Shit on a stick. I can’t believe someone is trying to equate culture to Santa Claus.
If you wish to argue along those lines, I’d suggest that because the light bulb is an invention and good old Santa is an invention that neither is real… so when you turn on the light, it’s all in your mind as an invention.
Get real tard.
[quote]Hamster wrote:
Interesting thread… I too like hip-hop culture, particularly funk and new soul.
What is difficult for me to deal with is the difference in language that has developed, particularly in the past 10 years or so. Call it ebonics or whatever, but it’s been very detrimental to the goal of unity among races. Now different pockets of culture not only look different, but sound entirely different as well. I acknowledge that the evolution of the English language is unstoppable (language is ever-changing), but this is different. Ebonics is distinctly a “black” way of speech. Caucasians cannot speak ebonics and be socially accepted. Most black men I know like the idea of ebonics because it helps to segregate their culture from white culture. Again, this is contrary to our goal of unity.
Any thoughts? I would like to be wrong about this…[/quote]
Your post implies you are fairly out of touch with much of popular culture. Not only has “Hip Hop culture” crossed color lines, so has much of the speech. Not only that, but much of what is considered slang/ebonics (a word that I hate) simply can not be looked at as “contrary to a goal of unity”. It was originally born out of an entire segment of the population being treated as less than human. You can’t ignore this and then turn around years later and say, “Damn it, those negroes speak to each other differently than they do white folks so they must not want unity.” Much of those differences in speech and culture arose because the only place a minority could be treated as equal would be within his own community. It was the lack of unity that created it.
Taking it further, I speak differently depending on what situation I am in. I wouldn’t speak the same on a basketball court as I would in my office. My patterns of speech arose from my background and are much less about “race” and much more about the culture I was raised in. There are white kids who speak just like I would in front of my frat brothers. Mind you, my mother would allow no slang at all in the house while I was growing up (being a teacher).
Taking it one step farther, anyone who walks around thinking that slang is simply found in the black community is delusional. Anyone who has been to Mississippi, Alabama, Lousiana or Texas knows that white people there don’t speak the same as white people in Boston. Why isn’t this capitalized on?
Patterns of speech arise from culture and similarities between subgroups of people in this country. It sounds like some of you are pissed that I can talk to someone from my old neighborhood and completely leave you out of the conversation. That doesn’t have shit to do with poverty. The speech from the average inner city black kid in Houston, Texas will be different than the speech from a kid straight from New Orleans. I am amazed that some of you seem so out of touch.
Who thought of the idea to use copper wire filament in a light bulb? If you don’t know this, why would you believe a commonly retold lie?
Er…I thought the filament was Tungsten?
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
What you are endorsing is called Solipsism. Solipsism is false. Berkeley’s idealism rests upon the premise that everything is consciousness – this is a contradiction. A consciousness w/o anything to be conscious of, other than itself, would not need senses to attain this consciousness. It would be self-contained. I refer you to the Empiricism of Hume and the later Positivists.
It IS true that the only reality we understand is that attained by our senses. Our senses organise sensations into perceptions. We then abstract from these to form concepts. This is the process of Reason and why Aristotle called us the Rational Animal, the animal that uses conceptual thinking.
Ayn Rand has some excellent work on this subject as well.
[/quote]
Not really. I don’t truly support solipsism, at least not fully. I do not believe we are truly creating reality, nor that knowledge of reality cannot be transferred from one individual to another. That would make me posting here worthless. (Then again sometimes it is.)
I am really referring to our senses, and our process of thinking more then reality. Rather it is our attempts at understanding reality I am discussing here.
But I do agree with the “the map is not the territory” philosophy / psychology. (The original quote is by Alford Korzybski: “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”)
We represent reality in our own minds, and that is the reality we deal with, not the actual reality. Understand this and you better understand the human animal.
[quote]Harry Flashman wrote:
Who thought of the idea to use copper wire filament in a light bulb? If you don’t know this, why would you believe a commonly retold lie?
Er…I thought the filament was Tungsten?[/quote]
Actually, it was a carbon filament invented by Lewis Howard Latimer and patented in 1881. I apologize for writing copper.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
Professor X wrote:
What I do find funny, however, is how the “political” opinions of actors are regarded as useless idiotic banter…until they say something you agree with. Then their words get plastered for all to see.
I think folks like Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman have earned a level of respect. They are black, and have gone through a lot of stuff that most folks born after 1970 only talk about.
I have to agree with you 100%, these two people have more than enough life experience and education. If you really want an interesting read look up Bill Cosby’s biography and read about his life while growing up, and going through school. I don’t care if your white, black, brown purple or green. Take five minutes and read about this man. His story of growing up poor and working to make ends meet and his dedication to getting an education should be an inspiration for anyone. If the black community wants a role model or someone to look up to they need to look up to this man, and give Jesse jackson, and Louis Farakhan thier walking papers. Those two ingrates do absolutely nothing for the black population of the United States other than give them a false sense of hope.
Bullpup
I think their views on being black carry a whole lot more weight than Janine Garafalo yammering her pseudo-intellectual trap about the evils of the Bush Administration. [/quote]
I was trying to leave this thread alone, but I find that I can’t. I had some issues with Morgan Freeman’s statements. I agree with him that it is shameful that Black History is relegated to just one month. Black History is American History and should be given more mention than slavery, Fredrick Douglass and Martin Luther King. The problem that I have with his statements is when he said the way to deal with racism is to stop talking about it. WHAT?
So I guess if you ignore it it’ll go away? That is the single dumbest thing that I read in his interview. If people took that approach, we would still have Jim Crow laws and separate public facilities for white and blacks. You don’t fix a problem by ignoring it. You address it and think of ways to fix it. Conversely, you do not use it as a crutch to explain away all of your issues, nor do you exploit it for personal gain.
I am holding out hope that he didn’t mean it that way and that what he meant is that people should look at people as people and not by skin color. However, I know that’s not how people will take it and that is not how this country and society runs. It is still very much a biased, racial mess.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
What you are endorsing is called Solipsism. Solipsism is false. Berkeley’s idealism rests upon the premise that everything is consciousness – this is a contradiction. A consciousness w/o anything to be conscious of, other than itself, would not need senses to attain this consciousness. It would be self-contained. I refer you to the Empiricism of Hume and the later Positivists.
It IS true that the only reality we understand is that attained by our senses. Our senses organise sensations into perceptions. We then abstract from these to form concepts. This is the process of Reason and why Aristotle called us the Rational Animal, the animal that uses conceptual thinking.
Ayn Rand has some excellent work on this subject as well.
Not really. I don’t truly support solipsism, at least not fully. I do not believe we are truly creating reality, nor that knowledge of reality cannot be transferred from one individual to another. That would make me posting here worthless. (Then again sometimes it is.)
I am really referring to our senses, and our process of thinking more then reality. Rather it is our attempts at understanding reality I am discussing here.
But I do agree with the “the map is not the territory” philosophy / psychology. (The original quote is by Alford Korzybski: “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”)
We represent reality in our own minds, and that is the reality we deal with, not the actual reality. Understand this and you better understand the human animal.
[/quote]
Wow, have we gotten off topic 
Anyway, cool! While I agree that we represent reality ‘in our own minds’, that doesn’t change the objectivity of that reality. This is the problem that I have with Kant – just because humans understand reality in ONE particular way, that doesn’t mean that we are wrong or that our perception is somehow non-objective. A subjective consciousness is not excluded from making an objective evaluation. In fact, if we are wrong, reality will be quite swift to come up and bite us on the ass!
To me, consciousness means ‘identification’. To be conscious implies that one tries to identify what ‘it’ is. Now, it has been shown that perceiving affects or interferes with subatomic particles; at the macrolevel, however, if a tree falls in the forest, it MUST makes a noise – otherwise it would violate laws of physics. Our consciousness would play no role whatever.
BTW: this is a great discussion! One of my degrees is in philosophy and that made understanding my other fields (physics and mathematics) more understandable.
[quote]ALDurr wrote:
…The problem that I have with his statements is when he said the way to deal with racism is to stop talking about it. WHAT?
So I guess if you ignore it it’ll go away? That is the single dumbest thing that I read in his interview. If people took that approach, we would still have Jim Crow laws and separate public facilities for white and blacks. You don’t fix a problem by ignoring it. You address it and think of ways to fix it. Conversely, you do not use it as a crutch to explain away all of your issues, nor do you exploit it for personal gain.
I am holding out hope that he didn’t mean it that way and that what he meant is that people should look at people as people and not by skin color. However, I know that’s not how people will take it and that is not how this country and society runs. It is still very much a biased, racial mess.[/quote]
He wasn’t really saying ignore it. Just quit talking about it all the time and keeping it in people’s minds.
By discussing race all the time, we are continuously reinforcing our differences, and in a way promoting racism. (Interesting how we are talking about him telling us not to talk about it.)
The reality is race is not that important. If we treat race as being important, then races are different, and we are in a way segregating people. This is what we need to get over.
““Still what Mr. Freeman spoke of is not acceptable for many Blacks. What Morgan Freeman spoke of is something that many Blacks fear. True and full integration. Integration to a level where a special month for a race is not promoted. Because all are viewed as Americans. All Americans can help this happen, by no longer promoting such race forced standards on the masses. Push to include Black figures as AMERICAN history and not a special “Black” mention. There was a fight to end segregation and so there is no need for Blacks to have heroes with darker skin segregated any longer.””
http://www.independentconservative.com/
A piece from a black conservative blogger commenting on Freeman which I also found quite interesting.
Let’s take the next step !!!
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Christomopher wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
They are finally figuring out that naming your child ‘O-ran-jello’, letting him dress ‘gangsta’ and speak like a half-wit, was a guarantee of poverty and misery.
O-ran-jello? That’s stupid, and you are an idiot. Let’s make sweeping racist statements that only marginally deal with the topic! Good job! Idiot.
A friend of mine works in a hospital. When a woman had her baby, he went to her and said, “Ma’am, you put down Orange Jello for your baby’s name.” She said, “It’s not Orange Jello, it’s O-ran-jello!”
So, before you start name-calling, how about asking a question about where my response came from – bugwit!
[/quote]
That’s a flat out lie! I heard that same joke 5 yrs in Germany. Damn shame what some people will say to support narrow & misinformed point of veiw. Come on…give us another one, I know you have more!
[quote]bumpy wrote:
That’s a flat out lie! I heard that same joke 5 yrs in Germany. Damn shame what some people will say to support narrow & misinformed point of veiw. Come on…give us another one, I know you have more![/quote]
He actually does not have more and thought he was being damn creative with that one. Why he is being tolerated on this forum must simply be because he exclaims his like for George Bush enough to qualify as a conservative.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Freeman is so right. (Although this leaves me confused with him presenting at the Black Movie awards.)
Oh and Cosby is right also. Instead of listening to what he says, people are getting upset because he is not following the politically correct line, and actually thinking about the issues.
Once people realize there is no race, and there is no culture, it will be a better place. When you really get down to it, we are all the same.
[/quote]
It all goes to Political Correctness. the country need start elimnating saying Irish/American ,African/American, Italian/American, Spanish/Americans etc etc…along with NFL and college sports saying there needs to be X amount of black coaches…the stupidty of this is let’s say each team should have X amount of white players, japenes, mexican etc etc…it comes down to best person gets job. Morgan is oh SOOO right
Good luck eliminating heritage and history.
Although, you might have a small chance at doing that if people didn’t feel a need to associate with others sharing their heritage for some strange reason.
Ignoring the basic functioning of humanity or wishing it away is… is… damn, I’m just at a loss for words.