Equality

There’s a difference between:

Equality of outcome

And 

Equality of opportunity 

One make a person responsible for their own efforts and actions. This gives a person purpose and allows a person to grow. The other does the opposite.

Take a guess which is which.

Empathy

Dictionary

em·pa·thy

ˈempəTHē/

noun

1. the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

So, where does this ability come from?
This question has been on my mind lately.
Is it learned? By experience....if you go through the same pain or hurt then you can recognize it in others?
Is it taught? By others telling you how they feel and by you caring about that person and trying to understand emotionally what they are going through?

Why so many questions about empathy?

Well some people simply don't have it.

So much so, I am beginning to think that it is an actual gene people are lacking.

If the hurt/pain is not happening to them, well good luck with the fact that you are dealing with it, not them.

Cases in point:

Someone hurt you. You tell them by expressing your displeasure, or being mad or sad or upset or even simply telling them that they hurt you.
They say "SOOOOORRRRRY then!" like they were forced or coerced into saying something they didn't feel they needed to because they do not believe you. And they are just saying it so that this awkward, uncomfortable feeling you are putting ON THEM will stop.

It is still about them.
No understanding about how the other person feels.
No empathy there.

Or punishment for doing harm to others. When robbers get caught. SORRRYYY and maybe even some tears. But only because they got caught. Not because they have empathy for how they affected other people's lives.

Or expressing how you are bummed that your vacation is ruined by a deadly typhoon while people that live in that area are losing homes or being injured or dying.

I'm seeing a lot of this lately. No empathy, no understanding of other people's feelings.
Very much part of this ever growing ME society.
MY feelings, not your feelings.
Only until people start actually caring about other people than themselves will they have the ability to have empathy.

But yea, whiners, and people who deem themselves helpless but they have full capacity and abilities to help themselves, I have no empathy for....but that's another post.

Jordan B. Peterson | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

Elections 2019

What is happening?

I can't..

I just...
Where am I....

When is the next election?!

Cause my butt is sore from sitting by this campfire singing kumbya, wearing flower crowns and breathing in this smoke all day....

Can we start running a country already?!

Political Correctness.....

"...I'm standing here with someone who I have differences with, in terms of politics, precisely because I think all this has got to stop. This rage, resentment, hostility, intolerance. Above all, this 'with us or against us' certainty.

The Grand Canyon has opened up in our world, the fistula, the crack grows wider every day. Neither can hear a word that the other shrieks, and nor do they want to. While these armies and propagandists in the country wars clash, down below in the enormous space between the two sides, the people of the world try to get along with their lives, eternally baffled, bored, and betrayed by the horrible noises and explosions all around.

I think it is time for this toxic, binary, zero sum madness to stop before we destroy ourselves.

......

I think one of the greatest human failings, is to prefer to be right, than to be effective. Political Correctness is always obsessed with thinking about how right it is than how effective it might be.

.....

I'm prepared to entertain the opportunity that Political correctness will bring us more tolerance and a better world. But I am not sure.


 ' One of the painful things of our time, is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision. Let doubt prevail' "

- Stephen Fry

Feminism..?

Girl power whoo hoo!

Sometimes it baffles me how the achievements already made become so undervalued.

You don't just like a person or support a person just because they are female and it is supposively a female forward way of thinking....

You support them or like them because of the person they are and their values and their achievements, and it is that more amazing when they are women, because of all the obstacles they have faced back then... Back then. (as opposed to obstacles facing women now... accept that we have come pretty far compared to then, do not invalidate those achievements by saying we are still "repressed" like we were back then, we just have STILL a bit more to go, but acknowledge we are not like back then).


Wow. 1979 as Prime Minister of UK.

1979 people!

Just think about it.

I shamefully didn't until now. But more so now, it is ever more important when people are putting value to people who do not exactly have the best character but only just because they are "female". When people are filling "quotas" of gender or nationality, rather than based on qualifications. Equality is not about one aspect of a person, its treating the person on even plane on all aspects and respecting the differences.

-------------------------------------------------
Anyhoot, I will stop blabbering and fill the rest of this post by quotes from the late Margaret Thatcher, that a friend emailed me :


"do you know that one of the greatest problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas."

"we want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state."

"I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand 'O have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!' or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!' "I am homeless, the Government must house me!' and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through the people and people look to themselves first... There is no such thing as a society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn around and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."

D.H Lawrence

Woke up to a few quotes this morning. One of which is from this dude:

"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."

I have to remind myself of these small birds every now and then.

What petty privileges we have, it seems sometimes, to be human...