Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Abuse Paradox

I put a long post in reply to OneSTDV's post about Chris Brown.  It started out small, but, I just got carried away.

I have to wonder, would any attempt to counsel women to understand the danger of provoking men verbally in order to help them reduce the risk of physical assault be considered blaming the victim?  Does avoiding such a strategy and allowing women to act as if they have an invisible shield from men's violence increase the instance of violence in relationships and help justify the existence of the anti-violence agenda?

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Very Nice Planet Paradigm

I've been meaning to write a post about the Very Nice Planet paradigm. I coined the term to describe the concept that Very Nice People have of the world. This faulty paradigm explains how people can believe that we can all live as vegetarians among other insanities. Anyways, it came in usefule in a post at OneSTDV
I thought that since it was a fairly long post, I should post it here.

Responding to Svigor:
How come nobody says "Judeo-Christo-Mohametean"? Christ was put to death at the behest of the Hebrews, for crying out loud. Judaic scripture excoriates him.

Fine, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion contains the seeds of vegetarianism. My church had a bible with the new and old testament, although, I haven't been for over 2o years. I admit my ignorance of scripture, but, I'm only speaking in general terms. It's fine here because One's point is not that there was a concerted effort on behalf of all Jews or that Jewish religion's ultimate goal is to make everyone vegetarian. It's that the influence on general thought has led many people to a false belief in vegetarianism.

Jews have Kosher and Muslims have Halal, both ostensibly to prevent cruelty and the wrath of god. I get the whole dominion over animals granted to man thing in Christianity, but, that has been watered down for most people. Even still, the creation myth separates man from nature, his real creator. Not only does this myth endow man with magical properties, it creates the illusion that life on this planet is supposed to be nice.
I know that this isn't the main intention, but you spin these ideas around in the Gaia worshipping mainstream culture of a society as stable and happy as the US and you get, what I like to call, The Very Nice Planet Paradigm. This notion, I find, permeates everything. It's a basic belief that life is easy in nature. The Nobel Savage concept looms large and all indiginous tribes are thought to have lived in harmony with eachother. The gentler side of nature is emphasized and predators visciousness is downplayed or ignored. How many products are sold using the "All-Natural" nonsense label?
In this paradigm, humans are half in the good, natural world and half in the evil, unnatural world due to the invention of greed (original sin). It makes sense that we're supposed to eat only plants because that is more "in tune" with this perverted sense of nature. Liberal Atheists will tell you that their influenced by Hindus and Buddhism, but, these roots lie in the religions their parents taught them.