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Re: Fishing for Passion, but finding insensitivity

This is rather blunt, so forgive me, but some of the reasoning I hear today is rather thick and muddied.

What are the morals involved in thinking that killing- for sport, or inducing pain -for sport, engenders any experience except a numbing experience?
If one wants to meditate, there are multiple other choices. If one wants to do intricate things with one's hands, there are multiple other choices, none of which need to involve killing or inducing pain.

Look at it this way - what is the difference between catch and release, and an older boy tormenting your younger son, but not killing him? Is this the bully's redemption, that he did not more severely maim or even kill your boy?

What kind of morality makes such distinction except a dysfunctional morality?

One that allows perhaps, balloon payments on mortgages? or allows the very rich to hire a very expensive lawyer and not be found guilty of a murder the common man would have been fried for?

The sometimes necessity of killing to eat is one question which is often answered by an attempt toward balance via some sacrifice, but what do we sacrifice in order to kill for our entertainment.

What sort of excellence is attained by harming the innocent? Surely the fish are not pests.

From small seed grow great weeds -

so, when your boy comes home with a bloody nose, or bloody fists, maybe you need to look at something in your self very deeply, and apologize to that boy you have misled.

Some. indeed most, of the 'reasons' offered to support fishing-as-sport sound just like drug use - attaining a state of mind using something as an intermediary - rather than one's own mind and quietness.

Few would defend as educational or civilizing the gladiatorial games, either roman or those on present day TV. Would you? The difference is only in scale and not in principle. The pure although undeveloped child mind sees directly though these rationalizations re: sport, character building, zen (the sound of one hand killing???) poetry in motion -

as difficult as it might seem for you to grasp what about the fish's sense of poetry, which bible does the fish read that says he must give up his life or suffer great pain so someone can despoil his habitat, kill him or a part of his unknown family -

there is no end to the reasons most so-called sport is the decline of civilizing forces, and not any sort of necessary prop or edification, unless it be to one time cause, see and comprehend suffering and vow to never door allow that again.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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I have to preface this:
The quote "there were mistakes made" is a total whitewash - yes many mistakes, but the major cause is and has been outright corruption, cheating, hedging, bribery of one sort or many. lying, and other actions not only of the unethical sort, but actions illegal, and now most of the boo-hoo on the execs?/institutions? part is trying to cover their tracks in time and confusion.

The biggest mistake is that the country has been allowed to be run until it has become, de facto, taken over by large corporations and away from an informed voting populace - an ?economocracy?, in the derogatory sense, perhaps, or a kleptocracy of our very own. When one has had the opportunity to serve these people, up close, see them when they are at their unguarded moments, their hubris is breath-taking, and it is contagious among them. Look at what has leak out unto us, the 'innocent' public.
****

I think I have a few ideas i would like to introduce. I?ll try to be blunt, but i can guarantee nothing.
1st
If anyone thinks that the financiers, who do simulations for everything, were not also doing simulations of what would be a worst case scenario, and how they would get themselves (and their second house, third mistress, off-shore bank accounts, and alimony payments, illegitimate sons in private schools, et c) out of it, they are fooling themselves. And IF they were NOT doing such simulations, they are the even bigger fools. But i think it is greed and incompetence which has caused this, brought us to this point, and it has been a long time coming.
we, the public, have lain on the tracks like Pauline, while Oilcan Harry has gone thorough all sorts of machinations, and we have seen the train steadily approaching down the tracks for some time- ?what?s that light, what?s that light??
who is to blame??
Well, in this case, it IS OilCan Harry, because even while he has been telling us he is loosing the bonds so we can escape before the train cuts us to bits, he has really been rebinding us with other and more fickle promises, more and more fickle as the train gets closer and closer.
We are greedy idiots for having trusted them, and they are scoundrels for lying, and then lying more to us.
So, idea 1,they lied to us and we foolishly, unquestioningly believed them, and they knew how iffy the balancing act had become over the years, at least since the ?80?s, eh? this is not some recent upshot that suddenly and recently ruined a perviously perfected system. As the broker will tell you each and every time that you ask - ?This is gambling, there are no guarantees.?

. I myself am in the bizarre situation of having some investments. I am no real genius myself, although i test out fairly high. Let me tell you without seeming like an intellectual snot, - I have never met anyone in those offices who is close to brilliant, yet there they are, running around with billions of dollars of other people?s money - blame is distributable here, and while responsibility is something other; who are we for letting nitwits and nincompoops and just plain common men and women run around with something so important, with no oversight.
2nd- there is responsibility here, and this is of such great consequence that a debacle like this is the true definition of crime, and it cries out for judgement and justice -just like there are people with mortgages who are going to be homeless because of this, ruined by this, there should equally be upper echelon execs who become homeless- let them as well try to work their way back from literal nothing, not proportional nothing - if they are really that talented, they can do it, if not - they never deserved the privilege they have so so egregiously misused, no - this is abuse, this is not misfeasance, this is malfeasance.
This ? we?ll scare away the talent? argument against responsibility with teeth is bull pucky- ?falling on one?s sword? is honorable- and these people have no honor, what they have instead is our bank accounts. if they want the reward, they have to accept the responsibility- it is grossly unfair for the incompetent to skim off the cream as it were, and skip out when the cream goes badly sour, or the cow dies because they were keeping it, milking it to the death and not giving the poor beast nutritious silage. How stupid can anyone be for not feeding the cow they are milking.
This is also the class that screams communism and socialism about public education, public health, public funding of great arts and other works. All the benefits to them and all the risk to us? For believing this, for accepting it as de facto, this is our failing. John Q. Gullible Public!
3rd -there should be, there must be if we are to avoid doing the same thing over and over again, a winnowing out of the less intelligent as one rises, and ethics should be so ingrained during anyone?s rise that to call it mandatory would be redundant. Obligation is a word. A sophomore college level ?Ethics 101-b class is not it. We have agreed-upon ethics dating back 5000 years, and actual living philosophers are incrementally bettering our potential every year, every decade. We have the latest walkman/ipod- how much more desirable up-to-date, and actually functional/functioning ethics. Ethics is not religion. Ethics are demonstrable. We have become an unethical people. The demonstration is before our eyes. All it requires to see is open and educated eyes.
We cannot have those of lesser intelligence doing what requires great intelligence to accomplish. And yet we have exactly that, and these lesser minds find it extremely difficult to resist the temptation of so much! and so easy to take! Ask yourself, a pile of millions of dollars, there loose in the office, how much would you try to stuff in your pocket before you felt guilty, shamed, - especially when your co-workers brag about their ?take?, in the restrooms, in the elevators, in the bars before and after, they brag - status!. How much could YOU resist, in such a situation? - Really ?
There is no shame in some aspects of being as one was born - we do not expect the physically frail to lift as much as the very fit or very large - shame would be when the frail tries to lift and falls and breaks much of value.
is it not the same - is not intellect of greater or lesser it?s own gift, and while to reach is admirable, to over-reach is asking for calamity - and this is culpable.
if we as a society and culture had actual demands of intelligence and ethics we could have avoided this president entirely, and perhaps the previous president may have been reformed before he did something unethical

and now, sending the fbi to investigate - how is this not like sending gorillas into the libraries and bookshops looking for evidence of plagiarism. The trap is set.- we may get our own KGB out of all this - if indeed some secret arm of 'official investigation' has not already been brought into being by this ever-so transparent administration of today.

There have been predictions that this may be our last election and an interregnum is in our near future - and not by the likes of Jean Dixon or Mama?s Hot Tarot Seances.

I think democracy and ?America?s Favorite Home Balls-up? are not compatible.
there is blame to go all around far

to bail or not to bail?

WE ARE ALREADY SUNK

the question is- to where should we swim? -just any shore? i
-is the vision, the myth, of America no longer within our range?
Columbia strides away, weeping?

posted 4 years, 8 months ago
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the person who spoke against joining a teachers union, the person who seemed to speak way too much on your show today, is to me the sort of intellect which should be allowed almost no major input into any sort of decision. It is neither that she spoke so much, nor that she was averse to the union which leads me to this opinion, i use these only to identify her of whom i now write.
That person exhibits what i would call a cheerleader sort of mentality. The person is a complete victim of her prejudices and clique-ism. i listen to that sort of person speak, and there is no doubt in my mind that should she have much say in anything, it will go wrong. Her manner is obstructionistic, she will never reconsider unless her clique undergoes some sort of transformation in belief, and belief has so little to do with thought and so much to do with trying to fit in, without thought.

Coincidentally, this is exactly the sort of person which has been nominated by the republicans for VP - a useless intellect for an underutilized position- a recipe for corruption and disaster.

We have no hope as either nation or world with folks like this doing anything more than mowing the lawn. If they will not train themselves, their gift of mind, then they should never be allowed to dictate for others, nor have anything to do with the formation of the opinions necessary when fact or knowledge is for some reason lacking.

posted 4 years, 8 months ago
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