Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

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Steve3007
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Steve3007 »

Belindi wrote:I agree with Steve that this general change from authority to freedom seems to be happening. The most conspicuous sign is how women are rebelling against male supremacy and chauvinism, rape and so on.
I should probably point out that in the OP I wasn't necessarily saying that this freedom is an un-alloyed good thing. I was attempting to draw attention to the trade-off that societies have to make between the benefits of individual freedom (the notion that we should all follow our individual dreams without fear of judgement or the pressure to conform) and the benefits of adherence to traditions and tribal rituals. Both, it seems to me, have their pros and cons.
Londoner wrote:
In short: freedom.
The contrary argument would be that the franchise was extended along with the power of government. The reason that ordinary people did not vote in elections was that nobody dreamed that the state would interfere in ordinary lives in the way it does now. Ordinary life was governed by common law, which was traditional.

So democracy can be seen as the enemy of individual rights. If our current legal rights are seen as the gift of a democratically elected government, we are also accepting that a democratically elected government can take them away.
The quote "In short: freedom" above is from the OP, which says:
...This gradual enfranchisement of a larger and larger proportion of society appears to correlate with less and less natural deference towards authority figures, including religious authority figures, and a wider range of lifestyle choices. In short: freedom.
So the contrary argument that you've stated here is that the correlation I've described between enfranchisement and freedom is not the whole story. As I understand it, you're putting the argument that we may think we have more individual freedom now, but we actually have less because government has more power over our lives now than it did in the past. It is the increase in the size of government which is more correctly seen as correlating with more universal suffrage. Or maybe the argument could be that the amount of freedom hasn't changed much but the constraints on us have shifted from tribal tradition and ritual to government.

One point I would like to make: When you say "we are also accepting that a democratically elected government can take them away", I suppose that is theoretically not true in countries (like the US) which have a written constitution which purports to set out general principles that can't simply be removed by democratically elected politicians. As I understand it, that's part of the point of having a constitution which forms the baseline on which legislation (which is theoretically decided by the people via their elected representatives) is built. And some people argue that part of the point of that constitution is to limit the size and reach of government.
Belindi
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Belindi »

Steve wrote to Londoner:
Or maybe the argument could be that the amount of freedom hasn't changed much but the constraints on us have shifted from tribal tradition and ritual to government.
And to me:
I should probably point out that in the OP I wasn't necessarily saying that this freedom is an un-alloyed good thing. I was attempting to draw attention to the trade-off that societies have to make between the benefits of individual freedom (the notion that we should all follow our individual dreams without fear of judgement or the pressure to conform) and the benefits of adherence to traditions and tribal rituals. Both, it seems to me, have their pros and cons.
I agree with what Steve wrote to Londoner, as above, and I think this is the case. The case for prudence is well stated in The Declaration of Independence and well amalgamated with freedoms.

When in the Course of human Events, it
becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the
Political Bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the Powers of the
Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the
Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,
a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident,
that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and
the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these
Rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the
Governed, that whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of
the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its Foundation on such
Principles, and organizing its Powers in such
Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that Governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient Causes;
and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the Forms to which they are accustomed.
Steve3007
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Steve3007 »

Belindi:

Yes, and what the Declaration of Independence also starts to set out is the "truths that are held to be self-evident" - the axioms on which the proposed society is to be based and which (being axioms) cannot be changed by the people or their government. In other words, it declares that democracy cannot vote itself out of existence, as it has actually done in some instances in history.

"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles..."

The implication also being that people don't have the right to institute a new government that is destructive of these ends. And the constitution, and its amendments, then go on to set out some of the other means (e.g. freedom of speech) by which these axiomatic ends shall be protected, even against the will of the people.

I think that's one of the reasons why the Trump administration is so interesting, because he so clearly and obviously doesn't know or care about this purpose of the US Constitution and would like to replace it with a form of democracy more similar to those in which the leader sees himself as being synonymous with the people and in which, as he sees it, because the leader is clearly popular, there in no need for any "checks and balances" to his power. Why would there be? The people clearly love their dear leader. The people have spoken. It would be the personality-cult form of democracy that we see with people like Mussolini or Hugo Chavez or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It's interesting to see the US form of government's defence mechanisms against this kind of aspiring dictatorship being triggered and the frustration of Trump at being (at least so far) thwarted in those populist-dictator ambitions. Almost as if he came to power for that reason - to test the system; to prove the pudding.
Belindi
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Belindi »

Steve wrote regarding Trump:
Almost as if he came to power for that reason - to test the system; to prove the pudding.
That makes me think of Hegel's dialectic , applied to the soul of America.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Because after its battle with Trumpist dictatorship democracy will be a stronger and thus different beast.
Dachshund
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Dachshund »

Belindi wrote: February 12th, 2018, 6:21 pm Steve wrote regarding Trump:
Almost as if he came to power for that reason - to test the system; to prove the pudding.
That makes me think of Hegel's dialectic , applied to the soul of America.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Because after its battle with Trumpist dictatorship democracy will be a stronger and thus different beast.

Belinda


What was the modern era's most ridiculous, nonsensical and downright bloody dangerous lie?

It has to be Thomas Jefferson's "We hold these truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal..." that was written into the America Declaration of Independence.

What a pile of pure codswallop and mindless tosh! And ditto the political egalitatarian democratic utopian delusions it entains. All pie-in-the-shy, romantic idealistic cloud cookoo land madness.

Do you know what the Bell Curve principle is, Belinda. The Bell Curve or Standard, Gaussian distribution is the most common type of distribution for a variable, so common, it is also called the "Normal" distribution.

The Bell Curve principle applies to all sorts of human traits such as: strength, speed, beauty, coordination, artistic ability, musical ability, memory, mathematical skills, talent and intelligence ( g-factor which has a high heritability factor, rising up to 80% (i.e. 80% due to genetics as opposed to environment as we get older).

Before you launch into the predicable objection " Awww, but we're all Special Snowflakes , and each brilliant in our own unique special way, Dachshund"!

The Bell Curve ( i.e. hard, empirical science) says, "NAH, that's ******** too" !

The Bell curve tells us, Belinda, that the vast, overwhelming majority of us do not, in fact, possess , special,extraordinary abilities. Most of us , - the VAST MAJORITY fall into the humdrum, mundane old category of being no more than average IN ALL RESPECTS.

And , there is nothing wrong with being ordinary, right Belinda ? If you want a little reassurance about this , I will happily direct you to some of the "Nerd's Corners" on this forum and you can read some examples of medically (severely) ABNORMAL thinking for yourself. Just ask.


Regards


Dachshund
Dachshund
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Dachshund »

i mean "entails" not entains.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Sy Borg »

Dachshund wrote: February 14th, 2018, 4:34 pmWhat was the modern era's most ridiculous, nonsensical and downright bloody dangerous lie?

It has to be Thomas Jefferson's "We hold these truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal..." that was written into the America Declaration of Independence.
What is the most amount of hyperbole possible in one sentence? It seems that our most intent virtue signalling member is giving it a shot. Just a tip to improve your performance next time, "monstrous" tends to work as one of the better final adjectives when claiming that someone else has told porkies.

Of course all humans are not equal. However, we are equal enough to have a common set of rights and responsibilities, noting that the very wealthy are only occasionally subject to the same rules by virtue of their peer relationships with governments and, being more nimble than said governments with a narrow range of focus, they are usually a few steps ahead. However, as a general principle it makes sense to aim to treat people as equally as practicable. Personally, I would extend extra rights to various other intelligent species too - why not?
Dachshund
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Dachshund »

Greta wrote: February 14th, 2018, 6:18 pm
Dachshund wrote: February 14th, 2018, 4:34 pmWhat was the modern era's most ridiculous, nonsensical and downright bloody dangerous lie?

It has to be Thomas Jefferson's "We hold these truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal..." that was written into the America Declaration of Independence.

However, as a general principle it makes sense to aim to treat people as equally as practicable. Personally, I would extend extra rights to various other intelligent species too - why not?
NO, NO, NO,NO,NO, NO GRETRA !! You must never use the "e" word ("equal) or anything approaching it in describing how human beings are, or should be treated; not at this at this point in evolutionary history, anyway.

Among the notions in the service of which the liberal "progressive" mentality, such as that of yours and HAN's ( for example) never ceases to tinker with , nothing outshines in prominence the associated notions of equality and democracy. To be fair, I think you are aware that there is no such thing as genuine liberal democracy in the contemporary West. You do , - I seem to recall reading a comment you made -, understand that , in reality, Western societies like the US, UK and Australia (for example) are nothing but bloated , corrupt plutocracies, so I will not belabour this point. Equality, however, is still a concept you are struggling with, so allow me to enlighten you.

Whenever and wherever in the modern era ( past 400 years) idealistic intellectuals like, say Diderot, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Tom Paine, for instance, have set foot on that ever-so-slippery path , i.e. the path that leads to fully-fledged egalitarian utopism, disaster has followed in relatively short order.

You must get it into your obtuse, liberal , progressive head, Greta, that the notion of equality, from the time it was first discussed in the fashionable salons of Paris by French philosophers like those above , to the time it was enshrined in the revolutionary trinity of "Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite " that became the vaunted cry the Jacobite communist insurrectionaries in 1789 was merely a few brief years. Even more rapid, after 1789, was the erection of the gruesome "Madam Guillotine" in Paris' Place de la Concorde and the bloody terror that ensued as some 40,000 men and women were beheaded before (truly) deplorable mobs of cheering Parisian lowlife in streets below.

The very same cool, sophisticated, Enlightenment reasoning and the trumpetted rationality of grand abstract, egalitarian schemes, touted by pampered and cossetted romantic European intellectuals who wanted to change the world always ended up creating bloody chaos and mayhem when they were taken seriously and actually trialled in the reality. The SJW of the 18th and 19th century argued, ad nauseum, that by installing new political structures/orders that would realise policies to uphold :the equality of all men; universal equal rights and equal human freedoms for all, etc; etc; they could create a paradise on Earth. History shows us all to graphically, how their arrant egalitarian/equalitarian stupidity, ultimately led to projects on the social plane that saw the rise of murderous totalitarian regimes in the 20th century that were a catastrophic disaster for humanity ( national socialism in Germany, Marxist dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union, the "Communist "Cultural Revolution" Mao's Red China, Pol Pot's primitive agrarian collectivist utopism in Cambodia, the Cold War arms race and the surreal global nightmare that was the Cuban Missile Crisis of '62, etc).

So the rule is Greta , don't use the word equal in any context involving descriptions of groups of human beings. Human beings are ABSOLUTELY NOT created equal, not in ANY sense except for the fact that they happen to belong to the same species homo sapiens ,OK ?

To conclude.The final sentence of your post above can now be simply corrected by deleting the phrase " as equally as possible" and substituting the phrase " as "charitably" as necessary "(The term "charitable", BTW I define here as an adjective which connotes an act that is motivated by compassionate loving-kindness).

Try it out and see how it sounds... Pretty neat, huh?! :D ( And yes, I agree, the same "rule of thumb" can and ought be energetically extended to other conscious animals that we humans encounter in our day-to-day affairs like the primates, mammals, reptiles, amphibians etc, etc.)

Got it?

Good!!

Thus Spake the Dachshund ! ( WOOF, WOOF)
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Sy Borg
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Sy Borg »

Gosh, one day you are going to be quite the cash cow for a pharma company selling blood pressure tablets.

Yes, "equal" was the wrong word - "equivalent" is what I meant.
Belindi
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Belindi »

Just as dachshunds are specially bred to have long spines so Dachshund our poster was newly born a tiny squalling Conservative.
Londoner
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Londoner »

Dachshund wrote: February 14th, 2018, 9:55 pm
NO, NO, NO,NO,NO, NO GRETRA !! You must never use the "e" word ("equal) or anything approaching it in describing how human beings are, or should be treated; not at this at this point in evolutionary history, anyway.
At which point we are awaiting a 'because'.

But it never comes, instead we have a history lesson, which contains such gems as:
You must get it into your obtuse, liberal , progressive head, Greta, that the notion of equality, from the time it was first discussed in the fashionable salons of Paris by French philosophers like those above , to the time it was enshrined in the revolutionary trinity of "Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite " that became the vaunted cry the Jacobite communist insurrectionaries in 1789 was merely a few brief years.
'First discussed'? Really?

Haven't we just been discussing 'liberty' in the American Declaration of Independence? I would have thought the year that document was produced would be one of the few dates in history nearly everyone knows.

But it seems I would be wrong to assume we are all equal in that respect. That's always the irony about those who are opposed to the idea of 'equality'; they always assume of themselves that they belong in the 'superior' class of humanity. But suppose they are right about the inequality, however it is Greta who is on the top deck and the Dachshund is in steerage.
Dachshund
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Dachshund »

Belindi wrote: February 15th, 2018, 5:36 am Just as dachshunds are specially bred to have long spines so Dachshund our poster was newly born a tiny squalling Conservative.
And it would seem that female moderators on this forum (i.e. you and Grrrreta) ares pecially inclined to be naive, moralistic SJWs and sensitive little liberal "Snowflakes" :P

Regards

Dachshund ( the sausage dog's b ollo cks !!)
Londoner
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Londoner »

Oh yes, and 'Jacobites' were not ' communist insurrectionaries in 1789'. Jacobites were supporters of the Stuart dynasty in England and Scotland, named after the deposed king James. You were probably thinking of 'Jacobins'
Belindi
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Belindi »

Dachshund wrote:
What was the modern era's most ridiculous, nonsensical and downright bloody dangerous lie?

It has to be Thomas Jefferson's "We hold these truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal..." that was written into the America Declaration of Independence.

What a pile of pure codswallop and mindless tosh! And ditto the political egalitatarian democratic utopian delusions it entains. All pie-in-the-shy, romantic idealistic cloud cookoo land madness.
Whether or not there be natural rights there is no doubt that inequalities between rich classes and poor classes are caused by cultures not genes.The USA is going to the dachshunds because it is owned by the National Rifle Association instead of the spirit of its Constitution.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Changes in society correlated with the rise of women's rights

Post by Sy Borg »

Dachshund wrote: February 15th, 2018, 10:06 am
Belindi wrote: February 15th, 2018, 5:36 amJust as dachshunds are specially bred to have long spines so Dachshund our poster was newly born a tiny squalling Conservative.
And it would seem that female moderators on this forum (i.e. you and Grrrreta) ares pecially inclined to be naive, moralistic SJWs and sensitive little liberal "Snowflakes" :P
Fair enough to fire back at Belinda, but I'm not going to be a punching bag to be hit when the moods arrives when I'm providing voluntary services. Mods tend to cop more aggression than others and after a while you need to protect yourself. The occasional attack is no drama, but when it is regular it becomes wearing so it's probably smartest to act.

It will be interesting to try something different so I'd like to put this to a vote. My options in dealing with Dachshund's rebellion are:

1. Do nothing
2. Give him another warning
3. Warn him that I will give him another warning
4. Suspend for a period
5. Banning
6. Reply in kind with an ad hominem
7. Quit the forum and write.

I am taking votes. If there's no input, then it's third strike and out banned. Choose as many options as you like, or add new ones.

Thank you :)
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