures. The human population has doubled since the 60s. It will probably gain that number of people again in the next... 30 years I think? There isn't enough space on the planet, even if all of it was arable land, to support that many people. Much less if a large portion of us (the western world) continue living the way we do. Some of these figures, he put in perspective. Hunter-gatherer groups, on average, live at a density of about 1 person per 2 square miles. Obviously, they live in a village, but the amount of land they control and subsist off of is proportional to that figure. Currently, we are at a population density of 112 per square mile. And the majority of us use a hell of a lot more resources than a hunter-gatherer.
The data is still there. You can say it's all politics all you want, interpret it however you want. But the numbers don't lie. And right now they're pointing in one direction, and we're all just plugging away happily ignoring them.
PS guys, A-CAP and I can take this to IM/PM if y'all don't want to deal with the makeouts.
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When you follow the money back, though, on the "conflicting information", it always ends up funded by people who are profiting off the status quo and fighting like hell to keep the shared reality in a fashion that is maximally profitable to those people.
You're the economist, follow the money backwards and the conflicting information is nearly always disinformation to protect some kind of economic monopoly that is threatened by the actual truth.
I mean, that's my whole problem with unfettered large-scale corporatist forms of capitalism... there comes a critical mass size for all kinds of businesses where the power of competition breaks down and they function under the weight of their own pre-existing power... not innovation, not competition...
Just throwing itself around like a bull in a china shop under the momentum of some long-ago successes.
The energy industry is such an entrenched juggernaut that it can use its capital to try and squash legitimate competition before it can even begin to spring forth, you see. Competition and all that lovely sounding stuff has broken down and they can hire out people to try and prevent the kind of competition that created their industry to begin with.
There must be a check against it. If academia is the possible check against this particular ensconced monopoly, that prevents competition with the global-warming idea, then academia is a lovely thing... Adam Smith's Invisible Hand long ago washed itself on the matter.
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PS guys, A-CAP and I can take this to IM/PM if y'all don't want to deal with the makeouts.
I stepped out for a cigarette without my keys. Im locked out until 4AM. I blame it on global warming, or el nino, or janet reno, one of those.
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As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it.
It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy self-interest of profit, and through softness and love of luxuries that personal services are replaced by money payments. Men surrender a part of their profits in order to have time to increase them at leisure. Make gifts of money, and you will not be long without chains. The word finance is a slave's word, unknown to citizens. In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means of money; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from taking the common view: I hold enforced labour to be less opposed to liberty than taxes.
The better the constitution of a State is, the more do public affairs encroach on private in the minds of the citizens. Private affairs are even of much less importance, because the aggregate of the common happiness furnishes a greater proportion of that of each individual, so that there is less for him to seek in particular cares. In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one is interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the general will will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-absorbing. Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "Why should I care?" the State is dead.
Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards, and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void — is, in fact, not a law. The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them.
The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government, from that iniquitous and absurd system which degrades humanity and dishonours the name of man. In ancient republics and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the word itself was unknown. It is very singular that in Rome, where the tribunes were so sacrosanct, it was never even imagined that they could usurp the functions of the people, and that in the midst of so great a multitude they never attempted to pass on their own authority a single plebiscitum. We can, however, form an idea of the difficulties caused sometimes by the people being so numerous, from what happened in the time of the Gracchi, when some of the citizens had to cast their votes from the roofs of buildings.
I am resisting just quoting whole chapters, here. Rousseau, where have you been all my life.
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LFM-style post coming up:
To be fair, in some cases there are legitimate alternative theories.
See the thing is 'alternative theories' in a scientific environment are what they sound like: Theories, not fact. Where scientists and the general public seem to get their wires crossed is that when a scientist reports their findings they expect other scientists to tear strips out of it and demand that other experiments be done to prove that these results mean what you are saying they mean (we call this process 'peer review' and it's ever so much fun) but whenever you read a mainstream news article about a published paper they act like this is the final word on the subject and no more investigation needs to be done.
The reason that scientists would never be so cavalier is that every real scientist lies awake some nights in terror that tomorrow they are going to do the one test that tosses their whole pet theory out the window and that will be that. The whole system of peer-review in scientific journals is based on the idea that scientists are people who can get things wrong and not account for all the variables, and since getting into peer reviewed journals is basically how a scientist manages to have a career they do not generally say 'X causes Y, that is the end of it and I will accept no other answer'.
Anyway my longwinded point is this: there are alternative theories, but there is only one fact of reality. A scientist is not employed to come up with theories, they are employed to find the truth. People talking about science get caught up waving these theories at each other like holy writ while real scientists are getting down to business trying to determine which theory better explains observed results. At the end of the day a scientist might have one pet theory but they'd never try to hold it up in the face of good experimental evidence that says otherwise.
Because theories are theories and fact is fact.
This is why 90% of science journalism is complete BS by the way, but that's another long, long rant.
Edit: that is a bitching quote inev. I should get some more culture into me so I could break out that kind of shit on a whim.
Double Edit: It should be noted that I'm a young RA, fresh out of honours so my world-view might be tinchy little bit more idealistic than someone who has actually been a working scientist for say, about as long as I've been able to talk.
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oh, see, I am writing a paper about this guy right now. He is so good. Except for some places, where he just makes really weird assumptions that i don't like.
I completely understand the theories thing. I'm just saying that in some cases, there are multiple explanations of the data, and it is not clear which one better conforms yet.
All of the examples I can think of are from the social sciences, so, I will just refrain. That's just a whole 'nother can of worms. I really want to take the Philosophy of Science class that one of my professors teaches eventually. he is so cool. He has a PhD in philosophy, and then some kind of graduate degree in neuroscience. He alternates rapidly between "What is a Person? What is the self?" and talking about such as the way cellular mechanisms in neurons create (blah blah blah). So basically he is either being really out-there and confusing, or really nitty-gritty and confusing. And then, you know, there's the moment where he whips out some perfect metaphor, and I go "aha" and understand it. Or at least, mostly understand.
I think there was, at some point in my education, a point where I started finding the idea that there are theories which can be proven to be a lot more appealing. I am not sure when this happened.
I have become so much less of a lit person. I am still not good at being skeptical, though. I am so credulous, it is a thing among my friends to make fun of me for it. On the other hand, they're so skeptical of everything that we can't even have fruitful conversations.
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I'm not even sure what I was really trying to say there anymore. But don't be down on yourself because you think you're credulous, the only real difference between saying 'That's so awesome, show me how it works.' and 'That's bullshit, prove it.' is that the credulous guy is happier.
I completely understand the theories thing. I'm just saying that in some cases, there are multiple explanations of the data, and it is not clear which one better conforms yet.
I totally get that, my angle is that people put too much importance on this theory or that theory. In the end only one of them will be right (or more likely, none of them will be completely right) so it seems more productive to focus on actually finding out what the truth is rather than being all rah rah behind a particular theory.
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Also it really blows my mind when people are able to jump disciplines like that, it's cool that they can bring together fairly disparate types of thinking.
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it isn't great, though, when I show people this cool article and they all laugh at me for thinking that it is serious. Granted, in at least a few of those times, I still think that they were just being dicks. In one case, I was informed that the article I had sent someone couldn't possibly be taken seriously, because it had a misspelled word. It was a summary of someone else's article, in bullet points, but god forbid something slip past the spell-checker. It's not like it was even saying anything radical-- I believe it was about the placebo effect as it relates to Acupuncture. He had said that he thought he'd read somewhere that there was evidence that there were other reasons that it worked, and I said "no, it's the placebo effect, check this article out." They spelled it Meridien instead of Meridian, and so obviously the whole article was a bunch of crock.
I enjoyed a lot, then, when our professor mentioned the site like 3 days later, as an example of a good site to check out for refutation of this dumb pseudo-science article that came out. (the one from a month or so ago, where some lame guy was saying that in 1000 years all men will have big dicks, all women will have big breasts, everyone will be "coffee-colored" and immune to AIDS, obesity, etc.)
yeah, this professor is going places in a major way. he is so rad. His book (http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Brain-Carl-F-Craver/dp/0199299315) that just came out is nominated for some big award, I think. Also, he's going up to some town in Canada next semester to do research on this amnesic patient, possibly based on stuff we've discussed in our class? So cool. Is such cool guy.
I know I have mentioned this multiple times, but I basically have a crush on some level or another on every professor I have this semester. I am not looking forward to next semester, when several of the people I am supposed to have are not great. Damn you, major requirements.
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Like I say man, people who are skeptical like that are just idiots with their default set to 'no' instead of 'yes'. Not that I am calling your friends idiots... much.
Was the article on badscience.net? If not you should check it out, that dude can write himself up a storm.
Also you should totally take that philosophy of science course. Biggest problem in science is communication so the more literary dudes like your good self we can rope into thinking about that stuff the better.
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yes, that was the site.
I feel the need to say, I really like Rousseau when he says stuff like in that quote I posted... and I like him less when I write a paper about him where I end up saying that he would have liked the Fugitive Slave Law. He didn't like slavery, but was really into the idea that the Majority has to be obeyed, and that if you find yourself in the minority in a popular vote on a law, you have to realize that you are wrong. There is so much I like in here, and so much that I really really dislike.
All of these political theory guys, though, say that a vote is best for deciding things-- once the population is properly educated, so that they always make the right decision. Rousseau, though, also goes on a weird thing about how the majority is always right anyway, but sometimes later if they change their minds then they were wrong, but right at the time... and you have to teach them to see things in the right way, but they're right even if they don't see them in the right way, so you still have to obey the will of the majority... and then he says that if you force someone to conform to the laws of society, you are really only "forcing them to be free." Because if people only followed the laws they liked, we would go back to being exploited by the powerful? I have read this section a dozen times, and I still do not think that it makes sense. We talked about it in class, and I thought I understood it then, but...
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I think I get the general idea but it does seem a tad wacky. There again I've always had a little trouble with the idea of absolute morality. I mean, there are things I'd never do and that are absolutely wrong to me but I've always felt that morality comes from within a person and so the idea of a majority saying 'you are wrong' to an individual is kind of odd.
Then again I'm not exactly against locking murderers up or anything but I'm generally for laws with a practical purpose rather than a moral one.
Having re-read your post I guess you're talking about right and wrong in a more specific sense than a moral one huh? Just ignore me, it's 10pm and I'm still at work, ain't nothing I say going to make sense tonight.
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he, on some weird level, thinks that the Majority always makes the correct decision. The decision in the best interest of all, the decision which everyone should follow. That is my understanding, at least.
It's 6:20 AM, and I am at the point of doing calculations of... if I guess on every question on my Human Ev exam, I will get around a 65% in the class. This is, obviously, not acceptable, so I am now at the point of deciding to stay up all night studying, rather than going to sleep now for a few hours. I know he's going to end up curving it, and I know that I probably know more than I think. But right now I feel like I don't know any of it, and he's going to ask questions that are all
"I was discovered in the Koobi Fora formation in Kenya, and am an important specimen of Homo erectus"--
A. KNM-ER 1813 B. "Lucy" C. KNM-ER 1470 D. KNM-ER 3733
What was the average cranial capacity of Homo erectus?
a. 950-1100 CC b. 850-950 CC C. 1000-1150 CC d. specimens have been found in all of these ranges
The second one is kind of an exaggeration, but... kind of depressingly not. I am so bad at memorizing these things.
I figure, when I finish the exam, I will have been up for exactly 24 hours. That's not so bad, and I can sleep for as long as I want after that. Maybe I'll sleep for a few hours in a while.
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I at least, after being stuck for twenty minutes in a hallway in which all doors require security cards (including the one leading out) and not having a security card have escaped to my home and am partaking of delicious pepsi cola.
I'd be more worried about that first one. Damn it's been a long time since I sat an exam.
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Wow. These threads are why I hang here. Or at least lurk here...
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Who's the asswipe who forgot to include a link to the strip in the first post of this thread?
Me. Sorry. I blame the mid-day update.