Why I Oppose Abortion

[choiceone]

I agree with a lot of what you're saying here, but you're ignoring the success of pagan societies such as the Celts, Goths, and northern Native Americans who didn't obsess over having kids for agriculture. Instead, they constructively dedicated their energy towards the arts in cultivating ceremonies where they could celebrate who they were.

The truth is that we do not actually know very much about the societies of the Celts and Goths. As for Native Americans, the women of the Iroquois nations in what is now New York state traditionally spaced their pregnancies by means of abortion, an extremely common practice in hunter-gatherer and other small band societies.

If you were not aware of this, you might try starting with this read: Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non ... - Google Books

It might also interest you that chimpanzees also seem to space pregnancies conveniently by the use of abortifacients: Eating leaves to control reproduction: chimpanzees - Ask Nature - the Biomimicry Design Portal: biomimetics, architecture, biology, innovation inspired by nature, industrial design

 

[EcoFemSoc]

So you don't think businesswomen are in touch with what matters. What are you? What work do you do that you are a non-alienated, non-commodifying person. Where, indeed, are you living, if capitalism does not touch your life?

I work with an organic folk culture community if you're so interested.

The only elements of capitalism in our lives are the tools and initial materials we bought. Everything else is handmade.

The only reason I'm here right now is because we take turns operating a museum for reserve funds in case of medical emergencies.

 

[choiceone]

I would agree with what you said about symbolism if people regularly took pride in the images printed on money when conducting transactions.

People don't. It's simply used in the pursuit of calculating efficiency, not reflecting on what we're being efficient about.

That's what I mean as "stupid".

Symbols are not all about taking pride in art. In cultures of the South Pacific, they also had money-like symbols through the use of shells, because it was a convenient form of summarizing. That is not stupid, even though it is about efficient symbolization of wealth that can be conveniently used. Not everything humans do is about taking pride in image-making or exhibiting affect about symbols. Some symbols are for convenience and some are for deep meaning. This has been true for many millenia. People are complex.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

Your overgeneralizations about female and male are a form of commodifying women and men, something seen wherever statistics run rampant. Only statistically do female and male thought patterns diverge - more women than men tend X or Y and more men than women tend A or B. That is reducing men and women to statistical generalizations, and I personally can't imagine a way of thinking that exhibits commodification of persons more than that other than, say, the institutions of slavery and prostitution. What makes you think women never try to deal with universals and men do not care about particular people?

I never said that.

What I said is that each sex is disposed towards certain forms of thinking. That doesn't mean we can't think other ways.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

One choice is not to have children. We are not supposed to have that choice?

Then put your energy towards more constructive efforts.

This isn't just about abortion. We shouldn't allow people to do anything halfway in general. That's uncommitted laziness.

 

[choiceone]

I work with an organic folk culture community if you're so interested.

The only elements of capitalism in our lives are the tools and initial materials we bought. Everything else is handmade.

The only reason I'm here right now is because we take turns operating a museum for reserve funds in case of medical emergencies.

Off-hand, I would say that you misunderstand. If reserve funds are available through operating a museum, the museum must be supplying those funds. I suppose this means that the museum is a business of sorts which yields a profit. That is part of how capitalism touches your lives. You say you make everything but some tools and initial materials you bought. But when one makes something, one makes it out of something else - where does the something else come from? Do you have to buy it? Do you grow it? Do you have to buy the seeds you grow it from, or do you collect them? One way or another, capitalism is affecting your life. Besides, if you have medical emergencies, what sort of medicine is patronized? If it's western medicine, how capitalistic can you get?

 

[EcoFemSoc]

If such a commune is where you live, it sounds to me like it is not built on trust but on a really, really anti-intellectual, anti-individual place where no one respects genuine individual others at all.

We understand that excessive individuality breeds "anti-intellectual" paranoia.

By living transparently, everyone respects everyone, and everyone is expected to respect everyone. It's easier to look after each other when we don't behave like we have something to hide.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

Well, you can refuse to believe I'm a woman, too, if you want. I loved living in grad dorms and still love being housemates or apartmentmates with others, but find it superior to family life precisely because everybody gets their own room and privacy and does not have be cozy with others. I have never wanted to get or be pregnant and, in fact, have never been pregnant. I can't imagine wanting all that cozy stuff.

I feel sorry for how you don't know what it's like to be warm and close with others on a relaxed basis.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

1. There is often diversity in thought and feeling in the same family.
2. People who have different levels of income sometimes think the same way, and people with similar levels of income sometimes think in different ways.
3. Different ethnicities have different genes??? What is wrong with you???

Go get an adequate modern education.

Diversity in family only happens when parents don't explain what's important to their children. There's no culture uniting them.

Sometimes, yes, people from different income levels think similarly, but not over the long run. They have different expectations of what people ought to be practically familiar with versus what ought to be ideally explained.

I guess you're unfamiliar with haplogroups. That's how we trace our ancestry.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

Symbols are not all about taking pride in art. In cultures of the South Pacific, they also had money-like symbols through the use of shells, because it was a convenient form of summarizing. That is not stupid, even though it is about efficient symbolization of wealth that can be conveniently used. Not everything humans do is about taking pride in image-making or exhibiting affect about symbols. Some symbols are for convenience and some are for deep meaning. This has been true for many millenia. People are complex.

Can you explain what's smart about living a life of convenience and summary?

When people live their lives for efficiency, they forget how it's the little things which count. They forget about the details which excite our taste and make life worth living.

 

[nota bene]

Somebody has to do the work. Not even mentioning the fact that somebody somewhere down the line had to purchase the bourgeois computer on which you're communicating, you've been a member of the DP community for three+ days and are averaging 100 posts a day. Unless your group has you "recruiting" here, I don't understand your idling.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

Off-hand, I would say that you misunderstand. If reserve funds are available through operating a museum, the museum must be supplying those funds. I suppose this means that the museum is a business of sorts which yields a profit. That is part of how capitalism touches your lives. You say you make everything but some tools and initial materials you bought. But when one makes something, one makes it out of something else - where does the something else come from? Do you have to buy it? Do you grow it? Do you have to buy the seeds you grow it from, or do you collect them? One way or another, capitalism is affecting your life. Besides, if you have medical emergencies, what sort of medicine is patronized? If it's western medicine, how capitalistic can you get?

That's not fair. When people are born into capitalism, they make do with what they have.

What do you want?

 

[EcoFemSoc]

Somebody has to do the work. Not even mentioning the fact that somebody somewhere down the line had to purchase the bourgeois computer on which you're communicating, you've been a member of the DP community for three+ days and are averaging 100 posts a day. Unless your group has you "recruiting" here, I don't understand your idling.

Do you really believe it's so difficult to make one or two line remarks?

You're overcomplicating things. :neutral:

 

[nota bene]

Do you really believe it's so difficult to make one or two line remarks?

You're overcomplicating things. :neutral:

Nope, I'm not complicating anything. Over 300 posts per day is..."impressive." You were on here early yesterday morning, apparently all day long, and late into the evening. So who's doing your share while you idly post?

 

[EcoFemSoc]

Nope, I'm not complicating anything. Over 300 posts per day is..."impressive." You were on here early yesterday morning, apparently all day long, and late into the evening. So who's doing your share while you idly post?

I greet people in the reception area. It's not terribly difficult.

What do you do for a living right now?

 

[nota bene]

How I earn my living isn't at issue.

 

[EcoFemSoc]

How I earn my living isn't at issue.

I never said it was. I was just trying to get to know you.

 

[nota bene]

No, you weren't; you were just trying to deflect.

 

[choiceone]

That's not fair. When people are born into capitalism, they make do with what they have.

What do you want?

Modesty.

The realization that free enterprise for subsistence and modest well-being is hardly "capitalism" - "Capitalism" is money making money, something that happens after needs for subsistence housing, food, clothing, heat, communication, education, health care, a modicum of security for the near future, and a modest degree of well-being, including the pursuit of meaningful activities, are already supplied. Once you recognize that, perhaps you will stop criticizing people as "capitalists" for pursuing subsistence and a modest degree of basic well-being just because they don't live in communes and think their sex organs are community property.

 

[choiceone]

Diversity in family only happens when parents don't explain what's important to their children. There's no culture uniting them.

Sometimes, yes, people from different income levels think similarly, but not over the long run. They have different expectations of what people ought to be practically familiar with versus what ought to be ideally explained.

I guess you're unfamiliar with haplogroups. That's how we trace our ancestry.

I guess you're unfamiliar with the fact that Native Americans are famous for having practiced adoption, that Japanese also often practiced adoption, that legal adoption makes a person a genuine family member in the US, and therefore that three generations later, a family will consider you an ancestor whether you were a member by biology or adoption. That is also true of the other groups mentioned. The reality is that the people who love and accept you as a genuine member of a family are always your genuine family, whereas merely biological parents who do not do that are just not.

 

[choiceone]

Can you explain what's smart about living a life of convenience and summary?

When people live their lives for efficiency, they forget how it's the little things which count. They forget about the details which excite our taste and make life worth living.

I do not agree. The utility of such symbols as money is that the right supplies can be obtained with it at the right time even if one cannot find someone with those supplies to offer who does not need one's own particular skills or products for trade at that time.

Being efficient about things like the above allows one more time and energy to devote to the little things that do excite our taste and make life worth living rather than mere subsistence needs. Human cultures recognize that there is a difference between filling subsistence needs and focusing on what makes life worth living. Efficiency allows us to live so that we can have the energy and time to spend on that which is of priceless value. For example, if one has to focus all one's daylight energy on trying to make grains grow in sufficient abundance for survival, one has no time to find infinity in a grain of sand or eternity in a wildflower.

And FYI, even in Marx's utopia, that's why everyone would volunteer to work part of the time to supply basic subsistence/well-being needs at the "icky" jobs - so that everyone would have time and energy for that infinity in a grain of sand.

 

[choiceone]

I agree. People are emotionally tied to those they physically create.

Multiculturalism ignores this. It expects people from different physiques to care universally despite not feeling the desire to do so. It encourages frustration.

Actually, the genuine teachings of Jesus Christ and Sakyamuni Buddha expected the same thing that you claim multiculturalism does. In Christianity, that's called loving your neighbor as yourself - a universal value, so I guess you would think it's male.

 

[Scrabaholic]

Nope, I'm not complicating anything. Over 300 posts per day is..."impressive." You were on here early yesterday morning, apparently all day long, and late into the evening. So who's doing your share while you idly post?

What does it matter how many posts one makes in a day? I think thousands in a year is "impressive" but it's none of my business how often someone posts.

At any rate, by the "banned" under the OP's name, it looks like she is no longer here.

 

[nota bene]

What does it matter how many posts one makes in a day? I think thousands in a year is "impressive" but it's none of my business how often someone posts.

At any rate, by the "banned" under the OP's name, it looks like she is no longer here.

That's right; it's no longer here. Not sure why you thought commenting on what I posted to somebody else is any of your business either, but you did, so I'd say that with a little more thought, you'd realize that over 100 posts a day qualifies as "unusual."

 

[Scrabaholic]

That's right; it's no longer here. Not sure why you thought commenting on what I posted to somebody else is any of your business either, but you did, so I'd say that with a little more thought, you'd realize that over 100 posts a day qualifies as "unusual."

Not sure why you think it isn't any of my business to comment on a post that is on a debate board, where anyone who is registered to the site can participate. If you want a private conversation, I suggest you take it to private messaging.

And I never said 100 posts a day is or is not unusual, I asked what it mattered.