January 30, 2005
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topic: I should write a book
Well…now Time Magazine has decided to promote my book on their cover. But…why the hell are we called “twixters?” because we’re betwixed and between? If you haven’t read the article, it basically fills in anyone 45+ (or around those ages) what it means to be a twentysomething today. They even had “School Daze” as a heading for part of the article, discussing how more and more kids are going to college, and college is so very far removed from providing anything resembling the skills necessary in real life. Anyways…will be posting more on that shorty. Thanks to all for the ongoing debates. One idea I had to make politics more peaceful, was to have politicians go on an Outward Bound course together…seriously. Make the Democrats and Republicans go camping, and rely on each other to carry the gear, the poop shovel, the toilet paper, the trail mix, the tents. Maybe that experience would help people find some common ground. When we do not have any personal connection to people, we can quickly grow hostile, which has shown itself in some of the debates on this site.
In that spirit, I hope to encourage those who wish to debate certain points on my site to refrain from ad hominem attacks. First of all, it lowers the entire level of debate. Second of all, it distracts from the issues, and third of all, when we feel hostile to one another, we become intolerant to ideas different than our own. Our goal should be to educate one another, for if we believe strongly enough that someone is misguided, we should be concered with enlightening them, and in the process, enlighten ourselves.
Comments (6)
the twixters was a great article and a real view of a culture shift. I think what was a standout to me was how the debt society (in the form of student loans) was boxing kids out and forcing them to live back at home. I have been studying university bottom lines and that may be a great education topic for you…wouldn’t you agree?…
Three things. First of all, thank you for your stance on peaceful and educational debates. I am sick of the jabs of political debates, and dirty campaigns. I would vote for anyone or anything that just once, didn’t run a campaign based on the reputation demise of the opposition. I wouldn’t care what they stood for.
Secondly, is this a recent article? As in, I can go out today and buy it? That is awesome for you! Exciting exciting.
Third(ly)? I am sitting in a computer lab full of people in my university’s arts building. When I read your “camping trip” scenario, I literally broke into laughter, and everyone turned to look at the crazy lady. What a sight that would be! I am just imagining the suit and tie-clad, gray haired politicians struggling to climb trails in thier designer shoes, and sweat dripping from there lined faces. I know that I am being stereotypical, but I don’t care and I love it! Haha. That thought makes my day!!! Thanks for planting a smile on my face this morning!
Okay, fourthly, but in regards to the first comment. I would care what they stood for. But anyone that runs a campaign with respect, at the risk of losing it for lack of spite, probably would have my vote anyways. Yes. I’m done now.
Eventually I think I will have at least a book or two written. One thing I wrote was entirely fictional and is 2/3 done but i never finished and the other I plan to write if I ever get a PHd.
I should apologize for continuing the argument in the post below. Not that I doubt anything I said, but at some point, when two people can’t even agree on basic facts, the argument becomes ridiculous.
I’ll say this about where my arguments tend to come from: My biggest training is in history (Michigan State – the Naval War College), and that tends to make me someone who looks for historical comparisons. There are two ways to look at history: one, I’ll call “evolutionist” (heavily preached in American secondary schools and basic college history classes), this assumes that humans are constantly progressing toward something (nothwithstanding setbacks and reversals). All “utopians” be they Marxian or Neoconservative are evolutionists, though Marxists use history as a guide and someone like Paul Wolfowitz rejects that as vaild. I’m not one of those. I see human history as much more circular and repetitive (as in, are there really any huge differences between the US now and the Roman Republic in the First Century BCE?). That’s probably in large part do to who I’ve studied with, and what I’ve studied. Some would call it more “pessimistic” but I would argue against that, finding great bright points of light all the way through history.
And my points of historical study: The Holy Roman Empire and then Central Europe, say, 1848 – 1989, Africa’s emergence from Colonialism, the growth of the Iroquois Confederacy, probably create a radically different world view from that of someone schooled deeply in British or French history. What you know does indeed determine what you know.
Lastly, my law enforcement experience in inner city America has surely turned me into a radical on economics. I’m an absolute Socialist. I believe that Europeans live better than Americans do in the ways that matter to me. That they’re healthier, safer, better educated. That children there are less likely to be confined to poverty because of who their parents are.
So while “facts are facts,” we’ll all use them as our biases direct. And my biases are surely pro-socialist, anti-colonial, pro-intra-national-diversity, anti-Woodrow Wilson, anti-British, perhaps more Catholic than I’d like to admit, pro-Navy, pro-(well-trained)-police.
Just a disclaimer.
Personally, when history “repeats itself,” it does not repeat itself by having the exact same countries 150 years apart react the same way to the same situation. This is a total misunderstanding of history.
The first true historian, Thucydides, said concerning the Sicilian Expedition in 415, “The result of this excessive enthusiasm of the majority was that the few who actually were opposed to the expedition were afraid of being unpatriotic if they voted against it, and therefore kept quiet” (Thucydides, 425). Is this not the same exact thing that happened just two years ago? The Democratic Party, before the midterm elections, ended up overwhelmingly voting in favor of the War in Iraq, because they did not want to be branded as traitors. In fact, what Thucydides says happens all the time, it is ingrained in the nature of citizens and representatives of the state. Exact actions of states and the relations of people are hardly analagous, but certain things to repeat themselves. Taking too much people on at once in war hardly ever ends with success, patriotic fervor during war can ruin democracy, incomplete understandings of other people can lead to one group claiming a kind of superiority and look the other way during a genocide or needless war. these things happen all the itme, however, I do believe that if your education taught you that history repeats itself differently, I would have to respectively disagree with their methods.