Philosophy Now Forum

Many grown-ups think that just cause they have made a few extra trips around the sun they are somehow major fonts of wisdom

and they for some reason expect the younger people to partake of this wisdom

unfortunately very few of them have read hume and so do not realize that even if they had some wisdom acquired through experience as they claim - even then it would mean nothing to those with no life experience since even the value of experience cannot be understood except through experience if even then

further many grown-ups are stark raving insane making it obvious to anyone with half a brain - which unfortunately excludes many grown-ups - that the extra trips around the sun provide no extra experience in an of themselves

a little 7 year old girl i frequently babysit - lets call her Clara - is very upset because her best friends parents wont let them see each other any more

the little girl and her friend announced that when they grown up they are going to get married - her best friend is also a girl

Claras parents are very liberal on the subject of same sex marriage to a point where their daughter was not even aware that same sex marriage is an issue at all - of course boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls

but her friends parents are asshole republicans and do not want their daughter getting ideas

obviously they have learned fuck all from all these trips around the sun

on saturday clara asked me why all the grownups except her parents are so stupid i was not sure what to say

well except to point out that not just her parents are non-stupid there is a small minority of grown ups who are not stark raving batshit insane

i am not sure where i am going with this

bleah

I think "grown ups" are too large a group to generalize about in any meaningful way. Of course grown ups have more experience than youngsters. Unfortunately experience doesn't automatically turn into wisdom.

also it takes experience to figure out that experience matters

i suppose it is unfair to make a generalized statement about grown-ups just as it would be unfair to make a generalized statement about teenagers

but it is certainly true that someone should not be trusted as a source of wisdom, or even basic common sense, just because they are a grown up

the number of grown ups who are Republican is clear evidence of that

Re: "...it is certainly true that someone should not be trusted as a source of wisdom, or even basic common sense, just because they are a grown up"

it is certainly true that one should trust in their own instinct when it comes to listening to the abundance of opinions available in our modern world. To do otherwise is without doubt, unwise... and 'unwisdom' is all too available as a remedy to our lack of understanding, much less knowing.

I think grown up's is spot on, as I'm a 54 year old kid, and shall remain that way until the day that I die (the kid part).

It's a shame that the parents are such, as to me I see it as a common thing, I mean, how many out there are exactly what it is that they said, as a 7 year old, that they wanted to be?

growing up is a bad idea, i tried it, stopped as soon as i realised

I think the problem her is that you are definitely more wise than Clara, because you have had more trips round the sun.
By extension many people that are older than you are also wiser for the same reason.
So you are sort of shooting yourself in the foot, with your premise.

can't be a matter of just a few trips around the sun

plenty of my peers have poorer impulse control and judgement than Clara

and it is manifestly obvious that plenty of grownups are stark raving batshit insane and would not know wisdom if it hit them in the had with a locomotive

Don't you think you're being biased? There is not a parent on earth who does not raise their child/children to reflect their own views. Are those whose stance is not to support gay marriage wrong? If it is wrong in your view and in the view of most of your friends and acquaintances or those you admire in public positions, does that make it a mandatory unilateral view? You seem to be saying so. I can understand why people feel offended by the idea of same sex marriage, even if just at the level of being an abuse of the english language. The term marry etymologically is thought to mean 'to provide with a women'. This seems to bear some truth as 'mer' or 'mar' are very old feminine prefixes. Its rather an abhorrent term when you think about it, and I don't quite get why such high value is placed on it either side of the fence. My favourite usage of it in common parlance is where it is used to refer to the joining of opposing yet complementary parts, as in plumbing where a flanged pipe will be could female, and the one that fits into it is called male; and thus the two 'marry'. There would be a lot of dodgy plumbing around if we all had to accept that two flanged, or two straight pipes fit together, so I would hope that stays the same at least.

What I get out of all this is that marriage as we have known it has had its day. The ultra right seem too resistant to this, whilst the liberals seem to push too hard to pull marriage away from its moorings. I think that in the end its about bringing down the population somehow, like in the middle ages when it became popular in overcrowded Europe to spend life in a monastery with others of the same gender as you.

I don't think either ultra right or ultra left are going to be overly satisfied about the eventual outcome of this intense debate, and it will take a long while for the debris from all this fighting to settle, but I believe peace will have its day.

Kayla



Quite right, Kayla, the world's full of them. So what are you going to do? Insult them? Kill them? Tell them they're beyond insane?

You'll be coming into contact with them for the rest of your life a lot of the time, won't you? So what will you do? You can't just make them vanish!

depends on what you mean by biased

there is whose thinking is context free so in that sense bias in inevitable



irrelevant

this does not in any way justify those views



yes



i am saying they are wrong i am not saying this view should be banned



no one

not one person in existence

is offended by same sex marriage solely on the basis of meaning of words

those who claim that their sole objection is to definitions of words are lying asshole shitbags

in reality this objection is a last ditch defense when every other argument against same sex marriage fails as they always do

due to you know lack of good arguments against same sex marriage



etymology does not define meaning

are you going to say that Lex luthor is a super peasant?

he is if etymology == meaning

that makes about as much sense as telling someone who is complaining about nazis or klansmen

well, there are lots of them in the world

duh

Kayla, you are just a bunch of feelings. You need to learn ethics, and grow-up. I'll wait for the insults this board is known-for.

Kayla



I didn't tell you anything. I asked you, since you're going to meet many of these kinds of people, what will your action be toward them? How will you act?

It's a problem you're actually going to have to deal with in life, you understand?

Hey Cecil! How ya been?