The state of affairs described in the February 2007 UNICEF report - that the UK is the worst place in the industrialised world to bring up children has its origins in both parents being in full-time employment, ie working mums. (I wonder if I will be condemned by every feminist in this land just for saying so!)
Most mothers believe that bringing up children is sufficient work and do not want any more. There are some who want everything and have the energy and competence to combine having well-brought up children with a successful career. Most of us are only human and only want the kind of work we can cope well with, and then not too much of it either. I suggest, as a woman, that the problem is to do with women wanting to have it all and who believe they can become Shirley Conran's SUPERWOMAN just by reading the book. More sensible and less “career-ambitious” women do not have this aspiration and do not enjoy being sneered at by working mums with careers who think that their income-generating work makes them by definition superior and more fulfilled than unpaid stay-at-home mums. Anti-gender discrimination has not helped this state of affairs.
Who, as an employer, wants to provide crèche facilities and have women complaining about sexual harassment and sex discrimination and being occasionally compelled to give maternity benefits to suddenly pregnant and unmarried mothers?
Who, as a mother, thinks dragging her toddler into work in the rush hour on the tube is a perk of working motherhood?
Have we all been mad so long we have forgotten the causes of our distress?
THE VOICE OF REASON Solon, (born c. 630 BCE—died c. 560 BCE), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece (the others were Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Periander of Corinth). Solon ended exclusive aristocratic control of the government, substituted a system of control by the wealthy, and introduced a new and more humane law code. He was also a noted poet.
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29 comments:
Thats right, its the womens fault.
Of course some mothers work because they have to. Either because they have low income and need two to make looking after children viable or because the father has fucked off.
It is rubbish to be a child in this country because:
1.you are given no respect
2.you seldom leave your house due to safety fears
3. if you do and you are noisy all adults will be very negative towards you and see you as a "hoodie" who needs an ASBO stuck on them.
4. Education is based only on preparing children to be workers and is constantly bombarding kids with assessment from reception upwards.
5. There is no sense of communal responsibility towards the children within society.
6. Parents work ridiculously long hours.
7. Connectedly, children spend longer inside being educated, their "working days" are lengthened.They also start school earlier than anywhere else in Europe.
8. we have terrible attitudes towards food and what food is served is restricted again by the time constraints of the working week.
9. Advertising is marketed with increasing ferocity at children.
10. Child poverty is rife.
11. we are scared of children.
12. children can see that they have no hope, no future, that politics doesn't care about them, that adults don't care about them, that the world is in a pretty sorry state. They are also aware of how powerless they are to do anything about it. It is understandable that they become more and more apathetic and nihilistic and turn towards computer games, TV, drugs, sex, booze, to numb themselves towards this world that offers nothing to them.
There are a lot of other reasons why kids are having a bad time in this country, and maybe the lack of parents who spend time with them, is one of them. Perhaps people think to much of childhood as their right and not as a responsibility that they take on.
But you can't blame working mothers for the results of the UNICEF report, there are working mothers in most if not all other countries in the industrialized world!!
http://www.myspace.com/themiddleclassbastards
= modern day protest songs?
http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/2006/12/funny-world.html
and
http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/2006/12/fear-of-youth.html
expand on my feelings about kids today.
Well, these single never-married mums shouldn’t have babies with fathers who fuck off, should they? Maybe they should consider doing something that is now practically unheard of: KEEPING THEIR KNICKERS ON FOR A CHANGE!
How about that for a new idea on How Not To Ruin Your Life???
As for it being rubbish to be a child, it is probably just as rubbish to be a parent, or to be married. All I am trying to do is suggest a better way of doing things, after apportioning the blame, which we all share, even the ones who just put up with it unthinkingly and uncomplainingly share the blame of being stupid and not making the connection between cause and effect.
I am of course referring to our political system and laws which encourages stupidity and stupid people to the detriment of society in general.
However, as has been said before: "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain!"
Since I do not believe in God or gods, I have taken on the task of contending (probably in vain) against this ineradicable human pastime of being stupid.
Stupidity is not a concept that I subscribe to. It is just a mean way of dismissing whole areas of existence.
Laws can be stupid, people I am much less sure of.
You are blaming women for men leaving them. How stupid of you!!
What about single-once married mothers? Or widows? I don't agree in anyway with your dismissal of many women who bring up their children the best they can and have lives, which like most peoples, do not work out as they hoped or expected. But even if I was to countenance your rejection of these women it doesn't apply to many other women, like the ones I just mentioned, who are also single mothers (or men for that matter.)
Keeping your knickers on is a stupid thing to expect people to do. It is not particularly new , children born out of wedlock, accidentally etc... It's been happening throughout history. ultimately we are just animals and have animal drives and evolutionary urges.
You cannot police desire, though of course better education and a society that encourages respect between men and women, would help.
You must understand that when you dismiss single, un-married mothers you dismiss my little sister. She is one of the best mothers I have ever met and her child has a lovely life. She is also someone who plans her life round her child and is determined to be a mother first and an income generator second.
Many mothers feel like this.
My sisters life is in fact very much unruined, it is enriched and perhaps, contrary to what I myself expected, her getting pregnant as a teenager was the best thing that could have happened to her. It gave her something to believe in, purpose and also helped her to understand and respect others and to receive respect herself. Obviously I am not advocating this as some sort of applicable solution to how shit it is to be young.
It is for many rubbish to be married or a parent, and arguably children have less constraints on them than adults. But in terms of rights and respect and public perception it is much worse to be a child. An illegal immigrant or a homeless person, or a prostitute have things worse, obviously, but to be a kid still sucks.
If parental responsibility was shared between genders properly bringing up children would be easier, as would having adequate working hours that are flexible for both dads and mums to do there other, more important work, better.
“Stupidity is not a concept that I subscribe to. It is just a mean way of dismissing whole areas of existence.”
Not sure what you mean by that.
”Laws can be stupid, people I am much less sure of.”
Er, laws do not make themselves. People make, enforce, obey or break them!
”You are blaming women for men leaving them. How stupid of you!!”
How so? Obviously, if a relationship does not work out, it means that the couple in question were not meant to me, or could not work out their problems, or should not have been in a relationship in the first place. OK, put it another way: the person who did not want to be left was doing something wrong or chose the wrong partner, or they would not have been abandoned.
”What about single-once married mothers? Or widows? I don't agree in anyway with your dismissal of many women who bring up their children the best they can and have lives, which like most peoples, do not work out as they hoped or expected. But even if I was to countenance your rejection of these women it doesn't apply to many other women, like the ones I just mentioned, who are also single mothers (or men for that matter.)”
I am talking mainly about parents who never bothered with marriage before having a child and perhaps those who divorce for what are to my mind trivial reasons.
”Keeping your knickers on is a stupid thing to expect people to do. It is not particularly new , children born out of wedlock, accidentally etc... It's been happening throughout history. ultimately we are just animals and have animal drives and evolutionary urges.”
What I am saying is that we should learn to control our urges or we could get into trouble. Are you saying we should just do what we feel like all the time? Is that not a recipe for anarchy?
”You must understand that when you dismiss single, un-married mothers you dismiss my little sister. She is one of the best mothers I have ever met and her child has a lovely life. She is also someone who plans her life round her child and is determined to be a mother first and an income generator second.
Many mothers feel like this.”
I know many single mothers who have the best of intentions. Let us just see what their children turn into. It is a statistical fact that children who do not have fathers are more likely to underachieve and that is really the problem I am talking about here. These underachieving children eventually drag the rest of society down.
“My sisters life is in fact very much unruined, it is enriched and perhaps, contrary to what I myself expected, her getting pregnant as a teenager was the best thing that could have happened to her. It gave her something to believe in, purpose and also helped her to understand and respect others and to receive respect herself.”
It is really too early to judge the success or otherwise of your sister’s life. The final account can only be rendered on the final day of our lives! Sorry to be morbid, but it is an inescapable fact of life and death.
“It is for many rubbish to be married or a parent, and arguably children have less constraints on them than adults. But in terms of rights and respect and public perception it is much worse to be a child. An illegal immigrant or a homeless person, or a prostitute have things worse, obviously, but to be a kid still sucks.”
I don’t think being a child is really as hellish as you claim and know a few children who seem to me to be perfectly happy.
”If parental responsibility was shared between genders properly bringing up children would be easier, as would having adequate working hours that are flexible for both dads and mums to do there other, more important work, better.”
The father discharges his role as breadwinner, the mother looks after the home and children. Is that not shared parental responsibility too? Economists would call this allocation of labour “specialisation”!
I disagree with you in all these areas so fundamentally that it isn't worth bothering to get involved in why you are wrong. You are, but clearly you will not see it.
So instead I will agree with you on the one thing you said that I can connect to: Namely that many children are happy. I do not mean to suggest that happy childhoods don't happen. Though I would say that your chance of a happy childhood is effected by three things, you're class, you're parents ability to create a happy home life and you're ability to fit in to a school environment.
Childhood can be great for a lot of kids. What I was saying (pretty clearly I think) was that children have far less rights than anyone else in society.
Lots of people see that as a good thing, believing that children shouldn't have rights as rights are something that you achieve through maturity.
I don't feel that way.
I also don't think staying together in a marriage is always a good thing. Many relationships are abusive and/or full of misery and tension. Take it from me, exposure to such marriages does not give the children happy childhoods.
Also when arguing with someone who would, when pressed, be forced to admit that they are an anarchist, you achieve nothing by saying "Is that not a recipe for anarchy?".
And before you start with all those tired things about anarchy and why it is wrong, make sure that you are actually talking about what anarchists want. Anarchy is a rejection of the standard order but it doesn't dismiss the need to rebuild a new society that is not based on power structures afterwards.
Don't worry I am not a hopeful anarchist. I don't believe my utopia to be achievable and I certainly don't believe it to be something that should be forced into existence through any sort of violent methods.
and to explain the stupidity thing:
I don't believe in the validity of the concept of stupid or intelligent. I certainly don't think any of our systems that measure intelligence have any validity. Everyone has different strengths and different weaknesses. To say someone is stupid is to say they are lesser to say someone is intelligent is to say they are higher. But people are not > than or < than sums. They are people.
When I say you can have stupid laws, perhaps I should say, stupid acts, people can do stupid things but they are never stupid in their essence.
But I agree its an ambiguous and often hypocritical area, that is why after dismissing stupidity I made the joke: "You are blaming women for men leaving them. How stupid of you!!"
So you are saying that a child should have the same rights as adult, even though it has no responsibilities?
Growing up with warring parents gives you an insight into the reality of marriage. It is children whose parents never argue in front of them who seem to think that quarrelling with your spouse means that your marriage is doomed.
You appeared to be saying earlier that sex is natural and therefore we should all have sex with no thought of the consequences, ie babies, with the wrong person at the wrong time that would ruin our lives, leading to children who will grow up WRONG who will ruin other people’s lives by being more likely to be dysfunctional, criminal, violent, drug-addicted and unemployable. Are you saying that does not happen when there are examples of this everywhere? Are you saying that being promiscuous is a good thing and should be encouraged?
If it is not anarchy as you see it, it is still undesirable! Or do you disagree?
As for being stupid, I think you are being rather bold in claiming it does not exist or is not a valid concept. You seem to always argue on the basis of your subjective feelings. You feel this or you don’t feel that. If you were God and capable of controlling your own and other’s destinies then I would take your feelings more seriously, but as mere mortals, I am afraid we will have to use arguments to persuade each other, rather than say “Well, you may feel that, but I feel this” as if that were the last word.
It is undeniably true that that you disagree with me and that you feel differently to me but that really does not take the argument any further. To use your own phrase, I do not feel that your subjective feelings - not being arguments in favour or against something - are a valid tool of persuasion, as far as I am concerned.
You are just saying that calling people stupid is unkind. I am not saying I am above stupidity but only saying that we should all watch ourselves for signs to prevent ourselves from thinking, believing and doing foolish things, eg Iraq war, causing irreparable harm to ourselves and others.
I only use the phrase I feel to indicate that my feelings are no less likely to be correct than anyone else's, nut you can substitute I believe if it offends you so much.
Children should have equal rights and comparable responsibilities. At the very least they should have equal basic rights.
I seem to have given you a less than accurate portrayal of my family life. I was conceived by accident after my parents had already split up. However my dad lived with us for most of my childhood in a separate part of the house from my mother. He looked after me and eventually after me and my sister (the product of my mothers horribly nasty second marriage which was much better ended than continued) whilst my mum went out to work and supported us all financially. Essentially he was a sort of house husband, though to be fair he was retired so he had his pensions coming in.
I know, it doesn't even sound believable to me, but thats the way things go.
I believe that stupidity doesn't exist because I have observed the concept to be a manipulative and invalid one, used to invalidate the rights and realities of other peoples ways of being. Perhaps in a less loaded context the idea of stupidity would be fine because it is neutral. I do not base this on subjective feeling but on subjective objective evaluation.
To do stupid things is to be human, as is to make mistakes. I am not advocating promiscuity but accepting that you cannot always control emotion and that to fail to do so is both pretty natural and occasionally wonderful. But I am talking less of promiscuity anyway, because I do not think it indelibly linked to single parent hood. I only takes one mistake, to fall in love with the wrong person, to misuse contraception or get so lost in passion that you neglect it.
One mistake doesn't invalidate people for the rest of their lives. And no child grows up in a mistake free household. To prepare children from the world but creating false worlds around them is completely counterproductive and anyway they aren't stupid, they can work out the lack of love if it is there.
It is much more sensible to see class as the determining factor in the predisposition towards crime etc... than children being born of single parents. Also it is about the love and childhood the children receive from parents and from education/friends rather than whether the parents have stayed married or their is only one of them.
Also I don't see a problem with drug use in the right context and I certainly see no virtue whatsoever in the concept of employability. Is someones worth really to be determined in such a way? You could equally say that it is the work opportunities that are lacking as the unemployable person just can't find a job worthy of taking.
The reason that I chose not to argue with you're earlier remarks was precisely because I knew that I disagreed with them so strongly I would fail to find persuasive, unsubjective responses to them. I guess thats how people feel when they read or listen to arguments that are so strongly opposed to their beliefs and the lives of them and their family and friends.
Also please do not kid yourself than anyone can ever truly be objective, that emotions aren't always mashed up with ideology and morality. If I choose not to point out where you do not produce adequate or correctly interpreted evidence to back up your emotional viewpoints it is because I don't see this way of responding to such things as having a point. People always engage half with subjectivity and half with objective subjectivity. I like to receive and respond to both.
Experiential evidence is as valid as statistical evidence. Phenomenology is as important as semiotics. Love is as important as anger. Mistakes are just as likely as advances.
The Iraq war didn't happen because we had stupid leaders but because we have a social structure and global system that attempts to protect and extend itself. The is a lot of evidence for this. But if you look at the evidence but do not see the same conclusions, how am I supposed to change your mind. Your mind cannot be changed because you fundamentally disagree. It is the void in argument, the brick wall of frustration, where you have boiled everything down, got right down to the basic parts that create the individual, and then you see at once how similar and yet so wholly and utterly separate they are.
Like when my old english teacher spent a whole evening trying to make me agree with him that God definitely must not exist and I refused to because you can never definitively know one way or the other. He couldn't change me and I couldn't change him, and yet we came to the conclusions we did based on the same data: the stars that were spread across the night sky above us.
“I only use the phrase I feel to indicate that my feelings are no less likely to be correct than anyone else's, nut you can substitute I believe if it offends you so much.”
What phrase is this?
”Children should have equal rights and comparable responsibilities. At the very least they should have equal basic rights.”
What sort of rights are you proposing they should have?
”I believe that stupidity doesn't exist because I have observed the concept to be a manipulative and invalid one, used to invalidate the rights and realities of other peoples ways of being. Perhaps in a less loaded context the idea of stupidity would be fine because it is neutral. I do not base this on subjective feeling but on subjective objective evaluation.”
I don’t understand what you are trying to say. Are you attempting to abolish the concept of stupidity, in an Orwellian way? It is a term of abuse, I know, and once heard a child actually equate using “stupid” as very similar to swearing.
”One mistake doesn't invalidate people for the rest of their lives. And no child grows up in a mistake free household. To prepare children from the world but creating false worlds around them is completely counterproductive and anyway they aren't stupid, they can work out the lack of love if it is there.”
Please don’t think I am saying that being a single parent is going to ruin your life, forever. All I am saying is that it could, in the same way that one second of not looking properly COULD make you another statistic in road traffic fatalities.
I am saying that we should take care not to commit easily preventable mistakes. Do the emotional equivalent of look right, left and right again before you have sex without contraception, before you marry someone.
”It is much more sensible to see class as the determining factor in the predisposition towards crime etc... than children being born of single parents. Also it is about the love and childhood the children receive from parents and from education/friends rather than whether the parents have stayed married or their is only one of them.”
We are talking about socio-economic class here as well as culture. There are many who are well-born ending up as drug-addicted criminals and there are many humbly born who achieve great things. Therefore it is the nurture and nature, talent, energy and determination that distinguishes some from the crowd, probably helped by not ending up being impregnated by a succession of feckless bounders if one is a woman, or marrying the wrong woman who will ruin your marriage and then take you to the cleaners if you are a man!
”Also I don't see a problem with drug use in the right context and I certainly see no virtue whatsoever in the concept of employability. Is someones worth really to be determined in such a way? You could equally say that it is the work opportunities that are lacking as the unemployable person just can't find a job worthy of taking.”
I believe in legalising ALL drugs and making addiction or intoxication in the course of committing a crime an aggravating factor.
As for the worth of someone, I am afraid it all boils down to how useful we are to others. If we are popular and loved with many dependents then we will be missed. If we are lunatics, invalids and not particularly useful to or loved by anyone, then we will not be missed. It really is as simple as that.
”The reason that I chose not to argue with you're earlier remarks was precisely because I knew that I disagreed with them so strongly I would fail to find persuasive, unsubjective responses to them. I guess thats how people feel when they read or listen to arguments that are so strongly opposed to their beliefs and the lives of them and their family and friends.”
I hope it is reasonably clear that I am making a general political statement and saying that, if it is possible to discourage the majority of people behaving in a particular way that is harmful to themselves and society, then that possibility should be explored, not condemning the lives of your family and friends. I have single parents too amongst my lot, as everybody else does nowadays.
“The Iraq war didn't happen because we had stupid leaders but because we have a social structure and global system that attempts to protect and extend itself. The is a lot of evidence for this.”
Well, *I* am saying that the Iraq war was a stupid thing to do, but what the hell do you expect if you have stupid leaders kept there by a stupid electoral system. Are you trying to tell me that it was NOT a stupid thing to do???? If so, how very Neo-Con (and stupid) of you! But I cannot believe that you are really saying that. Are you?
“Like when my old english teacher spent a whole evening trying to make me agree with him that God definitely must not exist and I refused to because you can never definitively know one way or the other. He couldn't change me and I couldn't change him, and yet we came to the conclusions we did based on the same data: the stars that were spread across the night sky above us.”
I am an agnostic too, and an atheist-agnostic (who believes that God does not exist but cannot be proven not to exist because so many people need to believe that He does).
A theistic-agnostic would believe that God exists but also knows he cannot prove it to the satisfaction of those who do not need to believe in God’s existence for their sense of well-being.
I like to think that we are not that far apart, and hope that I have not been talking to a Neo-Con disguised as an anti-capitalist who thinks the Iraq war was NOT stupid!
Sorry about the phrase confusion.
I am saying that children receive the rights to have a childhood and to be treated with respect. I am saying that they should never under any circumstance be "tried as an adult". And the rights to make choices about what they want from the world. The right to not be constantly monitored. The right to a sensible amount of danger and chance. Not to have their movements restricted (within of course reason I am not advocating toddlers being aloud to get themselves run over or anything.)
"Are you attempting to abolish the concept of stupidity, in an Orwellian way? "
Not quite sure, haven't read 1984. I understand some of the concepts involved due to their widespread fame and conversations with friends about such things. I didn't read Orwell because I found Animal Farm annoying. But then I read Down and Out... as research for a novel I was writing and also a couple of his essays were recommended to me by my dad. They were all great so I intend to read 1984. But anyway I don't understand what you are asking.
"It is a term of abuse, I know, and once heard a child actually equate using “stupid” as very similar to swearing."
Thats an interesting perspective on stupid. It certainly could be justifiably seen as swearing. In fact I call people and things stupid all the time in exactly the same way I use swear words.
But as a concept I think it is stupid. To conceive of somebody as being stupid is to fundementally misinterpret the complexity of being a human. Who defines stupid? Who decides what is stupid and what is not? Who are you or I to believe that we are worth more than anyone else. Or less.
"Please don’t think I am saying that being a single parent is going to ruin your life, forever. All I am saying is that it could, in the same way that one second of not looking properly COULD make you another statistic in road traffic fatalities."
Nice analogy in some ways. It seems initially to be very good. But then you think about it and you see that crossing a road without looking is a completely different thing to becoming a single parent.
People make mistakes like that and will continue to do so. There but for the grace of God go I. We cannot condemn them for it. Advice them, yes, fine. But accept that their are a million ways to do things. That everyones life is there own work of art.
But personally I agree. Thinking about things before doing them is a fantastic way to be. It would be ideal. I wish I could do it and think other people should give it a go as well.
Many single mothers do do that. And they decide that risking a terrible life is not as bad as risking not trying for that wonderful life.
"it is the nurture and nature, talent, energy and determination that distinguishes some from the crowd..."
and luck, never forget luck. And yes character has a big part to play in why people choose things. Perhaps it'd be a wonderful world if we were all gifted at making the right decisions and marrying the right people. But that is not the way we are made.
"I believe in legalising ALL drugs and making addiction or intoxication in the course of committing a crime an aggravating factor."
I like the concept. It is in many ways very fair. I believe in legalising ALL drugs and then having a big party. Well actually, no, I believe in a world where drugs education is a thorough as its wonderfully thorough sex education. Where people were advised of the risks of both and then allowed to get on with it. If people understood the realities of heroin they would be much less likely to begin taking it. If they could believe the extreme effects of the worst drugs because they were not lied to about the better ones. I believe that drug addiction should be a mittogating factor in crime, but then again I feel that there are mitegating factors for most crimes.
"As for the worth of someone, I am afraid it all boils down to how useful we are to others. If we are popular and loved with many dependents then we will be missed. If we are lunatics, invalids and not particularly useful to or loved by anyone, then we will not be missed. It really is as simple as that."
What about when we are popular lunatics? I am fully in opposition to you on your above take on life.
"I hope it is reasonably clear that I am making a general political statement and saying that, if it is possible to discourage the majority of people behaving in a particular way that is harmful to themselves and society, then that possibility should be explored, not condemning the lives of your family and friends."
So if I say "all blacks are f-ing stupid inferiors who deserve to hang" I would not be critising my niece Brianna in any way? When you make general political statements they are always personal as well as political. It can't be avoided. If you critisise single mothers then you critisise my sister, my girlfriends mum, in some ways my mum, many of my friends mums and you since you also exonerate heir men folk from any responsibility at the same time!! You may not want to be being personal, you may love those single mothers who are yours very much, but you are also being harsh about them.
“The Iraq war didn't happen because we had stupid leaders but because we have a social structure and global system that attempts to protect and extend itself. The is a lot of evidence for this.”
Well, *I* am saying that the Iraq war was a stupid thing to do, but what the hell do you expect if you have stupid leaders kept there by a stupid electoral system. Are you trying to tell me that it was NOT a stupid thing to do???? If so, how very Neo-Con (and stupid) of you! But I cannot believe that you are really saying that. Are you?
No. But bless you for your fears for me. I have to say that until you mentioned the war I'd expected you to be a Neo-Con. Neo-Cons often write very stirring essays though.
The war in Iraq is worse than stupid, but you could call it stupid and be considered to be fair. But our leaders aren't stupid people and from where they stand, given their ideological perspectives, you can understand what their reasoning is.
The war in Iraq is the logical outcome of the way that we run our society. The scrabble for oil and power, the desperate struggle to control the worlds resources and its hearts and minds, to be able to sell to everyone on your terms. This results in the war that we are not stopping and we will not stop.
In the long run, for global capitalism at least, the war may prove to be good. But I don't subscribe to a belief in the value of global capitalism and so for me this is another (lesser) reason for me to oppose the war.
"I am an agnostic too, and an atheist-agnostic (who believes that God does not exist but cannot be proven not to exist because so many people need to believe that He does).
A theistic-agnostic would believe that God exists but also knows he cannot prove it to the satisfaction of those who do not need to believe in God’s existence for their sense of well-being."
Hmm. Well I think I am just a plain agnostic. Someone who thinks that God can't exist because the world is so shit and yet also thinks that he must exist because the world is so beautiful. I'm against organised religion (because of its power structures and control etc...)but spirituality is something I envy. I wish I could have those f-kers surety and belief. I don't believe there's an afterlife. Or perhaps I hope there is not.
"I like to think that we are not that far apart, and hope that I have not been talking to a Neo-Con disguised as an anti-capitalist who thinks the Iraq war was NOT stupid!"
Stupid is too kind a word for what the War in Iraq is. The war in Iraq is a terrorist act we commit opon the Iraqi people. The way we have treated the middle east is beneath contempt and we have only ourselves to blame. We are at war with scattered radicals and yet we attack countries. We face fanatics from IslamPlc (no women or freethinkers R Us) precisely because we are both greedy and immoral. And we just keep on adding reasons for them to increase their number.It is not stupid, it is criminal. But then all war is criminal. It is whole countries acting like criminals. But the funny thing is that I have sympathy when its one on one, human against human. When it is country against country, ideology against ideology, I think we should lock every f-ker up and throw away the key.
“I am saying that children receive the rights to have a childhood and to be treated with respect. I am saying that they should never under any circumstance be "tried as an adult". And the rights to make choices about what they want from the world. The right to not be constantly monitored. The right to a sensible amount of danger and chance. Not to have their movements restricted (within of course reason I am not advocating toddlers being aloud to get themselves run over or anything.)”
Hmmm. You sound a bit vague about children’s rights, which sounds a bit like “all children have a right to good parenting if possible” which I cannot possibly object to!
Orwell in 1984 described how words (and political concepts) inconvenient to Big Brother were abolished. You appear to be doing trying to do the same by pretending that stupidity does not exist.
I didn't enjoy reading ANIMAL FARM - short and bitter though it was - but found it very useful how it demonstrated how easily moral, religious and political principles can be distorted when they are later found to be inconvenient to those in charge.
KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING made me cry while I was reading it in my lunch hour once but I cannot remember which bit now!
As for the definition of STUPID, Chambers says it means “showing lack of reason or judgement” to which I would add in this context “in pursuit of our goals”, whatever they are. If we get what we want, then we are on the right track. The trouble is most people don’t even know what they want, apart from this vague concept of happiness.
Copulating without contraception is very like crossing the road without looking, in terms of its potential long-term consequences!
“and luck, never forget luck. And yes character has a big part to play in why people choose things. Perhaps it'd be a wonderful world if we were all gifted at making the right decisions and marrying the right people. But that is not the way we are made.”
I have heard it said that people make their own luck. Many people have lucky break after lucky break but they seem to mess up again and again because they are either stupid, afraid of change and afraid of changing themselves. In short, they lack faith, always seeking the quickest way out of their distress, usually through intoxication, rather than sustained effort and long-term planning.
People do not just become successful and marry the right people. In the animal kingdom you have alpha males and females. There are qualities and ways of doing and thinking that make up a successful person (or animal). It does not just happen, but these qualities can be instilled in more people if the educational environment is functioning healthily.
Addiction and intoxication is currently considered a mitigating factor when a criminal is caught but, as I said, I would turn it into an aggravating factor if I could. It cannot be aggravating for some and mitigating for others – you have to make up your mind which you prefer!
It sounds like you are one big Liberal softie wanting to understand all and forgive all. Perhaps you might not be so forgiving ON BEHALF OF OTHER PEOPLE if you or your loved ones was a victim of crime?
Popular lunatics will, I imagine, be popular and missed even though they are mad. Can you think of a real example though? ;-)
“So if I say "all blacks are f-ing stupid inferiors who deserve to hang" I would not be critising my niece Brianna in any way? When you make general political statements they are always personal as well as political. It can't be avoided. If you critisise single mothers then you critisise my sister, my girlfriends mum, in some ways my mum, many of my friends mums and you since you also exonerate heir men folk from any responsibility at the same time!! You may not want to be being personal, you may love those single mothers who are yours very much, but you are also being harsh about them.”
If you said you wanted to hang all blacks you would be making a statement that you hate black people. Since Briana is your niece and you are white, it rather suggests that she is not completely black!, and that you are not necessarily including her. Perhaps you mean just her father and men who behave like him for impregnating your sister and then not taking any responsibility ! If you were to make an unflattering comment about your niece's behaviour or manners then you would be criticising her, or perhaps, indirectly, her mother!
If it is true that children of single parents are disadvantaged in many ways – financially, educationally, emotionally and socially – why should I refrain from saying that? Are YOU saying that they are not somehow disadvantaged? If you had only one daughter, whom you loved, would you recommend single parenthood as a lifestyle choice for her? Answer me honestly now!
”The war in Iraq is worse than stupid, but you could call it stupid and be considered to be fair. But our leaders aren't stupid people and from where they stand, given their ideological perspectives, you can understand what their reasoning is.”
I know why they are doing it, all I am saying is that whatever they are trying to do, it is not working, and for that reason it is stupid. China wants the same thing the West does, but is playing a rather smarter game. If anyone is winning hearts and minds, it’s China in Africa.
As for God, I believe that He is the creation of Man. Some people prefer to prostrate themselves before the God and the gods Man created and some prefer to think they can do without God. Thus is Man and God powerful and vulnerable at the same time, and therefore one of the most desperate and inspirational paradoxes that we know!
"Hmmm. You sound a bit vague about children’s rights, which sounds a bit like “all children have a right to good parenting if possible” which I cannot possibly object to!"
Hmmm. I don't think I was vague at all about childrens rights. But if you want to boil it all down to the right to good parenting, then maybe thats close. The right to good parenting that comes not just from the home but from education and the community might be more accurate. I will try and phrase my rights a little more precisely:
The right not to be pushed into anything they object to.
The right not to have CCTV cameras following them.
The right not to be vilified in the press.
The right not to be bombarded with advertising specifically designed to prey on them and formulate their relationship to the world.
The right to a non-assesement based education at least at the primary level.
The right to walk the streets and play there.
The right to non be prosecuted as an adult whatever the crime they are accused of.
There are more rights that I feel they do not receive but thats enough to go on with.
"Orwell in 1984 described how words (and political concepts) inconvenient to Big Brother were abolished. You appear to be doing trying to do the same by pretending that stupidity does not exist."
Oh thats what you meant. I'd have probably worked that out if you'd said big brother. I am not trying to abolish peoples right to use the word or the concept of stupidity I am just not recognising it as a valid idea. So I think you are being a little dramatic in your analysis of what I'm saying.
From where I stand I am not pretending at all. I truly don't believe in stupidity as it is meant currently by society. I think too many things are called stupid because people don't want to engage with them properly. Calling something stupid is he worst way of arguing with it. I think the idea of stupidity is something that has damaged many children, both in school and at home. And I think the fact that stupidity is essentially decided by the successful in society makes it very very damaging and oppressive.
"I didn't enjoy reading ANIMAL FARM - short and bitter though it was - but found it very useful how it demonstrated how easily moral, religious and political principles can be distorted when they are later found to be inconvenient to those in charge."
Yeah, yeah, its very worthy. My problem was that I read it when I was 15 and I'd just been reading a lot about the actual situation in terms of Russia and communism. I found it to be such a strait forward analogy that it was silly. I much prefer my metaphors to be more than just changing people into animals and simplifying everything to such a high level.
But if I had come to it the other way round it would have been a great way in to thinking about such things as how and why communism failed, and also would have spoken to me about the more general issues that it covers.
"As for the definition of STUPID, Chambers says it means “showing lack of reason or judgement” to"
hmmm. those sound like loaded words as well. Define reason. Define judgment. Again one mans stupid person will be anthers genius. One mans freedom fighter is anthers terrorist. One womans idea of reason is another's idea of subjective illogic.
"If we get what we want, then we are on the right track."
I agree but everyone can't get what they want at the same time, so we have to look for solutions that don't infringe on others liberty in order to gain our own.
"The trouble is most people don’t even know what they want, apart from this vague concept of happiness."
I would say that that is true and not true. Most peoples ideas of what they want change often and their goals are often unachievable. The vague concept of happiness is perhaps the most important thing you can try and achieve in personal terms. What else is there worth having. All other nice things come under it: love, success, friendship, fulfillment, freedom.
"Copulating without contraception is very like crossing the road without looking, in terms of its potential long-term consequences!"
Hmmm. Again, sounds very witty. But it just doesn't work. It is very easy to argue that someone aught to be objective enough to look before they cross a road and harder to argue that case in terms of being caught up in the sexual moment.
Though to be honest I have often crossed a road without looking and have never taken the chance of copulating without contraception (what a horrible way of phrasing it).
People do what they do. Ideally they wouldn't. But they do. And sometimes wonderful things come from mistakes. I myself was conceived in error and that was a good thing from my POV.
"I have heard it said that people make their own luck."
So have I. But it is I am afraid complete nonsense. Or at least it is a part truth. Yes luck can be achieved through hard work and yet if you are unlucky you're hard work will not pay off. Luck can come to those who are lazy, ignorant etc... and it will work out for them.
"Many people have lucky break after lucky break but they seem to mess up again and again because they are either stupid, afraid of change and afraid of changing themselves."
Yes but what about the unstupid people (I am using your terms here not mine) who embrace change and changing themselves who get unlucky break after break. The world needs to be set up for the least as well as the most. Some people can pull themselves out of poverty, but their ability do do this doesn't mean we should turn our backs on all the "average" people. Exceptionality adds to the world, but it is not the norm and it is no more important or valid than other ways of being.
"In short, they lack faith, always seeking the quickest way out of their distress, usually through intoxication, rather than sustained effort and long-term planning."
Right. Okay. But why the f-ck should they have faith? What evidence do they have that there is a point in faith? Sustained effort and long term planning is not some sort of magic wand, and the failure of such plans can often make it even harder to have faith. Society is set up for the haves, to expect the have-nots to have to be twice as determined and controlled as any have is to be grossly unfair, and extremely unrealistic.
I think there is much to be learned from evolutionary psychology but I don't think it is the be all and end all of the way that we should see humans. Having consciousness means we have different goals from animals. In an evolutionary sense it would be the large and successfully violent men who would be the alpha males, but in modern society it is those men who are most likely to be incarcerated.
"Addiction and intoxication is currently considered a mitigating factor when a criminal is caught but, as I said, I would turn it into an aggravating factor if I could. It cannot be aggravating for some and mitigating for others – you have to make up your mind which you prefer!"
Um... no I don't. I think it should be a mitigating factor all the time. But as I said I do like the idea as an idea of it being an aggravating factor, I can see why you would come to that conclusion. I also think that there are a hell of a lot of mitigating factors for crimes that are not taken into account enough. As I have said I am much more in favour of understanding that condemnation.
"It sounds like you are one big Liberal softie wanting to understand all and forgive all. Perhaps you might not be so forgiving ON BEHALF OF OTHER PEOPLE if you or your loved ones was a victim of crime?"
The liberal softy angle is something that I may grudgingly have to partly accept (though anarchist humanist, who is pro-diversity and anti-capitalist would be closer). But the other part is stupid and lazy. Why do people always respond to the concept of forgiveness and understanding with such drivel. Me and mine have been effected by crime, of course we have. I have had cigarettes stubbed out on my hands. I was mercilessly bullied at school. I forgive these people. Well actually I don't. But I do try and understand them.
Here's my feelings after someone close to me was effected by a crime: http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/2006/08/lebanese-switch.html
Heres a link to a bunch of people who have been victims of major crimes and yet have forgiven:
http://www.theforgivenessproject.com/
(though their site seems to be down at present)
"Popular lunatics will, I imagine, be popular and missed even though they are mad. Can you think of a real example though? ;-)"
Er... yes. Many of the greatest artists etc have unfortunately been charismatic people who also had mental illness problems. Many of my close friends and family have mental health problems and if they were to die they would be missed.
"If you said you wanted to hang all blacks you would be making a statement that you hate black people. Since Briana is your niece and you are white, it rather suggests that she is not completely black! and that you are not necessarily including her."
Yeah, well deduced. But mixed race people are all defined by the minority blood they carry. So in political terms she will be treated as black, despite being only half black. And I would certainly be saying that half of her should be hung.
"Perhaps you mean just her father and men who behave like him for impregnating your sister and then not taking any responsibility !"
To make it clear, I was using an extreme statement that I did not agree with to make a rhetorical point. My sister is equally as responsible in terms of getting her pregnant as he is. I do not think he or anyone should be hung.
"If it is true that children of single parents are disadvantaged in many ways – financially, educationally, emotionally and socially – why should I refrain from saying that? Are YOU saying that they are not somehow disadvantaged?"
Er... yes. I am saying that. I am saying that single parent status isn't the factor that makes people disadvantaged. I am saying that there are a variety of different, successful, ways of growing up. You perhaps have some validity when you speak financial disadvantage if you are referring to single mothers of a particular class. But in general your perspective on all of this is just, and I am sorry to put it this way, complete drivel.
Plus, I am not saying that you shouldn't say this drivel and stand by it. But I am saying that when you condemn single mothers you condemn my sister. You don't seem to have a problem with that, you have followed those comments with further offensive and negative statements about her and her family. But you must accept that the political is also the personal. When I say I hate politicians and what they stand for I am condemning the individual politicians as well as the social group politicians. I may make exceptions and perhaps say that so-and-so is doing the best job he/she can do within the social constrictions and terrible ideology of politicians, but that won't make my statements any less condemnatory of politicians. So you can say that miss blah-blah is doing a great job bringing up little alfie considering the fact that she is a single mother, but that doesn't make you any less opposed to single mothers politically and personally.
I don't ask you to change you're mind. But the fact that you hold these opinions makes you in personal and political terms lesser in my eyes, because you are opposed to those I love and you contemn them using logic that I do not hold to be accurate or even valid.
"If you had only one daughter, whom you loved, would you recommend single parenthood as a lifestyle choice for her? Answer me honestly now!"
Okay. My honest opinion is that I don't want to have children. But if I did I would hope I would bring them up to understand that the world isn't simple and easy and that life doesn't always go the way that you plan. That sometimes mistakes can be successes and sometimes successes can be mistakes. That whatever she did I would try a I and support her in it and if I could not support her I could at least try and understand. I would not recommend any lifestyle choice to her, or at least not in terms of procreation. I would let her know my views and hope that she would subscribe to them. But just as when my sister got pregnant at 17 and I congratulated her and supported her, I would hope I would be as sensible if it were my daughter in a similar position.
But then it is easier for me because I see little of any value in the conventional ways of living life. If I did maybe I would see single parenthood as a terrible thing, because it didn't fit the blueprints for how people should behave.
"I know why they are doing it, all I am saying is that whatever they are trying to do, it is not working, and for that reason it is stupid. China wants the same thing the West does, but is playing a rather smarter game. If anyone is winning hearts and minds, it’s China in Africa."
That is fair enough. But by the end of this unnecessary war (and don't lets kid ourselves all ways are unnecessary and illegal) America/Britain/et al will control Iraqi oil. They will have created a million more terrorists, they will have f-cked the middle east up terribly and they will have killed many many many people both Iraqi and western military.
China go about things in a cleverer and more terrifying way.
The point is that I think that both the west and the east have a stupid aim in sight. I don't want what the west want. But to dismiss this stupidity as stupid would be stupid of me ;-) They all have reasons for doing what they do. These reasons are just not mine and are not compatible with what I would like both personally and politically.
“Define reason. Define judgment. Again one mans stupid person will be anthers genius. One mans freedom fighter is anthers terrorist. One womans idea of reason is another's idea of subjective illogic.”
Er, are there people who think Bush is a genius?
If we get what we want, then we are on the right track.
”I agree but everyone can't get what they want at the same time, so we have to look for solutions that don't infringe on others liberty in order to gain our own.”
The trouble is most people don’t even know what they want, apart from this vague concept of happiness.
”I would say that that is true and not true. Most peoples ideas of what they want change often and their goals are often unachievable. The vague concept of happiness is perhaps the most important thing you can try and achieve in personal terms. What else is there worth having. All other nice things come under it: love, success, friendship, fulfillment, freedom.
I suggest that to know what you want means knowing yourself – “know thyself”, which will tell you what constitutes happiness for YOU but not necessarily others. Once you know what it is you want, you at least start thinking about how to get it.
Copulating without contraception is very like crossing the road without looking, in terms of its potential long-term consequences!
”Hmmm. Again, sounds very witty. But it just doesn't work. It is very easy to argue that someone aught to be objective enough to look before they cross a road and harder to argue that case in terms of being caught up in the sexual moment.”
Not at all. When crossing the road without looking you are being careless, ie negligent. Having sex without contraception is also negligent, wouldn’t you say?
”Though to be honest I have often crossed a road without looking and have never taken the chance of copulating without contraception (what a horrible way of phrasing it).”
You are a careful and considerate young man then!
”People do what they do. Ideally they wouldn't. But they do. And sometimes wonderful things come from mistakes. I myself was conceived in error and that was a good thing from my POV.”
Of course I am not saying you should never have been born, as you seem to say I am! I am saying I wouldn’t go about having a child in that way nor would I recommend that anybody do so.
I have heard it said that people make their own luck.
”Yes but what about the unstupid people (I am using your terms here not mine) who embrace change and changing themselves who get unlucky break after break. The world needs to be set up for the least as well as the most. Some people can pull themselves out of poverty, but their ability do do this doesn't mean we should turn our backs on all the "average" people. Exceptionality adds to the world, but it is not the norm and it is no more important or valid than other ways of being.”
I am saying the state should educate ALL people into behaving responsibly. This is not happening in our schools now, is it?
In short, they lack faith, always seeking the quickest way out of their distress, usually through intoxication, rather than sustained effort and long-term planning.
”Right. Okay. But why the f-ck should they have faith? What evidence do they have that there is a point in faith? Sustained effort and long term planning is not some sort of magic wand, and the failure of such plans can often make it even harder to have faith. Society is set up for the haves, to expect the have-nots to have to be twice as determined and controlled as any have is to be grossly unfair, and extremely unrealistic.”
You have faith in the future, otherwise you might as well kill yourself, but that is such a drastic step most people do not take this final step. Therefore you have faith because it is the only rational thing to do to justify your existence and make your existence bearable, even pleasurable.
”Er... yes. Many of the greatest artists etc have unfortunately been charismatic people who also had mental illness problems. Many of my close friends and family have mental health problems and if they were to die they would be missed.”
I know someone who is not quite there all the time, who is a bit annoying at times but quite sweet really. But our worth is still connected to how useful we are to people, how much pleasure we give them and how many rely upon us. It is all relative and I am not saying these people’s lives are worthless to everyone. But if I do not know them then I would not miss them, would I?
"If it is true that children of single parents are disadvantaged in many ways: financially, educationally, emotionally and socially, why should I refrain from saying that? Are YOU saying that they are not somehow disadvantaged?"
Er... yes. I am saying that. I am saying that single parent status isn't the factor that makes people disadvantaged. I am saying that there are a variety of different, successful, ways of growing up. You perhaps have some validity when you speak financial disadvantage if you are referring to single mothers of a particular class. But in general your perspective on all of this is just, and I am sorry to put it this way, complete drivel.
”Plus, I am not saying that you shouldn't say this drivel and stand by it. But I am saying that when you condemn single mothers you condemn my sister. You don't seem to have a problem with that, you have followed those comments with further offensive and negative statements about her and her family.”
Crikey. The only person capable of truly condemning your sister is herself if she allows the fact of being a single mother and its consequences destroy her life. If your niece turns out fine then it is all OK, isn’t it? If your sister is happy with her lot, then she is OK too. All I was saying was that no one’s life can be judged until it is over, and that applies to me, you, everyone. There are people who are doing really well and they can still mess it all up. That was all I meant.
“But you must accept that the political is also the personal. When I say I hate politicians and what they stand for I am condemning the individual politicians as well as the social group politicians. I may make exceptions and perhaps say that so-and-so is doing the best job he/she can do within the social constrictions and terrible ideology of politicians, but that won't make my statements any less condemnatory of politicians. So you can say that miss blah-blah is doing a great job bringing up little alfie considering the fact that she is a single mother, but that doesn't make you any less opposed to single mothers politically and personally.”
There was a reason why marriage was invented - because a contract to bring up children together was necessary to make them more likely to survive into adulthood and produce the next generation. By trying to do it on your own because you did not use contraception or because you thought the state or someone else would provide even if the father wouldn’t means you are just more likely to mess up than if you had waited for a man who loved you and wanted to be with you and bring up that child with you. You cannot deny that as a general principle and you probably would not if your sister or anyone you are fond of were not in that position. I like to think I can still be supportive to someone I am fond of, even if I thought they had made a mistake, unless they carry on making the same mistake again and again.
So … how would you feel if she had another child by another absent father?
”I don't ask you to change you're mind. But the fact that you hold these opinions makes you in personal and political terms lesser in my eyes, because you are opposed to those I love and you contemn them using logic that I do not hold to be accurate or even valid.”
I am not OPPOSED to those you love, nor do I condemn them. I only oppose courses of action that I regard to be harmful in the long term to the society I live in. Surely there are things that your friends do that you disapprove of, but you do not cease your friendship with them, do you, unless it is really so seriously bad that you cannot continue your association with them. You are so determined to take offence even though it is not my intention to give it!
If you had only one daughter, whom you loved, would you recommend single parenthood as a lifestyle choice for her? Answer me honestly now!
”Okay. My honest opinion is that I don't want to have children. But if I did I would hope I would bring them up to understand that the world isn't simple and easy and that life doesn't always go the way that you plan. That sometimes mistakes can be successes and sometimes successes can be mistakes. That whatever she did I would try a I and support her in it and if I could not support her I could at least try and understand. I would not recommend any lifestyle choice to her, or at least not in terms of procreation. I would let her know my views and hope that she would subscribe to them. But just as when my sister got pregnant at 17 and I congratulated her and supported her, I would hope I would be as sensible if it were my daughter in a similar position.”
Well, we will see, won’t we? It is well known that people change their views as they grow and grow older and have their own flesh and blood to consider, rather than just a hypothesis!
”But then it is easier for me because I see little of any value in the conventional ways of living life. If I did maybe I would see single parenthood as a terrible thing, because it didn't fit the blueprints for how people should behave.”
I see single parenthood as shooting yourself in the foot, it is true, but there are many people I am fond of who do just that. I think it was Christ who said “Hate the sin, not the sinner”.
I have faith in the present, in the momentary, in what is tangible and experienced.
Sometimes in a moment I may hope for the future, but objectively I see no evidence for anything particularly hopeful. The best I can find is a hope for my own future. This hope never crosses into faith because it is never as definite as that.
I would have no trouble if my sister father another child from an absent father, I certainly wouldn't be surprised.
Our lives are not one solid thing that can be judged. Even in terms of our deaths.
And as I said before the concept of judgment is not one I like much. I think it was Jesus who said "judge not lest ye be judged".
Single mothers are not the danger to society, society is a danger to single mothers.
There are a hell of a lot of different ways of making social contracts for the good of the child. Marriage is as much an oppressing force as it is unifying one.
If I have children that will be unfortunate for both me and them, but I never suggested that things might not change in this area as I get older.
But I hope with everything I am that I will not change my beliefs as significantly as you suggest in getting older. I see many examples f people with similar beliefs to mine who are old (as in actually old, not just middle aged, for you may find yourself that you change your mind about everything before the end, their is always this possibility just as their is always the possibility that we won't change our minds at all.)
I really cannot relate to very much about the way that you see the world. But I do like that you see it. Many people don't bother.
And though you clearly try to reduce the world to an unemotional and rational framework you cannot manage to disguise kindness and love and that makes me like you despite all this.
My sister hasn't sinned. Single parenthood is not a bad thing necessarily. As for waiting till I have my own flesh and blood, my sister is my flesh and blood and I don't judge her, in fact through knowing her I have become much more open to different approaches to the world. I find that the flesh and blood thing can go either way, either lack of judgment or the desire for control. One of the reasons I don't want kids is to avoid treating them in the sort of way that you seem to advocate.
“Single mothers are not the danger to society, society is a danger to single mothers.”
My point is that their children tend to become a danger to society!
”There are a hell of a lot of different ways of making social contracts for the good of the child. Marriage is as much an oppressing force as it is unifying one.”
THE CHAINS OF MARRIAGE
Do please name another social contract, other than marriage, that is made for the good of the child!
OF COURSE marriage is oppressive: “Marriage is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God [including divorce/disgrace/single-parenthood and all the harm to the individual and society this tends to accompany]." It is MEANT to be!
”And though you clearly try to reduce the world to an unemotional and rational framework you cannot manage to disguise kindness and love and that makes me like you despite all this.”
I respect and like you for having the open-mindedness to try to understand me even if you find my views so horribly offensive.
RATIONALITY
As for being rational, I think EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A GO AT IT! It really would make the world a better place, rather than not minding terribly about being irrational ….
”My sister hasn't sinned. Single parenthood is not a bad thing necessarily. As for waiting till I have my own flesh and blood, my sister is my flesh and blood and I don't judge her, in fact through knowing her I have become much more open to different approaches to the world. I find that the flesh and blood thing can go either way, either lack of judgment or the desire for control. One of the reasons I don't want kids is to avoid treating them in the sort of way that you seem to advocate.”
CHILDREN
I don’t know how you think I would want to treat children! I prefer not to have that much to do with them at all, if I am being honest. I frankly cannot see why people sentimentalise childhood in their mawkish way. The way children are made to believe in Santa Claus and then be told he does not exist is a rite of passage I find abhorrent and irrational. They are just little savages needing to be civilised, the sooner the better
SIN
As for your sister, I would not say that she has sinned, because I am not religious. The most I would say is that she has “disadvantaged herself in life”, but that is something anyone can get over, in theory, if she has family and friends who are wise and loving.
The children of single parents are also not a danger to society, again it is society that is a danger to them.
When I spoke of social contracts I didn't mean official ones that are legal, but unofficial ones that are about love. The most enduring relationships I know of have not been as simple as life long marriages.
Marriage SHOULDN'T be oppressive. Oppression serves no purpose but to result in misery for all concerned. Yes it shouldn't be entered into lightly necessarily but to enter into anything with the fear of god in you is just plain irrational!
I don't sentimentalise childhood but nor do I see it as something as completely bleak as you seem to.
And I see NO value in "civilising" people as quickly as possible. In fact I mistrust the whole concept of civilisation (and of savages to come to that) as what this generally means is saying "if you don't do things my way then you are inferior to me". Civilising childhood is like civilising africa and the rest of the third world, a sure fire way to f-ck things up for the natives.
This doesn't mean I am some kind of nutcase who doesn't believe in fairness and decency and the like. I just don't see these things in anything or anybody that calls itself civilised.
Rationality is a useful tool and everyone should have a go at it. But we have to be rational about our irrationality and objective about our subjectivity because these things are not going to be vanquished by will.
In fact it is often those who believe themselves to be the most rational who do the most horrendous things. All our rational thoughts, all our intellectual theories, have emotional bases. To pretend otherwise is to be in denial. Being ruled by emotion isn't ideal in any way but if I had to make a choice between being ruled by heart or by head I think I'd choose heart. However practically I suggest a healthy mix of the two.
You brought up sin and in fact you often bring god into things, despite these claims to not be religious.
“The children of single parents are also not a danger to society, again it is society that is a danger to them.”
Perhaps we are all a danger to each other and it would be better if we were all kept in separate cages!
It is undeniable that, being statistically more likely to be socially, financially, educationally disadvantaged, children of single parents tend to “go wrong”. I am not saying they are ALL bad, or that they should all be systematically exterminated en masse! What I am saying though, is that there is a greater statistical probability of a child under-achieving because of all the attendant difficulties of being poor and single when bringing up children.
I am not saying anything about you or your sister or your sister’s child. I am stating a statistical fact which may (or may not!) include you or them. I do NOT intend to give you offence – merely make a political point about what the state should do for the good of all concerned and how laws should be framed to achieve that purpose.
“When I spoke of social contracts I didn't mean official ones that are legal, but unofficial ones that are about love. The most enduring relationships I know of have not been as simple as life long marriages.”
Please give an example.
”Marriage SHOULDN'T be oppressive. Oppression serves no purpose but to result in misery for all concerned. Yes it shouldn't be entered into lightly necessarily but to enter into anything with the fear of god in you is just plain irrational!”
Of course the chains of marriage are meant to be oppressive precisely because it is meant to be taken seriously because other people (their offspring and parents) are also involved. They are after all legal promises that the couple concerned made to each other in front of witnesses that changed their legal status. It is INTENDED to be permanent so that children can be brought up by parents who will have a biological and social interest in their offspring as well as a legal and emotional commitment to each other.
As for specifying that marriage is to be entered into “with the fear of God”, that was, I imagine, to encourage the couple to take the enterprise of partnership seriously OR ELSE. This does not seem to be particularly irrational to me!
Being civilised is better than being savage, ignorant and childish. Being civilised is being grown up and wiser compared to the savages, barbarians, children, lunatics and animals, who are not. Exploiting and colonising other countries in the name of civilisation is not an ideal of civilisation!
"It is undeniable that, being statistically more likely to be socially, financially, educationally disadvantaged, children of single parents tend to “go wrong”."
Right, almost fair enough, apart from you are talking about statistics and then you are spinning them to back up your political point of view. This is what everyone does with stats so thats not exactly a criticism but more and unavoidable fact.
The spin you are putting on it however is a lie. As I have said before the significant factor here is more likely to be class and or race. The children who form such statistics "go wrong" (a term I find problematic, but never mind) because they are disadvantaged socially, educationally and financially rather than because they have only one parent around. Surely we should be talking about laws that compel fathers to stick around and take responsibility once a child is born, if we are talking legislating love lives. The fact of it is that when a middle class marriage breaks up (and to be fair when a lot of working class marriages break up) the fathers provide still in financial and/or emotional ways.
"I am not saying they are ALL bad,"
But you are saying they are bad. I am afraid that badness and evil are again concepts I can't subscribe to. There are evil acts but not evil people. This black and white way of looking at things is such an over simplication.
"a greater statistical probability of a child under-achieving because of all the attendant difficulties of being poor and single when bringing up children."
What about deaf parents. It is harder for them to bring up hearing children, should they be encouraged not to have children? And if they should would that be something you could actually police without impacting on peoples civil liberties.
I mean really, regardless of whether you are right about single parents (and I think you are not) consider being realistic. They will always exist and have always existed. The social stigma is less for them now than it has been and that is pretty useful to help them to bring up their children without the disadvantages you say are likely for them.
"I do NOT intend to give you offence – merely make a political point about what the state should do for the good of all concerned and how laws should be framed to achieve that purpose."
Firstly: your intention is not the point (though it is appreciated.) Political points have personal implications, the people who make them should understand this, and not be afraid of the ramifications.
Secondly: You're concept of the state intervening into our private lives for our own good is, as I mentioned, an attack on out civil liberties and our human rights. The next thing you'll be advocating ID cards because security is more important that liberty! You are grossly exaggerating the dangers of single parenthood, and if there are some for whom it is working, perhaps we should be looking to them and seeing why.
"“When I spoke of social contracts I didn't mean official ones that are legal, but unofficial ones that are about love. The most enduring relationships I know of have not been as simple as life long marriages.”
Please give an example."
Well my mum and dad who got divorced, remarried, hated each other, became friends with each other again, all for the sake of the children. If they had remained married it is hard to imagine that they would not have both gone mad.
I also know many couples who have decided not to marry or have ended up marrying purely for legal reasons after many years of avoidance.
"Of course the chains of marriage are meant to be oppressive precisely because it is meant to be taken seriously because other people (their offspring and parents) are also involved."
This is part of the problem with marriage (and I say this as someone who is engaged to become married). It is indeed about being responsible, about accepting joint responsibility for any children that you may have (and possibly even for each other parents). But when responsibility is seen as a prison it makes things start off bad. My mum and my step dad were deeply and happily in love until they got married. Once married he expected things off her that he had never expected before and things began to slowly and painfully unravel.
I think marriage shouldn't involve the law. It is about two people making a promise, a commitment to responsibility and to LOVE. But like all other promises this is for them to keep or fail to keep and not for society to get involved with. Yes that promise effects other people, but most promises do and they are still kept or broken.
Making marriage into a prison is not necessary. It is not desirable. It doesn't help society and it is not good for the children.
"They are after all legal promises that the couple concerned made to each other in front of witnesses that changed their legal status."
Why do you have such respect for the concept of legality?
"It is INTENDED to be permanent so that children can be brought up by parents who will have a biological and social interest in their offspring as well as a legal and emotional commitment to each other."
Um... surely you cannot create a biological interest!! Biologically speaking there is no reason why parents should stay together once children can fend for themselves and have matured. So I guess that's be around 13 or 14 for girls and 15 or 16 for boys.
There is no reason at all why the couple must lose their social interest in their children if they split up.
Of course marriage is entered in (or you would hope) by people who believe and intend it to be permanent. But often these beliefs and intentions won't work out. If they don't work out then the couple will cease to have an emotional commitment to each other. Forcing them to pretend to, trying to make them feel differently that they do, well that can be the job of spiritual advisers and the like, if you see a validity in them, but it can't be the job of the law.
When you cease to have emotional commitment you seek to stop having legal commitment. That is fair.
"As for specifying that marriage is to be entered into “with the fear of God”, that was, I imagine, to encourage the couple to take the enterprise of partnership seriously OR ELSE. This does not seem to be particularly irrational to me!"
Or else what? Since god doesn't exist for many people, including you theoretically, then this is unnecessary. And for the poor buggers who do think he exists, a spiritual dimension is now added to their prison.
The sort of world that you seem to want seems to me to be horrific. A world with little else but the legislation of emotion, a world that takes away liberty and freedoms and replaces them with judgment and punishment. But you want all these things "for societies good" which is the most worrying thing. Essentially we both want a world that is good for its inhabitants.
"Being civilised is better than being savage, ignorant and childish. Being civilised is being grown up and wiser compared to the savages, barbarians, children, lunatics and animals, who are not."
I really don't know where to begin arguing with the above bunch of clap trap. We are so opposed on this it is hard to see a common ground. I object to many of the words you use above and their implications. I object to the concept of "being grown up" as a valuable trait. I suspect wisdom that values itself so highly and anything that see's humans as being some sort of superior state, rather than the cancer on the world which in many ways we are. Lunatics is another very aggravating (and antiquated) term which is not just you once again attacking (without meaning to) some of my close friends and family but also Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Picasso, Ian Curtis... the list is bloody long. I don't think that madness should be glamorised and promoted as a nice or desirable option, but mad people are people with as much of value to say as anyone else, with as much truth and bullshit as anyone else.
I think I made myself clear in my last comment, I am suspicious of the idea of civilization because it always seems to be about be about inequality, power and a lack of fairness, despite it's appearance to be about the opposite of this. You have certainly done nothing to defend it by spouting rhetoric designed to appeal to someone else's emotions.
Children are as likely as adults to be wise or not wise. Savages is a term designed to make people into enemies who have a different approach to things, either we are all savages or non of us are, surely? Barbarians is another such term. Animals don't have consciousness and so are not comparable. You wouldn't use bread as an example of a fruit would you? No. So why bring animals into a discussion of humans?
I just looked at my last comment and so I will stop my argument about this here. I have already said whats wrong with the concept of civilising and civilisation there, clearly and you havent really said anything to disprove my objections to it.
"Exploiting and colonising other countries in the name of civilisation is not an ideal of civilisation!"
I don't know which civilisation you are referring to because most of them have certainly seen the value in "civilising the savages" and to be fair you're concept of civilisation involves civilising the children.
It is undeniable that, being statistically more likely to be socially, financially, educationally disadvantaged, children of single parents tend to “go wrong”.
”Right, almost fair enough, apart from you are talking about statistics and then you are spinning them to back up your political point of view. This is what everyone does with stats so thats not exactly a criticism but more and unavoidable fact.”
What is an “unavoidable fact”?
”The spin you are putting on it however is a lie. As I have said before the significant factor here is more likely to be class and or race. The children who form such statistics "go wrong" (a term I find problematic, but never mind) because they are disadvantaged socially, educationally and financially rather than because they have only one parent around. Surely we should be talking about laws that compel fathers to stick around and take responsibility once a child is born, if we are talking legislating love lives. The fact of it is that when a middle class marriage breaks up (and to be fair when a lot of working class marriages break up) the fathers provide still in financial and/or emotional ways.”
What spin is what lie???
Go to any prison and you will find that the majority of prisoners are illegitimate!
You want to compel fathers to stick around to support their illegitimate children that they never wanted born?
I do NOT want to legislate anyone’s love life. All I am proposing is that the state gives no state or child benefit to never married single mums. It is the ONLY way of discouraging single parenthood and would not infringe on anyone’s civil liberty. Women are still free to be promiscuous and have husbandless pregnancies, but they will have to bring them up using their own resources, and not others’.
I am not saying they are ALL bad.
”But you are saying they are bad. I am afraid that badness and evil are again concepts I can't subscribe to. There are evil acts but not evil people. This black and white way of looking at things is such an over simplication.”
You have been saying you do not acknowledge the concept of “evil” and “stupid” or “evil people”. Congratulations if you have managed to banish those concepts from your consciousness! Too bad you cannot just rid the world of evil, evil people and stupidity by pretending they do not exist!
”What about deaf parents. It is harder for them to bring up hearing children, should they be encouraged not to have children? And if they should would that be something you could actually police without impacting on peoples civil liberties.”
Disabled people should remain free to have children if they have the means to provide for them and bring them up. They certainly shouldn’t be encouraged to have more deaf children and expect somebody else to look after them or pick up the bill.
“I mean really, regardless of whether you are right about single parents (and I think you are not) consider being realistic. They will always exist and have always existed. The social stigma is less for them now than it has been and that is pretty useful to help them to bring up their children without the disadvantages you say are likely for them.”
Because there is less stigma, there are more of them. Of course they have always existed, but in sterner times there were fewer single parents and less crime!
I do NOT intend to give you offence – merely make a political point about what the state should do for the good of all concerned and how laws should be framed to achieve that purpose."
”Firstly: your intention is not the point (though it is appreciated.) Political points have personal implications, the people who make them should understand this, and not be afraid of the ramifications.”
Political points are moral points and moral points apply to individuals, it is true. I am not afraid of the “ramifications” as you put it.
”Secondly: You're concept of the state intervening into our private lives for our own good is, as I mentioned, an attack on out civil liberties and our human rights. The next thing you'll be advocating ID cards because security is more important that liberty! You are grossly exaggerating the dangers of single parenthood, and if there are some for whom it is working, perhaps we should be looking to them and seeing why.”
I don’t want the state to interfere in our lives more than it already does. All I am proposing is that never married single mums should not be given state or child benefit. This does not infringe on anyone’s civil liberties, does it?
”This is part of the problem with marriage (and I say this as someone who is engaged to become married). It is indeed about being responsible, about accepting joint responsibility for any children that you may have (and possibly even for each other parents). But when responsibility is seen as a prison it makes things start off bad. My mum and my step dad were deeply and happily in love until they got married. Once married he expected things off her that he had never expected before and things began to slowly and painfully unravel.”
Responsibility IS a burden. The point is to know what you are getting yourself into.
”I think marriage shouldn't involve the law. It is about two people making a promise, a commitment to responsibility and to LOVE. But like all other promises this is for them to keep or fail to keep and not for society to get involved with. Yes that promise effects other people, but most promises do and they are still kept or broken.”
By entering into a marriage, you are entering into a legal contract. If you don’t know that you shouldn’t even be thinking about it. It is a contract to bring up your children together. If you don’t fancy having that sort of responsibility, you shouldn’t be doing it. It is not, I repeat, NOT, a way of saying “I fancy you and want to spend some time with you and see how it goes.” It is a BET, saying that you BET you will want to spend the rest of your life with your wife and bring up your children with her. Then, if you lose that bet, both of you will suffer the consequences of losing that bet. If you can’t deal with that, why even get married at all?
“Making marriage into a prison is not necessary. It is not desirable. It doesn't help society and it is not good for the children.”
You still don’t get the purpose of marriage. It is not ONLY about you and your partner. It is about the children, if you have any. If there is no one else apart from you to consider, then of course there is no reason why one of you should not pack your bags when you have had enough. If there are children, are you saying that you need not consider them?
What do you actually think marriage is for anyway?
”Why do you have such respect for the concept of legality?”
If you make a promise, should you not be held to your promise? What do you think marriage is?
It is INTENDED to be permanent so that children can be brought up by parents who will have a biological and social interest in their offspring as well as a legal and emotional commitment to each other."
”Um... surely you cannot create a biological interest!! Biologically speaking there is no reason why parents should stay together once children can fend for themselves and have matured. So I guess that's be around 13 or 14 for girls and 15 or 16 for boys.”
Obviously, if both parents stay together their offspring will do better than if they separated. If neither parent care about doing the best for their children, then obviously their children will be disadvantaged compared to other children with parents who care. If you do not care that they are socially disadvantaged, then nothing I can do or say will make you care. All I am saying is that I would not wish to be you, your wife or your child and would choose to be the child of parents who take their commitment to each other seriously. If I were a child I would NOT choose you as a parent, since you are so clearly NOT planning to stick around.
”There is no reason at all why the couple must lose their social interest in their children if they split up.”
Parents who split up have a harder job bringing up children, who are still more likely to get into trouble and under-achieve.
You see, if you cared about your child, you would be doing the best you can for them, not thinking, well, they’ll LIVE, won’t they? “My ex-wife might start taking a string of lovers who might mistreat my children, but they’ll live, won’t they? They might even be sexually abused, but they’ll live, won’t they? They might turn into drug-addicts, criminals, prostitutes, but they’ll live, won’t they?”
But then, it is a kind of Darwinian selection. A fit, smart woman wouldn’t marry someone who didn’t take marriage seriously, and then end up a socially and financially disadvantaged single mum with brats who will ruin her chances of getting someone nice after her husband abandons her.
”Of course marriage is entered in (or you would hope) by people who believe and intend it to be permanent. But often these beliefs and intentions won't work out. If they don't work out then the couple will cease to have an emotional commitment to each other. Forcing them to pretend to, trying to make them feel differently that they do, well that can be the job of spiritual advisers and the like, if you see a validity in them, but it can't be the job of the law.”
Marriage is about staying with the person you have had children with, AFTER you have ceased to think they are the sexiest, smartest, most charming person you could ever hope to meet.
The law is just there to make you pay for breaking your marriage vows, which you seem to think should be broken the moment you think you should be moving on.
You don’t sound like you are ready for it, if I may say so!
As for specifying that marriage is to be entered into “with the fear of God”, that was, I imagine, to encourage the couple to take the enterprise of partnership seriously OR ELSE. This does not seem to be particularly irrational to me!
”Or else what? Since god doesn't exist for many people, including you theoretically, then this is unnecessary. And for the poor buggers who do think he exists, a spiritual dimension is now added to their prison.”
Bringing God into this is only to frighten believers into staying together. Even if you did not believe in God, there would still be a financial, social and emotional penalty to pay, if the marriage fails, and rightly so.
”The sort of world that you seem to want seems to me to be horrific. A world with little else but the legislation of emotion, a world that takes away liberty and freedoms and replaces them with judgment and punishment. But you want all these things "for societies good" which is the most worrying thing. Essentially we both want a world that is good for its inhabitants.”
I actually want FEWER laws. How am I taking away the liberty of anyone? You do what you want, I'm just saying: don’t expect me to pay for it!
”I object to the concept of "being grown up" as a valuable trait.”
Would you prefer to be a child, an animal or a lunatic instead? Are you really saying that?
“I suspect wisdom that values itself so highly and anything that see's humans as being some sort of superior state, rather than the cancer on the world which in many ways we are. Lunatics is another very aggravating (and antiquated) term which is not just you once again attacking (without meaning to) some of my close friends and family but also Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Picasso, Ian Curtis... the list is bloody long. I don't think that madness should be glamorised and promoted as a nice or desirable option, but mad people are people with as much of value to say as anyone else, with as much truth and bullshit as anyone else.”
I just don’t find insanity attractive, desirable or admirable. Just because there are a few talented mad people around, doesn’t mean that we should imitate everything about them, should we? Would YOU like to be mad? Cut your ear off? Shoot yourself? Hang yourself?
”I think I made myself clear in my last comment, I am suspicious of the idea of civilization because it always seems to be about be about inequality, power and a lack of fairness, despite it's appearance to be about the opposite of this. You have certainly done nothing to defend it by spouting rhetoric designed to appeal to someone else's emotions.”
Civilisation is what allows a dialogue like this to take place between two people who have never met. I am sorry you cannot see the good in it when you use the benefits of civilisation every day. You could go and live as a hermit in the woods, like an animal, since you scorn civilisation so much, but for some reason you do not!
”Children are as likely as adults to be wise or not wise. Savages is a term designed to make people into enemies who have a different approach to things, either we are all savages or non of us are, surely? Barbarians is another such term. Animals don't have consciousness and so are not comparable. You wouldn't use bread as an example of a fruit would you? No. So why bring animals into a discussion of humans?”
I was only saying that I would rather be human, sane, adult and civilised. For some reason you say you do not share my preference while remaining human, sane, adult and civilised. I can only conclude that you are disagreeing with me just for the sake of it!
It is an unavoidable fact that stats, when presented, or at least when interpreted, will be used to back up their users POV, rather than being presented as a neutral piece of information.
Mind you having said that, you're use of stats in this argument has only been a use of the concept of stats, rather than a specific use. When you say its an undeniable fact you haven't directed me to any studies that back this up. I am not saying that you need to do this in order to validate your argument, but when you make these biased and (from my POV unfounded and misleading) assertions they would be stronger if you could paint to exact evidence.
However even if you do I will still probably see this as I just described: your interpretation of the data. I suspect that given the same data I would come to very different conclusions based on how I see the world as working.
The spin/lie you are promoting is this: that it is the fault of single/working mothers that their children "go wrong" and that being a child of a single/working mother is the factor that makes the children "go wrong".
With this prison claim you are again offering an assertion. Have you been to prisons and met these "illegitimate" inmates (I don't recognise the concept of illegitimate children incidentally) or read studies of prison inmates?
And is the important factor the illegitimacy of these peoples births or the view by society that they are illegitimate from birth? A lot of people I knew at university were illegitimate. Why are they not in prison?
Are all crimes right to be considered crimes?
Are there not many many factors that influence someones criminality?
I am not saying that people who live in poverty are not more likely to commit some forms of crime. I am not denying that social forces make individuals more likely to commit crimes, I am just arguing with you're (frankly odd by this stage) premise that being an "illegitimate" child is the factor that causes this. And in the capacity that legitimacy is relevant I would say that it marks you as more likely to have to struggle against the oppressive force of "civilisation" and also that in many cases of "illegitimacy" parents are not taking responsibility for their children. That parents don't do that is down to a mix of the general absence of the concept of responsibility from our culture coupled with the pressures (both practical and cultural) that these parents are under.
I don't want to compel fathers to stick around and support the children that they never wanted born. But I do think that morally it would be good if the idea that if you have unprotected sex (personal choice) that you must be prepared to be responsible for the outcome (child/HIV etc)was more widely excepted. Just as I don't want to outlaw smoking (as a smoker this would not aid my lifestyle for a start) but I think it is better if smokers start smoking with the full knowledge that it may lead to early deaths and iron lungs.
You can't police peoples actions, that is what I have been saying to you all along. But you can work towards a society that has its eyes open and that has the ideal of responsibility at its core (from personal to political to corporate and governmental).
One of those responsibilities is the social. It is our social duty to support those in society who find it hard to support themselves. It is not the child's choice to be born and to not aid their mother to bring them up when they need the help is pretty despicable. Certainly in a society with so much wealth it is terrifying how little is received by those who need it most. And single mothers don't get anywhere near as much as people believe and many of hem work hard to bring their children up with very little governmental help.
I think fathers should be compelled to offer financial support for their actions. The idea that they can wash their hands of their own flash and blood just because they didn't want them is stupid. You can't do that for your parents so why for your children. You have to work with reality and not with fantasy. You can't imagine cancer out of your body. You can't imagine your child out of the world.
Why are you only condemning women for promiscuity and not also men? Surely your argument that single mothers should have to find all their own money (which I don't support) should include the fathers as well, by the simple fact that it takes 2 to tango. Promiscuity isn't the issue anyway, unprotected sex and often the religion that helps to cause it (and the opposition to abortion) are the problem.
As I said evil and stupid exist in actions and events, just not in people because they are totalising concepts and people are not one solid definite thing. Not subscribing to these concepts doesn't in any sense make me think the world is perfect. I think that seeing people as stupid or evil increases the evil and stupidity in the world rather than lessens in. You simply have to listen to one of George Bushes speeches after 9/11 to see what I mean. People who simplify like this are no longer looking at the way things are, they are instead creating elegant and simple fictions. Like calling suicide bombers cowards.
Responsibility is a burden and no commitment whether framed as a marriage or not should (ideally) be taken lightly. But part of that responsibility is to look out for your children. Keeping a marriage going when all that exists in the household is barely concealed hate, or worse open hostility, is not good for the children. There fore the responsible thing to do for all concerned is to end the marriage. It is a myth that staying together = always good.
I don't think marriage always has to have a relationship to kids anyway. I don't want kids but I do want to get married.
Sterner times as you put it have their own problems. The oppression of those times is in my view well worth exchanging for what we have now. Plus there wasn't less crime as far as I understand it. Again I ask if you have any evidence to back up our assertion?
Early in this argument you accused me of basing all my arguments on my feelings. I openly admit that my feelings play a big part in the way I argue, but I have to say that more and more I am getting the feeling from you that you keep presenting opinion (based on no evidence) as fact. That crime is differently reported now is a fact. But whether it has increased or not is a different question.
Single parenthood has increased but the lessening of social stigma has given the children of single parents much greater opportunities than before. (my opinion)
Clearly I know marriage is a legal contract, or else I wouldn't be saying that I think the legal element of it should be taken out if it!! I don't think it is a bet, I think it is a promise. The consequences of marriages breaking down are not necessarily disastrous. I certainly don't think marriage (or co-habitation, or having children) is just a way of saying we'll see how things go. It's about saying that this is how you believe things will be for the rest of your life. But beliefs can be wrong and things can change.
Marriage is not specifically about children either. You seem to be suggesting that if a couple don't want children (like myself and my partner) that we shouldn't get married. Marriage is about a commitment to a shared life together, that shared life may involve children but it also involves a massive variety of other things.
I am not someone who subscribes to procreation as the point of existence and whilst having a child is a big responsibility I think you are still making far to much of it. No one has the secret to good parenthood or to good marriage or we can do is try our best. Who are you or I or anyone else to judge each others attempts.
You misunderstood my point about biological imperative, I was pointing out that we have to override this in order to do the right thing. But as we are conscious and so have a new dimension to all other creatures in evolution this isn't a problem. I was demonstrating to you that human beings constantly over-ride evolution/biology which would have them being more promiscuous and not sticking around ever.
"Obviously, if both parents stay together their offspring will do better than if they separated. "
Obviously? How so. If a father beats up their offspring will they be better or worse off if the parents stay together? If the parents are arguing all the time is it better the child remains there or would it be better if they split up and the child split their time between seeing the parents individually?
"If neither parent care about doing the best for their children, then obviously their children will be disadvantaged compared to other children with parents who care."
Caring about you children also means making sure you are happy enough to provide them with a stimulating and positive childhood experience. My parents divorced before I was born but both of them have been here for me for my entire life. For quite a lot of it they have lived together (in separate rooms/living spaces)for the good of the children but we were never fed any sort of stupid lie. They found ways to deal with each other for the sake of their children. A hell of a lot of parents do this sort of thing. To suggest people like that don't care is "obviously" an assertion based on illogical emotion.
Also many parents who stay together don't care for their children adequately. This insistence that this blueprint (that makes sense as a blueprint) always works and that it is the only design that can work for the house that is a family is very misinformed and doesn't have much relation to reality.
"If you do not care that they are socially disadvantaged, then nothing I can do or say will make you care."
Do not attempt to make out that I don't care about the disadvantaged. You are the one who would deny single parents state money. If you really care as you claim to then you would want to help the poor little lost souls. I am saying that "illegitimacy" doesn't have to equal social disadvantage and that human relations are massively more complex than you make out. And that you cannot legislate for them.
"All I am saying is that I would not wish to be you, your wife or your child and would choose to be the child of parents who take their commitment to each other seriously."
That is a very odd statement to make. Since I have been in a committed relationship for 7 years and take its perminance as a serious commitment. I have already told you that I don't want to have children so you need not worry for them and if I do then I will be sticking by them whether or not me and their mother remain together. A child is a permanent commitment, a relationship will not always manage to be the same way.
"If I were a child I would NOT choose you as a parent, since you are so clearly NOT planning to stick around."
What a bizarre thing to say. Where have you based this opinion of me from? To say that human beings are not perfect and shouldn't be expected to be if not to say that you will do the worst things available to you. If I had a child I think I would definitely stick around. I can't prove it obviously because its a hypothetical. Plus I would clearly only have children with a mother who I intended to be together for the rest of my life with.
In reference to my actual relationship I sure as hell am intending to stick around. You have a tendency to talk about men as if we are all deadbeat dads and at the same time to validate our right to be so!!
"Parents who split up have a harder job bringing up children, who are still more likely to get into trouble and under-achieve."
Assertion. Maybe for some it is easier to bring up their kids without their spousal conflict constantly effecting them. Again I would direct you to the social factors related to getting into trouble and underachieving.
Um... you seem to have got massively the wrong end of some sort of stick here, I am not sure where you got it from. I don't have a child but you keep suggesting that I do...
actually (hopefully) you seem to be creating a fictional example. All that they'll live won't they business has nothing to do with any of my arguments but is rather a pretty odd journey into your own prejudices. Interesting place to visit though. And then you take a leaf out of the Nazi's books and invoke darwin to prove your prejudices. Evolution (as I already mentioned) suggests promiscuity and leaving children once they are old enough to mate if you want to take it as a bluerprint for living (rather than as a way of understanding how we came to be here).
You're fanciful stuff is not very nice at all, since it further seems to be having a dig at this deadbeat dad you imagine me to be (and as someone who has both a very committed sense of responsibility and no children this is annoying). But they'll live is not the point.
Here's my alternative take on your fiction:
OTHER SIDE:I may be beating my wife and children but I'd better stay because thats what parents do, and I am a responsible one.
ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE:
Me and the mother split up but because I care about my child, you I do the best I can for them, by continuing to give them emotinal and financial support. I am grateful to my ex-wife new lover who treats my children as if they were his own but doesn't try and usurp me.
FACTS: Most sexual abuse happens in the home, often from father to child. Should the mother stay with that father for the sake of the family? A step-parent is no more likely to be an abuser than anyone else.
"They might turn into drug-addicts, criminals, prostitutes, but they’ll live, won’t they?"
As if I would advocate that statement in anyway. But I also do not judge drug-addicts, criminals and prostitutes in the way you sound like you do. I am aware of the sort of factors that create them (and in regards to addicts the most important seems to disposition, its just that the poorer the addict the less of a functioning addict they can be. Poor addicts are criminals, rich ones work on wall street, until they don't. Out of the addicts I have known many have been from rich legitimate backgrounds.
"The law is just there to make you pay for breaking your marriage vows, which you seem to think should be broken the moment you think you should be moving on."
surely it would be better if people were forced to pay for breaking their responsibility to their children as opposed to the partner they have split from? You want people to be punished for having marriages that fail to work but you don't want fathers to have to pay money towards their "illegitimate" children!!
And I never said that a marriage vow should or shouldn't be broken. I said that they are and they will be and that it isn't for anyone but the interested parties to make judgments on it. Personally I believe that lasting relationships must be worked for and are not easy and fun all the time. But I also think that it is perfectly possible to go on considering your partner to be the best of all the possibilities. The passion may not remain as constant but if you are remaining together for no other reason than your children then you are doing the wrong thing.
And you MAY NOT say if you consider me to be ready for marriage or not. Or at least you may say so, it is a free country, but in saying so you are being incredibly rude, judgmental and presumptuous. You are also basing your presumption on a heck of a lot of misunderstanding as far as I can gather.
You are arguing for legal restrictions on emotions but against society protecting everyone. That is how your attitude to law seems to work. Marriage should be a punitive law but single parents shouldn't receive state help. That is how I see you as being against liberty. You are against the emotional liberty of people having the right to bring up their children as they see fit and treat their relationships as they see fit. And you are against the practical liberty of allowing those with less to have the same chances as those with more. Particularly you are putting the liberty of the child (who we must both agree is blameless) last. You want people to pay for their own actions, but I'm afraid that it is the child who will pay if we don't help the mothers!
I am happy to pay for any illegitimate children that you may have. I object to paying for a lot of things my tax goes into: defense, unsustainable farming, CCTV cameras, ID cards, spin, the war on drugs but things like income support, benefits, national health, public libraries, public transport, they are fine. That stuff helps everyone and might one day help me. I am not saying I approve of how these services are run, either. Just that they exist.
"I just don’t find insanity attractive, desirable or admirable. Just because there are a few talented mad people around, doesn’t mean that we should imitate everything about them, should we? Would YOU like to be mad? Cut your ear off? Shoot yourself? Hang yourself?"
I am incredibly angered by you misrepresenting what I said in this way. By arguing that mad people are not an invalid part of society and specifically stating that madness shouldn't be glamorized or admired (for being mad) I was clearly not saying what you suggest I was saying. But since you have been so obtuse about what I said I will state my case again:
No I would not like to be mad. I know mad people and I do not wish to have the troubles they have. Nor do I think that mad people are automatically artists, nor that they are better artists than the non-mad. I am just saying that they cannot and must not be written off as inferior to the sane. I was certainly not advocating or glamorising suicide and I truly suggest you do not respond by implying that I am.
I was mostly objecting to the hideous way you bandy around words such as lunatic and suggest that a lunatic is less than a human! Mad people are humans and as valid as any other human.
"Civilisation is what allows a dialogue like this to take place between two people who have never met. I am sorry you cannot see the good in it when you use the benefits of civilisation every day. You could go and live as a hermit in the woods, like an animal, since you scorn civilisation so much, but for some reason you do not!"
Again you have read what I said and then chosen to completely misunderstand it. What I say about civislation is nuanced. It isn't black and white. I am objecting to the connotations, the semantic effects and the cultural effects of the concept of civilization. And lets face it, technology and progress and the rest which we all enjoy so much, is also completely fucking up the world and society. Yes there are many paradox's involved.
Going and living in the woods as a hermit would imply that to not be civilised is not to be social. Tell that to chimpanzees.
"I was only saying that I would rather be human, sane, adult and civilised. For some reason you say you do not share my preference while remaining human, sane, adult and civilised. I can only conclude that you are disagreeing with me just for the sake of it!"
I have no choice about being human and adult.
I don't think that civilised is a word you can use without being an evil and stupid person ;-) But seriously I don't like what civilisation means and what civilisation does which doesn't (as I say again) mean I am against fairness and decency and the rest. I just see little fairness and decency in the society around me. We are very unequal here and when you look at the global picture it is even less civilised. But its a serpent underneath the flower thing, what really gets me is that we lie and pretend we are fair and just when we are not.
You assume I am sane. I would say that I am saner than some and less sane than others. Certainly mental illness runs in my family and most people will experience some sort of "mad" time in their lives. I prefer to be sane because it is easier, but I do not see mad people as being lesser and object to you're use of them as a rhetorical device, suggesting they are not civilised and less than human.
You're conclusion is monstrously arrogant and I am surprised at myself that I am still giving you the time of day after some of the things you have said. I am disagreeing with you because I think that what you are saying is very very wrong. You can think it is because I like to argue if you want, but that is not it at all.
I do question why I bother arguing with you when you fail to even try and engage with ideas that are not your own. You keep on and on with your assertions and assumptions but when you really boil down your politics they are based on illogical prejudices. You remind me of talking to religious fanatics.
Try to argue with what I am actually saying rather than what you want to argue against, please. And could you stop making such personal attacks on someone that you don't really know. Or at least if you do continue to do so please bring some of your own personal life into it, so I can have a go at you and your choices (and even better make up complete fictions about your behavior). I know that my general personal is the political take on argument leaves me open to personal attacks and I am happy to do this and accept the consequences, but I am not making assumptions about your life or fictitious accounts of your behavior, so please stick to what is said rather than imagining what isn't.
”With this prison claim you are again offering an assertion. Have you been to prisons and met these "illegitimate" inmates (I don't recognise the concept of illegitimate children incidentally) or read studies of prison inmates?”
No, but it is quite obvious that most of them come from broken homes. The word “bastard”, ie illegitimate child, is used to mean “bad person” and this in itself is telling.
”And is the important factor the illegitimacy of these peoples births or the view by society that they are illegitimate from birth? A lot of people I knew at university were illegitimate. Why are they not in prison?”
I am not saying that everyone who is illegitimate has a bad nature, merely that their nurture and environment is more likely to be disadvantaged.
”Are all crimes right to be considered crimes?”
Depends what they are.
”Are there not many many factors that influence someones criminality?”
Of course, the most important of which is environment. Single mums tend not, for all sorts of practical reasons, give their children the best start in life.
”I don't want to compel fathers to stick around and support the children that they never wanted born. But I do think that morally it would be good if the idea that if you have unprotected sex (personal choice) that you must be prepared to be responsible for the outcome (child/HIV etc) was more widely excepted.”
There is marriage and the CSA.
”I think fathers should be compelled to offer financial support for their actions. The idea that they can wash their hands of their own flash and blood just because they didn't want them is stupid. You can't do that for your parents so why for your children. You have to work with reality and not with fantasy. You can't imagine cancer out of your body. You can't imagine your child out of the world.”
You can still abandon them!
”Why are you only condemning women for promiscuity and not also men? Surely your argument that single mothers should have to find all their own money (which I don't support) should include the fathers as well, by the simple fact that it takes 2 to tango. Promiscuity isn't the issue anyway, unprotected sex and often the religion that helps to cause it (and the opposition to abortion) are the problem.”
It is women who become pregnant and therefore it is they who must assume the responsibility for their own fertility.
If you let these women who somehow do not make the connection between copulating without contraception with the having of babies, go their merry way, picking up the bill for them, then they will carry on having more.
”As I said evil and stupid exist in actions and events, just not in people because they are totalising concepts and people are not one solid definite thing. Not subscribing to these concepts doesn't in any sense make me think the world is perfect. I think that seeing people as stupid or evil increases the evil and stupidity in the world rather than lessens in. You simply have to listen to one of George Bushes speeches after 9/11 to see what I mean. People who simplify like this are no longer looking at the way things are, they are instead creating elegant and simple fictions. Like calling suicide bombers cowards.”
Sounds like you’re saying the words “stupid” and “evil” can only be used if YOU approve of the context. Sounds a bit totalitarian to me! ;-)
”Responsibility is a burden and no commitment whether framed as a marriage or not should (ideally) be taken lightly. But part of that responsibility is to look out for your children. Keeping a marriage going when all that exists in the household is barely concealed hate, or worse open hostility, is not good for the children. There fore the responsible thing to do for all concerned is to end the marriage. It is a myth that staying together = always good.”
I am not saying staying together is ALWAYS good. I am merely observing that many couples these days split up for reasons I regard as trivial to the detriment of their children.
”Sterner times as you put it have their own problems. The oppression of those times is in my view well worth exchanging for what we have now. Plus there wasn't less crime as far as I understand it. Again I ask if you have any evidence to back up our assertion?”
There are more burglaries, drug-addiction, robberies, public drunkenness, vandalism, murders and shootings now. However much you hate to admit that I am right, there is no getting around the fact that, whatever the problems of the UK in the 1950s, it certainly was not violent crime.
”Marriage is not specifically about children either. You seem to be suggesting that if a couple don't want children (like myself and my partner) that we shouldn't get married. Marriage is about a commitment to a shared life together, that shared life may involve children but it also involves a massive variety of other things.”
All I am saying is that marriage, apart from being a legal way to promise or bet your money, pride and energy that you are going to stay together, is also a contract to bring up children. If homosexuals with their civil partnership can make this bet, then of course heterosexuals should be able to do likewise.
There are no societal consequences when a couple, gay or straight, break up with no children. But there are if children are involved. That is all I am saying.
”I am not someone who subscribes to procreation as the point of existence and whilst having a child is a big responsibility I think you are still making far to much of it. No one has the secret to good parenthood or to good marriage or we can do is try our best. Who are you or I or anyone else to judge each others attempts.”
If you get divorced, you have had a failed marriage. You embarked on an enterprise and failed. If it was a childless marriage, I am certainly not going to be judgemental about it, because it is nothing more than 2 people who part because they no longer want to stay together.
However, if a couple divorce, with the result that their offspring suffer a disadvantage, or if a single mum gets pregnant without bothering to get married and her offspring turns out to be delinquent and criminal and becomes yet another single parent, there are clearly harmful societal consequences which the state should discourage, by telling them that single mums will no longer receive state benefits.
”If a father beats up their offspring will they be better or worse off if the parents stay together? If the parents are arguing all the time is it better the child remains there or would it be better if they split up and the child split their time between seeing the parents individually?
If you mean the father is violent and harms his children, then it is of course something the mother should do something about, ie divorce him and take the children out of harm’s way.
As for parents arguing all the time, I don’t have a problem with it. It is as well that the children get used to the fact that couples argue. It does not mean your marriage has ended if everything is not sweetness and light all the time.
”Caring about you children also means making sure you are happy enough to provide them with a stimulating and positive childhood experience. My parents divorced before I was born but both of them have been here for me for my entire life. For quite a lot of it they have lived together (in separate rooms/living spaces)for the good of the children but we were never fed any sort of stupid lie. They found ways to deal with each other for the sake of their children. A hell of a lot of parents do this sort of thing. To suggest people like that don't care is "obviously" an assertion based on illogical emotion.”
Well, obviously you turned out OK. The fact that your parents’ marriage was a turbulent affair did not harm you because both your parents, but especially your father, were around, which I think is quite important, especially for a boy.
"Do not attempt to make out that I don't care about the disadvantaged. You are the one who would deny single parents state money. If you really care as you claim to then you would want to help the poor little lost souls. I am saying that "illegitimacy" doesn't have to equal social disadvantage and that human relations are massively more complex than you make out. And that you cannot legislate for them.”
Illegitimacy doesn’t necessarily mean your life is doomed, but it is likely to work out in a way that is socially, financially and educationally disadvantageous.
”Maybe for some it is easier to bring up their kids without their spousal conflict constantly effecting them. Again I would direct you to the social factors related to getting into trouble and underachieving.”
Single and working parenthood are the 2 most conclusive factors of children “running wild” and under-achieving. There was something in the papers about that not long ago, showing that black people with their highest crime rate have more single mums than any other race.
”Evolution (as I already mentioned) suggests promiscuity and leaving children once they are old enough to mate if you want to take it as a bluerprint for living (rather than as a way of understanding how we came to be here).”
While it is clearly a man’s role to avail himself of every reproductive opportunity, it would be more in the interests of the woman that she does not co-operate at every opportunity. Otherwise, she would find herself being one of those single mums with a family full of children from different fathers, who constitute the criminal underclass of British society.
Obviously there are women who don’t care, because an extra child means another lot of child benefit.
These women are a menace to society but you will probably take me to task for saying so.
It also depends on whether you want quantity (lots and lots of little bastards all over the place behaving like bastards) or want quality (fewer children but better quality human beings). Even in evolutionary terms you would have to choose between quality and quantity. I suspect the best balance is a mixture of the two.
”Surely it would be better if people were forced to pay for breaking their responsibility to their children as opposed to the partner they have split from? You want people to be punished for having marriages that fail to work but you don't want fathers to have to pay money towards their "illegitimate" children!!”
The reason for this is because I want to give more rights to people who get married and stay together (to encourage them to stay together) than those who don’t bother to get married and don’t stay together and have children (to discourage illegitimacy).
”And you MAY NOT say if you consider me to be ready for marriage or not. Or at least you may say so, it is a free country, but in saying so you are being incredibly rude, judgmental and presumptuous. You are also basing your presumption on a heck of a lot of misunderstanding as far as I can gather.”
I am sorry to have offended you. Since you have already stayed with your partner for 7 years, it does suggest that you are a young man quite capable of commitment. Or are you both due for what is called the 7 Year Itch? ;-)
”You are arguing for legal restrictions on emotions but against society protecting everyone. That is how your attitude to law seems to work. Marriage should be a punitive law but single parents shouldn't receive state help. That is how I see you as being against liberty. You are against the emotional liberty of people having the right to bring up their children as they see fit and treat their relationships as they see fit. And you are against the practical liberty of allowing those with less to have the same chances as those with more. Particularly you are putting the liberty of the child (who we must both agree is blameless) last. You want people to pay for their own actions, but I'm afraid that it is the child who will pay if we don't help the mothers!”
There is always a price to pay whatever choice we make. To discourage illegitimacy I propose withholding state benefits from single never-married mums, yes.
People can have as many illegitimate children as they want, as long as they do not harm my interests. Since I suspect that they mostly turn into criminals, I see that discouraging illegitimacy as one of the ways of dealing with rising crime.
”I am happy to pay for any illegitimate children that you may have. I object to paying for a lot of things my tax goes into: defense, unsustainable farming, CCTV cameras, ID cards, spin, the war on drugs but things like income support, benefits, national health, public libraries, public transport, they are fine. That stuff helps everyone and might one day help me. I am not saying I approve of how these services are run, either. Just that they exist.”
I am against the welfare state nannying us. Public libraries and public transport I am happy to pay for, but not other people’s children, illegitimate or not.
”I was mostly objecting to the hideous way you bandy around words such as lunatic and suggest that a lunatic is less than a human! Mad people are humans and as valid as any other human.”
You are reading words I never wrote. All I said was that I would not like to be a lunatic and prefer sanity to insanity. I never said they are not part of the human race, but I wouldn’t be hiring them or marrying them or trusting them to look after my children, legitimate or not.
”I don't think that civilised is a word you can use without being an evil and stupid person ;-) But seriously I don't like what civilisation means and what civilisation does which doesn't (as I say again) mean I am against fairness and decency and the rest. I just see little fairness and decency in the society around me. We are very unequal here and when you look at the global picture it is even less civilised. But its a serpent underneath the flower thing, what really gets me is that we lie and pretend we are fair and just when we are not.”
Please define civilisation. To me it is a mixed bag (for it includes pornography, dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction etc) but still preferable to being uncivilised!
”I do question why I bother arguing with you when you fail to even try and engage with ideas that are not your own. You keep on and on with your assertions and assumptions but when you really boil down your politics they are based on illogical prejudices. You remind me of talking to religious fanatics.”
You also make assertions and assumptions. Now you are calling me a religious fanatic, when all I was saying is that illegitimacy should be discouraged by the state by withholding benefits to these unmarried single mums!
”Try to argue with what I am actually saying rather than what you want to argue against, please. And could you stop making such personal attacks on someone that you don't really know. Or at least if you do continue to do so please bring some of your own personal life into it, so I can have a go at you and your choices (and even better make up complete fictions about your behavior). I know that my general personal is the political take on argument leaves me open to personal attacks and I am happy to do this and accept the consequences, but I am not making assumptions about your life or fictitious accounts of your behavior, so please stick to what is said rather than imagining what isn't.”
You want me to give you ammunition so that you can attack my arguments? I suppose if I had a brood of illegitimate children by many different fathers, you might accuse me of being a fool to myself for suggesting that state benefit should be withheld from the likes of me!
In fact, I would still say the same even if I were the Old Woman who lived in a shoe:
There was an old woman
who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children
she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth
without any bread;
She whipped them all soundly
and put them to bed.
Do as I say, not as I do!
There are many words that are used to mean bad people and they tell a lot, but rarely about the object of negativity. They are telling however about the person who uses them and their prejudices. I know many bastards (the literal meaning) who are very nice.
The most important factor that influences someone’s criminality is environment, we agree. But that has much less to do with if their parents are married or are both around and more to do with what sort of environment their parents/families/schools/society provide for them. Class and race (and how society treats these issues) are the significant things and not wedlock and working mothers.
You can abandon children, but you shouldn’t. It is not right for fathers to do nothing to support their children.
I am not saying that stupid and evil can or can’t be used. I am saying I do not recognise the concept of stupid or evil people. I don’t relate to a simplified, binary opposite, heaven and hell view of the world. I can relate to the idea of actions or events or whatever as being stupid and occasionally even evil. I am not being totalitarian about it.
“There are more burglaries, drug-addiction, robberies, public drunkenness, vandalism, murders and shootings now.”
I’m not convinced. They are certainly reported in a certain manner now. Victorian times were as bad I reckon. Yeah we are probably better off than the 50’s but then again in the fifties it was worse to be a woman or a black person or a homosexual and everything was extremely repressive. We have more shootings because capitalism and technology have made gun distribution much more wide spread. I reckon murders and drug addiction and burglaries stay pretty level as well. I’d be interested in seeing some statistical evidence though.
I don’t think violent crime is as much of a problem as it is made out to be. And where it is a problem it has nothing to do with single parents and working mothers.
I am saying that marriage isn’t the contract to have and bring up children, it is having the children that is that contract.
What would be the result for the state and for the children if single mothers were given no benefits? (and they are not given adequate benefits anyway, let me tell you, which is one reason that their children face tougher lives and may get involved in all the stuff you seem to think they all get involved in.)
When I talk of parents arguing all the time, I use the words all the time for a reason: I am trying to suggest parents who hate/have no respect for each other being constantly on at each other, and not the normal arguing that goes on in any healthy couple. I am not talking about bad patches that can be worked through. I am talking about where households become like prison cells because people who don’t want to/can’t live with each other are forcing themselves (and their children) to live together. This is bad for the children. And responsible parents will know when this situation has arisen and for their children’s sake they will split up. By that time it may be a bit late in some ways. But they are doing their best and the world isn’t perfect.
I never knew the turbulent affair of my parents marriage, though my older brother did. I knew the turbulent affair of my mothers second marriage and I can tell you that if they’d split up earlier EVERYONE would have been a lot better off.
I agree that having fathers around is important. That is why I think it best if they stay around. But you can’t legislate how people choose to live their lives. You can legislate what they do with their money though and so I think they should have to pay for their children’s upkeep.
“While it is clearly a man’s role to avail himself of every reproductive opportunity, it would be more in the interests of the woman that she does not co-operate at every opportunity.”
Right, we are talking evolution here and I have read a lot of things that suggest that women are equally as likely to be promiscuous, they are just likely to hide it so they can remain with the alpha male. Also women are designed to have children from an evolutionary standpoint. Probably when they get to be about 14 they should start trying to have children.
BUT we have consciousness and so are not at the mercy of evolution. So we can conquer these impulses. However it is hard and not very fun to try and conquer our impulses and instincts. Because it is so hard we should have sympathy and understanding for those who follow their biology rather than their brains, especially because many of the “logical and rational” ways that we are “supposed” to behave are actually really rubbish ways of existing anyway.
“criminal underclass of British society”
You sound like the daily mail or some such twoddle. How am I supposed to take anyone who uses such a phrase seriously? What are you talking about? I know a few members of that underclass and they are just people like you and me.
Few women use benefits in the way you imply. The ones who do don’t seem to have very nice lives and are a menace to themselves as much as anyone else. Most people on benefits struggle. You can claim different but your claims are not good enough. You neither have first hand experiential evidence to back them up or broader statistical evidence. You are just basing them on the explicit misrepresentations of certain elements of press and politics.
I want less people because the world could do with less people. But I don’t understand your concept of quality and quantity. I think all humans have an equal right and worth. Yes I like some much more than others. But if I was picking quality the people I would weed out would be vastly different to you. And because when you get down to it such weeding is distasteful I think we would all be better off if we stopped fantasising about it. Every person is a person.
“You are reading words I never wrote. All I said was that I would not like to be a lunatic and prefer sanity to insanity. I never said they are not part of the human race,”
you implied they were lesser to adult humans, by putting them in the same category as children and animals.
“but I wouldn’t be hiring them or marrying them or trusting them to look after my children, legitimate or not.”
That is pure unadulterated ignorance. Many of your last comments have been like that, but I have not responded to them because I know I cannot actually change your mind, but I just can’t stop myself from pointing out your particularly WRONG points. Sadly my anger and sadness at your statements make me less able to argue against them properly. You really do have a knack with saying really offensive things. I commend you on it in a way.
I can’t define civilisation but I do know that many many things that are called civilised I abhor and many that are called uncivilised I am in favour of. I suspect a new word would be good with a clear definition. But I also suspect that were we to both make different words to cover the thing inside civilisation that we believe in they would contain completely different definitions, since you have all these negative views (or I have all these negative views depending on the way you see it).
“You also make assertions and assumptions. Now you are calling me a religious fanatic, when all I was saying is that illegitimacy should be discouraged by the state by withholding benefits to these unmarried single mums!”
I rest my case you nutcase!!!
I know I make assertions and assumptions, I tend to try and frame them as such, and I think I do so more than you. But you are right I do make them. But I don’t make them about such terrible things as you.
I don’t believe that you would say the same regardless of your personal situation. I think that you would think very differently. I didn’t want you to give me ammunition as such. I don’t really need any. I was upset by your barrage of negative comments directed at my moral character and was pointing out the unfairness of this behaviour.
I was really thinking about marriage anyway, rather than if you have kids or not. Because it seems strange to me that someone would say the sort of things that you are saying and be happily married. Because if you were then you wouldn’t have the hatred for divorce et al… maybe even for single mothers… that you have. I might be wrong. When I first read your blog I assumed you were a man because you were so misogynistic. If I am wrong then fair enough.
ps it was very odd that you wrote down that entire verse of the old woman who lived in a shoe to end your comment. It was surprising though. Conversing with you is always surprising.
“There are many words that are used to mean bad people and they tell a lot, but rarely about the object of negativity. They are telling however about the person who uses them and their prejudices. I know many bastards (the literal meaning) who are very nice.”
I’m not saying every one who was born illegitimate is a “bastard”, merely asking you why this insult is historically used to mean an unpleasant person, in this country and other cultures too.
”The most important factor that influences someone’s criminality is environment, we agree. But that has much less to do with if their parents are married or are both around and more to do with what sort of environment their parents/families/schools/society provide for them. Class and race (and how society treats these issues) are the significant things and not wedlock and working mothers.”
As if a parent’s income and single parenthood will not affect a child’s environment! It is all down to money, and you know it.
” We have more shootings because capitalism and technology have made gun distribution much more wide spread. I reckon murders and drug addiction and burglaries stay pretty level as well. I’d be interested in seeing some statistical evidence though.”
Here it is:
Failure has no father
By Alasdair Palmer
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/04/2007
The history of ambitious social policies aimed at diminishing crime is one of failure. That is not because we are unable to identify the groups who are likely to furnish us with the next generation of criminals: we are. It is possible to make some reasonably secure predictions, such as that being brought up in a single-parent family is more likely to lead to a child (the vast majority of the "danger kids" are boys) ending up in prison. Seventy per cent of young offenders are from single-parent families. Being raised by your mother on her own is not the strongest predictor of ending up as a criminal: having a father who is himself a criminal is the top of that list. But not far behind is being raised without a father at all.
As last week's survey on social trends demonstrates, single-parent families in Britain are increasing fast. There are now three times the number of children being brought up just by their mothers than there were 30 years ago. One in every four children is raised without a father. The proportion has reached one in every two in black families, who furnish a predictably greater number of child criminals.
This is not an issue about race or marriage: it is about the presence of fathers. Cohabiting parents do just as well as married ones, provided they stick together. The concern about single-parent families centres on the depressing association between being raised without a father and ending up as a criminal. That association is statistical, like the association between smoking and cancer: while not everyone who smokes will die of cancer, no one in their right mind would advocate smoking on the basis that some smokers don't die of a smoking-related disease.
The Government's policy of subsidising single-parenthood is the equivalent, in social policy terms, of subsiding tobacco consumption. The Government provides incentives to bring up children without both parents. So much so that, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, there are 200,000 more people claiming the benefits and tax credits that are due to lone parents than there are actually lone parents in the UK. The consequences of making single-parenthood ever-more economically viable are completely predictable. One of them is that there will be more teenage killings, and not just in the black community.
Perhaps those who advocate the policy believe it will be worth its heavy costs. The trouble is, there is no evidence that they have seriously considered them. And they certainly haven't asked the rest of us.
For the complete article, go to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/15/do1507.xml
”I agree that having fathers around is important. That is why I think it best if they stay around. But you can’t legislate how people choose to live their lives. You can legislate what they do with their money though and so I think they should have to pay for their children’s upkeep.”
Are you saying men should pay for a child even though all they intended to do was to have sex?
”BUT we have consciousness and so are not at the mercy of evolution. So we can conquer these impulses. However it is hard and not very fun to try and conquer our impulses and instincts. Because it is so hard we should have sympathy and understanding for those who follow their biology rather than their brains, especially because many of the “logical and rational” ways that we are “supposed” to behave are actually really rubbish ways of existing anyway.”
If people do the wrong thing and get themselves into trouble, you don’t just pick up the bill for them, hoping they won’t do it again. If you do, there is nothing to stop them from doing it again and again and again.
Please give examples of how being logical and rational could lead to “rubbish ways of existing”
“ ‘criminal underclass of British society’ You sound like the daily mail or some such twoddle. How am I supposed to take anyone who uses such a phrase seriously? What are you talking about? I know a few members of that underclass and they are just people like you and me.
You are probably referring to the vendors of the recreational drugs you occasionally purchase. Yes, drug-dealers are people too, and so are people of the criminal underclass. Some of them can be kind, generous, amusing and entertaining company, I know.
If you ever watched THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND – that film about Idi Amin’s Uganda, you will never forget how charming some villains and criminals can be, when they want to turn on the charm. Just because you find them good company does not detract from the fact that they are still villains, criminals, gangsters, dictators etc.
In a way it is honourable of you to be so loyal to people you regard as your friends, but there really is no need to defend them against me. I never said they “weren’t people” anyway.
”Few women use benefits in the way you imply. The ones who do don’t seem to have very nice lives and are a menace to themselves as much as anyone else. Most people on benefits struggle. You can claim different but your claims are not good enough. You neither have first hand experiential evidence to back them up or broader statistical evidence. You are just basing them on the explicit misrepresentations of certain elements of press and politics.”
I do not say these people have a nice life. I just don’t want to encourage these women to have more little bastards or pay for them to grow up, or for their imprisonment when they are old enough to go to prison.
”I was really thinking about marriage anyway, rather than if you have kids or not. Because it seems strange to me that someone would say the sort of things that you are saying and be happily married. Because if you were then you wouldn’t have the hatred for divorce et al… maybe even for single mothers… that you have. I might be wrong. When I first read your blog I assumed you were a man because you were so misogynistic. If I am wrong then fair enough.”
Not quite sure what you mean. I could equally be a smug married person and say what I do. I could also be the Old Woman in the Shoe and say what I do (having seen the error of my promiscuous ways!).
You are always saying, “Oh, but you can’t say that, because people I like and love are never-married single mums, illegitimate, lunatic, reliable providers of my recreational drugs” etc.
We are just having a political discussion. I am not attacking anyone personally so please do not feel you have to protect them from me!
"As if a parent’s income and single parenthood will not affect a child’s environment! It is all down to money, and you know it."
Indeed I do know that money is a very large factor. But then again so is love. And family support.
If you take away benefits from single mothers they will be even worse off and their children are even more likely to become socially difficult.
You've attacked the concept of working mothers as well. But it is essentially to have 2 incomes if you are poor, where as when you are better of it is simply a choice.
So as I said the important factor is class/race because that is what decides (as a general rule) who has the money and who has the freedom. If you have money and you are a single parent it is unlikely you're children will get involved in crime etc... If you are poor it is much more likely (although still NOT the norm.)
Hmm... I checked out your evidence and it proved to be just someone elses opinionated rant. Everyone wrote an oppinionated rant about those comments by Blair. Even I did one:
http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/2007/04/apples-in-fruit-bowl.html
Opinionated rants of course do not prove much. But don't get me wrong, I do agree that its better to have the father around, who doesn't? I just don't buy all the rest of the conclusions that you and the Telegraph come to.
It's nice to see where you get your distorted view of the world from though. The amount of other factors that are combined with an increase in the likely hood of being a lone parent are so large that to draw such simplistic conclusions about it and print them in a newspaper is very very irresponsible and damaging. But hey its a free country and so it should be... everyone has the right to inject this poison into their brains, but I don't advise it myself.
As for benefit fraud, yes that happens, but we are not talking about fraudulent lone parents but about real ones.
"Are you saying men should pay for a child even though all they intended to do was to have sex?"
Morally speaking without a doubt. As for legally, well if we have to have laws (and I don't really like much about our legal system) we should have just ones, and so yes, I guess legally speaking to.
As you say yourself people shouldn't be able to shirk their responsibilities. You said of women that they were stupid if they didn't keep their knickers on and would pay the consequences for this stupidity. I am saying that men are stupid if they don't keep their knickers on (or at least their condoms) and that they as well as the women should have to take responsibility for this stupid act.
I am trying to use your words there, because I don't really see anything within such personal spheres as stupid, just as choices or mistakes, but we must be true to our choices and mistakes.
And really, as I've said before, you can't regulate these things. But you can put equal weight to both of the people involved in creating a child.
"If people do the wrong thing and get themselves into trouble, you don’t just pick up the bill for them, hoping they won’t do it again. If you do, there is nothing to stop them from doing it again and again and again."
Apart from experience, although I guess you can't rely on that. All I will say (again) is that it is not necessarily the wrong thing to do, but just one of the ways someone may take to navigate through life. It is also not an easy route and it is hard to take benefits or not. When you talk of teaching these people the hard truths of life it sounds very cosy, but we are actually talking about real people here. My sister can only afford to live in an area filled with heroin addicts and prostitutes, this is because she is going to college at the same time as raising a child in order to be able to give that child a better life. A house in that sort of area is all she can afford with her benefits. If you took them away from her what would you actually be doing that was good?
In her case she would be lucky. She would move back in with my mother (her child would not be lucky the amount of arguing that it would be again subjected to). But someone in my sisters situation who did not have the same safety net?
You have to think about the human beings that your attitudes effect. If you are happy for lone parents to end up in even worse situations than they are already in, if you think the survival of the fittest should be applied to society then fair enough. But if you think that then there is no reason why we should have free anything or state anything. Instead we should all have to fend for ourselves and may the best person win.
I happen to believe, though I am against the state as a concept, in the idea of community and responsibility. The capitalist system we live in has decided the restrictions and pressures that we must live under, if you don't have money you cannot exist, and so it is the communities responsibility to provide money for those who don't have it, because the right to exist and to be treated as an equal is the most important thing surely?
"Please give examples of how being logical and rational could lead to “rubbish ways of existing”"
The significance was in the inverted comma's. I am saying that the way we live now, in order to fulfill the requirements of our logical and rational economy is pretty rubbish. The working hours. The lack of communication and relation to each other. The way everyone is fragmented and separated within society. The media saturation. The continual pressure of consumerism. Etc...
I am not talking about the vendors of the recreational drugs I sometimes purchase, for I don't consider them to be criminal. I am referring to people who are involved in crimes, such as football hooliganism, burglary, etc... These people are not my friends as such but they are people I like and have met and treat with an equal respect to anyone else I meet. In fact some of these people have given me much more respect as a human being that the more "respectful" members of society.
http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/2006/08/legalising-hooliganism_25.html
"If you ever watched THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND – that film about Idi Amin’s Uganda, you will never forget how charming some villains and criminals can be,"
I did watch it yes. A very good film. The worst criminal in it was in many ways the white Scottish (fictional) doctor, who was clearly educated enough to understand what he was sanctioning. But he went with it anyway because armin and what he offered was so wonderful for him. And look at the way he treated the women!!
But I can still sympathise and empathise and try and understand that man. Same with Armin who was brutalised himself on the way up. I can even sympathise with Hitler. This doesn't mean I condone them but I do not see them as the single perpetrator of their crimes either. A society or at least an army create dictatorships.
But the "criminal underclass" is an umbrella term, and may of those who stand under it are not just nice, but decent in some ways and are just trying to get what they consider is theres. You'd probably find a lot of criminals that agree with your survival of the fittest, deal with your own mistakes on your own money. Criminals are often just taking the logic of the market and applying it to their lives.
I feel no loyalty towards many of the various different types of criminals I have met. Although I guess I feel loyal towards myself and my friends who are criminals, its just I don't see us as criminals because I don't recognise the crimes as crimes. I am not always talking about drugs here either:
http://goosefat101.blogspot.com/2006/10/hatfull-of-hollow.html
"We are just having a political discussion. I am not attacking anyone personally so please do not feel you have to protect them from me!"
I do think that I have to protect people from attitudes like yours. I have said before that the personal is the political. It is people who forget this (or never realise it) that commit terrible crimes in the name of what is right politically. Politics should always be taken personally. Theory and reality must test each other. They are not separate disciplines. We all need protecting from ignorance and when you say things that are ignorant, such as your comments about mental illness, lone parents, working mothers, marriage, the black community, etc... I have to bring you up on it. You are probably right though, I would be better at doing it if I didn't insist on making the personal so clear in my arguments. The kind of arguments that you make need to be faced with cold hard logic and fact and all that jazz. But I am not that sort of person. I don't enjoy or see the need to compartmentalize existence. It is all connected and to pretend otherwise is to lie.
And to make it clear, I do not think that you can't say things You are free to say whatever you like. I am just attacking the correctness of what you say. You are free to say whatever you like but one would hope that eventually, if you become educated about the people you are dismissing you will choose not to. I am not a fan of political correctness, but personal correctness seems sensible.
Sorry about my little touch of attempted psychoanalysis at the end of the last comment. I'm afraid your character fascinates me because it feels like such a paradox, so I was trying out some of my theories. You are of course right, you might be a million things, I don't really know much about you. Apart from the fact that you're profile bio suggests you are a romantic, but your ideology seems opposed to this. But as I said you are a paradox (with a bizarre attachment to the idea of the old woman who lived in a shoe).
I was transcribing this from a Newsnight Interview with Harold Pinter for something I was doing and I thought of you:
But I do see, what we call civilisation, I can only put it not very precisely I’m afraid, but as a betrayal of the spirit and the dignity of the essence of life, the flame of life.
Thats what Pinter has to say on the subject.
“If you take away benefits from single mothers they will be even worse off and their children are even more likely to become socially difficult.”
If you do not discourage unmarried women from having children, you will have more single parenthood.
Are you saying men should pay for a child even though all they intended to do was to have sex?
”Morally speaking without a doubt. As for legally, well if we have to have laws (and I don't really like much about our legal system) we should have just ones, and so yes, I guess legally speaking to.”
There is the Child Support Agency who chases accidental fathers, and there are men who get trapped into marriage by a suddenly pregnant girlfriend. I wonder if so-called Sex Education classes in schools even teach adolescents about these things, other than how to do it.
“As you say yourself people shouldn't be able to shirk their responsibilities. You said of women that they were stupid if they didn't keep their knickers on and would pay the consequences for this stupidity. I am saying that men are stupid if they don't keep their knickers on (or at least their condoms) and that they as well as the women should have to take responsibility for this stupid act.”
It is a shame boys don’t get drummed into them, by their fathers or if absent, their mothers. Since most singly parented boys have mothers who have already shown a lack of knowledge in this department, or have grandparents who didn’t get their act together to warn their children about irresponsible pre-marital sex, then I guess this sort of thing is bound to perpetuate itself.
Instead of “unconditional love”, parents might try telling their children that they will not be supporting any unwanted grandchildren their children might produce.
”I am trying to use your words there, because I don't really see anything within such personal spheres as stupid, just as choices or mistakes, but we must be true to our choices and mistakes.”
What do you mean about being “true to our choices and mistakes”?
”And really, as I've said before, you can't regulate these things. But you can put equal weight to both of the people involved in creating a child.”
Of course you can regulate these things! By cutting off benefit to single parents, you discourage single parenthood in one stroke. Simple.
If people do the wrong thing and get themselves into trouble, you don’t just pick up the bill for them, hoping they won’t do it again. If you do, there is nothing to stop them from doing it again and again and again.
”Apart from experience, although I guess you can't rely on that. All I will say (again) is that it is not necessarily the wrong thing to do, but just one of the ways someone may take to navigate through life. It is also not an easy route and it is hard to take benefits or not. When you talk of teaching these people the hard truths of life it sounds very cosy, but we are actually talking about real people here. My sister can only afford to live in an area filled with heroin addicts and prostitutes, this is because she is going to college at the same time as raising a child in order to be able to give that child a better life. A house in that sort of area is all she can afford with her benefits. If you took them away from her what would you actually be doing that was good?”
You are personalising this again and forcing me to say something that you will interpret as an attack on your sister.
In the old days, when there were no single mum benefits, parents were probably a little more diligent in ensuring that their children had some modicum of sex education, eg copulating without contraceptive leads to unwanted babies, abandonment and unhappy marriages. These days most parents will avoid bringing up the subject and hope that the school does it for them in what passes for sex education at secondary school. I have spoken to mothers who think 9 is too early to talk about such things, but by the time they are old enough to do it, it will already be too late.
But I guess these mums don’t mind so much as me about their precious daughters being knocked up or their sons being pursued by the CSA, so that’s up to them …
The most effective way if of reminding them periodically that you will not be looking after unwanted, unexpected and illegitimate grandchildren.
Your sister did have a number of options, which she was probably not encouraged to exercise, because the stigma has been now taken out of single parenthood. I knew a single mum who said she would not do it again if she had her life over again, so I really cannot see why you are refusing to admit that your sister made a mistake and that you would be doing your utmost to see that any daughter of yours will not be bringing up your grandchild in a neighbourhood of prostitutes and drug addicts.
It does not mean disloyalty to your sister if you make this admission, does it? Or that you do not love her, does it?
“But someone in my sisters situation who did not have the same safety net?”
The child would be taken into care, after much emotional trauma and damage, to grow into a troubled adult. That is why I believe it is better that single parenthood should be discouraged in the first place.
”You have to think about the human beings that your attitudes effect. If you are happy for lone parents to end up in even worse situations than they are already in, if you think the survival of the fittest should be applied to society then fair enough. But if you think that then there is no reason why we should have free anything or state anything. Instead we should all have to fend for ourselves and may the best person win.”
A balance can be struck and bad outcomes prevented by discouraging behaviour likely to lead to bad outcomes.
”I happen to believe, though I am against the state as a concept, in the idea of community and responsibility. The capitalist system we live in has decided the restrictions and pressures that we must live under, if you don't have money you cannot exist, and so it is the communities responsibility to provide money for those who don't have it, because the right to exist and to be treated as an equal is the most important thing surely?”
There is also the perception of relative wealth in primitive pre-capitalist societies. Inequality is an ineradicable part of human nature and pretending it does not exist does not help us make the world a better place. If your community is providing for you, then they would expect you to conform to its standards of behaviour. I think it would also have an interest in discouraging illegitimacy.
Don’t you think this is why some of the more medieval Muslims, who certainly have a feeling community and are under a religious duty to provide for each other, have such strong feelings about these things that they would excuse honour killings?
Please give examples of how being logical and rational could lead to “rubbish ways of existing”
”The significance was in the inverted comma's. I am saying that the way we live now, in order to fulfill the requirements of our logical and rational economy is pretty rubbish. The working hours. The lack of communication and relation to each other. The way everyone is fragmented and separated within society. The media saturation. The continual pressure of consumerism. Etc..."
We are certainly expected to consume. However, none of us have any obligation to buy anything we do not need. If we are easily subject to peer pressure to do things as they do, then it is just the price we have to pay for being “one of the gang”.
To escape all this, all we have to do is exercise our freedom of choice, to make a point of distinguishing between what we need and what we want, between what will cause us happiness in the long run and the long-term pain but short-term pleasure of vices (such as gluttony, gambling, lust, intoxication, anger) and of course to know ourselves ….
That would be the rational and logical thing to do!
Harold Pinter is not exactly a philosopher!
This is the definition from the Wikipedia:
The word "civilization" has two origins: (1) "civis" (Latin word for citizen or townsman), and (2), civilis (the adjective form of "civis"). In this sense, being "civilised" means being a citizen, who is governed by the law of his/her city, town or community. Civilisation may also refer to the culture of a particular community.
As you can see, it is a morally neutral term. Civilising children is therefore preparing them to be good and perhaps successful citizens. Civilising or socialising is what you do to prepare them for the trials of this life that we complain about but have no other choice but to endure!
"There is the Child Support Agency who chases accidental fathers, and there are men who get trapped into marriage by a suddenly pregnant girlfriend. I wonder if so-called Sex Education classes in schools even teach adolescents about these things, other than how to do it."
indeed there is, I know about them, have sex. In my day they didn't do that well, I had a wickid hard time working it out. Mind you they did teach me how to stick a condom on pretty successfully and gave me one which I could practice with at home. That was very useful and my parents had drummed into me the importance of safe sex.
"What do you mean about being “true to our choices and mistakes”?"
That we must be actively involved with them, take responsibility for them and that all worthwhile life is about making choices and making mistakes and wonderful things can come from both.
"You are personalising this again and forcing me to say something that you will interpret as an attack on your sister."
When will you understand that your entire way of thinking is an attack on my sister whether directly or generically. I personalise in the hope that by doing so I can have some way of making you understand that life isn't theory but theory and practice, THE POLITICAL IS THE PERSONAL.
"In the old days, when there were no single mum benefits, parents were probably a little more diligent in ensuring that their children had some modicum of sex education, eg copulating without contraceptive leads to unwanted babies, abandonment and unhappy marriages. These days most parents will avoid bringing up the subject and hope that the school does it for them in what passes for sex education at secondary school. I have spoken to mothers who think 9 is too early to talk about such things, but by the time they are old enough to do it, it will already be too late."
Hogwash. In the old days people were taught not to copulate not how to copulate. It is ludicrous to suggest that sex education happened more in more repressed and repressive times.
But we agree RE: sex. I think kids should be taught about it from the time they can talk. Not in a ramming it down their throat way but in an informative way.
"
Your sister did have a number of options, which she was probably not encouraged to exercise, because the stigma has been now taken out of single parenthood. I knew a single mum who said she would not do it again if she had her life over again, so I really cannot see why you are refusing to admit that your sister made a mistake and that you would be doing your utmost to see that any daughter of yours will not be bringing up your grandchild in a neighbourhood of prostitutes and drug addicts."
You can't understand what I am saying so I won't bother to continue to convince you. Understand that all options were presented to my sister and she made the one she wanted most. Some single parents regret what they have done and some don't. My sister didn't take the decision likely. In fact in some ways you could say she planned to have a child as a result of being pushed into abortion at a younger age. I know that will just set off your silly judgmental posturing again, but really people are much more complex than you seem to believe.
Anyway I must eat my dinner now. I will probably continue to dissect your response soon.
Andromeda: could you try and make it clearer what is the last comment and what is the new one. I am carefully using quotation marks as pointers but you are not and it makes it very hard to know what is new and what is not. Thanks.
"But I guess these mums don’t mind so much as me about their precious daughters being knocked up or their sons being pursued by the CSA, so that’s up to them"
What about the dads? Its both parents job to tell their children about sex, I don't hold with all this one gender tells the other gender nonsense. Both my mum and my dad explained sex to me (although their was never some stupid forced awkward official chat) so I got all sides of the story.
I believe that sex education, better sex education, would reduce the amount of single/teenage mothers in the country. I think that if you add to that ways of making children feel better about themselves, so they bother to care about what happens in the future and not to look to outside factors (like a baby) as ways of giving themselves self-esteem) that will also reduce teen pregnancy.
But I think after all that there will still be teenage mothers and single mothers. And that in the right circumstances their children will not be particularly disadvantaged and that everyone concerned can have worthwhile lives. Teenagers are biologically designed to have children and so they will have instinctual drives to do so. Extended families sharing responsibility for children is rather than being a burden, when looked at in social rather than financial terms, an excellent thing for a child, offering them variety and a sense of community.
Fathers are important and need to learn to take responsible for the actions.
I have known women who are married and in their thirties who have had children and it has ruined their lives and the lives of their children. Just as I know unmarried teenagers who are perfectly suited to it all. Things are not as simple as you make out.
You're idea that single mothers are a particular drain on the communal pocket is pretty unsubstantiated. We would all pay a lot less tax if we stopped paying for high MP's salaries and for Nuclear weapons and unjustifiable farming practices. Better still make the tax system fair and tax those with obscene amounts of money much much more than those with hardly any. We all pay our taxes including single mothers. You are happy to take the money of those single parents who run businesses so why shouldn't those single parents who are on benefits take yours.
"I really cannot see why you are refusing to admit that your sister made a mistake"
because it is impossible to spend time with her and her daughter and see any of it as a mistake. They are both so happy and she is such a naturally good parent (and this isn't family feeling for I certainly don't see my mother as a good parent or some of my other sisters as being naturally good parents).
What do you mean by mistake? Loath as I was to be convinced of this before my sisters child was born, her having a baby did save her life. If this had not happened my sister would probably be either dead or in prison or a drug addict. She is none of these things now and had completely turned her entire life around. She has taken responsibility for her actions. You'd like her she is as moralistic and hard as you are about things. As many reformed character are!!
I know she is an exception and that their are many cases that do not share her positives. That is terrible and things must be done either to avoid them or to give their situations more hope. But she is an exception that is not that unusual. There are many good and happy single parents and children. Life isn't some sort of formula as you seem to see it. It doesn't go: child of single parent = criminal. There are so many things that must be added to that child of single parent to make s/he equal a criminal and the infuriating thing is that different children will react differently to different situations.
Yes we need better sex education. That seems to be something we agree on. Also fathers must be held to account and all this moralising and stigmatising woman and child must be cast out. Benefits must be made to fit the task, with the focus being on the child's needs and being realistic. Education must be improved, particularly for those in poverty, by improving I am not just talking about passing on the essentials such as sex ed and healthy eating, I am also talking about removing the emphasis from passing tests to having dreams. I am talking about allowing children to enjoy school and have fun there, giving children alternatives if their home lives are found wanting.
"you would be doing your utmost to see that any daughter of yours will not be bringing up your grandchild in a neighbourhood of prostitutes and drug addicts"
What about a son of mine? Would it be okay to bring them up like that. I see no problem to bringing up a child in those surroundings. They will learn a lot about life and prostitutes are normally really nice to kids. Drug addicts not so much, but if you leave them alone they'll normally do the same to you. When my sister complains of the behavior of the local hookers (as in they change clothes in her doorway) I always tell her to be less judgmental and try talking to them as human beings. Maybe even offer them a cup of tea.
I was brought up in a nice middle class environment and that didn't stop my home from being a horrible and violent place for a number of years. I am not convinced that being in a run down area means that a child has a bad life, particularly in the early years.
My sister is working very hard to be able to move out of that area before her child becomes older than the early years. And it looks as if she will manage it. You know it isn't just single parents who bring their children up in that area, it is parents who are poor.
If I had a daughter I would make her aware of what things can and can't happen in life, tell her my understanding of the way things are, and then stand by her choices and her mistakes. I would try not to judge her for them and I would certainly not have some sort of daily mail freak out if she was to get pregnant before the blueprint of society directed her to be so. I may end up feeling sad for a daughter if she threw her life away to have a child. But I would feel this whether she were 15 or 40. The worst thing is when you see adults losing their personality and their energy because they have children. There is no need for it to be this way and this sort of nonsense is caused by a mixture of the financial stress that we are all under as adults and the stupid social pressure to become "mature". Responsibility doesn't have to equal dying inside, but so often it does.
You answered my question:But someone in my sisters situation who did not have the same safety net?
With:
"The child would be taken into care, after much emotional trauma and damage, to grow into a troubled adult. That is why I believe it is better that single parenthood should be discouraged in the first place"
Which is interesting. The discouragement that you advocate is what creates the children/adults that you say you are trying to avoid. When you talk of cutting benefits for single mothers, you are talking more children in care, more criminals, more pain, more sadness, not less. And you seem to think that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. But the sheer amount of eggs you are prepared to break. Eggs who are people and who didn't ask to be born is amazing to me. Surely their are others ways to discourage single parenthood that don't involve penalising children.
"There is also the perception of relative wealth in primitive pre-capitalist societies."
Firstly, not all. I know of tribes who definitely don't have that perception. However they are very small and I agree that most groups of humans find some way of demarcating status, many of them do not use wealth however.
"Inequality is an ineradicable part of human nature and pretending it does not exist does not help us make the world a better place."
As is giving in to libido and making mistakes but you seem to think we can regulate these things. I am certainly NOT pretending inequality doesn't exist. I am trying to address it. I just do so in completely different ways to you.
"If your community is providing for you, then they would expect you to conform to its standards of behaviour."
That is not the case in all communities. But yes in many you are right. I am not suggesting any different exactly. I am saying that our communities expectations and standards for behavior are not fair or realistic and should be altered. Once they are altered then their would be n problem.
"I think it would also have an interest in discouraging illegitimacy."
Again the word illegitimacy is something that sticks in my throat. But perhaps if I can ignore your unpleasant way of phrasing things
I can almost concede something here. In would say that our community would have some interest in discouraging illegitimacy because we make things harder for the illegitimate and don't have a culture that pulls together. Discouragement doesn't have to equal punishment however and we should still communally pull together to help those who need help.
There are some cultures where you're entire concept has no meaning however. There are tribes where all children belong to the tribe in general, everyone parents them and looks after them. Their is no concept of illegitimate in such a context. That culture is such a global thing doesn't mean their aren't alternatives, it is just we have a very limited exposure to them.
"Don’t you think this is why some of the more medieval Muslims, who certainly have a feeling community and are under a religious duty to provide for each other, have such strong feelings about these things that they would excuse honour killings?"
They excuse honour killings, we excuse mass murder (Iraq) and mass slavery (our dependency on third world sweat shops). Communities can do terrible things. I don't support the death penalty or honour killings (both of which can be found in the middle east and in America). I don't see how this has relivency to our debate though. Unless you mean to demonstrate that social codes often need to be changed and that communities can be based on terrible principles. I see honour killings and not giving benefits to single mothers as being on the same side of the coin, the side that promotes and uses moralistic judgment to try and control and distort then human experience.
"To escape all this, all we have to do is exercise our freedom of choice, to make a point of distinguishing between what we need and what we want, between what will cause us happiness in the long run and the long-term pain but short-term pleasure of vices (such as gluttony, gambling, lust, intoxication, anger) and of course to know ourselves …."
Doesn't sound very realistic to me. Not really very much in human nature. And also we have distorted what we need by having consciousness. Our freedom of choice is a lie. We are not free to choose what work we wish to do. We are not free to opt out of society unless we choose the freedom of living on the streets with no money (you cannot live self-sufficiently unless you first amass enough capital to allow you to buy your way out!) The "choice" we are presented with is a choice of same verses same. The products that we buy, whether we have assessed them as what we need or not, are not unambiguous. They have come through the pain and toil of others. Our freedom of choice is something that only those wealthy enough to have it can get and even then their choice is an illusion.
I think your main problem is that you believe what is logical and rational for one is logical and rational for all. Our economic system works through logic and rationality but through these things it blindly continues on, without a thought to the damage it does, it is like a self replicating computer program spinning through its cycle. I don't attack rationality or logic as ways of seeing the world. On a personal level they are nice things to aspire to. But when people try and organise society with them then they reach terrifying conclusions and are extremely destructive. From communism to capitalism. From global warming to genocide.
There is a place for being rational and being logical. But I think that to be really rational and logical is to admit and support the fact that the world is illogical and people are irrational and you will never be able to change that and that you must work with it.
"Harold Pinter is not exactly a philosopher!"
Why not? He is an artist and a human being, both of which imply philosopher. He is also a winner of the Nobel Prize and a very good writer and political commentator.
Who exactly is a philosopher? If you look back to the greeks Pinter would make a prime candidate as he is a poet and playwright and an active member and theoriser about his culture.
As for your wikipedia quotation: that is definitely not philosophy.
I do not disagree that civilisation (like most words) is morally neutral. It does however have many negative connotations in its practical use in conversation (and positive ones, it really depends on your political point of view.) I have heard to many bastards use it to be anything other than fearful of it. I certainly think, for all your attempts to convince me of your neutral use of it, that many times in this debate you have used it with precisely the negative meanings that I fear from it.
Pinters point, and mine, is that we call things civilisation when they are in fact not that at all. We use the word to excuse atrocities, not just practical ones like genocide but spiritual ones like dimming as pinter puts it the flame of life. When you talk of civilising children to me (though obviously not to you) you are talking about dimming their flames. You don't see it this way because you are not pro this flame. I however am pro the flame and so don't want it to be diminished.
"Civilising children is therefore preparing them to be good and perhaps successful citizens"
Okay but here's my problem. I do not like the values of this culture and so I think preparing people to be good and successful citizens is to be making them lesser. Who's definition of "good". It is hard to be good when you exist in a society so "bad". To be a productive worker (middle class/ working class there is little difference now) is to increase environmental damage, to exploit the global working classes, to live to work and have no time to think. To be a good member of this society is to contribute all the time to the economy. To be successful is an even worse concept within our culture.
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