Stephen Morgan wrote:If you want to show your solidarity with other humans take part in the collective organisation of society by forming queues, allowing people to keep their seats, and so on, not by giving certain people preferential seat treatment. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Ask for no seat, give up no seat. That is the virtuous way to be.
I agree that we should respect each other's rights by forming orderly queues and allowing people to keep their seats. But nobody's disputing each person's right to keep his or her seat. I was suggesting that freely choosing to give up something that you don't really need, to someone who does, is liberating and life-affirming. There's no virtue without choice, but there's also no virtue in selfishness.
I prefer being on a level playing field with people. I'm not a supplicant and I'm not your mum. I gave someone a gift once, as it made for the most efficient use of that item. Like Plato's thing about a just society giving the best flute to the best player.
But it's not a level playing field, so why pretend it is? One day you'll be old and frail and need to get somewhere, and imagine having to balance on legs that can barely hold you up, holding on to the pole with trembling muscles, on a long bus trip while a young, healthy person sits right there and pretends not to notice. There's something very ugly and frightening about a society where this is viewed as good, or even normal. In a way, I feel even more sorry for the young person, who is convinced he has so little, that he or she has nothing to give.
I don't seem to have that. Funeral processions make me think what a rich fucker the dead must have been to shut down a street or two in town. Normal people get burned and disposed of, as is the right way to do things.
Yeah, but in the end, it all works out to the same. A corpse is a corpse, whether it's inside a golden casket or in some pauper's grave. Death is the great equalizer, the one inevitability. For some of us, coming face-to-face with birth and death can prompt a moment of reflection about the impenetrable mystery that brackets our lives. Not for everyone, of course.
Which implies that you aren't as horrified by his wantonly beating people other than pregnant women. Or pepper spraying, tasing, whatever. Solidarity as humans is the tenet breached, not some taboo against bashing pregnant women.
Absolutely. I agree with you. It's just that in the case of a cop beating an unarmed, pregnant woman, they are so unevenly matched physically it makes his assault even more cowardly and a flagrant abuse of power than usual, just as shooting a dog that was already tied up is simply an act of cowardly cruelty. Also, the terror she's likely to feel for the life of the baby she's carrying, in addition to the pain of her physical injuries, adds a further element of sheer sadism or even just callousness that's hard to fathom. Beyond the legalities or the principles involved, it's understandable that people would feel horror knowing that such a person was armed and unleashed against citizens.
Simulist wrote:Project Willow wrote:Misogyny is not adorable, neither is racism.
Agreed.
I thought this was a "discussion" forum. But some people are trying to turn it into a "labeling" forum. How about we just stick labels on everything and then take votes? People could just write "agreed" or "disagreed". No fuss, no muss, no need to think or explain or discuss. Just let others, very smart people I'm sure, do our thinking for us.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
Of course I have never met the guy, however I would bet several of my most valuable matchsticks (and I'm not a betting man) that if there was a woman in said condition in any distress nearby, she would have Mr Morgan's seat before anyone else even noticed. He would no doubt also think "Oh just SIT DOWN you big Heffalump" 
