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| Senator Barack Obama,
You stated recently in your interview with Rick Warren that "Answering [the question of when a baby gets human rights] with specificity... you know... is above my pay grade."
Sen. Obama, you have my respect for making that point, because I completely agree with you. Furthermore, this is a point that needs to be more loudly and more often. However, that statement completely misses the issue, because if you are elected President of the United States, you will, more than any other elected official, answer this question as far as the U.S. Government is concerned. I agree with you that it is unfortunate that the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon themselves to answer this question. But they have opened the issue, and as long as the Supreme Court retains the power to exclude unborn fetuses from the most basic human right to life, the President will have the responsibility, whether he likes it or not, to take that profoundly important issue into consideration when selecting Supreme Court Justices.
So, Sen. Obama, I have two questions for you:
If you are elected President, will you take responsibility for all the power you will wield as President? And, if so, at what point will you acknowledge that babies get human rights, when making Supreme Court selections? It is profoundly important that you, and we, the People, know, because, as you have acknowleged, there is a "moral and ethical element to this issue."
Respectfully,
Abe Lewis
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| So, I was recently re-reading some of my stuff from pre-2006, and was quite impressed. So I've decided to repost those posts onto my Xanga blog. Hopefully I haven't done this before. Here you go:
Metaphysical Dualism
Here's what I don't get about metaphysical dualism: I have never ever
heard anyone offer a good solid definition of what it means to be
physical or spiritual. Here are some attempts I've heard and why I
don't buy them:
1. If you can taste, touch, see, feel, or smell it, it's physical.
Problem:
There are many things that are considered physical that you cannot
detect with your senses, like sub-atomic particles. The other side of
the coin is that most "physical" things are sensed solely through their
influence on other "physical" entities, but supposedly "spiritual"
entities, like angels, demons, or God are perfectly capable of
influencing the "physical" world, and therefore would likewise be
sensible, if only for a limited time.
2. Everyone has an intuitive understanding of what it means to be "physical."
Problem:
First of all, I don't. Second of all, that intuition seems to abandon
people when presented with entities that fall outside of the
traditional enumerative definitions of physical and spiritual.
3. There are a few more, but I can't remember them at the moment.
You'd think this would be a critical question to answer, before you could start the dualist/monist debate.
What
causes this confusion? I suspect that the Biblical concept of spirit
would have included many things that we consider to be physical these
days, if they had been known in those days. Dualists believe that
"spiritual" entities are real and therefore are required to defend the
reality of the "spiritual." But the label of "physical" has meanwhile
been extended by discrete inclusion to include just about everything
that's discernible while still retaining a meaning that excludes the
"spiritual." So, the concept of "spiritual" has lost coherence due to
"physical's" semantic pillaging.
P.S. I should point out that
this is also a problem with physical monism, since to deny the
existence of the spiritual, you have to know what the spiritual is.
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| Well, continuing my tradition of substituting old poems for actual posts, here's one you've probably all read before. Hopefully I haven't already posted this one. Eventually I'll make a post when I actually have something to say.
The Young Man and the Sea
Next to the sea a soul was born
And kingdom's crown would he have worn
But youth's desire soon burnt and he
Fled from his duty to the sea.
Across the deep he sailed at will
And slept 'neath stars when winds grew still.
But if perchance he'd wake from sleep
By night's cold light he'd watch the deep.
On one such night he took his place
And looking down he saw a face.
A gentle form, her skin was white,
Her eyes like stars, her hair like night.
He reached to touch her flowing hair,
But to his grief she was not there.
The deep at once reclaimed the vision.
The deep became his young heart's prison.
Into the waves he leapt to swim.
His heart, below, called up to him.
He, swimming down, her face ne'er found.
He lost his will and quickly drowned.
A fisher caught him in his net.
A miracle! His life stayed yet.
He lay once more beneath the sky.
'Twas not his fate to, drowning, die.
His life remained, not memory.
He knew but longing for the sea.
He swam each night, his mind was set.
After six months they finally met.
He took her hand and spoke one line,
"My heart is yours; is your heart mine?"
Her answer put his mind at ease.
Man loving maid, they swam the seas.
But maid's proud father heard this tale.
He'd not let maid wed human male.
"If man with maid so longs to be,
Then from my deep he'll ne'er be free."
So father took the man and chained
him in a cave. Then he explained,
"He who'd wed maid must here respire--
Spirit of water, not of fire."
There he left him, kept from the air,
And his beloved found him there.
They tried with strength to break his chain.
It would not break, that much was plain.
Immortal mermaid wove a spell.
She took his form, he hers as well.
She who was mermaid now woman;
He who was human now merman.
So she breathed his final breath and died.
He, crying, pulled her to his side.
Sorrow his deathless body shook.
Deathless maid, his death she took.
A moonlight beam across the waves
Lends light to mouth of ocean caves.
A haunting echo from the gloom,
Calls its pain out to the moon.
At last his fate has come to be:
A drowning death he will not see.
What could not be at last is his;
He in immortal torture lives.
What beast should lie hid from all sight?
A tortured ghost, a wretched wight.
He waits and longs to be released,
To sleep as man, not dream as beast. | | |
| Consider the life of a man: He's born. If he's lucky he
spends his life with his mother until the age of five. When he's
five he gets sent off to be put under the supervision of other women at
school, where he will probably remain for the next 13 years of his
life. At school he is subjected to an endless stream of useless
and demeaning "exercises". When he rebels, he is labelled as
disruptive and immature. As he grows, he is told that boys mature
slower than girls. When he gets in conflicts with others, it is
dismissed as male aggression or competativeness. If he succeeds
at school, he is told that it is because the classroom is biased in his
favor. In school he learns one of the important lessons that is
likely to define his life: a man is someone who has turned 21,
graduated from school, has sex, drives cars, drinks alchohol, and makes
himself look good as much as he can. Beyond that, you're more
manly the more girls like you--the boy who has the most girls
infatuated with him is the best. Teachers are thrilled when boys
finally learn that lesson, because it empowers their primary means of
control: praise and shame. Eventually the boy graduates from
petty exercises to more complex games of pleasing the teacher, such as
papers, and class participation.
When he finally graduates from school, a "man" moves into the world of
actually getting paid for doing demeaning excercises. This is
very exciting to him, because he now has the resources to pursue his
real interest: ingratiating himself with women. If he happens to
do well in his career, he knows that it's because the workplace is
biased in his favor.
So, what does he feel at this point? Does he feel
respected? Does he feel loved? Does he feel he needs to get
married and have children? Does he feel like he owes society
anything? I don't think so. So what does he do?
Whatever he wants.
Then what happens? Maybe at this point his father or some older
man shows up and says, "You need to be a man! Make lots of
money/have a successful career/get married/stop doing what you want,
just like I did!"
Yeah, that's going to work.
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| So, I've recently felt like writing a Xanga post on one of the following topics:
1. Determinism
2. Masculinity
3. Art
I would like you to vote on which which topic you'd like me to write on, or which topic you'd like me to not write on by leaving a comment. You don't have to leave me eProps, but it couldn't hurt.
Let the voting begin! (And by this I'm praying that someone will actually vote.) | | |
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