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It even describes it as "powerfully seductive" which is not how I felt at all about the description. It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. But I felt

It even describes it as "powerfully seductive" which is not how I felt at all about the description. It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. But I felt sorry for the poor bear.

jacobush 9y ago
That made me laugh and still feel sorry for the bear. Best put ever... "above my paygrade to judge another culture". :-) Very Star Trek.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Star Trek doesn't have paygrades because Star Trek doesn't have money. Try the U.S. military, the stereotype of the corrupt commissioned officer saying things like "Askin' questions like that is above your paygrade, son."
  - monknomo 9y ago
    I think that is probably more literal than a person should be with a simile, metaphor or poetical comparison
  - flukus 9y ago
    The phrase was used in the last episode of The Orville, I think we should accept that into cannon and ignore everything JJ Abrams has done. Aside from that, Star Trek has Latinum bars and Credits as the plot dictates.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    I never heard it from that perspective - only from below, as in "I'm not paid to worry about such things". (And/or implied not qualified, which is how I read my OP-ish.)
- ironic_ali 9y ago
  Wrong place to get a Star trek reference wrong....
dqpb 9y ago
It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. No it's not. Being attracted or repulsed by other people's behavior is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human. Of course, if you are doing or studying anthropology, you should be as objective as possible. But in the course of just being a person, it's good to be critical, because basically everyone is doing almost everything wrong, and it's good to point that out when you see it.
- rxhernandez 9y ago
  It's one of the fundamental aspects of being a toddler. Then your parents teach you to stop gagging when eating foods you find repulsive and you realize there were other qualities to that food that you can appreciate. Then your parents make you do your homework despite you putting up a resistance and you at some point realize how beneficial that homework was. Then you somehow end up in college where hopefully, in the American system at least, they teach you about other cultures and how silly it is to judge other cultures for things you've only taken a cursory glance at. That is, any group can arbitrarily make up rules and belief systems that point in any arbitrary direction. Just because you happen to be apart of a larger group, doesn't mean yours are any better than anyone elses. A simple example can be summed up with the mutilation of genitals. At a first glance an uneducated person would probably say "no, that's completely wrong, I don't care what anyone says, there is something fundamentally crazy about mutilating your genitals." An educated person would have at least taken 10 minutes to hear out that, some people are born believing their sex is incorrect and to help them live a better life they sometimes modify their genitals to match the sex they believe themselves to be.
  - z0r 9y ago
    Is your post satirical? It is easy to over apply abstract ideals if you let yourself. One person's objection to the mistreatment of animals isn't a toddler refusing broccoli, it's a reflection of cultural value. If you weren't blinded by cognitive dissonance you'd at least recognize that feeling of disgust is no better or worse than the mistreatment (or acceptable cultural ritual) of the bear and would abstain from judging the parent posters. Fortunately the kind of apathetic moral relativism you're espousing rings hollow for most.

It even describes it as "powerfully seductive" which is not how I felt at all about the description. It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. But I felt sorry for the poor bear.

jacobush 9y ago

That made me laugh and still feel sorry for the bear. Best put ever... "above my paygrade to judge another culture". :-) Very Star Trek.

bitwize 9y ago
Star Trek doesn't have paygrades because Star Trek doesn't have money. Try the U.S. military, the stereotype of the corrupt commissioned officer saying things like "Askin' questions like that is above your paygrade, son."
- monknomo 9y ago
  I think that is probably more literal than a person should be with a simile, metaphor or poetical comparison
- flukus 9y ago
  The phrase was used in the last episode of The Orville, I think we should accept that into cannon and ignore everything JJ Abrams has done. Aside from that, Star Trek has Latinum bars and Credits as the plot dictates.
- jacobush 9y ago
  I never heard it from that perspective - only from below, as in "I'm not paid to worry about such things". (And/or implied not qualified, which is how I read my OP-ish.)
ironic_ali 9y ago
Wrong place to get a Star trek reference wrong....

dqpb 9y ago

It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. No it's not. Being attracted or repulsed by other people's behavior is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human. Of course, if you are doing or studying anthropology, you should be as objective as possible. But in the course of just being a person, it's good to be critical, because basically everyone is doing almost everything wrong, and it's good to point that out when you see it.

rxhernandez 9y ago
It's one of the fundamental aspects of being a toddler. Then your parents teach you to stop gagging when eating foods you find repulsive and you realize there were other qualities to that food that you can appreciate. Then your parents make you do your homework despite you putting up a resistance and you at some point realize how beneficial that homework was. Then you somehow end up in college where hopefully, in the American system at least, they teach you about other cultures and how silly it is to judge other cultures for things you've only taken a cursory glance at. That is, any group can arbitrarily make up rules and belief systems that point in any arbitrary direction. Just because you happen to be apart of a larger group, doesn't mean yours are any better than anyone elses. A simple example can be summed up with the mutilation of genitals. At a first glance an uneducated person would probably say "no, that's completely wrong, I don't care what anyone says, there is something fundamentally crazy about mutilating your genitals." An educated person would have at least taken 10 minutes to hear out that, some people are born believing their sex is incorrect and to help them live a better life they sometimes modify their genitals to match the sex they believe themselves to be.
- z0r 9y ago
  Is your post satirical? It is easy to over apply abstract ideals if you let yourself. One person's objection to the mistreatment of animals isn't a toddler refusing broccoli, it's a reflection of cultural value. If you weren't blinded by cognitive dissonance you'd at least recognize that feeling of disgust is no better or worse than the mistreatment (or acceptable cultural ritual) of the bear and would abstain from judging the parent posters. Fortunately the kind of apathetic moral relativism you're espousing rings hollow for most.