The Problem With Moderates. In a world of ever-widening extremes – from weather patterns to wealth disparities to polarized politics – what does it mean to be a moderate? More specifically, how does this term apply to religion? Viewed in the context of most everyday activities and situations and in line with Aristotle’s idea of the “Golden Mean” (which states that virtue lies at the midpoint between two vices; i.e. courage lies between cowardice and recklessness, etc.), it could be said that a moderate stance is generally better than an extremist one. For example, being a moderate drinker seems to strike a pretty good balance between being healthy and having fun, as opposed to the opposite extremes of being an ascetic teetotaler or a raging alcoholic. Likewise, being politically moderate, if nothing else, tends to generate far less strife during dinner conversations amid mixed company or at large family gatherings.
When it comes to religion, being moderate is similarly troublesome. 'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct - Karen Swallow Prior. When I was attending graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, political correctness reigned supreme. Lassoing the powers of language, literature, and the law, the movement dubbed “PC” initially worked toward the good goal of greater inclusiveness for marginalized communities.
Eventually, however, bloated by the riches of the ivory tower of academia and provoked by the excesses and exclusivity of the good-ol’-boy culture of Wall Street, political correctness morphed into a tyranny of speech codes, sensitivity training, and book banning. Its reach lingers still, most recently exemplified in the decision by a state panel in Nevada not to name a cove after Mark Twain because of the author’s racist 19th-century views toward Native Americans. But it seems political correctness is being replaced by a new trend—one that might be called “empathetic correctness.” Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. I’m not entirely unsympathetic. The Prescience of Tocqueville. Alexis de Tocqueville Public Domain Alexis de Tocqueville was amazingly observant and had an outsider perspective of American democracy.
He was a deposed French Aristocrat from Normandy whose ancestors had fought in the battle of Hastings. His parents narrowly escaped the guillotine during the French Revolution. He came to America initially to study the Penal system but ended up writing his magnum opus Democracy in America, instead. I think of writers of Tocqueville’s era – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Mellville – as having greater social intelligence. This was before sociology, in which masses of people are seen in terms of statistics and the machinations of dialectical materialism. This classic text has long been in the public domain and is available to read free online.
Because of his unique perspective, Tocqueville presents an excellent way of framing a debate about the erosion of democracy in the United States. Tocqueville again comments on the potential resurgence of aristocracy. Social Conformity. Amanda Palmer: The art of asking. Ignore the prophets of doom – this is a golden age for the world. THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2011 — Page 8. GERD GIGERENZER Psychologist; Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin; Author, Gut Feelings Risk Literacy Literacy — the ability to read and write — is the precondition for an informed citizenship in a participatory democracy. But knowing how to read and write is no longer enough. The breakneck speed of technological innovation has made risk literacy as indispensable in the 21st century as reading and writing were in the 20th century. Risk literacy is the ability to deal with uncertainties in an informed way.
Without it, people jeopardize their health and money and can be manipulated into experiencing unwarranted, even damaging hopes and fears. But one crucial idea was missing: helping the public better understand financial risk. I believe that the answer to modern crises is not simply more laws, more bureaucracy, or more money, but, first and foremost, more citizens who are risk literate. Albert-camus-rebellion-quote.jpg (JPEG Image, 750 × 553 pixels) The Riddle of the Gun. (Photo by Zorin Denu) Fantasists and zealots can be found on both sides of the debate over guns in America.
On the one hand, many gun-rights advocates reject even the most sensible restrictions on the sale of weapons to the public. On the other, proponents of stricter gun laws often seem unable to understand why a good person would ever want ready access to a loaded firearm. Between these two extremes we must find grounds for a rational discussion about the problem of gun violence. Unlike most Americans, I stand on both sides of this debate. I understand the apprehension that many people feel toward “gun culture,” and I share their outrage over the political influence of the National Rifle Association.
How is it that we live in a society in which one of the most compelling interests is gun ownership? Most of my friends do not own guns and never will. But, unlike my friends, I own several guns and train with them regularly. Some Facts About Guns Twenty-two children injured. National responsibility and historic crimes. Your country has probably done some very bad things. Perhaps recently, perhaps before you or even your parents were born. How do you feel about that? Does your present government have a duty to make amends for the bad things it has done, for example with apologies and reparations?
Intuitively most people think so, but what kind of duty is that and what does it require from you as a citizen or subject? And how can you get other countries to admit that they have done wrong? The standard way of thinking about national responsibility for historic crimes employs the best worked out model we have for coping with violations of justice: criminal law. The criminal law model is concerned with establishing the guilt of an accused party. National identity presumes that a country, like a person, has an enduring individual identity over time. Personal identity is philosophically controversial - after all people do change significantly as they go through life in all sorts of ways.
I think so. What Is Value? What Is Money? For example, if you think of Galileo, a long time ago he was looking at an object that everybody else had looked at before: Jupiter, which is super bright. It's one of the brightest objects in the night sky. But, he looked at Jupiter with an increased resolution, because he had this telescope. That increased resolution allowed him to see that there were these little things going around Jupiter: the Galileo moons of Jupiter. The increase in resolution allowed him to show that there were things going around something other than the earth. It was not that he looked at something that never had been looked at before. Everybody had looked at Jupiter. I'll bring data to a modern example, medicine.
I have a definition of big data. The second condition is it has to be big in resolution. Now for the third condition: the first two are size and resolution. Another thing that is somehow related that I have been thinking about recently quite a bit are differences between value and money. A network? No, It Has Not 'Always Been This Way' One of the more common responses I get when I try to point out the alarming decline of basic civic values and practices in the US is one version or another of the following: "What are you getting so excited about?
It is a dog eat dog world today, just as it has been for the entire trajectory of the human race. The powerful have always sought to fully exploit their ability to toy with the lives of “lesser beings”. Adolf Eichmann listening as the court declares him guilty on all counts at his war crimes trial in Jerusalem in December 1961. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives And with this response, these men--they are almost always men--feel they have really put the silly dreamer in his place, and that, moreover, that they have actually engaged in an argument and won it. Why? Last Thursday was the 50th anniversary of the hanging of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, man who was, as you know, one of the prime architects of the Nazi plan to eliminate European Jewry.