h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

when I was but a child I had an experience which has remained with me ever since (obviously, I've had a number of such experiences, including the mad boyhood snowball warfare between Protestants and Catholics, but for the sake of this post, I am thinking of a different particular childhood experience).

One day I was walking along Walford Road in Sudbury, Ontario at approximately this http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=36+walford+road,+sudbury+ontario&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl location when I noticed a group of older boys on the road having great fun taunting a young Down's Syndrome fellow who had retreated to what was then a vacant lot to the north of the road. Ever since that moment there has been a question, only articulated in adulthood, niggling at my mind. To put it bluntly: What possibly fun can be derived from beating up a retard?

Decades later I found myself in the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, Mexico, about to descend the stairs leading down into the burial chamber of Pacal. I was quite surprised and impressed to be accompanied by an acquaintance who had contracted polio a few months before the vaccine was distributed. With great excitement and joy he had inched his way up the thousand year old steps of the pyramid and was now inching his way down the slimy stairs inside, his crutches clattering along in the darkness.

A day or to ago I looking in on one of 'those' threads and somebody said something about a 'crutch' known as religion and I thought back to that morning on Walford Road. So, perhaps religion *is* a crutch for many. So what? Should we beat someone up because they need a crutch? Or should we be surprised and impressed and share their joy at their successes in life? Obviously, the latter is the proper course.


I must, however, add one further paragraph of caveat:

some who post on 'those' threads might argue that disbelief is itself a crutch. some might argue that a particular belief is a choice. So what? to both:

I was not asked in the Temple of Inscriptions to abandon my ability to walk and I did not suggest that my acquaintance should throw away his crutches.




I am not interested in kicking people's crutches out from under them. But I am also not interested in having my relatively healthy legs assaulted by crutches.

In short, I am going to continue my walk down Walford Road, too small to stop the taunting, but too big to be a part of it.

I've stopped even looking in on 'those' threads, for any number of reasons, but mainly because I no longer find the tedious verbal roundabout even slightly entertaining.

For the record, I have no problem with the notion of happy-sappy believers for whom religious belief is a crutch, however I do become annoyed with those for whom their particular delusion takes destructive form as a blunt instrument

'I have no problem with the notion of happy-sappy believers for whom religious belief is a crutch, however I do become annoyed with those for whom their particular delusion takes destructive form as a blunt instrument'

Indeed, for both clauses of that statement.

As you both all know, it's all perception. I believe that the moon is made of a very tasty blue cheese, you think it's a very well aged cheddar. Prove me wrong, prove yourself right. The point is... The Point.

http://www.bluegrass.kctcs.edu/LCC/ENG/101nil.html

(I listen to this regularly, I highly recommend it to you (especially *Think About Your Troubles*, a friend with BiPolar finds it helpful.)

I see what you are saying, but is the metaphor/allegory/whatever actually accurate?

I'm sure for some it is. But for others it is more akin to having been brought in an environment where using crutches is the norm, even if you have healthy legs and need no aid. You come to depend, to need, them because it is part of your life and you have always used them. But you'll never experience your full potential to walk unaided if you never try to walk without them. Is there not then a role for others in aiding those so hindered to explore their full potential? Not that I am saying that is what goes on in those threads, but in general.

Perhaps a different medical analogy could be used. Say you had a reoccuring illness and seen the doctor many years ago and been a particular treatment which has controlled the illness for all those years. It's a pretty good treatment, doesn;t fix everything but makes life livable and so you get on with things. However, in that time medical knowledge has moved on and there is now a better treatment which gives better results and deals with more of the symptoms. Still doesn't cure everything but means the old treatment is no longer needed. Should you offer this new treatment to the person? Should you try and persuade them to take it?

I guess it also depends on whether the illness is infectious or not. Or if the person is trying to persuade other able bodied people to use crutches.

Just exploring the issue

I think that for many who have been using the 'crutch' for years, their 'legs' have so atrophied that it would be very difficult, even with help, for them to ever 'walk' without the 'crutch'. It's tragic, but it might be best to just let them carry on.

Unless they start forcing 'crutches' onto healthy children.

All I know is that I am not unhappy with myself and that I can justify myself and my world quite easily- to myself. I wonder why I feel the urge sometimes to justify it all to others or why I care what others do unless it directly or indirectly affects me or those I care about.

The whole thing reminds me of when I was a full-on vegetarian. When I would mention it to omnivores they would mostly immediately go on the offensive, as if I was saying that meat eating was somehow wrong. Then I would have to explain that it was a personal choice and not a crusade. Human nature is a bitch, it would seem.

*This country is going to hell in a hand basket. *They* are ruining society.* If so, what can you or I do about it? Argue endlessly in a tiny little room on the net? I'll argue my point and then when it is rejected I'll try and find out why. After that it's just mental masturbation, OMO.

I was listening to CBC while driving this morning and Anna Maria had on a Priest, a Rabbi and a Theologian to talk about 'Spiritual Leadership'. After a while I had to turn it off because it almost sounded to me like 'blah blah blah'. I say almost because I could understand each individual word and even the sentences, but nothing seemed to have any coherent meaning. At one point the Rabbi decided to define what he meant by spirituality and he said something like 'the spiritual is all the parts of reality which cannot be empirically tested, which cannot be measured, which cannot be felt with our senses.' then he gave a few examples such as love and gratitude.

well, I, for one, have felt both love and gratitude and if they were not felt with my senses, I don't know what I felt them with. Furthermore, both love and gratitude can be and I'm sure have been empirically studied.

the entire discussion was incoherent as far as I could tell.

Am I missing something? Is there something wrong with me?

>>it almost sounded to me like 'blah blah blah'<

Exactly! Incoherent! That's what religious/supernatural twaddle sounds like to me, and that's what I keep saying, (or did), on 'those' threads!

Maybe there's something wrong with me, too

btw, for a moment there I thought you were telling us a joke: "A priest, a rabbi, and a theologian...."

I felt like it must have been a joke as soon as she introduced her guests.

I do wonder why the cbc ended up with a theologian rather than an Imam.

"A priest, a rabbi, and an armadillo..."

Hi anhaga

(Haven't read this thread, sorry. Just posting now in response to your post on Dawkins and why you suddenly decided to post and what it meant. I wasn't entirely sure. Apologies if I've misunderstood your purpose or reason.)

I just saw your post on the Dawkins thread. I'm now past caring. I'm fairly sure now that it is actually someone being very clever and calculating; unfortunately I've come across such people in my psychiatric travels. Psychiatrists normally speak about personality disorders, whatever the hell that means. Such people make it their life's purpose to cluck with other peoples' heads as much as they can. It's one long journey of inflicting as much insanity, chaos and confusion on other people as they can manage. I can assure you these people exist. Many of them pass for fairly normal. A common symptom is that such destructive behaviour goes on and on and on for years. It doesn't change. It is utterly unrelenting.

For someone like me who's own sense of reality is often quite shaky I find spending any time around such people to be very detrimental to my mental health.

I have only one way of dealing with them once I am finally sure what is going on and I have had my feelings and thoughts repeatedly clucked with, I have to dehumanise them in mind. Either that or I have to find a way to never encounter them again.

That is not possible quite clearly here.

Precious discussion and debate about ideas is repeatedly and cynically sabotaged.

Sorry if you think me callous. But I have my own sanity to think of and put first.

Sorry anhaga, I agree with Effers

There is an agenda at work here. It is destructive and self-pity is only one of the weapons in the arsenal. Crutch, my a**. It's a bludgeon and it's used to hurt people.

Why we tolerate it is beyond me. The pattern is absolutely clear and has repeated itself almost a dozen times in the last half decade.

*Why we tolerate it is beyond me*

Isn't that the point? Do we tolerate it? The act of us *defending to the death the right of a person to speak even if we disagree* is just another weapon in her arsenal. By this point can't we see that someone who chooses what phrases or indeed what individual words to *respond* to can't be reasoned with?

Personally I'll just watch from a distance and now and then throw in a non sequitur or alternately a bit of relevant humour. So sue me.

*What if they gave a war and nobody came?*
John Lennon

>Personally I'll just watch from a distance<

But why? The Dawkins thread has sometimes been brilliant. I've learnt loads from Roy's and Clive's links about Dawkins et al. But of course they are rarely there now. Basically because of her. Lets be honest that thead could be a hive of exciting discussion. What is it much of the time? Something like a WW1 trench.

I'm not watching from a distance OR making any sort of excuse for someone who deliberately and cynically sabotages something good for years.

At least in the Great war they took people out and shot them when they sabotaged their comrades.

That's about how I honestly feel now.

I'll watch from a distance when the troll steps in. As for sabotage, am I included in the list of wooden shoe throwers? I see humour in most everything but not in trolls or people bashing their heads against stone walls.

Yes, the Dawkins thread is and was occasionally brilliant, I go to it immediately when I open up hootoo. I must say that I have been alternately disgusted and weary of it on occasion as well. I make no excuse for the troll, I just don't really want to engage it.

Yes well that's why I'm so incredibly angry; yes we Brits can do 'beside ourselves with rage' you know, , because I so absolutely love the ideas. Roy is a really good friend of mine; he even goes to Dawkins' meetings sometimes I think in London. He can't stand what keeps happening because of HER. Lets be 100% honest here if she wasn't around this wouldn't be happening.

As much as I love Gif it annoys the hell out of me that he treats her like a normal human being when she behaves for months on end, anything but.

It's clucking ruined what could be brilliant; which presumably is what she aims for.



That's why it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if the old WW1 laws came back to deal with such people, very quickly and effectively. I'd volunteer for the squad in a shot.

gee. I seemed to have stirred the pot a bit.

I posted because I realized that vicky has stated a number of times that religion is her iron lung and yet nobody had taken her up on it. If it's really her iron lung then she should be able to graciously accept that many of us can breathe without help and we should try taking her at her word and let her have her artificial aid to help her with her apparently admitted limitations.

now, if she doesn't want to be treated as someone with a disability, she shouldn't talk about iron lungs, and if we aren't willing to c.ut her the slack we would allow a tuberculosis patient who was down to half a lung then we're being rather unpleasant


Unless . . .

any of the points which Gif brought up on the other thread come into play, in which case, hit her with her crutch and tell her that you are doing it because she has been lashing out with it herself.



But I won't be a part of it. I have no desire for conflict.


Unless . . .

she seeks me out in order to whack me with her crutch. Or to spit more purile rubbish from C. S. Lewis, the Danielle Steele of the theological world. (I was going to say the Dan Brown of the theological world but then I realized that Dan Brown is the Dan Brown of the theological world)


now I'm going to get ready to go out in -30 C ish weather to donate blood because there can be no morality or selfless acts without god.

Well that's one thing I've not been able to do. If you take meds regualarly that won't let you give blood.

You may think I'm over reacting about things anhaga. I don't. I think discussion, debate, creativity etc, especially that which goes on here on this site is a wonderful and precious thing.

All my life I have absolutely loved sharing ideas with people. And this place is so wonderful because people from all over the world can do it. That's pretty special.

And so if for years on end someone appears to enjoy sabotaging that; I have no patience. I DON"T understand it.

Say if someone at university behaved like that, they'd be expelled. The same should happen in schools I think to those who continually disrupt and spoil things for others without changing.

At least the spring is now coming and I can spend more time when I get home in the garden. I went out earlier and there was a cacophony of blackbird/thrush and sparrow chirrupping. I just planted some broad beans and potatoes in the garden. It was wonderful.

It's been quite spring like here today in London. -30 for you, blimey.

Trolls are only as effective as they are allowed to be.

If troll posts, and the troll, are simply ignored they are rendered powerless.

One of the main reasons I no longer bother with 'those' threads, in particular the Dawkins thread, is because many reasonable posts by others ended up being ignored, while undue attention was given the outrageous troll posts.

In RL, a disruptive individual is dealt with in a different way, often involving application of high-voltage current, but in VL the most effective method is to consistently refuse to feed them, until eventually the troll, unsated, becomes bored and wanders off

~~~

It seems to be slightly warmer here today!