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This is both a great article and a mediocre article. I agree with others that the marriage aspect is the weakest part. As a parent, I constantly think back to
by rustynails 11y ago
This is both a great article and a mediocre article. I agree with others that the marriage aspect is the weakest part.
As a parent, I constantly think back to the 70s as a benchmark for open mindedness and freedom with my children. In my honest opinion, we've lost a lot of perspective and become much less tolerant. In Australia, someone called the police because children walked a short distance to the local park by themselves. Taking a photo at a swimming carnival is taboo. None of these attitudes were around in the 70s.
I felt the relationship aspects between adults missed the mark. Not only the relationship breakdown aspects, but the women and sex. That reminds me of the woman who runs she++ (a sexist business name that no one calls out) who said in a Forbes interview that sex was bad and a man thing. There is a social stigma in admitting that women can like sex. Even Sam Mechkovich from Ars commented about bond women not falling for bond in his Spectre review, because that's not a woman thing to like sex. My response to these people is "what's wrong with it?" Most of the women I know and respect are open about sex. That doesn't mean free sex, it means being open minded and confident in yourself to be free to speak your mind. My sort of people...
Ultimately, I lump all these social and parental problems down to Political Correctness. For the nay sayers, you can treat people with respect and not be PC. PC is a set of perverted rules that bully people into what to think.
- engi_nerd 11y ago>> Ultimately, I lump all these social and parental problems down to Political Correctness. For the nay sayers, you can treat people with respect and not be PC. PC is a set of perverted rules that bully people into what to think. I have been told, "You can't say that, we have to be open minded here" when expressing the belief that political correctness does more to damage discourse than almost any other idea in western society. Way to provide a demonstration of my point!
- disantlor 11y agoIsn't the perverse fairness of giving equal time to clearly unequal opinions (/science/facts/etc) worse discourse than political correctness? Of course PC can and does wade into over sensitivity but it also includes the idea that you should err on the side of safety when using words that can be terribly hurtful to some people. It's not our place to decide that it's not in fact hurtful.
- engi_nerd 11y agoYes, the idea that we must be fair to all opinions, no matter how silly, is also a bad one.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoBut it must be countered by the fact that some valid opinions of today were the silliest of the past. Consider how many things we accept as valid today (say opinions related to equality) were once almost blasphemous to mention. It would be arrogant of us to assume we are not making similar mistakes.
- engi_nerd 11y agoYou raise a good point that I hadn't thought about. I suppose the lesson is to keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoI'm just worried that among progressives of the past, many open minded positions of today would have been 'opening your mind til your brain fell out'. Consider what people would've said a century ago if you brought up homosexuals marrying or transsexual acceptance. What today seems a strange to use as those concepts seemed a to progressives a century ago?
- engi_nerd 11y agoAny ideas for how we can guard against this?