prisons, again, again, again.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7366258.stm

so in response to this "news" we hear the typical knee-jerk responses : "they're living in luxury: 3 meals a day, they watch TV, they are housed for free!!!"

Oh yes, what a luxury, 3 meals a day, a roof over your head : BUUUUTTT how troubled, turbulent and awful must your life have been in order to feel this way about prison!

what we dont realise is that these prisoners' lives, before going to prison, must have been so lacking in what we take for granted everyday (like 3 meals a day, certain shelter) that they are a luxury for them!!! IT ISNT THE PRISONS WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON, IT IS THE LIFE OF POVERTY AND LAST RESORTS THAT THOSE WHO END UP IN PRISONS HAD TO DEAL WITH, WHICH LED THEM THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! IT'S JUST.......SO........ OBVIOUS! it is humbling, and devastating to think that prisoners are the few ppl who really appreciate that yes, food, electricity, shelter IS a luxury and something that is the default position for the rest of us.
of course there are many contributing factors as to why people commit crimes, and there is a huge arrogance that i hear everyday when ppl say "well if i were in that position i wouldnt....." = ingorance and hyporcrisy.

and yes there are those in poverty who dont commit crimes, BUT EVERY SITIUTATION IS DIFFERENT ANNNNDDD what are we even talking about when we use the word "crime".
i think we should question who IS really committing the crimes against who? YET STILL IT IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS THAT, i think we should turn to foucault at this point :)

hmm

you know the latest about how our brain "knows" what it will do 10 secs before it actually performs it? (was previously thought that it only "knew" a couple of seconds before). now i know it is problematic, and rather silly even, to read anything at all into this, especially as sartre is a phenomonologist, but:

i wonder how, if, this relates to sartre's fundamental project and pre=reflective consciouness (well i dont mean's sartre's pre-ref consciousness, but his concept ;p)?

ideas/?

pfft

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7356970.stm

a not too well informed response, but nevermind:


hitler youth :"he said his teenage years had been "marred by a sinister regime". "
yeh IN HINDSIGHT! WELL DUH! "Its influence grew, infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion, before it was fully recognised for the monster it was," !!!!

the hitler youth WAS SPECIFICALLY designed to give these mini-nazis the most rewarding, strengthening, communitarian, idealistic time of their lives!!!
and i bet he had a bloody awesome time too!! OBVIOUSLY later, AS WOULD BE EXPECT, he;d realise it was rather shitty, well, for some ppl.
so he is moaning about being part of the hitler youth, ah diddums, HOW ABOUT TRY BEING A JEW UNDER THE NAZI REGIME!

also, i love it! I LOVE IT! FOUCAULT AT WORK!
"The sexual abuse scandal has been a recurring theme in the Pope's visit.
Addressing 40,000 people at a Washington stadium earlier in the week, he spoke of the issue before talking privately to a group of people who had been abused by priests. "
yeh he has talked about it FOUR TIMES NOW in public, must also be the regular chit-chat over breakfast, lunch and dinner too!

HE GETS PLEASURE, THE LISTENERS GET PLEASURE! PLEASURE ALL ROUND! apart from the abused kids who are suddenly the centre of attention and are having their past shoved in their faces but the very people who did it. what hypocrisy. pfft.

needs

in marcuse;s "1 dimensional man", he discusses the creation of "false needs" by capitalist society. makes sense right? we dont need i pods, we have discmans....but for the sake of free market capitalism, and consumer society, it is now something we feel we need.

i have often asked my parents, and asked of myself sometimes, how i managed without a mobile phone, without a laptop? i do really need my laptop now that i have it! i really rely on it for all sorts of important things!
should i feel bad when millions of ppl around the world lack such things, and historically also?

according to hegel, need......in a word.....is relative.
part of what makes us human is the fact that we actually do really need such things associated with our cultural situation.
it is incorrect to say that just because ppl didnt need laptops 100 years ago, that i dont really need one now. "need" is not an objective criteria....for hegel.

why?

why is it that:

on tv programmes, films or other forms of entertaintment one never comes across people who are gay, lesbian, disabled, blind or have mental health issues without being the centre, or subject of the film/ tv show showing them.

we never just regulary have a woman in a wheelchair in a tv show as just one of the characters, there must always be a justification for her being there.

and why do we rarely see old, ugly people kissing, let alone having sex!!!!!! maybe old and ugly ppl just dont have sex.

a counter example i have found is that of the lesbian scene in mulholland drive (david lynch). the scene happens,it just happens....it is not discussed, it is not a central feature .although in the story it is important, neverless the "lesbianism" of it is not what is at issue.


this is what we need more of.

empathy

is it a real possibility?

Translated from the Greek meaning of empatheia: physical affection. (Thanks wikipedia).


How can we conceive of truly EMPATHISING with an-other. This other's feeling, in its alterity....understood or appreciated with the same strength of emotion felt by the one it to who it exists. Transcending oneself's own feelings, histories, and facticity.....then having the ability to emphasizes with someone else’s????????? This makes little sense to me.

You cannot know…..this lies in the beauty of otherness. We can have a relation of expression, and acknowledgment that this person feels this way yet I can never understand fully or empathises…….my attempt to do so would be to accommodate such a feeling into my “self” knowledge, and this it is no longer the feeling, in it’s original state of the other’s and thus to focus on this altered feeling is shear inaccuracy, and trivialises the original thought.

This may lead to a vacuous feeling with, and through the other, and the existing dialogue. However, it is this that draws out, and draws together, the precise relations of difference by which the other’s difference can be of aid. You cannot understand, and it is from this position that you can BE with me….and that I can ask OF you….

noumenal animal

It struck me, yesterday, as I revelled in my delights about Kant’s critique of pure reason finally clicking for me (well, as much as it is going to for now), that I had actually been putting forward, what I think is, a Kantian argument for some years now.
It revolves around the question of pain in animals. My argument being that we cannot even being to use the word “pain” when talking about animals. Pain is a purely subjective, a priori condition of the human mind which it makes no sense for us to associate with animals. I guess, metaphorically, I could say that Kant would have included animals as part of the noumenal realm. Apart from seeing their reactions (scientifically measuring them) we can never comprehend anything more. The only way we can say anything about them, is via the use of human terminology, comparisons with human reactions, and by the use of human understanding. I regard as a pretty anthropocentric take on the world.
When we try to define pain we don’t define it as “ouch, that hurts”; because this could apply to an infinite number of things, and then there is also the whole pain/pleasure aspect. However, what we can define it as “I don’t like this experience, and I want it to stop happening to me”. Can we conceive of an animal going through the same thought processes? Can we conceive of animals being able to think of “me”, themselves, think about their identity, and how pain is related themselves?
No we cannot possibly conceive of this, as we don’t have access to what is like to think in such a way. However, this is in no way a denial that animals can feel pain, but rather a critique of the way humans impose their phenomological view onto the rest of the world.
For humans, we have self-consciousness, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the individual, yet we have no way of assessing this in animals. Yet we claim that an animal feels pain in the same sense that we feel pain, and this seems problematic.
The is along the lines as saying that a dog is happy when it wags its tail, we can measure certain chemicals in that dog, but I think this is a question of self-consciousness rather than a science lab.

watchmaker

Seriously, I cannot believe that I am stillllll hearing these trendy psuedo-intellectuals and scientists use the “argument from design” as a last resort so as to not completely be seen as utter nihilists………there are other ways out you know!
Science is perfectly compatible with religion anyway!
So according to this argument, the very fact that the universe has been so perfectly coordinated to allow for our existence, and the fact that a zillion specific details had to be in place, at just the right moment in time and space (if we are to ignore Kant here), then this must be more than just chance or luck; there must have been some kind of intentionality, a designer which organised this.
BUT, what we forget, is that we have no idea of what we could have been, if something else tiny may have been in place. There is nothing essential about humans, or life on this planet, who knows, if it the temperature had been different at the time of the big bang we may have had an immunity to cancer, yet we would know no difference. Basically, things could have been otherwise, yet we would still apply this argument, and that defeats its point!

also, at what point do dirty drawings of children, or as is more relevant, virtual children as in 2nd Life, become subsumed under the title "child abuse"?