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April 19, 2011 at 11:36 am (This post was last modified: April 19, 2011 at 12:20 pm by reverendjeremiah.)
(April 19, 2011 at 6:11 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: ...the imagery of people jumping out of buildings....
That, in fact, was the specific thing that touched me the most during 9/11..seeing those people decide wether to die in the fire or jump out of the window. It wasnt a choice of live or die, it was a choice of which death they concidered to be the least horrible or painful.
THAT really got to me. I came to the conclusion after watching them jump that there is no such thing as a loving god.
April 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm (This post was last modified: April 19, 2011 at 12:10 pm by reverendjeremiah.)
(April 19, 2011 at 2:52 am)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: Weird, I don't find that particular day to be at all emotionally upsetting. As I recall, people were crying and in considerable distress, and I was confused as to why. No longer confused as to why, but also still not remotely upset by it.
Am I a despicable if lovable human being?
Like I said before, I like you most of the times...but every now and then you creep me out...it isnt meant to be rude or mean to you. Its just what you posted made my skin crawl
Quote:Revvy does have a good point - and he always goes a step further to make people laugh, which I think would be key in getting people to loosen up and start looking around them with a more open heart and mind. Humor, if you have a sense of it, allows you to appreciate the utter absurdity.
Well said. If it wasnt for my sense of humor, I would have shoved a gun up my asshole and shot my brains out long ago.
Reverend Wrote:Like I said before, I like you most of the times...but every now and then you creep me out...it isnt meant to be rude or mean to you. Its just what you posted made my skin crawl
Fascinating that it makes people's skin crawl to not be disturbed by a thing. Rocks must be truly hair raising.
(April 19, 2011 at 6:11 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: I'd like to answer that kindly but my father was inside the Pentagon at the time and we had to wait far too long to hear if he was okay as well as my great-aunt up in NY.
Also, I'd worry if the imagery of people jumping out of buildings and running away covered in dust and massive destruction didn't affect you in the least. I really hope you're joking.
Not in the least. If someone I cared about was there, then I would care... but it wouldn't be about the death and destruction: it would be about their safety in the wake of it.
Even watching videos of it today, I still can't find myself caring. Infact, the buildings manner of collapsing is somewhat entertaining, as I would never have expected a building to break straight south
Orogenicman Wrote:Agreed. It was a very upsetting day for nearly all of us, I'd say. My cousin was a commander and Navy Chaplain who had been at the Pentagon earlier that morning, and was at Ronnie Raygun Airport when the plane struck the Pentagon. A week later, we received a letter from him. He had been attached to a British (SAS) special forces unit, and couldn't say where they were. All he could tell us was that they were "bugs on a wall". Reportedly, they were among the first to go into Afganistan. Frightening times, indeed.
Frightening? Not really. Had it occurred several times then I would be frightened about how much power they had. But one fluke success and a country goes to war over it? It's as bad as an erratic militaristic Klackon on Impossible difficulty.
Summer Wrote:I understand, in a way - there were some people who had neither family in those areas nor lived there themselves who become unnecessarily hysterical.
But at the same time, I would hope you understand that some of the emotional outbursts would be from empathy, and I acknowledge that a lot of it was fear.
I acknowledge that many people are frightened of such things, but as a child I likely didn't care from an underdeveloped sense of empathy... and today I have a personality that is neither surprised by such news nor concerned in any way with a few occurrences of death and destruction.
Quote:My father framed the next day's Washington Post's front page and has it tucked away in his office. The headlines and pictures still produce a gut-wrenching reaction.
I went to a high school where about half (and that's low-balling) of our parents worked in and around DC. It was like an electrical current running through the entire building even before the vice-principle announced what had happened. I can't imagine multiplying that terror by 1000 by living in NY.
This isn't about nationalities or ideologies or religions. Purely from a human standpoint, the sight of rampant hateful destruction ought to cause at least some sort of emotional response.
The sight of destruction (hateful or not, it is destruction) doesn't faze me unless it is in regards to someone I care (a lot) about. Most emotional response of the kind I've ever felt was flipping a 4-wheeler trailer carrying a lover. Had it been carrying something less, it is unlikely that I would have panicked as I did.
On that subject, panic is a surefire way to reduce one's effectiveness in *any* situation. I suppose we evolved it because any reaction is safer than no reaction at all.
Iamatheist Wrote:Yeah I'd like to whole-heartedly agree with you, I'm not sure where it came into this debating whether or not 9/11 affected us.. I'm a UK citizen and my heart stopped for those involved on that day. Regardless of religion a large loss of life on that scale is an entirely human issue and "not-caring" is an entirely inhuman thought.. I hope that Aerzia has a point to be made from that post..
I'm inhuman because I am detached from the masses? How collectivistic
Honestly, it is a tiny loss of life. Raise the depravity value (ie: Rhwanda), raise the body count (hundred thousand at least), build a significant effect upon the environment (nuking). People are getting caught in how loved ones were lost, and not that they were lost. People die, some people die painfully, why go nuts over this nonsense and cause even more people to die pointlessly?
Summer Wrote:I didn't want it to get into a debate about 9/11 - it just bothered me that Sae said something like that, is all.
I don't intend to debate 9/11 (actually, wasn't it 11/9/2001? Fucking american style of day-month-year...), but I will debate why it bothers people that I should say something 'like that'
Reverend Wrote:That, in fact, was the specific thing that touched me the most during 9/11..seeing those people decide wether to die in the fire or jump out of the window. It wasnt a choice of live or die, it was a choice of which death they concidered to be the least horrible or painful.
THAT really got to me. I came to the conclusion after watching them jump that there is no such thing as a loving god.
And that decision doesn't upset me either. Death will arrive upon every doorstep, it may be that death visits some before the rest.
April 19, 2011 at 1:21 pm (This post was last modified: April 19, 2011 at 1:25 pm by thesummerqueen.)
I'm not arguing the body count, Sae. I get the same sense of horror looking at anything along those lines. It doesn't matter if it's that crazy serial killer in NY right now who's body count is at what...9?...or if it's a genocidal holocaust on par with what's going on in Africa. What matters is the disgust that humans would treat each other that way.
And yeah, I get caught in "How" people were lost. Would I rather my dad die in his bed than be engulfed in flames and rubble from a crazed lunatic asshole screaming to Allah as he goes down? Fuck yes. I get caught in the "how" and the fact that buildings were destroyed because those buildings were created to serve a purpose, and to house people going about their business innocently enough and someone decided their ideology was more important than the spark of those people's lives and thought to symbolically and physically strike at what they thought the heart of America was.
I'm glad you were entertained by the buildings being destroyed. It might have been interesting if they had been cleared of people first. I was too busy watching those who were fleeing.
(April 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: Well said. If it wasnt for my sense of humor, I would have shoved a gun up my asshole and shot my brains out long ago.
Ever notice that some of the funniest people in the world are also some of the saddest and most cynical simply because they have to make a coping mechanism to deal with all the bullshit they see on a daily basis?
(April 19, 2011 at 9:07 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: I didn't want it to get into a debate about 9/11 - it just bothered me that Sae said something like that, is all.
Revvy does have a good point - and he always goes a step further to make people laugh, which I think would be key in getting people to loosen up and start looking around them with a more open heart and mind. Humor, if you have a sense of it, allows you to appreciate the utter absurdity.
And since Oro was sharing on another thread, I have to as well...
Lewis Black (on Islam): "You know a religion has no sense of humor, when a guy can stand up and say, ‘you know, if you commit suicide for Allah, after you die you will be met in heaven by 70 virgins,' and nobody in the room just goes, 'AHAHAHA! Son of a bitch! That was great!' They believe if they kill themselves that they will be met in Heaven by 70 some odd virgins. Imagine that kind of faith. To think that that would happen...when I haven't met one ON EARTH!"
If Black and Gervais can pass down a tradition of irreverent atheism that makes people cry they laugh so hard, something started by Carlin, I can only hope they'll convince others to reconsider too.
That is so true it hurts! I have a theory that having faith in modern religions requires one to lose all sense of the ironic. And I suppose it is this loss that causes the religious to lose their sense of humour as well.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
April 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm (This post was last modified: April 19, 2011 at 4:11 pm by Violet.)
Thesummerqueen Wrote:I'm not arguing the body count, Sae. I get the same sense of horror looking at anything along those lines. It doesn't matter if it's that crazy serial killer in NY right now who's body count is at what...9?...or if it's a genocidal holocaust on par with what's going on in Africa. What matters is the disgust that humans would treat each other that way.
It matters very much how many die/are brutalized. One priest molesting a handful of children is of little concern. An entire organization that defends many more priests molesting far more children is of major concern.
Quote:And yeah, I get caught in "How" people were lost. Would I rather my dad die in his bed than be engulfed in flames and rubble from a crazed lunatic asshole screaming to Allah as he goes down? Fuck yes. I get caught in the "how" and the fact that buildings were destroyed because those buildings were created to serve a purpose, and to house people going about their business innocently enough and someone decided their ideology was more important than the spark of those people's lives and thought to symbolically and physically strike at what they thought the heart of America was.
How is the way by which a person dies relevant to the fact that they are now dead? I'd rather people didn't suffer greatly too, but death is unchanged by how much pain was suffered before its occurrence.
The causation of the effect should not be tied in a part of the effect. The effect is a separate issue, and joining effect and cause together is to disservice the value of both. While we're at it, let's also charge the dead for standing someplace they shouldn't have been standing, as the effect would certainly not have occurred had they not. A raving murderous muslim that has committed the crime of killing is a separate being from those slain by said murderer. Hate the murderer that kills him all you wish, but don't hate them by tarnishing your memory of your father in the process. That's just counterproductive
They apparently struck true to the heart of america... america's response was a number of wars in other countries that killed far more people. And that's why you shouldn't have hyper-emotional people leading a nation
Quote:I'm glad you were entertained by the buildings being destroyed. It might have been interesting if they had been cleared of people first. I was too busy watching those who were fleeing.
It was a very interesting collapse. Since they took so long to fall, I find it quite amusing that people were there to 'flee' in the first place. The whole thing was poorly handled, from start to finish. Try not to blame me too much for being amused at failure on that scale
Quote:Ever notice that some of the funniest people in the world are also some of the saddest and most cynical simply because they have to make a coping mechanism to deal with all the bullshit they see on a daily basis?
My coping mechanism: detachment with a smile. Often found to be very rude (ie: smiling while others are frothing at the mouth angry).
(April 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: It matters very much how many die/are brutalized. One priest molesting a handful of children is of little concern. An entire organization that defends many more priests molesting far more children is of major concern.
I think you were misunderstanding my point, which I might not have communicated effectively. Perhaps I should have said that beyond the real terror for my own family members, there was an empathetic human reaction to other human suffering that I get regardless of body count. I thought this was a natural human sympathetic emotion.
Btw, one priest molesting a handful of children is only of "little" concern in comparison. I'm sure to the handful of children he diddled, it was a major fucking concern.
Two people die because of a murderer. Two thousand die because of terrorists. Two hundred thousand to two million because of a selfish dictator. It's all a tragedy. That's all I'm saying.
(April 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: How is the way by which a person dies relevant to the fact that they are now dead? I'd rather people didn't suffer greatly too, but death is unchanged by how much pain was suffered before its occurrence.
I didn't say I wouldn't rather my dad alive, I just stated I cared that he didn't die in a fucking explosion rather than comfortably as possible. The dead don't care after the fact, no, but that doesn't change that I'd rather them not suffer. Again with that empathy thing.
(April 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: The causation of the effect should not be tied in a part of the effect. The effect is a separate issue, and joining effect and cause together is to disservice the value of both. While we're at it, let's also charge the dead for standing someplace they shouldn't have been standing, as the effect would certainly not have occurred had they not. A raving murderous muslim that has committed the crime of killing is a separate being from those slain by said murderer. Hate the murderer that kills him all you wish, but don't hate them by tarnishing your memory of your father in the process. That's just counterproductive
I'm not quite sure what the hell you're talking about here. I don't blame my dad for being at the Pentagon - he's a military/government lawyer and that's his job. I fully blame Osama and the terrorists, not my dad for being where he was supposed to be that day. As I said above - if he dies in a fireball or in a hospital bed, I still have to divy up his possessions. It doesn't change that I'd rather he go out with comfort than pain. Where are you getting this?
(April 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: They apparently struck true to the heart of america... america's response was a number of wars in other countries that killed far more people. And that's why you shouldn't have hyper-emotional people leading a nation
1) Emotions aren't bad things. Sorry you have decided to think otherwise.
2) We didn't have an "emotional" leader. We had a religious right wing fuck nut who was fighting the rest of his daddy's war.
3) I never condoned the war in Afghanistan or Iraq.
4) if they thought destroying a military headquarters and a center of commerce was striking the "heart" of American, they were deluded. Obviously.
(April 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: It was a very interesting collapse. Since they took so long to fall, I find it quite amusing that people were there to 'flee' in the first place. The whole thing was poorly handled, from start to finish. Try not to blame me too much for being amused at failure on that scale
Summer Wrote:I think you were misunderstanding my point, which I might not have communicated effectively. Perhaps I should have said that beyond the real terror for my own family members, there was an empathetic human reaction to other human suffering that I get regardless of body count. I thought this was a natural human sympathetic emotion.
Oh, I have it... but I choose what I receive empathetically. Fear? Rarely. Sadness? Often.
Quote:Btw, one priest molesting a handful of children is only of "little" concern in comparison. I'm sure to the handful of children he diddled, it was a major fucking concern.
Two people die because of a murderer. Two thousand die because of terrorists. Two hundred thousand to two million because of a selfish dictator. It's all a tragedy. That's all I'm saying.
It's not a concern to society at large though... I think a lot of people make more out of things with little impact and less out of great impact than they should.
Life is a tragedy? Agreed. But I certainly don't desire a peaceful end to it anytime soon (death is peace)
Quote:I didn't say I wouldn't rather my dad alive, I just stated I cared that he didn't die in a fucking explosion rather than comfortably as possible. The dead don't care after the fact, no, but that doesn't change that I'd rather them not suffer. Again with that empathy thing.
Suffering is unrelated to death. The dead do not suffer at all, so it seems silly to connect the two. Charge those who kill people with killing, and those who torture with torturing, and should the tw be combined charge them with both at once. It still doesn't matter how a person dies: they are dead. It matters that a person suffers, but that is unrelated to that person being dead.
Quote:I'm not quite sure what the hell you're talking about here. I don't blame my dad for being at the Pentagon - he's a military/government lawyer and that's his job. I fully blame Osama and the terrorists, not my dad for being where he was supposed to be that day. As I said above - if he dies in a fireball or in a hospital bed, I still have to divy up his possessions. It doesn't change that I'd rather he go out with comfort than pain. Where are you getting this?
My point was only that where a person is has as much effect on their current state (dead/alive/whatever) as a bullet which could kill them. There are an infinite number of problems with charging the effect and cause together, and no reason to do so. He who murders is a murderer... to connect him and the dead in the same sentence of judgement is to disservice the value of both.
My point is that you'd rather the living not suffer, not that the living didn't suffer before they died. Your father has already suffered, as have you, as have I, as all of the living do. Your father will die, as will you, as will I, as will all that is alive. Connecting suffering with death is pointless. Connecting suffering with the living is rational
Quote:1) Emotions aren't bad things. Sorry you have decided to think otherwise.
It isn't that emotions are bad things, it is that they have their place. And that place is outside of leadership. Poop isn't a bad thing either, but it has its place. That place is not on a library table.
Quote:2) We didn't have an "emotional" leader. We had a religious right wing fuck nut who was fighting the rest of his daddy's war.
He was an emotional leader, or he wouldn't be a religious right wing fucknut that cares about his father's wars
Quote:3) I never condoned the war in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Didn't say you did. But America on the whole was thirsty for blood and vengeance. And now a lot of them that wanted in in the first place say to pull out. It's amazing how many of the people on local talk radio I recall supporting attacking those places a few years ago. Now the tune has changed, and the fickle populace is only starting to understand war and what it causes... I'm almost entirely convinced that this entire charade was set up by gas companies with the goal of leeching more money. I wish the american masses were not so fickle about things that should not be treated lightly.
Quote:4) if they thought destroying a military headquarters and a center of commerce was striking the "heart" of American, they were deluded. Obviously.
Those aren't the heart of america... take a good few churches out and you'd have a response of religious nationalism. Easier to pull off too. Cheaper even. Wow, maybe their idea wasn't actually to strike at the heart of america but to wage a more effective war?
I mean, i can't think of any other reason to hit the pentagon. Unless the pope was visiting on that day?
Quote:[opening mouth and shutting it]
I can't. I really just can't respond. Wow.
Failure in design of the buildings, failure in fire department putting out fires, failure in evacuation, failure in security, failure in response to infiltrated security and the helpless passengers on three planes (a few men with knives, for heaven's sake overpower them! A fourth plane's people at least weren't filled with helpless ninnies, although they failed to not crash a plane), failure in defense (a successful attack on the pentagon is pretty impressive i think), failure in the muslims flying the planes where they should have to cause the most damage, failure in predictions regarding the stability of the buildings, failure of triage, failure failure failure failure, and even today we're still failing.
What positive is to say about the whole ordeal? That an attacker got luckier than they should have expected and someone made a successful attack on the pentagon?
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