Beyond Good and Evil pt2

So no I don’t believe our choices make us good or bad people. But now for the part where I kind of do.

 

As children we are all blank slates. We start out from nothing with no knowledge of good or bad with no record of past successes or failures. We are filled with love for all people and all things. We have only one desire, one hope, one craving, to be loved back. And this is where most parents screw up.

 

When we yell at our children, we are voicing our disapproval with them. To them, when we do so, we are holding back our love or making it conditional on their behavior. Unless we are very careful and very specific we may unknowingly cause permanent harm to both their ego and their future lives.

 

A typical response to not liking something that a child is doing is to say that they are being bad. The problem with this is that even though you may realize that what you mean is the child is taking an action that you do not approve of, what they hear is that they ARE bad. Everyone knows that good people are loved and bad people are not. So when you tell the child that they are being bad, you are both declaring that they are a bad person and that you do not love them.

This is not at all acceptable. But how can we prevent this and still express our concerns ? Click here to read on and see

Beyond Good and Evil pt1

Nearly a year ago I talked about definitions for good and evil and how often one or the other is subjective due to circumstance. An action that is good for one may be bad for another and vice versa. At the time I promised more on the subject. However, there was so much more I wanted to say about other things that it got pushed aside. Today I am back for more on the topic. 

 

Many stories, in both print and digital format have clearly defined boundaries. The presence or lack thereof of a character’s moral fiber is easy to see. You often know from the very beginning who is the “good” guy and who is the bad. I am of course talking about classic tales of good and evil, things like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Godzilla and other such fairy tales.

 

Life however isn’t really much like those stories. Sure many of the components are there, romance, conflict and even the choices to do good or bad things. But, do those choices make us good or bad people? No, not really. And yes absolutely depending on your point of view. Seeing things as polarized, as black or white means ignoring all the colors in between. There is so much more but we often choose not to see it. So, of course, with any question where I answer on both sides of the fence more explanation is required.

Click here for that explanation

Pros and Cons

Today a bit more about how warped the English language is. We have a habit of borrowing words from other languages and making them part of our own. Over a period of hundreds of years the exact original reason for picking one word or root word over another is lost. Our tendency is to steal a word and then over time to add prefixes and or suffixes to change the meaning of the word. Sometimes it just doesn’t work though. Examples follow.

 

Pros and cons is a shortening of the Latin phrase pro et contra which literally means for and against. For the most part, when we make a list of pros and cons we are really setting up two lists, one of things that are good and the other a list of things that are bad. We often make lists such as these, compare the lists and then make some decision based on the comparison of the two lists.

 

Used in this context, pro is typically a good thing and con is typically a bad thing. A professional is someone that is good enough at a thing that they can and do in fact get paid to do that thing. So, a confessional should be someone who is so bad at that thing that there is no way they could ever get paid for doing it, right? No, a confessional is a place where people go to admit their sins. Wait! What?!?! Really? Actually, it is. Since the Latin root of the word confessional is fess, which means to speak, it makes perfect sense. Adding the prefix con, would make the word about having a “bad” talk. And what else would you call a conversation about the bad things you have done?

 

So this was kind of an odd pro/con pairing, but not the one that really bothers me. Click here to read on and see what I think may be the biggest con in history or at least in American history.

Video games. The bane of modern society?

Awhile back, I made mention of a video game, Grand Theft Auto V. Within a couple of days of its release it had made over a billion dollars in sales. That is a truly astronomical figure and considering what the game is about some may wonder if life as we know it is being ruined by video games in general.

 

Don’t know what I am talking about? Perhaps you don’t have a child above the age of ten in your house. Or maybe you don’t own a gaming console. As the name implies most of the series is about grand theft, either of or committed with cars and that’s the lighter side of the game. Then there’s the possibility of hooking up with prostitutes, having your way with them and then beating the tar out of them to get your money back. Although there is a main story line, the general idea is to commit as many crimes as you can possibly get away with all whilst avoiding or taking out the police.

 

Video games are certainly making a splash in a big way. Many of them such as the GTA series, are outselling every other form of media out there, including books, television, music and even blockbuster movies.

 

A lot of these games explore and even glorify the bad things that we do to one another. There are quite a few different gaming franchises where the entire purpose of the game is to murder a bunch of other guys before they murder you. Except instead of murder its called warfare. Semantics.

Yeah, they are bad. But are they destroying life as we know it? Click here to read on and see.

What are habits?

Filthy Habittses always stealing things and running away. Sorry couldn’t help a little LOTR humor. It’s silly but kind of brings up my first point today.

 

People tend to put a negative connotation on the word habit. Most likely you think of destructive behaviors when the word habit comes up. And why shouldn’t you. Often when the word comes up it is associated with drinking, smoking or even drugs. There are tons of bad habits. Things like driving too fast, not listening to good advice or just taking too many risks in general.

 

There are so many bad habits, that we tend to treat the words habit and bad habit as synonymous. And that is just not true. Literally, habits are just patterns or routines. Your habits describe what and when you do what it is that you do on a daily basis.

But are all of our habits bad? Click here to read on and see