What Type Of Government Would You Have..

[torn asunder]

Maybe not see EVERYTHING, but definitely have my eyes open through time & experience & the kind of wisdom that only comes with age.

I repeat only comes with age.

Scoff, rejoin, doubt, give me "examples" of how "wrong" I am, go ahead.

nope, just going to whole-heartedly disagree, and leave it at that!

[Fierce Critter]

nope, just going to whole-heartedly disagree, and leave it at that!

I expected nothing less.

[torn asunder]

I expected nothing less.

[phee]

Once, he has exhausted belittling others arguments (Phee/Erin)

dispensing with some 19th century political history he copied and pasted from a right wing blog (calm down now, I'm sure it was from a reliable source that you can rattle off the top of your head),

baited whoever dares to question his all-knowing supremacy through feigned outrage at such stupidity continued with laughing at any/all thoughts of that person,

personally attack the person,

tells the person to keep their thoughts to themself or shut up (a desperate move if you ask me),

Eh... don't worry too much about me mate (lol).

The question was hypothetical... and instead of simply stating his opinion, he decided to say "I will wait for Phee's Socialist government to collapse" or something to that effect... basically trying to start an argument instead of simply talk... I am used to it, it basically tells me that any and all discussion about the topic at hand will just simply turn into a masked flame war... It's an interesting kind of threadjack...

[Steven]

Eternal -I can only add this to your lengthy response: please dont use that dark blue colored font because my old ass eyes cannot pick it out clearly.

Moving on: Camille, I love you. that is all.

Even Mo Moving On:

I think I understand what Mike is saying here, but I'm much more inclined to lean toward Camille's point of view. And here is why.....

Wisdom - comes from experience and application of all that wonderful data you've filled your head with. You begin taking those passionate theories and branching out with them in your relationships, your freindships, your work ethics, your spirituality or lack theoreof, your leadership roles, your ability to live indipendently, your overall quality of life.

Then it gets fun as you learn to factor in the human element of all that you've learned and you begin to search for some form of synergy in all that those around you have learned, albeit equally as passionatly, and often in opposition to your own lauded ideals. Again you apply this to all of the above.

Then you get to fail. repeatedly. you get to understand your own mortality and degree of exhaustion. You get to start recgonizing and hopefully dealing with all of those little tapes playing in your psyche that mom and pop and society in general placed there. You get to know what its like to grind life out Thats just a little bit of it. and all of it, takes time.

Being brilliant, being gifted, having depth at a young age, or an old soul, or even starting out very young in the world (which incidently I did and was on my own and stayed on my own as a teen) - none of those things equal what you learn to recognize over time. Because what you learn to recognize (hopefully) over time more than anything else is

the mystery of the ever changing YOU.

when I spoke of un-earned pride I simply was referring to what I beleived was a lack of daily grind life expereince coupled with a spoonful of hautiness.

so..............get out of the parental's house - live on your own - find, nurture and maintain a significant relationship over time, fuk it up, fix it, make some concessions, make some confessions, purchase a property, get lost in and then found in your addictions, lead and teach lifeskills to those who seek you out, be teach-able to those who seek you out, recognize your fears and force yourself out of your comfort zones, experience great tragedy, take your muse forward in a community of leaders, mentor, fail, get wrecked, get clear, risk, risk, risk risk risk..................................fuk it all up and risk again. that sort of thing to me is ditch digging, none of it is glorious and none of it makes me "better" than any of you or more worthwhile but all of it has depth and definition and even purpose.

[torn asunder]

so..............get out of the parental's house - live on your own - find, nurture and maintain a significant relationship over time, fuk it up, fix it, make some concessions, make some confessions, purchase a property, get lost in and then found in your addictions, lead and teach lifeskills to those who seek you out, be teach-able to those who seek you out, recognize your fears and force yourself out of your comfort zones, experience great tragedy, take your muse forward in a community of leaders, mentor, fail, get wrecked, get clear, risk, risk, risk risk risk..................................fuk it all up and risk again. that sort of thing to me is ditch digging, none of it is glorious and none of it makes me "better" than any of you or more worthwhile but all of it has depth and definition and even purpose.

agreed, but i still say it has nothing to do with age - some people live a lifetime in only a few years. i totally get where you & FC are coming from, i just don't see how age *has to* enter into it. regardless of my age, i did almost all of my "ditch-digging", as you call it, within a 2-3 year time span. for that matter, there were some things i learned without having to experience them, such as addictions ruining lives, through watching friends lives fall apart. i call that being smart, not "lacking experience"...

[jadnifer]

Its sad to say it but I dont really know enough about government and politics to really have any kind of comment on what kind of government I would like to have

[torn asunder]

Its sad to say it but I dont really know enough about government and politics to really have any kind of comment on what kind of government I would like to have

shit!! *that's* what this thread was about!?!?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Wow. I was enjoying a converation with Erin.

"right wing blogs"? http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/co...n.overview.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

and Phee.. sorry you took that as an insult or a flame. I was just giving my reasons for not going with the types of government that had already been posted about.

half of page of slam Gaf... man I am loved.

[torn asunder]

half of page of slam Gaf... man I am loved.

[jadnifer]

shit!! *that's* what this thread was about!?!?

Thats exactly right....were you thrreadjacking again??? LMAO

[Steven]

agreed, but i still say it has nothing to do with age - some people live a lifetime in only a few years. i totally get where you & FC are coming from, i just don't see how age *has to* enter into it. regardless of my age, i did almost all of my "ditch-digging", as you call it, within a 2-3 year time span. for that matter, there were some things i learned without having to experience them, such as addictions ruining lives, through watching friends lives fall apart. i call that being smart, not "lacking experience"...

Dude,

no you havent done your ditch digging early, not all of it, thats simply impossible. you only get 24/7 365 per year. But you will. And your one of my favorites in here, I think your going to do very well.

Let me add this: Mike I AM that guy who lived a lifetime in a few years.

And I know others who's storys and experiences within a short and young timeframe beat out my own.

And I know those sorts of people who were just like you noted: smart.

and I know them at 19, at 25, and now at 41.

and the difference is monumental, for all of us, and we've all had this discussion with one another.

I also know the ones who wasted their experiences, were being taught that now as a society, to leave nothing behind.

let's get back to the root of this whole thread jack: Pride. earned and un-earned. Remember that part of that ditch digging involves celebration, victory, success. everything counts.

[Msterbeau]

for that matter, there were some things i learned without having to experience them, such as addictions ruining lives, through watching friends lives fall apart. i call that being smart, not "lacking experience"...

You're digging your own ditch on this one Mike. I generally don't care about age when it comes to most things so I'm totally with you from the "Age doesn't matter" POV. But here you're saying you learned from the experiences of friends. Guess what? That's YOUR experience. Just because someone else did the hard part doesn't mean it wasn't "experienced" over time, by you. And it may have been over a shorter time... but it was still time. And you were older then you were at the beginning of it. It's not tied to an absolute age... but wisdom can be tied to age in that you will always know more later in life then earlier.

Waits for Mike to come back and bang his head on the wall...

[phee]

It seems to me the older I get the less I come to realize that I know...

Every year that passes I understand less and less of what is around me....

[Steven]

It seems to me the older I get the less I come to realize that I know...

Every year that passes I understand less and less of what is around me....

Ah Phee.....this was the best and most honest response yet....awesome

[Msterbeau]

It seems to me the older I get the less I come to realize that I know...

Every year that passes I understand less and less of what is around me....

Knowing that you know less is a greater level of knowing.

[know_buddy_kares]

Not complaining by any means, I did like to see everyones own opinions as to how they would run things. But you gotta think for a sec, be ready to defend your methods with logical reasons, not lowering to make personal attacks on one another. Accept the possibility that you just might not be 100% on your ideas, and just TRY to listen to someone who thinks differently if they debate your idea respectfully.

The main goal of this post was to try to get people to think, not to get into a political argument. Truth is, none of us are in any seat of power to really do anything about the situation immediately. Like Gaf has said, it's rare I agree wtih him, however I agree with him in the idea that if you don't like a policy or law (gay marrige for example) do something to change it. That's a very good first step in the right direction to change and improve anything. The fact that this isn't being done, nothing's being questioned and challenged like it should, is why our government is so far detached with the population it governs. True they're not listening to us, however it's because they stopped after a while when we weren't listening to them.

I'd like to keep this topic on hand rather than get in a small debate or argument over one single tunnel vision of a certain law rather than take the whole bigger picture.

Put on your thinking caps for this one people. You said what you would do, now why would you do it, and think realisticly, what reactions would you think happen after you do it?

[torn asunder]

You're digging your own ditch on this one Mike. I generally don't care about age when it comes to most things so I'm totally with you from the "Age doesn't matter" POV. But here you're saying you learned from the experiences of friends. Guess what? That's YOUR experience. Just because someone else did the hard part doesn't mean it wasn't "experienced" over time, by you. And it may have been over a shorter time... but it was still time. And you were older then you were at the beginning of it. It's not tied to an absolute age... but wisdom can be tied to age in that you will always know more later in life then earlier.

Waits for Mike to come back and bang his head on the wall...

true, but you're getting into semantics now. by the time i finish writing this, i'm older, and will know more. i can learn/experience things like this without having attained some magical "age of wisdom" when people will say, "oh, you're Xyrs old - ...

steven was implying (not trying to put words in your mouth - just my impression) that because brass hadn't experienced/lived through some serious hardships, her "knowledge" or "wisdom" was lacking, and that her pride was "unearned". to follow that logic, if i learned, not through living, but watching addiction ruin someone's life, would that imply that my experience was less important than someone who'd actually lived it? to look at it one way, i would be the wiser of the two for not going down that path!

also, both steven and FC seem to be implying (disclaimer as above) that were we to be in our late 30's-early 40's they'd respect our experiences/wisom more.

example:

Steven, myself, and a few others on the board are around the same age. Late 30's, early 40's, some older.

The older I get - and I think Steven is at the same point in his life - the more I can clearly see what's going on in the world around me. Maybe not see EVERYTHING, but definitely have my eyes open through time & experience & the kind of wisdom that only comes with age.

I repeat only comes with age.

Scoff, rejoin, doubt, give me "examples" of how "wrong" I am, go ahead.

But when you are about a decade older - then, and only then, will you be able to see where we "were" coming from when we say things like this.

edited to add: i tried to figure out how to split this into another thread, but it would have removed some posts that had material related to both topics, so i left it alone...

[know_buddy_kares]

edited to add: i tried to figure out how to split this into another thread, but it would have removed some posts that had material related to both topics, so i left it alone...

No biggie, i just wanted to give a reminder of what the whole idea was intended behind this thread. They all are still related, but i just didn't wanna see it getting too bad here... i know how easily a debate or discussion about politics can snap into an immature, "NO, YOU'RE THE STUPID HEAD!!" mentality..

[Daniel]

I don't know. I'd simply sell it to the highest bidder, which would probably be Microsoft or Starbucks. Or Exxon/Mobile. I figure, best case scenario is I set up a fair and just government, and within three generations after my death, it will be run by the biggest corporate lobbyist around anyway. I may as well control which one it will go to.

[torn asunder]

Knowing that you know less is a greater level of knowing.

ah, but you don't truly know less, you just realize there are more questions than you first believed...

[torn asunder]

and to stay on-topic...

an anarcho-syndicalist commune!!!

[Daniel]

Without the experience of age, there's still a lot one just plain does NOT know.

Age really plays no direct factor in this, as it is a relative concept. The important factor is the experience, and the ability of the experiencer to understand and process the experience. Of course, one naturally experiences more as they accumulate years, but some people experience various things faster than other people, depending upon how quickly they learn, and the frequency of stimulus. Of course, any single person's perspectives change with time, and they also accumulate more knowledge. We are like whirlpools in a stream, so to speak.

But, comparing two different people's wisdom and knowledge on the basis of age is unfair and fallacious, as time and experience are both relative. There are other factors involved. Let me provide an absurd, hypothetical scenario. For instance, someone with an IQ of 95 that lives in a village with a population of 58 that never, ever interacts with any other people besides immediate family at all is not likely to accumulate in fifty years the experience or wisdom obtained in three years of a homeless orphan in NYC with an IQ of 135 (assuming the orphan survives). Of course, compare said orphan at 18 with the same orphan at 50, and the later is probably the wiser (though not always). But the 18 year old orphan may very likely be wiser than the 50 year old luke-warm IQ isolated person.

Sure, we all have 24 hours in 7 day weeks in 52 week years. But, not every second's worth of experience is even close to being equal to every other second of experience. Not all experiences are equal, nor is every person's ability to understand and process their experiences the same as every other person's.

[torn asunder]

Age really plays no direct factor in this, as it is a relative concept. The important factor is the experience, and the ability of the experiencer to understand and process the experience. Of course, one naturally experiences more as they accumulate years, but some people experience various things faster than other people, depending upon how quickly they learn, and the frequency of stimulus. Of course, any single person's perspectives change with time, and they also accumulate more knowledge. We are like whirlpools in a stream, so to speak.

But, comparing two different people's wisdom and knowledge on the basis of age is unfair and fallacious, as time and experience are both relative. There are other factors involved. Let me provide an absurd, hypothetical scenario. For instance, someone with an IQ of 95 that lives in a village with a population of 58 that never, ever interacts with any other people besides immediate family at all is not likely to accumulate in fifty years the experience or wisdom obtained in three years of a homeless orphan in NYC with an IQ of 135 (assuming the orphan survives). Of course, compare said orphan at 18 with the same orphan at 50, and the later is probably the wiser (though not always). But the 18 year old orphan may very likely be wiser than the 50 year old luke-warm IQ isolated person.

Sure, we all have 24 hours in 7 day weeks in 52 week years. But, not every second's worth of experience is even close to being equal to every other second of experience. Not all experiences are equal, nor is every person's ability to understand and process their experiences the same as every other person's.

whaddya know!? someone actually get it!!

[Fierce Critter]

also, both steven and FC seem to be implying (disclaimer as above) that were we to be in our late 30's-early 40's they'd respect our experiences/wisom more.

Nope.

If I'm saying anything along those lines, I'm saying that with passing time, a person has more experiences and things they've learned, things they put all together into their personal make-up and then form opinions, viewpoints, insights, etc.

The more time one accumulates, the more data you have to factor in.

In a way, if person A is 25 years old and is of the opinion that purple socks just don't work, and person B is 45 years old and is of the opinion that purple socks just don't work, yes, I am more likely to respect the opinion of person B. Because I know how much more information, experience & knowledge person B has gained in that difference of 20 years.

It's a little hard to explain, but it's also fruitless to try to convince people who have not yet passed that milestone of understanding just how much they DON'T know. I was of the same mind in my 20's. Everything I believed centered around myself and my personal experiences, and what I saw of others around me. "What else is there to learn that would affect my opinion?"

Countless "else". It does kinda relate to what Phee says. The older one gets, the more questions crop up. Answers you thought you had in your teens may change because of things you learn in your 20's, and then comes your 30's with a whole different mess of input, and maybe you find you no longer feel the same way you did a decade ago. And so it goes, throughout your life. Answers come, opinions change, new answers crop up.

It does have to do with age. Because, talking physics (which is NOT something I dare to often do), you simply don't have at 20 what you will have at 30. And so on.

Basically, come to me when (the collective) you're well out of your 20's and maybe midway through your 30's or older and tell me you feel EXACTLY the same way you did now, and maybe I'll change my mind. But I'm willing to bet you'll be the one saying, "duh, it makes sense to me now."

Let me just add an aside. That, no names named, I do respect the input of a person who has shown themselves to be considerate of others and comport themselves accordingly. Whereas a person who is consistently belittling of others, rude, and closed-minded to opinions that don't 100% mesh with theirs is likely to earn a deaf ear.

And that is something that does NOT depend on age. I can think of someone years younger than me whose opinion I respect highly, and someone around my same age who could learn from those who are younger and respectful when choosing their own tack and methods of communication.