What on earth would Alex DeLarge and The Droogs have made of all this?
Quote:Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo
Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo
Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo
Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo...
I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again
I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love
Let the stormy clouds chase
Everyone from the place
Come on with the rain
I've a smile on my face
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain
Just singin',
Singin' in the rain
Dancin' in the rain
Dee-ah dee-ah dee-ah
Dee-ah dee-ah dee-ah
I'm happy again!
I'm singin' and dancin' in the rain!
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Plot
Set in 1995 England, the film follows the life of a young man named Alex DeLarge, whose pleasures are classical music (most especially Beethoven), rape, and ultraviolence. He is leader of a small gang of thugs (Pete, Georgie and Dim), whom he refers to as his "droogs" (from the Russian word друг meaning "friend" or "buddy"). Alex narrates most of the film in "Nadsat"; the fractured, contemporary adolescent argot comprising Slavic (especially Russian), English, and Cockney rhyming slang. Alex is irreverent and abusive of others; he lies to his parents to skip school and has an expensive stereo sound deck blasting a classics recordings collection.
After drinking narcotic-laden milk at the Korova Milk Bar, Alex and his droogs ridicule and beat an old drunken vagrant under a motorway flyover. They then proceed to a run-down theater, where a rival gang led by Billy Boy are about to rape a woman. A fight between the two gangs ensues; Alex and his droogs emerge victorious and leave before the police arrive. Alex (with the gang) steals a "Durango 95" sports car (which is actually an Adams Probe 16[1]) for a reckless drive into the countryside. They then perpetrate a home invasion, beating a reclusive writer named Mr. Alexander and raping his wife while singing and dancing to "Singin' in the Rain".
While skipping school for the day, Alex picks up two teenyboppers in a record shop, takes them home, and engages in a threesome with them (comedically shown in extreme fast-motion) to the strains of the William Tell Overture. (In 1971, there was journalistic controversy about whether this scene constituted "obscenity" or not.[citation needed]) Alex soon learns that his droogs are not satisfied having him as their leader. Although he is slightly threatened, he seemingly deals with the problem by kicking two of the droogs (Georgie and Dim) into a decorative urban pool as they walk along the "flat block marina" and slashes the back of Dim's hand, demonstrating his leadership and unwillingness to be overthrown.
That night, Alex is caught during a burglary, a mutinous set-up by his ill-contented droogs. Alex breaks into a woman's house and uses a phallic sculpture to bludgeon the owner, unintentionally killing her. Alex is then attacked by Dim, hit in the head with a milk bottle and left helpless at the scene of their crime to be caught by the police. At the police station, he learns that his robbery victim has died, thus making him a murderer. He is sentenced to 14 years in prison. After serving two years, he is offered a chance at parole if he submits to the Ludovico technique, an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government to solve societal crime. The technique involves being exposed to extreme depictions of on-screen violence under the influence of a nausea-inducing drug. Alex is unable to look away from the screen and has his head held immobile and each of his eyes held open by small specula. Consequently, Alex is rendered incapable of violence, even in self-defense, and also incapable of touching a naked woman during a test of the technique. In an unintended side effect, the technique has also rendered him unable to listen to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the background score used in one of the films that is a montage of images of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis; the scientist-doctors apologize: "It can't be helped", saying that musical aversion is "the punishment element, perhaps?"
Once Alex has successfully completed the therapy, he returns home, joyful at the thought of starting afresh. However, he is unpleasantly surprised by the discovery that his parents have rented out his room to a new young man, essentially "replacing" their son. With no place to go, stripped of the ability to fight back, Alex despondently wanders London. He soon encounters the vagrant from the beginning, who quickly recognizes him and attacks Alex with his street friends. Two policemen break up the scene, who turn out to be two of his former droogs, Georgie and Dim. They take him into the outskirts of town, where they beat and half-drown him.
Alex wanders through the woods and unwittingly arrives upon the house of the writer whose wife he had raped and beaten earlier in the film. Mr. Alexander was apparently crippled in the initial assault, and is now confined to a wheelchair. Since Alex was wearing a mask during the earlier assault, Mr. Alexander does not recognize him, nor realize that Alex was his assailant. However, he does recognize Alex's case from the newspapers, and takes him in, with the intention of using him as a political tool to shame the government. Mrs. Alexander has died due to an illness, which her widowed husband believes was brought on by the rape, and he is now attended by a large, muscular manservant named Julian. Mr. Alexander soon learns who he is dealing with upon hearing Alex sing "Singing in the Rain" while in the bath, which was the same song he sung while raping his wife. Subsequently, he drugs Alex and attempts to drive him insane with an electronic version of the Ninth Symphony (Second Movement) played at full volume below Alex's locked bedroom. The boy attempts suicide by jumping out a window, but survives.
During his long recovery in the hospital, Alex talks about half-remembered dreams he has of people "messing about with me gulliver (Nadsat for 'head')". It is unclear if Alex is remembering his old treatment, or is undergoing new treatment to turn him back to what he was. Soon he is visited by the Minister of the Interior who earlier had personally selected Alex for the Ludovico treatment. He apologizes to Alex for the treatment's consequences, saying he was only following his staff's recommendations. He ultimately rewards Alex's gesture of support by presenting him with an enormous stereo playing the Ninth Symphony's finale (Fourth Movement), to which Alex listens with no physical reaction.
The government has promised Alex a job if he agrees to campaign on behalf of the ruling political party, whose public image has been severely damaged by Alex's attempted suicide. At the film's end, while having a vision of himself copulating with a woman in the snow, while a crowd of people dressed in Victorian clothing observe and applaud, Alex narates: "I was cured, all right...", implying the Ludovico treatment has been reversed and he is now able to exert his freedom of choice.
Anthony Burgess's response
Burgess had mixed feelings about the film adaptation of his novel. Publicly, he loved Malcolm McDowell and Michael Bates, and its use of music; he praised the film as "brilliant," even as a film so brilliant that it could be dangerous. His initial reaction to the film was very enthusiastic, insisting that the only thing that bothered him was the removal of the story's last chapter, for which he blamed his American publisher and not Kubrick.
According to his autobiography,
Burgess got along quite well with Kubrick. Both men held similar philosophic and political views; both were very interested in literature, cinema, music, and Napoleon Bonaparte (Burgess dedicated his book Napoleon Symphony to Kubrick). However their relationship was soured when Kubrick left it to Burgess to defend the film from accusations of glorifying violence. As a (lapsed) Catholic, Burgess tried many times to explain the story's Christian moral points to outraged Christian organisations who felt it a Satanic social influence; to defend it against journalistic accusations that it supported "fascist" dogma; and Burgess even received awards for Kubrick.
Burgess was deeply hurt, feeling Kubrick had used him as a film publicity pawn. Malcolm McDowell, who did a publicity tour with Burgess, shared his feelings, and at times said harsh things about Kubrick. Burgess and McDowell cited as evidence of Kubrick's uncontrolled ego that only Kubrick's name appears in the authorial opening credits. Burgess spoofed Kubrick's image in later works: the musical version of A Clockwork Orange, featuring a character resembling Kubrick who is beaten early in the work; The Clockwork Testament, wherein the fictional poet FX Enderby is attacked for supposedly glorifying violence in a film adaptation; and Burgess's novel Earthly Powers, which features a crafty director named Zabrick.
Morality
One of the film's central moral questions - as well as in many of Burgess's other books - is the definition of "goodness". After aversion therapy, Alex behaves like a good member of society, but not by choice; his "goodness" is involuntary and mechanical, like that of the titular clockwork orange. In prison, the chaplain criticises the Ludovico Technique, saying that true goodness must come from within. Another theme is the abuse of one's liberties - both by Alex and by those using him for their various ends. The film is also critical of both parties using Alex as a tool to those ends: Frank Alexander, writer and victim of Alex and the droogs, not only wants revenge over Alex, but sees him as a means to definitively turn the people against the government and its new regime - Mr. Alexander is afraid of this new government. Speaking on the phone, he says:
Â…Recruiting brutal young roughs into the police; proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh, we've seen it all before in other countries; the thin end of the wedge! Before we know where we are, we will have the full apparatus of totalitarianism.
On the other side, the Minister of the Interior, representing the government, puts Mr. Alexander away, using the excuse of him being a danger to Alex. Whether he has been harmed or not remains unclear, but from what the Minister tells Alex, it is obvious that the author has been denied his ability to write and, more importantly, to produce "subversive" material, critical of the current government and prone to cause unrest.
Psychology
Another central theme is outrage against behavioral psychology (popular throughout the 1940s through the 1960s), as propounded by psychologists John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. Burgess disapproved of behaviorism, calling Skinner's most popular book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, "one of the most dangerous books ever written".[8] Although Watson conceded behaviorism's limitations, Skinner argued that behavior modification (learning techniques of systematic reward and punishment) is the key to an ideal society (see Walden Two). Dr. Ludovico's technique, which is highly reminiscent of the notorious Project MKULTRA, is the form of behavior modification the scientists applied to Alex to condition associating violent acts with a sensation of severe physical illness, thereby preventing him from being violent. This film embodies a mistrust of behaviorism, especially the perceived dehumanization and lack of choice associated with behavior modification methods.
Belgian cinema writer Anthony Bochon points out the criminological question underlying the Ludovico treatment. He describes the quality of the film description of the Ludovico treatment as "a problem of integrating the bad, the criminal, who is rejecting human dignity, into Humanity itself. Kubrick didn't make an apology of some fascist practices but simply brought his vision of the future of our society and how violence is fed by our society"[9].
Adaptation
Kubrick's film is relatively faithful to Burgess's novel, omitting only the final, positive chapter in which Alex matures and outgrows sociopathy. The film ends with Alex offered an open-ended government job, implying that Alex remains a sociopath at heart, while the novel ends with Alex's positive change. This plot discrepancy occurred because Kubrick based his screenplay upon the novel's American edition, its final chapter deleted on insistence of the American publisher.[10] Director Kubrick claimed not having read the complete, original version of the novel until he had almost finished writing the screenplay, and that he never considered using it. In the introduction of the 1996 edition of the novel, it is said that Kubrick found the end of the original edition too blandly optimistic and unrealistic.
Some other notable differences:
Alex and his droogs are a few years older in the movie than in the book, and the two 10-year-old girls Alex raped in the novel are likewise several years older (for obvious reasons), and the sex consensual, in the analogous scene in the movie. Also, instead of former enemy Billyboy becoming Dim's police partner, it's fellow former droog Georgie.
United States censorship
The film was rated X on its original release in the United States. Later, Kubrick voluntarily replaced roughly 30 seconds of footage from two scenes with less bawdy action for a 1973 re-release, rated R. It is a common myth that only the R-rated version can be seen nowadays, but in fact the opposite is true: all DVDs present the original X-rated form, and only some of the early 80s VHS editions are in the R-rated form.[4]
The film was rated C (for "condemned") by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting because of its explicit sexual and violent content; such a rating conceptually forbade Catholics from seeing the film. The "condemned" rating was abolished in 1982, and since then films deemed by the conference to have unacceptable levels of sex and/or violence have been rated O, meaning "morally offensive".
British withdrawal
In the United Kingdom, the sexual violence in the film was considered extreme. Furthermore, it was claimed that the film had inspired copycat behavior. In March 1972, a prosecutor at a trial of a 14-year-old boy accused of the manslaughter of one of his classmates referred to A Clockwork Orange, telling the judge that the case had a macabre relevance to the film.[5]
The attacker, a boy aged 16 from Bletchley, pleaded guilty after telling police that his friends had told him of the film "and the beating up of an old boy like this one"; defence counsel told the trial "the link between this crime and sensational literature, particularly A Clockwork Orange, is established beyond reasonable doubt".[6] The press also blamed the influence of the film for a rape in which the attackers sang "Singin' in the Rain". Kubrick subsequently requested that Warner Brothers withdraw the film from UK distribution.
At the time, it was widely believed that the copycat attacks were what led Kubrick to withdraw the film from distribution in the United Kingdom. However, in a television documentary made after Kubrick's death, his widow Christiane confirmed rumours that Kubrick had withdrawn A Clockwork Orange on police advice after threats were made against Kubrick and his family (the source of the threats was not discussed). That Warner Bros. acceded to Kubrick's request to withdraw the film is an indication of the remarkable relationship Kubrick had with the studio, particularly the executive Terry Semel.
The ban was vigorously pursued during Kubrick's lifetime. One art house cinema that defied the ban in 1993, and was sued and lost, was the Scala cinema at Kings Cross, London, on the same premises as the present-day Scala nightclub. Unable to meet the cost of the defence, the cinema club was forced into receivership. [7]
Whatever the reason for the film's withdrawal, it could not easily be seen in the United Kingdom for some 27 years. The first VHS and DVD releases followed shortly after Kubrick's death. It was also shown in many UK cinemas
The Wikipedia article on the Thirty Years War wrote:The devastation caused by the war has long been a subject of controversy among historians. Estimates of civilian casualties of up to thirty percent of the population of Germany are now treated with caution. The mortality rate was perhaps closer to 15 to 20 percent, with deaths due to armed conflict, famine and disease. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers many of whom were rich commanders and poor soldiers. The war caused serious dislocations to both the economies and populations of central Europe, but may have done no more than seriously exacerbate changes that had begun earlier.
Pestilence of several kinds raged among combatants and civilians in Germany and surrounding lands from 1618 to 1648. Many features of the war spread disease. These included troop movements, the influx of soldiers from foreign countries, and the shifting locations of battle fronts. In addition, the displacement of civilian populations and the overcrowding of refugees into cities led to both disease and famine. Information about numerous epidemics is generally found in local chronicles, such as parish registers and tax records, that are often incomplete and may be exaggerated. The chronicles do show that epidemic disease was not a condition exclusive to war time, but was present in many parts of Germany for several decades prior to 1618.
However, when the Danish and imperial armies met in Saxony and Thuringia during 1625 and 1626, disease and infection in local communities increased. Local chronicles repeatedly referred to "head disease", "Hungarian disease", and a "spotted" disease identified as typhus. After the Mantuan War, between France and the Habsburgs in Italy, the northern half of the Italian peninsula was in the throes of a bubonic plague epidemic (see Italian Plague of 1629-1631). During the unsuccessful siege of Nuremberg, in 1632, civilians and soldiers in both the Swedish and imperial armies succumbed to typhus and scurvy. Two years later, as the imperial army pursued the defeated Swedes into southwest Germany, deaths from epidemics were high along the Rhine River. Bubonic plague continued to be a factor in the war. Beginning in 1634, Dresden, Munich, and smaller German communities such as Oberammergau recorded large numbers of plague casualties. In the last decades of the war, both typhus and dysentery had become endemic in Germany.
(You'll need to look up the Widipedia article on your own if you want to read it--i couldn't get a workable link.)
Most online sources which i found continue to assert that as much as a third of the population of Germany was destroyed in that war. Herbert Langer, writing in 1990, asserts that 33% of urban populations, and 40% of rural populations died in the war. I am frankly amazed to see such mythology perpetuated. I am sorry to say that the name of the author of an excellent work on this subject which i read about 10 years ago escapes me. This author points out that most historians repeat these figures and allegations speaking
ex cathedra without providing sources. This gentleman was careful to cite contemporary documents and provided an extensive bibliography.
Several points which i bring up myself, and which the forgotten author to whom i just referred brought up: When a ravaging horde such as Wallenstein's army approached, the rural population dropped to almost nothing in no time flat--people got out of Dodge. If one reads only such accounts, and ignores that all the evidence is that the population of Germany began to increase dramatically after 1650, one might be convinced. But the rural population was tied to the land upon which they lived by economics--when an army had passed, they returned to their land if they could. Accounts of a desert countryside in the wake of a marching army don't tell us what it looked like just two weeks later.
Looking at pandemics from the first outbreaks in the middle ages right up to the horrible outbreak of plague in Oran, in Algeria, immediately after the Second World War, it is evident that in the absence of rigorous public health programs, "plagues" were cyclical. They would flare up, run a brutal course, and die down as the population "thinned," and as people ceased to trust strangers or to congregate without damned good reasons. After 1800, and especially after the work of Dr. John Snow in London in the 1850s, even absent a coherent germ theory of medicine, European nations began taking the steps necessary to contain and prevent the spread of epidemic diseases. No such measures were in place in central Europe in the 17th century. So the question becomes whether or not septic diseases (typhus and other forms of dysentery) and bubonic plague were made endemic in Germany by the war, or whether they were already endemic, but were spread and intensified by the upheavals of the war.
This leads to another problem with the sensationalist view of the war. If "x" number of thousands of Germans died of epidemic diseases in the war, what fraction of x would have died had there been no war? The major objection i have to blithe remarks about such matters is that the scale of the horror alleged seems to assumed that everything would have been peaches and cream, and nary a buboe in sight, had there been no war. So one must exercise a good deal of caution in attributing a huge loss of life to the war, as thoguh it were unnatural. Plague spread in London in 1665, killing many thousands--yet England's civil wars had effectively ended by 1651, and the Thirty Years War, which had ended a generation before, was a non-event in English history (England's civil wars began at about the same time as the Thirty Years War was winding down, and came to their climax at about the time the Peace of Westphalia was being concluded). So, once again, if "X" number of thousands of Germans died from epidemic or pandemic outbreaks of disease in that war, is it reasonable to assume that there would have been no epidemic or pandemic outbreaks of disease absent the war?
With famine, the case is a little more clear--a certain low level of famine obtained throughout Europe in this period, but Germany was, form the early middle ages onward, usually much better off than the rest of Europe for food sources and successful agritulture. One can certainly say that a significant degree of low-level, chronic malnutrition was evident in the European population right up to the end of the 19th century, but there can be little doubt that the upheavals of the Thirty Years War greatly affected German agriculture, and undoubtedly contributed to a degree of famine which might have gone unnoticed in other circumstances.
Some areas of Germany were completely unaffected. Gustav Adolf invaded Bavaria in 1632, and several years later, a Franco-Swedish army invaded Wurttemberg (or Swabia, if you prefer)--but generally, southern Germany was not involved. The Rhineland only became involved during a brief Spanish incursion near the end of the Danish (first phase) phase of the war, and later, in the final, French phase, when Turenne campaigned there. Largely, though, the Rhineland was unaffected by the war. More than any other region of Germany, Saxony suffered, but, ironically, the city of Leipsic, near which Gustav Adolf won his two greatest victories, not only did not suffer from the war, but actually profited. The Hanseatic League, which was dying on the vine, and suffering from Dutch competition, enjoyed a brief resurgence, but not as a league, but only as individual cities--Hamburg and Danzig both profited. But Lubeck had attempted to lead a coalition against Gustav Adolf's grandfather Gustav Vasa in the late 16th century, and had utterly failed--the collapse of trade in most of the Baltic east of Hamburg and west of Danzig was a death knell for Lubeck's salad days.
Which leads to a final consideration. The economic map of Europe was already changing when the war began. Populations were already unsettled and in motion, and the Peace of Augsburg had only defined vaguely where people needed to live if they wished to avoid religious persecution. The King of Denmark probably leaped into the fray at the time of the Bohemian revolt because he thought he could establish an hegemony in northern Germany, but it is equally true that mad Matthias and dull-witted Ferdinand both dreamed of creating a true Holy Roman Empire (and in their view, rightfully Austrian and Hapsburg empire) through the war--when it had the the opposite effect, and enshrined the fragmentation of Germany.
There can be no doubt that the effect of the war was profound. However, i consider the extent usually alleged to be exaggerated, and i think the war exacerbated and accelerated political and economic processes which were already in train in 1618.
You can tell these guys don't go in pubs.
Both posts are undiscussable as they raise so many points that no-one would know where to start.
They belong in the lecture hall rather than on a discussion thread. And there might be fees fellahs for fancy fart farragoes.
And we already know the essentials. This is an intellectual thread and our erudition is taken for granted.
What method do you think is best to indoctrinate kids into believing that pilfering is ethically "wrong" because they certainly don't think so at 3.5 as I have seen recently. They are grabbers. Some stay grabbers all their lives. The rest don't.
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:cicerone imposter wrote:
How many children were molested or raped by priests, and their lives ruined forever, because the heads of the church did everything they could to hide their "sins?"
Very few, but still too many. I think we've found that spendius will start getting into an argument about 'ends justifies the means', though, as he's already started trying to compare amounts of good/bad done. Hilarious concerning Christianity, I must say.
The "heads of the Church" in America were also subject to the recruitment and training problems and obviously displayed weakness. Such things are no argument about the teachings of the Church. The Church doesn't do flavour of the month or opinion polls.
Did you quote me wrong or something? That doesn't constitute a reply to what I just said.
As for what you were actually replying to, you didn't do a terribly good job there, either. I said it was unsupported. You've provided yet again no support for that statement. In fact, you seem to entirely miss the point, which is that the supposed moral authorities in your favy religion didn't do a thing in this case, especially for those who should be the most-versed in those "teachings" you mention.
spendius wrote: I refer you to Setanta's post on that. Severity of torture was routine for all manner of activities. Life itself was torture.
I recommend that you educate yourself on this matter. The severity and brutality of the specific tortures used were quite distinct. Comparing the tortures of the Inquisition to life itself being torture is degrading, frankly.
spendius wrote: And fm used the ends justifies the means argument.
When?
spendius wrote: The odd thing is that I didn't. I merely said people did that. And still do.
You merely said that people did what? I don't think you realize how little context you supply for many of your statements. You have, however, already provided an 'ends justifies the means' argument when you're comparing the good and bad of Christianity, dismissing all the negatives and ignoring its epistemological basis in accuracy.
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:so you won't mind if I start a line of questioning about Chinese communism, will you? It's certainly on-topic!
Not at all. Feel free.
Then I think we both understand your grasp of what being "on-topic" means, don't we?
As for "cutting the ping-pong", I think we all know that it's just your laziness
.
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:Are you an agnostic theist?
I'm a well evolved microbe. Did you not know?
Good for you, big guy!
spendius wrote:
I have already conceded your correctness in all matters past, present and future. Do you not remember?
I remember it reeking of dishonesty. But that would be unChristian, wouldn't it? Quick, run from the moral vacuum!
spendius wrote:
Is that so?
Yes, that is so. Or have you never wondered why there are science and math classes?
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:spendius wrote:We could cut out pilfering with 20 strokes of the birch on first offence and serious **** on No2. Or 24hr surveillance.
What does punishment for offenses have to do with theism implicitly having a legitimate foundation as a "moral compass"?
Nothing.
Then how do you justify bringing up during that topic?
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote: ...you think 20 lashes and more serious punishments require theism.
It never entered my head.
You neglected to mention how I came to that conclusion, but anyways, it must be the other option I listed...
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote: Or are you actually pretending that society would fall apart and people would simply stop acting ethically without Christianity, such that corporal punishment is the only thing in the 'atheist's toolbox'? I guess I'll have to remind you that for both everything you've listed explicitly and implicitly, you've listed no or very little support.
What is in the "toolbox" then? Ref-pilfering.!
I'll take that as a "yes".
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:I've already explained my use of ad hominem, you were tellingly silent after the explanation. (psst, it's not fallacious)
It isn't intended to be to the man appealed to.
The phrase, "Donkey honks the car" makes about as much sense as that last sentence. What's the 'it'? Who's the 'man'? What does the appeal have to do with the context?
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:Oh look, another unsupported assertion that Christianity is "our" moral basis. That's your entire point after all, spendius, and it's the one being challenged. Invoking it to prove your point is begging the question.
It's obvious.
Hahaha, yet another old canard from the tragically incorrect person. Incidentally, the people I usually see using that argument are 1) conspiracy theorists and/or 2) creationists.
I will counter its lack of substance with the level of response it deserves: nuh-uh.
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:...but finding biblical support for one's bigotry against homosexuals is also very easy.
Not for me. They can do what they like as long as nobody else is involved as far as I'm concerned. I think it's mainly fear of women but I accept that some men are born a bit feminine and some women are born, and often brought, up a bit masculine.
Ignoring the parts you don't like is easy, too. However, I'm going to appeal to numbers on this one just to illustrate how easy it is to justify one's antihomosexual beliefs using Christianity by pointing at the catholics and all the protestants who condemn homosexual marriage and homosexual activity. They certainly don't have to look hard to find both a long tradition of doctrinally-based discrimination and lines from the Bible which are very easy to interpret. In fact, one doesn't have to do much bible mining to come up with the simple argument of 1) homosexuals cannot marry and 2) sex outside of marriage is sinful. I see it trotted out all the time, in fact.
And "a fear of women"? Aren't you supposed to be arguing against holding bigoted views?
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:We both know it was atrocious.
In the same way Gitmo and Rendition are--yes.
Not sure about Gitmo (we don't get much info out of there), but concerning Extraordinary Rendition, then yes it compares.
spendius wrote:Shirakawasuna wrote:Thanks, moral authorities!
They were not moral authorities. You just thought they were.
That's clearly not the case. I haven't considered any priest a moral authority so far as I remember.
As to whether they are
considered moral authorities, I thought we were speaking of Christianity's ownership of morality? Are priests not Christians, particularly ones with the authority of rank in the Roman Catholic church? Oh, right, their actions don't count because you don't like them. Obviously it doesn't have anything to do with refuting Christianity's ability to make people moral.
spendius wrote:Is English your first language?
Of course. I also speak german and caught your rather stupid insult.
spendius wrote:Are you a victim of bigotry?
Everyone is a victim of bigotry to some extent, but not me in particular to any significant degree.
Setanta: another excellent post! I've been tending towards a skeptical view of what most people/I learned in history class given that a lot of irritating things happen. Like mere repetition of an idea establishing it as citable. For example, I believe the "big debate" between T.H. Huxley and Wilberforce has little evidence of ever having occurred as anything more than a somewhat-heated exchange of comments at an event set up for something entirely different.
Spendius wrote:
Quote:You can tell these guys don't go in pubs.
Both posts are undiscussable as they raise so many points that no-one would know where to start.
They belong in the lecture hall rather than on a discussion thread. And there might be fees fellahs for fancy fart farragoes.
And we already know the essentials. This is an intellectual thread and our erudition is taken for granted.
What method do you think is best to indoctrinate kids into believing that pilfering is ethically "wrong" because they certainly don't think so at 3.5 as I have seen recently. They are grabbers. Some stay grabbers all their lives. The rest don't.
I thought Mathos' post was kind of interesting. Especially (although he didn't write it - it was just one of the points made) the line about the issue of 'goodness', which in Alex's case was not something inherent in his nature and was forced upon him - and he became almost robotic or mechanical in carrying that 'goodness' out. It was simply a mechanism of his survival instead of something that he really believed in.
Is that the point you're trying to make Spendius? That maybe the one out of three Christians (CI'S statistic - not mine- I'm only adopting it for this discussion) who have integrated and are truly intent on living a moral life as Christ taught (again, only using Christianity as an example- I'm aware there are other religions that at least try to offer a moralistic credo)- might have the means of maintaining a more constant moral compass than those who rely on the lessons taught by their own experiences in a world which is constantly changing, especially in terms of what is acceptable in terms of morals, values and behavior.
And you're applying this to children, who as I think we all can agree (I hope this isn't an assumption, assertion or naturalistic fallacy) are extremely malleable and may not have the means to make the right choice or decision, and are exceptionally vulnerable to the pressure of their peers and maybe other less than moral adults around them.
And that since school is the one compulsory event in their young lives - that might be a good place to try to give them some sort of road map for negotiating through life- along with teaching them their abc's.
I thought this was kind of interesting: I was reading another book and the author talked about 'kindness' which I think is akin to 'goodness' and this author said he used to think that kindness can be learned, but that now he believes it's more like an allotment or endowment - in other words that some people are 'gifted' with it as an aspect of their personality and others aren't.
And I am genuinely interested in exploring whether this might be true. I think it could be interesting on two levels - as an adjunct to the discussion of morality as inherent in an organism as well as looking at it as a function of evolution of the species.
And what purpose does it serve?
Would the kinder organism be looked at as more or less evolved?
It seems that in today's moral climate - kindness is viewed more as an evolutionary weakness than strength.
At least that's my take.
Mr S. wrote-
Quote:spendius wrote:
Shirakawasuna wrote:
cicerone imposter wrote:
How many children were molested or raped by priests, and their lives ruined forever, because the heads of the church did everything they could to hide their "sins?"
Very few, but still too many. I think we've found that spendius will start getting into an argument about 'ends justifies the means', though, as he's already started trying to compare amounts of good/bad done. Hilarious concerning Christianity, I must say.
The "heads of the Church" in America were also subject to the recruitment and training problems and obviously displayed weakness. Such things are no argument about the teachings of the Church. The Church doesn't do flavour of the month or opinion polls.
Did you quote me wrong or something? That doesn't constitute a reply to what I just said.
As for what you were actually replying to, you didn't do a terribly good job there, either. I said it was unsupported. You've provided yet again no support for that statement. In fact, you seem to entirely miss the point, which is that the supposed moral authorities in your favy religion didn't do a thing in this case, especially for those who should be the most-versed in those "teachings" you mention.
What do we actually know about this subject? How many cases are there which have been tested in court. Allegations are easy to make and not so easy to defend. And c.i.'s statement " and their lives ruined forever" is comprehensively unsupported. Obviously someone making allegations is going to rack-up the depth of the trauma suffered to get increased pay-outs. It goes on all the time. Here as well.
There are millions, some say billions, of lives that are ruined around the world on a permanent basis. The focus on the well-to-do American victim is caused by media catering to a market which is obsessed with sex and anything to do with sex and on undermining the RC Church. Thus there's a "cocktail" of forces swirling around the subject which only those taking a deep and abiding interest in it have any chance of getting to the bottom of.
The food price increases are caused by the American demand for oil distorting the price of that commodity and making it unaffordable to poor countries. And the lives of the people in those countries are being ruined objectively and on such a scale that these faked displays of outraged indignation can easily be seen as an expression of the fascination with such matters as priests being alleged to have done "something" which I have no idea whether they have done. And neither have you or c.i..
As I know you can't read very well I feel I must point out that nowhere in that have I said, or even hinted, that the allegations are untrue or if they are true that they are not a disgrace to the American Catholic Church.
I base my idea that it is an American recruitment and training problem on the obvious fact that such things as are being alleged hardly occur in any other country that I know of or are not being sensationally reported.
There are thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of cases where allegations are not defended because to do so causes the stigma and embarrassment involved to be a worse outcome than letting it go.
And you know it I presume because if you don't you should get a job tweeting in a ballet-skirt atop a Xmas tree.
If you, or c.i., are concerned with preventing lives being ruined forever I think you ought to shift your attention to other matters otherwise it could be alleged that you are not concerned with that in the least and are much more interested in reading and thinking about sex scandals and jacking your egos off.
Your moral outrage is misplaced in my view and you are using the reported cases as a sledgehammer to crack some nut of your own.
The evidence is quite compelling spendi. Youd have to have your nose firmly up your ass to deny it. The John JAy report, commissioned by the Conf of Bishops had revealed (remember this is an internal document), That certain facts are indesputable
1. There are over 4390 priests accused of molestation, with a resultant "payout after judgement" of over 6 Billion Dollars by the Church (hardly a trivial amount and not one disputed by the church)
2The church had established a practice of "serial reassignment" for molesters, thus keeping their acts from "piling up" at any one diocese
3The church has consistently failed to report incidents to the cops
4There are several plots uncovered where the diocesan "bigwigs" were guilty of concealing evidence
5Over 600 million of quiet "payouts" were made to alleged victims to keep cases from ever seeing a court
If it quacks like a duck...
Quote: I feel I must point out that nowhere in that have I said, or even hinted, that the allegations are untrue or if they are true that they are not a disgrace to the American Catholic Church.
Youve been a consistent apologist for the CAtholic Church and waaaay back in the dim Pliocene, I accusd you several times of being a defrocked priest who still maintains a "priestly" lifestyle. You have , several times in the past, attempted the diversion of our attention from this issue and have played a "so what" kind of game.
Just to remind some of the newcomers that spendi is temporally consistent in several of his core beliefs. (I guess thats why we call them core beliefs)
spendius wrote: What do we actually know about this subject? How many cases are there which have been tested in court. Allegations are easy to make and not so easy to defend. And c.i.'s statement " and their lives ruined forever" is comprehensively unsupported. Obviously someone making allegations is going to rack-up the depth of the trauma suffered to get increased pay-outs. It goes on all the time. Here as well.
Wave your hands some more, make it a little more obvious that you don't want to answer my points and counterpoints
.
Your response still had little to do with what you quoted and these examples still work explicitly against your 'thesis': here we have people well-versed in the Christian "message", people who have studied it in-depth from the oldest mainstream Christian group with the longest tradition, and not only does it not keep them from molesting children (which we might be able to brush off as isolated incidents), but it does not keep them from protecting their own at loss to the children, both abused and at risk of being abused, making the offense less isolated than you think.
There is ridiculous amounts of information supporting these allegations from diverse sources. You need only give a cursory reading of the Wikipedia article on catholic sex abuse cases to know that, but if you search harder you'll find even more. If you want some simple sources (you know you do), there's the Fern Report and John Jay report. They're not quite as good as the individual cases, though, imo.
Now of course none of this is in any way my attempt to show that catholics are somehow worse than other people, but rather that this is a specific case strongly hinting at refutation of your own ideas about Christianity being both the best and in some ways only moral guide, which I will repeat you have completely and utterly failed to support.
Concerning the abuse ruining lives, that's on a sliding scale. I would bet that a decent number of the cases resulted in revulsion, etc, and likely some other issues, but not life-ruining levels. I would also bet that there were some clear cases of serious damage and if you are attempting to minimize those cases, it is quite despicable.
spendius wrote: There are millions, some say billions, of lives that are ruined around the world on a permanent basis. The focus on the well-to-do American victim is caused by media catering to a market which is obsessed with sex and anything to do with sex and on undermining the RC Church. Thus there's a "cocktail" of forces swirling around the subject which only those taking a deep and abiding interest in it have any chance of getting to the bottom of.
Anything to rationalize an unfavorable reality, huh? Nice try at trying to change the subject, though. Oh, and this isn't just about America, there are cases in England and Ireland as well that received quite a bit of attention - in fact, the Fern Report was over in your neck of the woods.
spendius wrote: The food price increases are caused by the American demand for oil distorting the price of that commodity and making it unaffordable to poor countries. And the lives of the people in those countries are being ruined objectively and on such a scale that these faked displays of outraged indignation can easily be seen as an expression of the fascination with such matters as priests being alleged to have done "something" which I have no idea whether they have done. And neither have you or c.i..
Nice, still trying to change the subject. I'm not biting.
spendius wrote: As I know you can't read very well I feel I must point out that nowhere in that have I said, or even hinted, that the allegations are untrue or if they are true that they are not a disgrace to the American Catholic Church.
You mean Roman Catholic Church.
And you've strongly implied that the allegations are untrue, you did it just a couple paragraphs ago when you tried to minimize the damage caused by the molestation, sheesh. You've also attempted to cast doubt on the facts of a subject which is very, very easily researched, but that was because you think all the allegations are true, right?
spendius wrote: I base my idea that it is an American recruitment and training problem on the obvious fact that such things as are being alleged hardly occur in any other country that I know of or are not being sensationally reported.
Then I think you've noticed some differences concerning sensationalism, haven't you? Of course, even isolating it as an "American" issue would not establish that it has anything to do with recruitment or training, so again that's completely unsupported invention on your part, and you know it. The word is "rationalization".
spendius wrote: There are thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of cases where allegations are not defended because to do so causes the stigma and embarrassment involved to be a worse outcome than letting it go.
I had to read this a couple times to make sure you were really trying to make that argument. You think the church doesn't defend the allegations because there's
more stigma and embarassment than when they settle and/or just let the accusations sit there? Seriously? I have a bridge I'd like to sell you, mint condition...
spendius wrote: And you know it I presume because if you don't you should get a job tweeting in a ballet-skirt atop a Xmas tree.
*pats spendius on the head*
spendius wrote: If you, or c.i., are concerned with preventing lives being ruined forever I think you ought to shift your attention to other matters otherwise it could be alleged that you are not concerned with that in the least and are much more interested in reading and thinking about sex scandals and jacking your egos off.
Yes, I know that you want to change the subject, but you're not vulgar enough yet. Please reference scat porn next, but only in reference to our egos.
spendius wrote: Your moral outrage is misplaced in my view and you are using the reported cases as a sledgehammer to crack some nut of your own.
Again, my point is about refuting your unsupported notion of moral superiority. You always seem to forget context when it's convenient, fancy that.
How can I possibly answer all these points. I have a busy company to run.
I don't dispute any of your allegations fm. I've said that it looks like a specifically American problem and the figures you quote bear that out unless there's a giant cover up going on all over the place which I very much doubt seeing as there's compensation in the air.
And that's all I've said except when I pointed out that other priorities are being sidelined as these sexual matters divert the attention from them.
I have seen videos of American policemen clubbing people on the ground . Six on one once. I don't run around assuming that the institution of the Police is evil on that score.
Extraordinary Rendition, judging from how it is described, is a far worse problem that this one is because it is "official". It is done in all your names. A comparison, if fair, would mean that the Church hierarchy actively encourage sex abuse.
And what human beings do says nothing about the basic teachings of the Church which are what I think you are all trying to discredit for personal reasons. The Church cannot recruit angels.
I was taught by priests in a school with 600 boys and I never saw or heard the slightest indication of anything like this.
Those who have a disposition to children will soon find out if an organisation is easy to penetrate and will "act" accordingly.
Anybody here who seeks a job involving children is vetted. Even taxi drivers.
It's a complex matter but I'm not sitting still for the Church's basic teachings being discredited when other factors are in play which have nothing to do with that teaching.
Your eagerness to dwell on these matters is sufficient evidence to me that you have hidden agendas.
And I'm not a defrocked priest.
I have been a scientific civil-servant, in the military, a chief chemist in industry, a lecturer in chemistry and sociology and latterly in business on my own account. Okay?
And to suggest that I live a priestly life-style would have everybody I know, and that's a large number, ROTFLTAO. All night.
I'll try to work through this mish-mash as time permits but if you keep sticking up more of the same before I can then I'm assuming it is a tactic.
Quote:I recommend that you educate yourself on this matter. The severity and brutality of the specific tortures used were quite distinct. Comparing the tortures of the Inquisition to life itself being torture is degrading, frankly.
Try not to be so silly as to imagine that deliberately misconstruing what I have said is of any interest to me. That's the Obtuse Pedant fallacy.
Quote:spendius wrote:
And fm used the ends justifies the means argument.
When?
Ask fm. If he denies it I'll explain.
And get going on the Chinese communism thing willya? Don't ask about it--get my okay on it--drop it--and then declare me providing no context.
Quote:As for "cutting the ping-pong", I think we all know that it's just your laziness
Don't be ridiculous. I have no choice you silly sod. And a lot of your stuff is ping-pong. It isn't my problem if you can't see it.
Quote:Are you an agnostic theist?
I'm a well evolved microbe. Did you not know?
Good for you, big guy!
You are as well, Big Boy. It's an illusion that you are Mr Brain Box.
Quote:
I have already conceded your correctness in all matters past, present and future. Do you not remember?
I remember it reeking of dishonesty. But that would be unChristian, wouldn't it? Quick, run from the moral vacuum!
Why wouldn't I concede what I did. There's no question about it. There's nothing going to shift you one iota. So I might as well concede. You win the argument. You win all the arguments you involve yourself with. There's nothing to be done about it. Your mind has snapped shut.
Quote:Or have you never wondered why there are science and math classes?
I've taught both at graduate level.
Quote:Then how do you justify bringing up during that topic.
If I supply the context for that I have to go back a few times to different pages copying and pasting and that's out. You know the answer if you have been paying attention. The thread is the context.
You are simply trying to avoid answering my question about pilfering because you can't.
Quote:I'll take that as a "yes".
You are incorrect. I never said society will fall apart without Christian morals. There are other means of preventing society falling apart. They are means you are loathe to go into for obvious reasons.
Quote:spendius wrote:
Shirakawasuna wrote:
I've already explained my use of ad hominem, you were tellingly silent after the explanation. (psst, it's not fallacious)
It isn't intended to be to the man appealed to.
The phrase, "Donkey honks the car" makes about as much sense as that last sentence. What's the 'it'? Who's the 'man'? What does the appeal have to do with the context?
No. It means you can't read properly. The "it" is the ad hominem which is ridiculous if not intended to appeal to the sentiments and prejudices of the person addressed and to change the subject. The person addressed in your case is the viewer here who you think shares your sentiments and prejudices. It's elementary. To get your claque cheering.
Shirakawasuna wrote:Setanta: another excellent post! I've been tending towards a skeptical view of what most people/I learned in history class given that a lot of irritating things happen. Like mere repetition of an idea establishing it as citable. For example, I believe the "big debate" between T.H. Huxley and Wilberforce has little evidence of ever having occurred as anything more than a somewhat-heated exchange of comments at an event set up for something entirely different.
That "mere repetition of an idea establishing it as citable" is a very preceptive comment.
I was reading a history of the development and deployment of the Boeing 299, which became the B17 Flying Fortress bomber of World War Two fame. It retailed a story to the effect that a group of air crew were assembled for their briefing, and were told that their pathfinder had strayed in a recent raid over Brussels, and that they had dropped their bombs on a residential neighborhood. They were all alleged to be appalled, because they all "knew" they could be court-martialed for bombing Allied civilian areas. Then the briefing officer told them that, fortunately for them, the buildings in that area had been taken over by the Wehrmacht, and that there would be no courts-martial. It sounded apocryphal to me, but i paid no further attention.
Later i was reading a policy study of Eight United States Army Air Force, and the same story was retailed. For what ought to be obvious reasons, the book about the Boeing 299/B17 was in the bibliography, but no specific attribution was provided for this story. So i did some digging, both on-line and at a local university library, and confirmed to my satisfaction that no member of the United States Army Air Force was ever court-martialed for such an offense, and that in fact there was no such regulation. I have since seen this same denial posted in on-line pages about the USAAF (there was no independent Air Force until 1947, so the air services were a part of the Army in Dubya-Dubya Two). I have also since seen the same fairy story retailed in three other books.
The mere repetition of an idea establishing it as citable, indeed. I don't judge a book of history or biography by its cover, i judge it by its bibliography, and how well annotated it is.
wandeljw's source wrote:Dr. McLeroy, the board chairman, sees the debate as being between "two systems of science."
"You've got a creationist system and a naturalist system," he said.
This joker certainly tips his hand when he describes creationism as a "system of science." This may be headed for Federal Court, too.
Mr S. wrote-
Quote:Hahaha, yet another old canard from the tragically incorrect person. Incidentally, the people I usually see using that argument are 1) conspiracy theorists and/or 2) creationists.
I will counter its lack of substance with the level of response it deserves: nuh-uh.
There you go. I'm now " tragically incorrect" . How does one not concede the floor to such tripe. And what difference does it make what you "usually" see? You might not see so much and the door is open to what you don't usually see. 51% might validate "usually". And you might have subjective memory selection or you might just gob out any old thing that comes into your head to convince yourself you have answered a point.
Quote:..but finding biblical support for one's bigotry against homosexuals is also very easy.
Not me. Not ever.
Quote:Ignoring the parts you don't like is easy, too. However, I'm going to appeal to numbers on this one just to illustrate how easy it is to justify one's antihomosexual beliefs using Christianity by pointing at the catholics and all the protestants who condemn homosexual marriage and homosexual activity. They certainly don't have to look hard to find both a long tradition of doctrinally-based discrimination and lines from the Bible which are very easy to interpret. In fact, one doesn't have to do much bible mining to come up with the simple argument of 1) homosexuals cannot marry and 2) sex outside of marriage is sinful. I see it trotted out all the time, in fact.
There are millions of others who condemn homosexual marriage besides Catholics and Protestants. From my experience the ones who don't condemn it are a tiny minority. Which well known scientific or humanist organisations publicly support it.
Quote:And "a fear of women"? Aren't you supposed to be arguing against holding bigoted views?
Since when has being realistic been classed as bigoted. Any bloke who doesn't fear women is a male chauvinist idiot heading for a fall. You need to define "women" beyond biology. Real women are terrifying.
Quote:They were not moral authorities. You just thought they were.
That's clearly not the case. I haven't considered any priest a moral authority so far as I remember.
The Obtuse Pedant Fallacy again. What you remember or have considered is neither here nor there. If we only discussed what you have considered or remember you are back to the one way megaphone.
The argument against the moral authority of the priestly caste assumes that that authority not only exists but is powerful enough to have to be fought against.
Quote:As to whether they are considered moral authorities, I thought we were speaking of Christianity's ownership of morality?
I have neither said nor implied that Christianity owns morality. All I have said is that Christian morality dominates the earth and will do so more and more. Is that really difficult for you to understand?
Quote:Are priests not Christians
How would I know?
Quote:Is English your first language?
Of course. I also speak german and caught your rather stupid insult.
My,my--you are sensitive aren't you. No insult was intended. You will know when I insult you. It is a perfectly reasonable question given your username and the obvious fact that you speak a different language to me.
I only asked because I make allowances for A2Kers who are using English as a second language. When you accused aidan of being indignant you were obviously projecting.
Quote:Everyone is a victim of bigotry to some extent, but not me in particular to any significant degree.
I'm not. To become a victim you have to allow bigotry to affect you.
