Comments on: Out-takes VI

By: john baker

john baker — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:42:52 +0000

Maxine,
I can ‘hear’ the frustration in your voice. And I feel a little the same way. Obviously because we’re not communicating here.
But I’m not just being ‘awkward’ here. I do find it very difficult to separate the personal and the political in this respect.
Of course, I agree about what you call ‘common decency’. I try to see the point of view of others and to treat them as well as I can. I think most people do that.
At the same time I’m aware that there is always an element of selfishness in people, that they look after their own first, that they believe that ‘charity begins at home.’
We have dual, nay, multiple, personalities in this respect, we contain the good and the bad and the indifferent, and at any given moment of time we may go one way or another. It is not always easy to tell which.
You begin to lose me, however, when you ask what we can do to improve our own society, yet maintain that there can be no political solution involved in the answer.
That seems like a unreal premise to me. But given those parameters I can only say you live your life, you do what you think is important and hope that others will do likewise.

By: Maxine

Maxine — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:01:31 +0000

PS sorry, I don’t mean to sound callous and that I am “not interested” in people living under terrible regimes. I feel desperately sorry for them, but helpless from a distant place and viewing them from a different perspective. I merely wanted to respond to your original post in the context of what is immediately meaningful to me, ie the society in which I live and in which I observe that when people have lots of freedom, and don’t have “commandments”, they don’t always behave very well to their fellow man, woman and child — and what can we do to improve our own society in that respect, for the sake of future generations of it?

By: Maxine

Maxine — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 20:57:30 +0000

I was just talking about showing care and respect for others in our daily lives.
I have observed over the years that when people start insisting on their rights, small people suffer — usually children.
I wasn’t trying to be political or talk about governments, but what used to be called “common decency” which I wonder where you place in your original posting about “rights”?
But I accept I may be missing the point of the debate here, in that you may be more interested in the political aspects. I’m not very interested in those — I wasn’t referring to people living under the threat of state sponsored executions and awful things, but of people living in free democratic societies. Sorry if this is not your area of interest, my misunderstanding.

By: john baker

john baker — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:33:47 +0000

I feel as though I've been pulled out of my comfort-zone here. When we talk about concepts like an inner moral sense it can appear as though there is a concensus as to what that means, but I don't believe there is. Are we talking about some kind of innate reason here, a kind of spiritual given, the instinctual ability to know good from evil? Or are we talking about conscience (See my post of last month on Huckleberry Finn)? In my last post I tried to talk specifically about the State rather than whoever "happens to be in government." Because it is the State, for example, which sets up and orders curricula, and through that influences opinion and justifies certain prejudices while undermining others. How else can we begin to understand why certain societies retain and routinely use State-sponsored execution as a so-called deterrent to crime? And others, who believe that the chopping-off of limbs represents some form of justice? I just finished reading a piece on the resurgence of fundamentalism in Iraq, where women are routinely beaten, have their heads shaved, are crippled and killed for having opinions that differ with those of their menfolk. I don't believe, in instances like these, that we are looking at genetic issues, or that we are witnessing individual opinions. On the contrary we are looking at learned behaviour, which, with political will and courage, can be changed.

By: Maxine

Maxine — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 16:43:53 +0000

I don’t much like governments and all of that, but I don’t understand why it is the government’s fault (any government) when people behave selfishly, etc.
I don’t think the government is relevant to my point about inner moral sense vs people’s quick assertion of their own rights, or those police thinking more of the “rights” of the pelter rather than of the people he was pelting.
Surely an inner sense of morality is independent of who happens to be in goverment?

By: Divine Calm

Divine Calm — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 19:44:44 +0000

There is a murky and forever changing line between self-realization and harming others. I view the line as doing little harm as possible to others while still being true to what you need to be happy.

By: crimeficreader

crimeficreader — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:47:25 +0000

I now have a right under law to break the ten commandments? And Cherie Blair’s a Catholic?
Er excuse me. Where do we queue to re-write (or complain) about the (moving) values and standards this country has always upheld and fought for?

I’m not even baptised or christened and yet I hold some historic values true.

Do I need to be sectioned?

Please forgive me – I’ve had quite enough of this government and its double standards. My fantasy? Let hype be reality. And, oh yes, I see prescriptions for SSRIs coming…

By: john baker

john baker — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 08:52:01 +0000

Thanks for your contribution, Roger. Nicely observed points, and I particularly liked the idea about voyeurism – I hadn’t thought about that.
It’s good that you called in.