Bizud

Okay. Meanwhile, it's link time. Here is a primer piece about adultism: Understanding Adultism: A Key to Developing Positive Youth-Adult Relationships

I wonder, if I had instead asked the question "When you were a minor, did you ever drink or disobey your parents?" if the number of 'yes' answers would be higher.

I'm sure that even in Ontario you vote for parties (and candidates), not party leaders.

Nobody needs to go to school. It's just something most parents force their kids to do because they had to do it themselves. They don't consider alternative education options even if their kid tells them every day how they hate school. Some people don't feel safe at school. And you know what, school is a totalitarian institution. They tell you when to eat and when to go to the bathroom. It's degrading to be subjected to that kind of treatment, and I don't even think it's a particularly good way to learn. I ran away from home at age six as well. I came home. I didn't need to be grounded for it or whatever.

Chris Crocker is awesome.

And I guess it just sucks for kids who have parents that aren't reasonable or tolerant! In the vast majority of families, but also legally, kids don't have any say in the decisions that affect their life, like whether or not to take medications a doctor prescribes, or what school to attend, or whether to even attend school, or where to sleep that night. Denying minors the right to make these decisions is often denying them the right to protect themselves from harm.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21097673/

Drug testing is an egregious violation of civil liberties and bodily integrity. But let's ignore that and look at why she had these conditions placed on her in the first place, why she's even in court. Because a portrait has been painted of her, by sensationalist media, as "out of control" because she shaved her head and goes partying with paris hilton and doesn't always wear panties, none of which has any bearing on whether she's fit to be a parent or not. We don't know anything about Britney Spears and shouldn't assume the picture the media paints for us is accurate - even if the courts do. And now what everyone's talking about is how she's been out doing things today (after turning over the kids) instead of moping at home, and this proves she's a bad mother or something. Like, this is news?? Absolutely ghoulish.

We shouldn't think we have any idea how fit a parent she is or whether her drug use or partying are actual problems. The only picture we get of her personal life comes from the same sick sensationalist media. It's also the case that women are held up to higher expectations than men when it comes to parenting. How come nobody's drug testing K-Fed?

She's not a role model. She's a person with feelings and she's being victimized by the court system and the media. You think it's funny? I think it's sickening. She's done nothing to deserve your contempt.

Just because some fucking judge says Britney is a worse parent than K-Fed doesn't make it so. Does anyone seriously believe she would have lost custody of her kids if her party escapades weren't national news - if she wasn't a celebrity? LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!

Socrates said "I know nothing, except my own ignorance." I don't drive. ;) But if I did I sure wouldn't stop for a red light if there were no other cars around! Do you? Everyone picks and chooses what laws to obey based on things like whether they'll get caught and whether it goes against their own code of ethics. You can't imagine coercive relations that exist in society being replaced by voluntary relations between equals? You can't imagine hierarchies being replaced by democracies? Then you have a limited imagination. Democratic schools, workplaces, and families already exist. You think you're somehow less free as a citizen of a democracy than as an individual in a command hierarchy?

No, usually not, but I think it's better than giving parents or the state the right to regulate consensual sexual behaviour. Kids younger than the age of consent (14) are already having sex - I'm sure we can think of a better response than some kind of disciplinary response.

That's an awful lot of post, and I can't figure out what any of it has to do with what we're talking about. Where did I deny the Law of Identity? What does that even have to do with this? The Law of Identity, that a thing is itself, is a tautology. It's not exactly something you base a system of values on. Now that you've provided this definition, maybe you'll stop using it when you mean "a person." Please do tell me what the "key word" from my "essay" is.

how about in the other thread

Still using sexist language "man"! No, I'm the one who said that morality is not absolute, but exists only in our minds and in how we interact with each other. I'm not even convinced it's a useful concept. I believe people should not hurt others or exercise power over others. But people are not ethically obligated to survive. That's just silly - everybody dies. People have the right to self-preservation, of course. That is part of the right to self-determination. Furthermore, I'd never call the drugs I do "anti-mind." Psychedelic drugs can be used to expand your mind. You're consistently misrepresenting my positions. I am a proud socialist. I hate corporate capitalism and state communism (what real communists call state capitalism) precisely because both are materialist systems that use hierarchical organizations that subjugate individuals' needs and interests to the needs of the economy and the collective. We're both defending the primacy of the individual here, we just have different conceptions of it. You see property as the fundamental right of the individual, I see property as a construct of society that can function either to empower an individual (owning one's own home or business) or disempower individuals (someone else owns the place where one lives or works) depending on what's owned.

Straw man.

People should be allowed to pray in schools, adults just shouldn't have any say one way or the other in what the kids do. As for the reasonable accommodation debate, no, as far as I know it doesn't exist in the rest of Canada. It exists in Quebec because the need to assimilate immigrants (to the French-speaking culture) is seen as greater. But you're right, the talk of "are we being too accommodating?" comes from and promotes racism and xenophobia.

The extent of your argument is straw man arguments and that you think redistribution of wealth is slavery. ;)

You're confused, padre. Whatever concept you're describing isn't called morality. It's not immoral to do drugs. In fact, I think some drugs promote peace, love, honesty and happiness. That's another discussion altogether of course, but I'd like to see a convincing argument that it's immoral to do drugs (including pot, cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine and prescription drugs). Because when you say that you just sound silly. Morality is a social concept, and so only applies to interactions between people - if I'm alone on a desert island, nothing I do can be moral or immoral, good or evil. Thus taking drugs isn't necessarily immoral, though it could be to the extent that it negatively affects others. You can't study morality scientifically. It doesn't exist for science to study. You can study the social phenomenon that is morality in sociology, or you can look at various moral codes that societies have created in anthropology, but, again, you said you don't think society exists (tell that to a sociologist or an anthropologist). The only source of morality that we have is philosophy, and that's got nothing to do with science. You're just being silly. I never claimed to be some kind of market abolitionist. But the question of who is allowed to own what is a valid one, and it is right and proper for societies to regulate wealth. Wealth, after all, is not really a material substance, but rather refers to relative power within society - wealth is access to society's resources, but the resources are still society's, produced by collective efforts, and thus they are subject to social control.

redistribution of wealth /= slavery ;)

Capitalism is a disgusting evil doctrine. You can't have the right to the product of anyone's effort (like your employees) without owning that person, and land wasn't created by anyone's efforts. You don't own these things and you don't have the right enslave people! This is technically still the case, since all rights in the Charter are "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

Your definition of morality is peculiar. What does health have to do with moral behaviour? Is it immoral to do a bunch of drugs? What about commit suicide? These may be "unhealthy," but not necessarily immoral. As for animals, they may have social rules, but they don't experience morality or immorality, and plants certainly don't. People are right now slaves to collectives. A corporation is a collective - if you're an employee with no say in your work you're a slave to the collective, while you're at work. Socialism/anarchism is about creating democratic collectives to replace authoritarian collectives. But I don't know how you'd "define" a code of morality for it. It's silly to say there are some principles of morality that are absolute, axiomatic and never in contradiction, because the world is a complex place and because human society is ever-changing. But if you disagree, let's see your Ten Commandments, because what you provided back on page 2 was pretty unintelligible to me. I think we agree on freedom as a core value, but it's obvious we differ in our definitions of it.

People really need to stop thinking of money the government takes in taxes as "their money." There are some things that should be owned by the collective (and some things that should not be owned at all).

Fortunately not. But, yeah, morality. It's not something we discover, it's something we create.