Talked to Thornberg

[lostkitty]

Rustico-

I LOVED LOVED LOVED your sharing your story. I do believe that we learn most in times of adversity. Now I can understand how you became the philosopher that you are. I love your writings.

Have you published anything? Ever considered it?

I read A LOT, and you writing style is sufficiently unusual, and pleasant, and complicated, that i believe you could really have a slam-dunk book (on a topic of interest to you).

[lostkitty]

Rustico-

I LOVED LOVED LOVED your sharing your story. I do believe that we learn most in times of adversity. Now I can understand how you became the philosopher that you are. I love your writings.

Have you published anything? Ever considered it?

I read A LOT, and you writing style is sufficiently unusual, and pleasant, and complicated, that i believe you could really have a slam-dunk book (on a topic of interest to you).

[Anonymous]

R-, enlisted folks are, on average, better off than you think:

“…The slight dif­ferences are that wartime U.S. mil­itary enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on aver­age than their civilian peers…”

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm

Great study.

Lots of us have tough stories. My parents divorced when I was in second grade. We moved from Philly to San Diego with my mother. She died in a car accident one year later. By grace of God, we were adopted by our maternal aunt and uncle. Not a loving upbringing, but a safe, comfortable one. Good folks who are still with us today in Austin. My adopted mother immigrated from Mexico and left school in third grade. My adopted father is second generation from Mexico.

Through this, I saw firsthand the terrible damage from divorce when children are involved. The Catholic Church, in my opinion, is dead-on when it gives second-rate status to the divorced with children. ‘Avoidance of stigma’ is a great motivator for many of us weak humans.

I am very thankful that a strong-willed maternal grandmother said to my maternal aunt and uncle, “You will adopt and raise these three nephews and nieces.” It was a real change and sacrifice for my adopted parents; they were in their mid 30s with no children. One year later, they had a son of their own.

I recognized what was not good in my upbringing, and have worked hard not to repeat the mistakes of my birth and adopted parents. So far, so good.

[Anonymous]

R-, enlisted folks are, on average, better off than you think:

“…The slight dif­ferences are that wartime U.S. mil­itary enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on aver­age than their civilian peers…”

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm

Great study.

Lots of us have tough stories. My parents divorced when I was in second grade. We moved from Philly to San Diego with my mother. She died in a car accident one year later. By grace of God, we were adopted by our maternal aunt and uncle. Not a loving upbringing, but a safe, comfortable one. Good folks who are still with us today in Austin. My adopted mother immigrated from Mexico and left school in third grade. My adopted father is second generation from Mexico.

Through this, I saw firsthand the terrible damage from divorce when children are involved. The Catholic Church, in my opinion, is dead-on when it gives second-rate status to the divorced with children. ‘Avoidance of stigma’ is a great motivator for many of us weak humans.

I am very thankful that a strong-willed maternal grandmother said to my maternal aunt and uncle, “You will adopt and raise these three nephews and nieces.” It was a real change and sacrifice for my adopted parents; they were in their mid 30s with no children. One year later, they had a son of their own.

I recognized what was not good in my upbringing, and have worked hard not to repeat the mistakes of my birth and adopted parents. So far, so good.

[NotCranky]

You do love your studies JG.
The story I posted was the tip of the iceberg. Clearly you have made up your mind that it doesn’t matter so enough of that.
As for not responding directly to queries, you are the master. Nuance is not you strength evidently. I won’t hold it against you but I won’t value your opinions any topic that you refuse to delve into either.You are the ultimate “pick and chooser”.

“The Catholic Church, in my opinion, is dead-on when it gives second-rate status to the divorced with children. ‘Avoidance of stigma’ is a great motivator for many of us weak humans.”
The problem is that it gives second rate status to innocent children in doing so. Avoidance of that might help to stimatized the children less.In the pimate world, many social structures more or less work. If we were not the most judgemental, hording and fearful of them, as reflected by religious people as well as the rest of us, many human social structures might allow individuals to relatively thrive as well.

Lost Kitty,
Thanks, I know I have a few unusual mental traits, to say the least, that lend to creativity. Unfortunately, for all things requiring intellectual productivity, I am cursed with a short span of attention and am doomed to being a one page wonder. I am mostly a physical person and relish doltih periods of monotony. Probably some kind of coping strategy:). I appreciate your genrosity with the compliments.

On adversity,: I am not sure it is a benefit to anyone. The productivity factor seemed negative in my family. I would rather have had a better time. I survived that’s all. Sometimes I imagine what I could have done with some support but I don’t dwell on it. If water seeks it’s own level judging from my friends and wife I am O.K.
I don’t want to sound mean but I am not “Liberal”.I really dislike labels. Siding with large masses of people generally isn’t my thing.I think it causes “brain rot” and emotional sterility, when it is not causing revolution. (I guess me and the unabomber have that in common :).) Not that I am saying you suffer from that at all. I am sure you are quite the thinker.Thanks again for your kindnesses.
Best wishes

BTW I also post some things just for the fun of it. like this”Siding with large masses of people generally isn’t my thing.I think it causes “brain rot” and emotional sterility, when it is not causing revolution.”. That said you can trust that your’s truly is being sincere when it matters.

This forum is a little like “toast masters” for me…just practice and experimentation with language andideas.For instance,now I can spell syntax correctly and own the word in my vocabulary. Same with demagoguery.
Have a great day.

[NotCranky]

You do love your studies JG.
The story I posted was the tip of the iceberg. Clearly you have made up your mind that it doesn’t matter so enough of that.
As for not responding directly to queries, you are the master. Nuance is not you strength evidently. I won’t hold it against you but I won’t value your opinions any topic that you refuse to delve into either.You are the ultimate “pick and chooser”.

“The Catholic Church, in my opinion, is dead-on when it gives second-rate status to the divorced with children. ‘Avoidance of stigma’ is a great motivator for many of us weak humans.”
The problem is that it gives second rate status to innocent children in doing so. Avoidance of that might help to stimatized the children less.In the pimate world, many social structures more or less work. If we were not the most judgemental, hording and fearful of them, as reflected by religious people as well as the rest of us, many human social structures might allow individuals to relatively thrive as well.

Lost Kitty,
Thanks, I know I have a few unusual mental traits, to say the least, that lend to creativity. Unfortunately, for all things requiring intellectual productivity, I am cursed with a short span of attention and am doomed to being a one page wonder. I am mostly a physical person and relish doltih periods of monotony. Probably some kind of coping strategy:). I appreciate your genrosity with the compliments.

On adversity,: I am not sure it is a benefit to anyone. The productivity factor seemed negative in my family. I would rather have had a better time. I survived that’s all. Sometimes I imagine what I could have done with some support but I don’t dwell on it. If water seeks it’s own level judging from my friends and wife I am O.K.
I don’t want to sound mean but I am not “Liberal”.I really dislike labels. Siding with large masses of people generally isn’t my thing.I think it causes “brain rot” and emotional sterility, when it is not causing revolution. (I guess me and the unabomber have that in common :).) Not that I am saying you suffer from that at all. I am sure you are quite the thinker.Thanks again for your kindnesses.
Best wishes

BTW I also post some things just for the fun of it. like this”Siding with large masses of people generally isn’t my thing.I think it causes “brain rot” and emotional sterility, when it is not causing revolution.”. That said you can trust that your’s truly is being sincere when it matters.

This forum is a little like “toast masters” for me…just practice and experimentation with language andideas.For instance,now I can spell syntax correctly and own the word in my vocabulary. Same with demagoguery.
Have a great day.

[CardiffBaseball]

As CS Lewis stated he hated the idea that people said Jesus was a great teacher and philosopher. It’s like they throw out half of everything he said, and stick only to the “advice” he gave.

Now of course a logician (is that a word?) would say he is using false dilemmas, but nonetheless Lewis stated he was either:
Lunatic – kind of disproved by the sermon on the mount
Liar – claiming to be god in the flesh
Lord – i.e. who he says he was

[CardiffBaseball]

As CS Lewis stated he hated the idea that people said Jesus was a great teacher and philosopher. It’s like they throw out half of everything he said, and stick only to the “advice” he gave.

Now of course a logician (is that a word?) would say he is using false dilemmas, but nonetheless Lewis stated he was either:
Lunatic – kind of disproved by the sermon on the mount
Liar – claiming to be god in the flesh
Lord – i.e. who he says he was

[NotCranky]

I am not able to edit my posts for some reason,so a new one for JG:
Thanks for sharing your story as well. I know it takes courage. You certainly could have had better “nurture” yourself. Divorice is tragic,sometimes,my parents divoriced 3 years before my mom died.They were so crazy I think it was a relief to some of us.Having the sibling unit split was a disaster for me. I hope you can see that the system of beliefs that you maintain and the developement of the people involved has tremendous capacity to attenuate or exacerbate the deleterious effects of divorice. Are you glad that the Catholic church punished your parents for divoricing? It seems very cruel, dark and primative to have such policies .
I think, if my wife and I were ever to split we would still do a great job raising our kids.We would repair the wounds to the greatest degree possible. We would go on loving each other and being decent to one another.We would be free from having the curse of a requirement to label one another “sinner” or having a community we belonged to do so. That said I am old school and would also believe in staying together for the kids sake. We would simply agree not to make each other miserable and facilitate a reasonably tender,mutually supportive collegial relationship.

[NotCranky]

I am not able to edit my posts for some reason,so a new one for JG:
Thanks for sharing your story as well. I know it takes courage. You certainly could have had better “nurture” yourself. Divorice is tragic,sometimes,my parents divoriced 3 years before my mom died.They were so crazy I think it was a relief to some of us.Having the sibling unit split was a disaster for me. I hope you can see that the system of beliefs that you maintain and the developement of the people involved has tremendous capacity to attenuate or exacerbate the deleterious effects of divorice. Are you glad that the Catholic church punished your parents for divoricing? It seems very cruel, dark and primative to have such policies .
I think, if my wife and I were ever to split we would still do a great job raising our kids.We would repair the wounds to the greatest degree possible. We would go on loving each other and being decent to one another.We would be free from having the curse of a requirement to label one another “sinner” or having a community we belonged to do so. That said I am old school and would also believe in staying together for the kids sake. We would simply agree not to make each other miserable and facilitate a reasonably tender,mutually supportive collegial relationship.

[cyphire]

Grrr – I closed the browser window by accident! Lost one of my very long responses and don’t have the heart to try to recreate it verbatim – so here is the abridged version!

Imagine a world without the stigma of divorce, the stigma of who has the better car, the stigma of who is more educated (degrees attained, not actual education!), the stigma of not fitting in with the fold? Unfortunately, most of this isn’t possible as long as people are preaching their beliefs instead of being able to evolve both emotionally, as well as practically.

Last night I came to the conclusion (I was in deep thinking mode – you draw your own conclusions!) that the ‘family values’ and abstinence lobby has probably done more to promote teen sex and other things which they are supposed to be against! The problem is that by putting a religious moral label on something (God wants you to be pure, without chastity you are sinning, etc.) and the hippocracy of it as well as the forbidden fruit of it causes many kids to rebel against it. Without the hypocritical religious aspect of supposed social consciousness, society might actually have a chance to band together to create moral codes. For example, the more devout someone is, chances are the less they are open about a problem. The more devout someone is, the more likely if there is a problem to be discussed that the repercussions are so severe that the problem will continue and lying and deception will be the norm.

If there was no religion and social codes were in step society would come together in a greater way. Currently we have a us-vs.-them mentality of religious leaders preaching their own brand of morality to the masses (while usually they are the most egregious offenders of the social code i.e. Bush) and a backlash from open minded and the socially relaxed larger irreligious mass. Just as many people (like myself) disregard the preaching of the religious as either self-serving, opposite in values to what they preach, dangerous to free will, or just plain socially repressive as well as the very large group who pay lip service to their religious responsibilities and go out and break all the rules anyway (the forbidden fruit), this sets up conflict in society and actually increases the behavior against the preaching.

The corollary to that would be that if moralistic prigs didn’t abuse their power derived from the great mass of sheep like followers, and did not attach religion to social actions (such as chastity, abortion, vulgarism, etc.), society would have a greater mandate to set standards for these actions. It’s hard to set policies and ideas in dealing with teens as a community, when the community is so fractured with the far-right religious dogma which is tried to be hobbled on popular society.

Some examples of hippocracy are found in my own travels. I have a friend (spoke of him earlier) who is deeply religious. He spends a huge amount of time lying or thinking about lying as he chafes at the halter of his religious convictions. He is very typical. I go through life without ever telling any lies. As I live an open life, and don’t have any artificial requirements laid on me by any outsourced morality police, I never have anything to lie about!

I have a Mormon friend who sneaks off and plays golf and drinks and smokes on the course, and lies about it to his wife and family. I have a Hasidic friend (Ultra religious Jew) who has a huge porn collection at his office (as his other co religionists do) as he has to hide this from his family and the temple. I have a Catholic acquaintance who is in a loveless marriage, but stays together because he has to (and never, ever talks to his wife) – real good for the kids!

I live my own moral code and actually follow it. I tell the truth because I can’t imagine any reason I would have for lying. I don’t chafe…

On the subject of marriage, it is amazing how much damage is done by these strict and anti-sociatal edicts that accompany religion. I think that the Catholic church is a prime offender, but also many Muslim sects are also preaching regressive rules which are enforced with severity on the population. The stigma attached to divorce is one of many crimes which the church should answer for. Raising kids when you aren’t in love and don’t create a loving atmosphere is just not right. Preaching abstainance (without any chance of it working) and not using or endorsing contraception has killed more people than most wars – I would hate to part of a group which was this corrupt and dangerous to polite society.

I know it’s politically correct not to take a religion to task for the ills it creates, but perhaps this might be the start of a golden age where we make people who hurt others responsible for their actions. Take the church to task for the people who are diseased and dying because of the lack of contraception, take the church to task for making girls too young to raise an infant responsible to spend their lives in poverty and squalor, take the bishops who knew about sexual predators and moved them around to more fertile hunting grounds and imprison them (why has this not happened?)

I know this is going to inflame the religious core. I wish it wasn’t so. But try answering for the specific things as written above. I hope that there is a time where religion is not treated in a special manner and the religious are held accountable for their actions rather then being allowed to influence society for the worse.

p.s. Sorry Kitty for not realizing your position vis-a-vis religion and dogma. I shouldn’t have gotten it wrong based on your posts – you have an awesome and honest perspective on life and a great heart!

[cyphire]

Grrr – I closed the browser window by accident! Lost one of my very long responses and don’t have the heart to try to recreate it verbatim – so here is the abridged version!

Imagine a world without the stigma of divorce, the stigma of who has the better car, the stigma of who is more educated (degrees attained, not actual education!), the stigma of not fitting in with the fold? Unfortunately, most of this isn’t possible as long as people are preaching their beliefs instead of being able to evolve both emotionally, as well as practically.

Last night I came to the conclusion (I was in deep thinking mode – you draw your own conclusions!) that the ‘family values’ and abstinence lobby has probably done more to promote teen sex and other things which they are supposed to be against! The problem is that by putting a religious moral label on something (God wants you to be pure, without chastity you are sinning, etc.) and the hippocracy of it as well as the forbidden fruit of it causes many kids to rebel against it. Without the hypocritical religious aspect of supposed social consciousness, society might actually have a chance to band together to create moral codes. For example, the more devout someone is, chances are the less they are open about a problem. The more devout someone is, the more likely if there is a problem to be discussed that the repercussions are so severe that the problem will continue and lying and deception will be the norm.

If there was no religion and social codes were in step society would come together in a greater way. Currently we have a us-vs.-them mentality of religious leaders preaching their own brand of morality to the masses (while usually they are the most egregious offenders of the social code i.e. Bush) and a backlash from open minded and the socially relaxed larger irreligious mass. Just as many people (like myself) disregard the preaching of the religious as either self-serving, opposite in values to what they preach, dangerous to free will, or just plain socially repressive as well as the very large group who pay lip service to their religious responsibilities and go out and break all the rules anyway (the forbidden fruit), this sets up conflict in society and actually increases the behavior against the preaching.

The corollary to that would be that if moralistic prigs didn’t abuse their power derived from the great mass of sheep like followers, and did not attach religion to social actions (such as chastity, abortion, vulgarism, etc.), society would have a greater mandate to set standards for these actions. It’s hard to set policies and ideas in dealing with teens as a community, when the community is so fractured with the far-right religious dogma which is tried to be hobbled on popular society.

Some examples of hippocracy are found in my own travels. I have a friend (spoke of him earlier) who is deeply religious. He spends a huge amount of time lying or thinking about lying as he chafes at the halter of his religious convictions. He is very typical. I go through life without ever telling any lies. As I live an open life, and don’t have any artificial requirements laid on me by any outsourced morality police, I never have anything to lie about!

I have a Mormon friend who sneaks off and plays golf and drinks and smokes on the course, and lies about it to his wife and family. I have a Hasidic friend (Ultra religious Jew) who has a huge porn collection at his office (as his other co religionists do) as he has to hide this from his family and the temple. I have a Catholic acquaintance who is in a loveless marriage, but stays together because he has to (and never, ever talks to his wife) – real good for the kids!

I live my own moral code and actually follow it. I tell the truth because I can’t imagine any reason I would have for lying. I don’t chafe…

On the subject of marriage, it is amazing how much damage is done by these strict and anti-sociatal edicts that accompany religion. I think that the Catholic church is a prime offender, but also many Muslim sects are also preaching regressive rules which are enforced with severity on the population. The stigma attached to divorce is one of many crimes which the church should answer for. Raising kids when you aren’t in love and don’t create a loving atmosphere is just not right. Preaching abstainance (without any chance of it working) and not using or endorsing contraception has killed more people than most wars – I would hate to part of a group which was this corrupt and dangerous to polite society.

I know it’s politically correct not to take a religion to task for the ills it creates, but perhaps this might be the start of a golden age where we make people who hurt others responsible for their actions. Take the church to task for the people who are diseased and dying because of the lack of contraception, take the church to task for making girls too young to raise an infant responsible to spend their lives in poverty and squalor, take the bishops who knew about sexual predators and moved them around to more fertile hunting grounds and imprison them (why has this not happened?)

I know this is going to inflame the religious core. I wish it wasn’t so. But try answering for the specific things as written above. I hope that there is a time where religion is not treated in a special manner and the religious are held accountable for their actions rather then being allowed to influence society for the worse.

p.s. Sorry Kitty for not realizing your position vis-a-vis religion and dogma. I shouldn’t have gotten it wrong based on your posts – you have an awesome and honest perspective on life and a great heart!

[4runner]

Cyphire,

I disagree with most of what you said– but not on religious grounds. Rather, I disagree on economic grounds.

Judaism originally developed as an oral tradition– something memorized by successive generations to pass along to their ancestors. Imagine having to memorize the basis for your religion– you would make the corpus of it as lean as possible– cut out the fluff.

Now, imagine that you are a lot closer to the edge of survival then modern man. In other words, if you get it wrong, it’s not like you just go on unemployment insurance for a few months or dig into the 401(k) to pay your medical expenses. Instead, you die.

It would seem likely that economic rules which are most beneficial to society are the ones that get embodied in the corpus of religious knowledge. In fact, an atheist would say that the religious prohibitions on certain acts are made just because the prohibited acts are so economically damaging. The punishment for non-compliance (i.e., eternity in hell) needs to be so high because other means for enforcement (i.e., hunting down cheating spouses) are just too hard.

In other words, over time, that which is most economically beneficial is that which becomes encoded in religious law.

Now– let’s face it– we are a wealthy society and times have changed. We can afford to have parents living apart just because they “don’t love each other.” Limited premarital sex isn’t catastrophic when everyone can afford contraception. Thus, we have luxuries that the people who memorized the bible couldn’t afford. But make no mistake– these items are luxuries– the same as a plasma TV or a huge SUV.

[4runner]

Cyphire,

I disagree with most of what you said– but not on religious grounds. Rather, I disagree on economic grounds.

Judaism originally developed as an oral tradition– something memorized by successive generations to pass along to their ancestors. Imagine having to memorize the basis for your religion– you would make the corpus of it as lean as possible– cut out the fluff.

Now, imagine that you are a lot closer to the edge of survival then modern man. In other words, if you get it wrong, it’s not like you just go on unemployment insurance for a few months or dig into the 401(k) to pay your medical expenses. Instead, you die.

It would seem likely that economic rules which are most beneficial to society are the ones that get embodied in the corpus of religious knowledge. In fact, an atheist would say that the religious prohibitions on certain acts are made just because the prohibited acts are so economically damaging. The punishment for non-compliance (i.e., eternity in hell) needs to be so high because other means for enforcement (i.e., hunting down cheating spouses) are just too hard.

In other words, over time, that which is most economically beneficial is that which becomes encoded in religious law.

Now– let’s face it– we are a wealthy society and times have changed. We can afford to have parents living apart just because they “don’t love each other.” Limited premarital sex isn’t catastrophic when everyone can afford contraception. Thus, we have luxuries that the people who memorized the bible couldn’t afford. But make no mistake– these items are luxuries– the same as a plasma TV or a huge SUV.

[cyphire]

Interesting points 4Runner. But wouldn’t you agree that while these items were put into religious practice because religious practice was the standard for society? And now with a global perspective – each of the religions grate on each other?

While from a historical perspective you might be right, shouldn’t these arbitrary restrictions be removed? What is the reason for these social codes to remain in today’s more modern world?

Divorce is legal in this country. Aren’t the rules against it in some religions just keeping their power structure alive? Is it in societies best interest to not allow divorce?

Just picking on the Catholic church for a second, weren’t their rules (like all religion) just created to give power to a group of people (priests)? It seems to me that throughout the history of that institution, there has been more hypocracy than in most other religions. It is a religion that feeds off of the hungry and uneducated, and creates arbitrary rules of behavior which enslave its population. I always think of how Latin being required (because the locals didn’t speak of it) and they finally capitulated. And of course the humility and poverty (but not for the higher ups – after all some pigs are more equal than others!) The priest was the final judge, the rod he kept was eternal damnation. Judaism encourages scholarship in all of its people (male historically though!), as the Amish do in their meetings and others. Catholicism keeps the people at a different level then their priests.

Most appalling is that the morality rules aren’t very moral at all (example letting a woman die during childbirth instead of the child), no abortions even in case of horrific birth defects or rape, and the long list of other things which most people in most societies would view as outrageous by normal codes of ethics. Especially in these modern times.

I wish more people (ahh the apathy of most Americans!!!) would rise up against the intolerance and would also try to change our government from engaging in the same behaviour overseas with poorer nations.

[Author]

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