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Observations from the Park

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Pinto Girl, Jul 19, 2007.

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  1. formerVWdriver

    formerVWdriver New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Jul 23 2007, 10:27 AM) [snapback]483562[/snapback]</div>
    Whew! What a relief! Don't think I could have done it...

    However, my mother-in-law could persuade me.... :)
     
    #41 formerVWdriver, Jul 23, 2007
  2. Darwood

    Darwood Senior Member

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    Abortion, the unending debate....

    They should be heavily discouraged and avoided. Yet safe, legal, and not paid for by tax money.
    We don't need a return to the back alley clothes hanger abortions of pre-Roe.V.Wade.
     
    #42 Darwood, Jul 23, 2007
  3. formerVWdriver

    formerVWdriver New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Jul 23 2007, 11:24 AM) [snapback]483580[/snapback]</div>
    And the other unending debate....

    who and how to do the heavy discouragement and motivation to avoid?

    (Maybe get them handled by the DMV?)
     
    #43 formerVWdriver, Jul 23, 2007
  4. ohershey

    ohershey New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(formerVWdriver @ Jul 23 2007, 08:35 AM) [snapback]483586[/snapback]</div>
    A brilliant solution! Surly, overpaid clerks, horrible long lines and ever changing forms! Get summoned to Jury Duty! Pay exorbitant fees!

    That should cut down the number, without ever changing a single regulation!
     
    #44 ohershey, Jul 23, 2007
  5. Pinto Girl

    Pinto Girl New Member

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    Don't think a return to back alley abortions is the answer, but it sure sounded to me like, if these women didn't have such easy access, they might have been a bit more careful.

    After all, *all* of this *was* her choice. Would she have chosen differently knowing that she couldn't have it taken care of so quickly and easily?

    And my old boss who'd had four abortions...? That may be an extreme case, but, again...

    I may be provincial, but I have *never* sat around with my girlfriends talking about abortions. YUK!!

    Here's what I think: sex and overeating and other indulgences satisfy us in a very primal and low-level way. In a way more fundamental than the results of being responsible, for example, ever will. Previously, there was some encouragement to abstain from these low-level, dare I say, animal desires.

    Now there isn't, so much, for a whole variety of reasons.

    I'm going to throw red meat to the conservatives by suggesting that maybe the genie of permissiveness was indeed released in the '60's. Since then, we've found ourselves needing more and more, in order to feel stimulated (or in the case of clothing, less and less).

    That's not to say that I'm for a reversal of the civil liberties advances we've experienced since then, but there may be a negative side to it, too, of which we've underestimated the importance.

    It's like we keep needing to turn up the volume louder and louder, just to hear the song...not knowing that the ringing in our ears would go away and we could listen at a more reasonable level, if we'd just back off for a little bit.

    Consumerism=continuous self gratification=continuous affirmation of self importance=freedom to indulge ourselves whenever we want (even if we can't always afford it)=denial of limits=relaxation of standards=whoops, it happened again.

    A return to moderation in other areas of our lives will, I believe, aid in a return to a less self-indulgent and permissive society.

    So, the answer is, all of us need to be involved, in order to turn in around. All we have to do is begin to say, 'no' when, before, we'd tend to say, 'yes.' Just the little things at first, no big sacrifices.

    There are rewards for doing this; they're often of greater emotional and financial value than the instant ones...we just need to help get each other past the impulsiveness we all feel sometimes.

    But, as long as even a minority continues to perpetuate the 'prison culture/bling/money is more important than anything and here's how much I've got/everything is never enough' attitude, it's going to be significantly more difficult to popularize moderation.

    On this foggy Monday morning, it's looking pretty bleak to me, actually.

    The primal desires will always win out; that seems to be the way we're programmed. And it's simply easiest to acquiesce.
     
    #45 Pinto Girl, Jul 23, 2007
  6. TJandGENESIS

    TJandGENESIS Are We Having Fun Yet?

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(formerVWdriver @ Jul 23 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]483551[/snapback]</div>
    If she wants you to, then you should be allowed to. It's called assisted suicide. And it should be legal, IMHO.

    I have cancer, and arthritis, and diabetes. None are fun, with the cancer being the worse. However, I live on.

    What I was talking about, if back in the womb with no view, if someone had given me my life plan, and I had the power to choose, then yeah, I would have chosen not to be born. As it was, my mother was a horrible person, who drank and smoked herself to what would ultimately be her death. Glad she is gone; and she is another reason, if I had that choice back then, to wish I had not be brought to this plane.

    BUT, as I also said, that is not possible, and therefore, a MUTE POINT.
     
    #46 TJandGENESIS, Jul 23, 2007
  7. catgic

    catgic Mastr & Commandr Hybrid Guru

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    #47 catgic, Jul 23, 2007
  8. Pinto Girl

    Pinto Girl New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(formerVWdriver @ Jul 22 2007, 07:30 PM) [snapback]483324[/snapback]</div>
    Well, for what it's worth...

    I think that my soul's experience is directly related to its existence in my body; the exact same soul in a different body, under different circumstances, would naturally turn out to be someone different than myself.

    In a sense, it (my soul) --Pinto Girl-- *did not exist* until my body did, at least in any form that we can even begin to analyze and discuss here. And she would not have existed in this manner, given even a slightly different set of circumstances.

    Under no circumstances would I have been 'Vega Girl' though!!
    [laughing]

    I see a sort of combination, where our individual souls do have distinct characteristics, but are also absolutely dependent on our physical being for expression on Earth...and, as such, in a sense 'become' (to some degree) the body in which they dwell, and the experiences to which they're exposed, and the environment in which they live.

    The curse of living in a material world? (that, and entropy) We are part of it, and have to function by its rules.

    This may be a bit iconoclastic, but I feel that we're, each of us, infinitely valuable and also valueless...it is *our existence* itself which makes us valuable...but I don't see that our souls are somehow so special that if our body expires early, we get another chance at existence.

    Existence on Earth --as we know it-- is primarily an physiological process, it seems to me. If you're living in a poorly functioning body, it impacts directly your perception of your own existence, doesn't it? Take the soul out of the body (if we even can) and the nature of its existence would be so very different than anything we'd recognize. Even 'exist' might not be quite the right word.

    I don't believe in some sort of queue of souls, waiting for bodies to emerge from the womb...and I certainly don't believe that all the other souls have to wait, until the soul in front of the line is implanted in a healthy body at birth.

    This implies order, but in a very human way. I do believe in an ordered universe, but it's not the type of order we've come to recognize in our daily lives, or under some circumstances might even be capable of recognizing at all.

    ---

    When does the soul leave the body? It's a beautiful process, I think; our bodies are designed to release the seat of our consciousness (our soul?) when they expire. It's not perfect...sometimes we suffer...but that seems to me to be how it works.

    ---

    Anyway, my $0.02.
     
    #48 Pinto Girl, Jul 23, 2007
  9. Darwood

    Darwood Senior Member

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    Define the soul! Can it be defined?

    Do identical twins start with one soul and have it split when the embryo splits or did it have 2 souls at conception? How can a soul split? What if a fetus was removed and placed in an artificial uterus the size of a room and they lived their for years? Would they be soulless?
    Does a person with multiple personality disorder have multiple souls?
    When an epileptic has their corpus collosum cut and the two hemispheres no longer communicate in terms of upper brain functions, do they have two souls? Seems logical, since the two halves of the brain will physically argue with each other in said patient (as in the two arms will grapple with one another over the shirt they want to wear).

    I would say that our conscienceness and our brain ARE the soul, and cannot be separated (Though I'm sure to get nasty feedback on this). In fact, neuroscientists are leaning to what's called the interpreter module of the brain as the "soul". It is what tries to make sense of the neural information that is constantly assaulting our brains. While sleeping, it makes things up to make sense of the random neural firings in our sleep (dreams).
     
    #49 Darwood, Jul 23, 2007
  10. formerVWdriver

    formerVWdriver New Member

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    On one of the links IsrAmer posted there was an interesting section about the soul of someone with Down's Syndrome. Something along the lines of what a sturdy soul sent to live in such a body. (Terrible, terrible paraphrase -- don't kill me -- go read the link.)

    Not sure I can go there but some good food for thought, as are the other posts on this subject.

    Loved PintoGirl's image of the queue of souls lining up to find a body to inhabit. And Darwood's question about identical twins.

    Interesting thoughts.

    What about the "product of conception" so devastatingly ill-formed that it won't make it to birth, or perhaps even the mother's knowledge that she is pregnant (its passage out of her body seems to be a heavy period)? Something like an egg fertilized by two sperm (triploidy?)

    I think one person, one soul. Probably both formed at conception. The soul released at death. The soul could possibly have been somewhere before birth. No reincarnation, though.

    Not going to force my views on anyone. But am very troubled by many possibilities.....
     
    #50 formerVWdriver, Jul 23, 2007
  11. fshagan

    fshagan Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Jul 23 2007, 12:48 PM) [snapback]483704[/snapback]</div>
    I'm not so sure. I've been blessed with pretty good health, but I've known people with down's syndrome, and they are pretty much the same as I am ... happy sometimes, and sad sometimes. I've known people who were dying, and could have been bitter about their life, but they weren't. My wife worked as a social worker in convalescent care for 25 years, and some of the most remarkable people were those you would think would just wither away. But they don't wither at all.

    CS Lewis said that we don't have a soul, we are a soul and we have a body. I like that idea. Whether you think that souls pre-exist the body (as Mormons do), or whether you think that our souls are created and develop alongside our physical selves as most protestants do, it is comforting to me to know that we are more than the sum of our parts.
     
    #51 fshagan, Jul 23, 2007
  12. formerVWdriver

    formerVWdriver New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jul 23 2007, 11:54 PM) [snapback]483957[/snapback]</div>
    Beautiful.
     
    #52 formerVWdriver, Jul 24, 2007
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