Bigthink - Category Features and Ideas Feed

Re: What is your favorite quote?

Bigthink — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:59:15 +0100

: I have a bunch - on http://www.keltch.com/quotes.html

Secession, Now we only have a 99% chance of falure...before, it was a sure thing

Bigthink — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:38:52 +0100

: While talking about some of the feelings that people have across the country about secession; a theme and camps seamed to develop; and someone stated openly,

' Deviancy is a difference that is morally repugnant to the majority. It really has no inherent value in itself.'

The following is my reply;

We All are contradictory in nature; on one hand we desire "normality" and at the same time we like "novelty". We shape ourselves to fit into our societies, and when the society is too repressive/oppressive, we push and pull at the boundaries of "acceptable" behavior (appearance, etc). This is the 'creative contradiction'.

"That man (or woman) is a creature that needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his (or her) conformity and define his (or her) deviancy" - Freda Adler

There are many theories regarding deviancy. Not just "formal" and "informal". There is also a very basic statistical deviancy. Being physically deformed is a type of "deviancy" in that it deviates from the "norm", but we don't often think of it in terms of "deviancy"; although the physically deformed are often treated the same as a "behavioral deviant". There is also "antagonistic" deviancy, where the social norms are "wrong" or too narrow; the Stonewall Riots are a good example of "antagonistic deviancy".

"Labeling theory" is the idea that once society "labels" a type of behavior or a person as deviant, individuals identify with the label and it becomes a "self-fulfilling prophecy". There is also a Marxist social control theory; which states that the "dominant culture" uses the stigma of deviancy to stay in power. "Differential association" places the origin of deviancy with association; that the friends we have around us are what stimulate the desire for deviancy; "peer pressure", "learned behavior" etc.

Primal is change, completely and unfortunately suppressed by civilization.

Deviancy is a purposeful act of rebellion to stretch the boundaries of "social norms".

Many of us are creative yet not informal nor informal deviants.

Creativity is the foundation of change and is what makes the world a better place to live. If it weren't for creative people, we would still be living in caves. Humans are always looking for ways to make things simpler, easier and more comfortable; as we all heard this saying: necessity is the mother of all invention. Creativity is part of all nature, it's secrets make us a cut above other animals.

The "dominant culture" uses the stigma of deviancy to stay in power. I think our academic (and I suppose religious....heck thats where true psychology started) institutions have defined deviancy and it is here to stay.

Are 'we' to accept that change can be held back with a 'label'?

Is a sense of humor vital to life?

Bigthink — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:19:58 +0100

One of the things that I have to remind myself every so often is that life is to be serious to be taken that way. Laughter has been shown to have health benefits.

Where do you find humor in your daily life?

Re: What do you want to tell Big Thinkers?

Bigthink — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:14:24 +0100

: The public should stand with the LGBT community against hatred.

Re: What sparked your interest in food?

Bigthink — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:37:32 +0100

Barber overcompensated for his grandmother's bad cooking.

Transcript: You know I don’t . . . I mean my grandmother was a terrible cook, and my mother died when I was very young, and my father was a terrible cook. So I think, you know, I overcompensated a little bit for the cooking end of things. So I don’t know why . . . I don’t know what drove me to be a chef exactly. But the kind of chef that I’ve become I think was, you know, sort of unconsciously, you know, inculcated by this connection to land – especially like to my grandmother’s sense of responsibility, which was huge. It was like . . . It was like she . . . She very much believed in open space and in doing everything possible to preserve it. And that meant farming in the case of where Blue Hill was. I mean to preserve that pastureland you literally needed to pasture. And so you know there was a responsibility that came attached to the pleasure of the views, literally. And I think somehow I’ve connected that with food; and the idea to have those views and that open space, you’ve gotta eat it. So you know it’s chef and . . . You know it’s being a chef and providing pleasure by way of a kind of responsibility. That’s . . . that’s pleasurable in and of itself. I graduated and I was a little bit lost on what to do. And I went out and baked bread in California for a while, and kind of cooked on the side just to earn some money. And I thought actually maybe I’d write about . . . I thought I was gonna write about a bunch of things. But I ended up just earning extra money by cooking, and that led . . . One thing led to another, and I . . . You know I was always kind of undecided, I think, until I went to France. And then I was really cooking, and I was sort of . . . A light went off I think. Although it wasn’t an “Aha!” moment. It wasn’t one of those things. I just like . . . I’m still questioning things as we sit here now.

Recorded on: 2/11/08

Re: What is the common good?

Bigthink — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:04:37 +0100

: Michael Walzer tells us why we should care.

Re: Which philosophers have passed the test of time?

Bigthink — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:04:35 +0100

: John Rawls, among others.

Re: What Interests Michael Walzer?

Bigthink — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:58:37 +0100

: Walzer's interests are as diverse as his influences.

Re: Why do you find ignorance interesting?

Bigthink — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:50:06 +0100

Endless stuff of comedy.

Transcript:

To allude to one of the great comedies about unknowing ever written which was Pale Fire, Charles Kinboat and amusement park across the street while he’s tried to concentrate on his own annotation of a thousand line poem. Nabokov’s characters are wonderfully, I mean that’s all-- so much of that is the comedy of not knowing when one of the kids at school passes Kinboat the note that says, “Man you got H-dash-dash-dash-dash-S real bad” and the word is obviously halitosis but he said but of course what Kinboat tells us is “That’s not enough dashes for the word hallucinations, you know, it’s I mean it’s so perfect, you don’t know where to begin with how extraordinary that is because of course Kinboat is having hallucinations and the entire piece is filled with all of these faulty memories and these completely hallucinated scenes. But his response when someone passes him a note about his bad breath is to misread it as accusing him of having hallucinations in order to of course, I mean this is a on hallucinations but of course he knows he is. So that I mean that kind of play I really like for instance but it’s there in a lot of writers. Most comic characters are unknowing, they can’t be funny, I mean bad, unfunny comic characters can, but genuinely comic characters don’t know how funny they are, that is then they would just be witty or something or they’d be stitches. But so it’s impossible to imagine real comic scene without a high degree of unknowing, of hilarious lack of self knowledge, lack of awareness, otherwise, you know, you just get wit or you get slapstick or some less interesting sub genre of comedy. But, you know, somebody who comes out and thinks he’s incredibly important but is not, well that’s very funny, that’s a genuinely comic situation and we’re laughing because we see something that that person doesn’t, to take two examples. I think it has to do with my own taste for comic writing which I think tends to track pretty closely with the presence of real literature because that comedy of not knowing is so close to the tragedy of not knowing and so it’s just yeah, it grows out of my own sense of what literature is and what my taste in it is.

Other good comic writers, well Kafka’s very funny, “Man who loved children” is very funny, Dave Wallace is very funny. Most of these people I’m mentioning are very funny, Rilke not so funny but not entirely unfunny in that novel of Rilke’s there’s this great scene where young Rilke, there’s sort of there’s this family, there’s some family friends that they have to go and visit and it’s like it’s okay except this family is crazy and occasionally it comes because in the middle of a nice social evening, they all fall silent and go (nose sniffing) and they will all kind collectively hallucinate this ghost smell and the entire room will kinda go still and the family, I think they’re called the Schulan’s they all start creeping around sort of smelling, where’s that smell coming from, that’s a funny scene, so even Rilke could be funny.

Gogol yes, although yeah I admit I got a little bogged down when I went back and tried to reread “Dead Souls” not that long ago, I felt like I’d gotten “Dead Souls” on my first half reading and then full reading and it wasn’t quite working for me so much anymore. But yeah, very, very funny, but there’s a real bitter taste to Gogol’s humor I have to say, he was a chilly motherfucker and so even somebody who’s very, very dark and bleak like Kafka, it’s a much more humane and self implicating humor and I’m sure it’s there in Gogol too, it’s chilly stuff and kind of yeah one feels bad for how bad he must have felt to create that kind of humor and that’s not the best reaction to be having to the implied author I don’t think, feeling like whoa he must have been doing some real suffering to write that scene, like that’s not where you want the mind to be as you’re reading the scene. I don’t know, maybe just again a taste thing.

Recorded On: 4/1/08

FEATURE: How do poets compose?

Bigthink — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:41:07 +0100

How do the words become verse?

How do you compose?

Bigthink — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:29:05 +0100

: Big Think's poets tell us how the spin their poetry.

Re: What inspires your work?

Bigthink — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:45:41 +0100

: The ability of a great man to change his mind.

Re: How do you contribute?

Bigthink — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:44:47 +0100

: Riemen hopes to raise the essential questions about life and, in some small way, to restore meaning to language.

Re: What do you do?

Bigthink — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:43:47 +0100

: Riemen leads the Nexus Institute, a place to discuss life's big questions.

Re: What is your favorite proverb?

Bigthink — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:51:32 +0100

: I like the one Billy Collins referenced:

Every time the ax goes into the forest, all the trees think, "At least the handle is one of us."

What is your favorite proverb?

Bigthink — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:03:10 +0100

: A friend's Persian grandfather used to say, "when a big waves comes, lower your head and let it pass."

FEATURE: The Poets' Poets

Bigthink — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:17:49 +0100

No poet writes in a vacuum, so who inspired him?

Deliberate

Bigthink — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:19:53 +0100

Deliberate

You are deliberate about the food you put in your mouth, you are deliberate about what you spend your money on. You are deliberate about what you choose to wear, who you spend time with or what you read, watch on TV, which video or DVD you choose. These things seem to be important because you want to have good experiences. Yet most of you are not as deliberate about the thoughts and feelings you indulge in, instead choosing to let circumstances and the choices of others dictate what goes on in your mind and how you feel.

You wouldn't let others dictate what you put in your mouth, if you knew from past experience, you did not like it? Then why do you let the choices of others and how they choose to live, think or what others do with their time here on earth, dictate how you think and feel? You know from past experience that grumpy, worried, critical, judgmental, angry, or defensive thoughts do NOT FEEL good, and didn't you say you wanted to spread joy and have a great life?

Feeling good and having a magnificent life is all about what you deliberately choose to think about.

Your thoughts have electromagnetic vibrations that are attracting similar vibrations to you all the time. What is coming is always reflected back to you in your current emotions or feelings.

The most important part of life to be deliberate about, is what you choose to think and feel. Take time to be a deliberate thinker by deliberately choosing better feeling thoughts no matter what circumstances you are encountering, because when you are deliberate about choosing thoughts that feel good, you will HAVE the life you have always wanted.

Your thoughts are creating your world, treat them with great respect, and be the powerful deliberate creator you came here to be!

Your greater self, the Universe..

Is there a situation in your life which you would like to feel better about and find more clarity with so you can be more vibrationally aligned with your desires, feel good and live the life you dream?click here to book a guidance session with KAren today

allow more of your Well Being to flow.

Our Lady of the Holy Cinema

Bigthink — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:15:46 +0100

Can a secular humanist organization build the same kind of socially progressive, inspiring, close-knit community that many religious institutions possess?

Welcome to Our Lady of the Holy Cinema. After the processional, please remain standing for the blessing of the popcorn. Following services there will be a coffee hour, after which Deacon Scorcese will give a lecture entitled “Morality, Mistresses and Prostitution: Eliot Spitzer vs. Fanny and Alexander.” Now please turn to page 235 in your hymnal and rise for our opening hymn, “Hooray for Hollywood.”

OK, maybe I’m being a little over the top, but I am gay, after all. I’m also a musician, and for a good portion of my life I have played the piano and sung in a myriad of temples and churches. Most have been comprised of interesting and altruistic groups of people who discuss morality, traditions and ethics; organize and fight for progressive goals; build close and admirable bonds among people--in other words, partake of many fulfilling activities that I would greatly enjoy participating in. As an atheist, though, no matter how much I admire their sense of community, devotion, and social action, I've never felt comfortable becoming a member of any of these groups, as I don’t believe in the central rationale for their existence or mine—God.

As more and more atheists are becoming visible, why not consider providing people with some of the same positive elements that organized religion does—community, purpose, and a sense of inspiration? I would even go as far to say that it is our duty to be a counter-balance to the increasing religiosity in American society. We are social beings who crave fellowship and respond to inspiration.

Personally, I have had the most inspirational and revelatory experiences of my life in movie theaters. Great films have moved me to tears, made me laugh, stirred me to anger and inspired me to action. Why can't a group of cinema and humanity lovers meet once a week, watch a film, discuss the ethical situations revealed, care for their members, and organize to help effect change in the world?

How can Individuals choose to improve the lack of inspiring contribution online?

Bigthink — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:45:05 +0100

Why are individual choices towards contribution, too often not respectful of the magnitude of virtual communication,i.e. information exchange, our online resources provide?

It seems tell-tale of the human species that precedence of "when emotion goes up, intelligence goes down" is so evident as we interact with the www.

For many years now we have had access to communicating on a planet-wide basis more instantaneous than ever before in the brief history of humankind. And, yet the positive, mutually beneficial results ratio is much less than that of 'the prattle,' massively made up of ignorance, prejudice, fear, generalization, justification, rationale and actual choice to interact based on these human limitations.

It is unfortunate that this asset is in the hands of so many who are not even close to being prepared to utilize it to the full and positive benefit(s) it has had potential for all along.

I'm not advocating any kind of controls or un-evolution. Please don't read such into my comments and please don't suggest such, as this is clearly not the type of answers that will be implemented. Betterments have to come from individual choice.

What ideas can we share to support the individual towards progressive, beneficial eventualities from this astonishing life accessory?