For instance, my feminism tells me that domestic violence is a horrible manifestation of patriarchal society, with defenseless women being preyed upon by their overbearing husbands.
My ER experience tells me that a lot of domestic violence is two drunks getting into a fight, with the weakest one getting hurt the most.
And that soon, they will be calling out to one another in slurred voices, "I looooove you". "I looove you, too."
It's hard to hold on to your ideals in this situation.
But there is one conclusion that every new employee draws that I vehemently argue with.
It never fails that after they have been working in the ER for a while, they announce that they have a new theory. What might that be?
Well, it's that we are messing with Mother Nature. People used to die if they were stupid, but now we save them and they reproduce, and there will be none but stupid people in the future.
For one, this is not a new theory. It's called eugenics, and it was invented right along with Darwin, although not by him.
Hitler gave it a bad name, but every new generation invents it. (See "Idiocracy" for a very funny example.) And I remember a comedian, talking about the people in San Francisco who heard that a tsunami was predicted and went down to the beach to watch. He called it "Nature's way of weeding out the stupid".
Actually, smart people were not the ones who survived in the past. We are the descendants of a very long line of people who survived disease. Some of each of our ancestors were the only ones out of multiple children in a family who survived to adulthood.
To this day, disease kills millions of people each year, far more than die in stupid accidents. And smart people, of course, can make careless mistakes that lead to death.
Disease actually kills more people than war. This is why the US war machine spends so much money on biological warfare. They even tried, in the late 1960s, to engineer a disease that would attack a person's immune system, so that any disease would kill them, stating that it would be perfected in 5 to 10 years. But of course, no such disease showed up, did it?
And, as a heretic, I feel solidarity with all the heretics burned at the stake in medieval Europe. To me, this was the ruling class weeding out the intelligent, leaving only those who were willing to either believe, or to submit to fear and pretend to believe, to reproduce.
Galileo was a famous victim of the Church, but there were countless (because not counted, like victims of the US today) others who died for being intelligent or rebellious.
9 comments:
That's interesting. I work in a battered women's shelter and see the oppression of women and children from a completely different perspective. The man may or may not be a drinker. For the most part, the woman has been occupying herself raising the children. Generally the man has been tyrannizing the woman and children and physically attacks them because he enjoys it and guarantees his power over them this way. "Men's rights" advocates mislead the public when they pretend that the man is a hapless little victim of "domestic violence."
Well, I kind of hesitated putting that into my blog, but I've seen it so much!
I'm sure that your perspective is more accurate.
It's like the blind men and the elephant. They all saw a different part of the problem.
And I'm definitely not sympathetic to "men's rights". Come on. They are the stronger ones, usually.
Although we had a man stabbed by a 90 pound woman who's HIV+,and seems weak. And he was stabbed almost lethally.
He would have died in the old days.
But that wasn't, strictly speaking, domestic violence.
Just a fight among friends.
I think if you look up the statistics on democide (governments killing their own people) the most educated and intelligent go first.
Oh, yeah.
That's what I'm sayin'.
Wagelaborer, I'm closing down my blog as of today. People might think because I can put a few words together and find some good photographs that I'm intelligent.
I can't willyu downup poskshovelling.
There, now I'm stupid! And safe!
Seriously, great article. And the problem is that the stupid breed like rabbits.
...but there were countless (because not counted, like victims of the US today) others who died for being intelligent or rebellious.
Even here at home we can count being fed a steady stream of bread and circuses to keep us quiet and docile. So much more humane than killing us outright. ;-)
David G, I do recommend Idiocracy. Stupid breeding like rabbits, while intelligent limit their families is the point of the movie. And I've seen it in real life!
Kvatch, that's true. But I also prefer TV and lots of food to burning at the stake!
So, wagelaborer, you must be one of the "smart ones", eh?
Everybody always thinks it's all about them, that they're the smartest, holiest, etc., that they've got the answers to life, the universe, and everything.
Generally, these people tend to be hypocrites: jetting around on private jets while lecturing the plebes on global warming. Producing offspring who each consume as much as 100 third world children while condescending to instruct the third world on limiting consumption. Telling others to be peaceful while exhibiting more violent behavior than any civilization in the history of the world.
There are few things as disgusting to a rational person as hypocrisy.
Uh, yeah. I am one of the smart ones.
And clearly you aren't. The point of my post is that being smart isn't reason enough to reproduce or be in charge.
Duh.
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