I must admit I didn't go to the theater to see the new Star Trek movie when it came out. This is not uncommon for me though as I don't often see movies when they are first released. Since then I have had the opportunity to view it on DVD. I have my share of complaints but first I'll speak to the good stuff that was done.
The special effects are way over the top. You get the impression you are watching Star Wars rather than Star Trek. However, this is not a bad thing. It keeps one visually interested in the movie as Star Trek's new feel is supposed to be an action packed trek through the stars. The pace is fast and quite right for the movie. Anyone expecting long psuedo-scientific explanations of how temporal physics works is going to be sorely disappointed.
For many years I have wondered how ships in the Star Trek universe get by armed with only one or two phasers and a torpedo tube. Finally, someone fixed the inconsistency of these giant ships only having/firing one beam at a time. Despite the overly artistic sweep of the nacelles and curves of the ship itself the new Enterprise actually looks more realistic in combat than any Star Trek ship before it. My feeling is that if anyone says the new ship looks too unrealistic 'why not?' If your civilization is advanced enough to build something like that then surely it can take the time to make it look cool not just functional.
Aside from all that is new and good the movie still has plot holes you could fit a borg cube through. Just like the franchise since the beginning of Voyager and a few of the previous films there is a distinct lack of thought put into the writing. For those who haven't seen the film yet turn back now. I give you spoilers!
For as nicely designed the exterior of the Enterprise is its engineering section looks like a plumber's nightmare. Industrial pipes are everywhere and the entire area is so cluttered with industrial backdrop one can't even identify where the reactor powering the ship is. While the industrial look is an interesting take on the engineering section and visually stimulating it clashes horribly with the sterile white environment of the rest of the ship as well as its sleek exterior. The set designers should have hired someone to put up dry wall to hide the plumbing.
Due to a change in the time stream Kirk grows up without a father and ends up as a punk kid. What is horrible about the way they introduce this aspect in the film is he doesn't even appear to be an exceptional punk kid. The scene I refer to is when the young Kirk steals his uncle's car to go joy riding. He speeds down a long flat road in Iowa before encountering a highway patrolman who resembles robo cop. After a short chase sequence he is captured. This scene is completely pointless because one gets the intended idea that Kirk in this new universe is nothing more than a punk in the very next scene Kirk has at the cliche bar fight. The makers of this film would have been much better served by showing the real Kirk shining through allowing him to ditch the cop at the end of the chase scene. I personally expected him to pull a quick breaking move and watch the cop on his hover bike go sailing into a nearby canyon unharmed but unable to get back up the cliff to continue the pursuit. Unfortunately, this Kirk appears far too common an individual for such clever tactics.
Another blip on the plot hole radar is the Enterprise being assembled in Iowa. This does serve a useful purpose in allowing Kirk to see and connect with "his ship" which inevitably leads him to take Captain Pike's advice and join Starfleet. It unfortunately does so at the expense of believability. How is one going to get that gigantic thing into space? Did anyone stop to think that's why we have the shipyards at Utopia Planetia? The writers/director could have just had Kirk spend the scene gazing up at the stars in contemplation since one would surmise the adventure they offered would be attractive to someone of his character.
Rather than a Kirk who is successful with the ladies we get a Kirk who strikes out with Uhura and gets beaten in the race for her affections by Spock! The only redemption Kirk has in the love department is a slutty Orion girl. The romance scenes between Spock and Uhura come out of the blue and are paced the same as the action sequences. This doesn't really give you the sense of how the romance developed or the time one would want in revealing those deeply hidden Vulcan emotions. The whole idea reads as an attempt to throw Spock fans a bone. Hey Trekkies, you can be a logic geek and lucky with the ladies too!
Poorly developed romances aside the most glaring problem with the plot is how it all wraps up. Kirk and Spock fail to fix everything that changed and the old Spock didn't even return to his own time. This is a glaring problem because Spock is a master of time travel. It should have been easy for Spock and Kirk to use the time traveling ship with its red matter to go back, head off the Romulans before they could change anything, and put things back pretty much as they were before. They could have even had the young Kirk returning to the future with Spock with an explanation that his universe that branched off no longer existed when things were put right but he was protected from the change by being in the time ship when it happened. This would have allowed the reuse of a great character for future movies and left the time stream relatively intact.
Unfortunately, it appears to me Paramount wants to break from cannon so they can have an easier time writing scripts. They seem to view all the depth and history that makes Star Trek such a rich universe as baggage dragging down the franchise rather than their poor writing and ideas. I think if one wants to change cannon then one should do it on meaningless stuff like how many weapons a starship has or what it looks like rather than destroying entire planets and changing major characters into that which they aren't.
Despite all the things which could be better with the plot Star Trek makes a wonderful film as a remake loosely based on the concept of Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry. Watch it, enjoy the action, and if you are familiar with Star Trek try to suspend disbelief when the plot defies all logic.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Why All Religions are Wrong, Atheists have Faith, and Agnostics don't Know Jack
The following article is a philosophical walk through faith and religion, or lack thereof. Many things I write and post here I am not completely happy with like the Art of Violence and Justice Series among others. I feel when writing many of these articles that I haven't fully done my job and found the complete answers to the questions posed. I always feel like I've found some though. The same may be said for this article and what I like about all my work is that it promotes thought on these subjects in others. We all have many questions in life that need answering even if we may not be fully aware of them all the time.
Why All Religions are Wrong, Atheists have Faith, and Agnostics don’t Know Jack.
Humanity throughout its existence has believed many things. There have been sun gods, gods of the underworld, spirits of good or evil, concepts of karma and reincarnation. Many religions have risen and fallen across humanity’s existence. What is constant from religion to religion is the belief of the people of each religion that their own is the one true belief system. It is a frustratingly complex task given the sheer number of religions and their varying denominations to choose among them the one true belief system.
What makes all religions wrong is this overwhelming belief by all of humanity that their religion is the only true religion. It is the arrogance and vanity of such belief that shows religions could only be created by humanity and not of divine origin. Only humanity would put forth the idea “that I, because I believe, am more worthy than the non-believers”. Religions claim the unreasonable.
Many people in the new world died without ever knowing of Allah, God, the Jews, Jesus, Zeus, Osiris, or Satan. Yet to not believe in Christian doctrine, among others, is to be damned. These individuals had no knowledge of the beliefs of the religion yet would be punished by such contrived rules of divine morality. Limbo was brought into being by an inspired mind as the waiting room of God for individuals so unfortunate as these. Still limbo did not and does not exist in many religions. The idea one should be punished for lack of knowledge and even opportunity to believe is in total opposition to the concept of an omni-benevolent deity.
The odds that one’s religion is the one true religion are extremely small when given all the varying beliefs that exist and have existed in the world. To have to choose between them is as good as saying “damn yourself with your choice”. Whichever one you pick you will likely pick the wrong one.
In reality very few people even have the opportunity to make a choice such as the Native Americans before Columbus’s time. In other places one either believes what they are told or dies. It is in complete opposition to the idea of belief to deny one a free choice of their faith. Such a choice is not a choice at all and the forced belief merely the shadow of faith. These individuals go through the motions without ever choosing. Are they damned by their lack of options like the Native Americans?
How many people even question their beliefs even if given the option? We are born into the societies we are by fate or chance. What beliefs are there we are taught and they become our own beliefs. What our parents believe we generally believe. We never set out to decide from the start what our beliefs will be. It is by happy chance that a human ever decides to question and then make a choice as it generally goes against everything one is taught.
What makes one so fortunate as to be born in such a situation that one is given the opportunity to know of God and the one true faith from birth or even to hear of it, learn it, and believe it later? A truly omni-benevolent God would want all to benefit so such a God is in complete contradiction to reality. An omnipotent God would have the power to make it happen yet it is not so. If a divine being exists then it must not be what many religions teach for such a being and our reality do not lend themselves to be compatible. Such a being is either not omni-benevolent or not omnipotent. If not omnipotent why call him God, if not benevolent then why worship him?
The best chance one has of choosing correctly is to say that all religions are wrong. There is good evidence that they are all contrived by humanity and to choose one among many is an exercise in futility. Religions go far beyond the belief and concept of a divine being they outline scores of rules and ways of behavior. Unlike believers of many faiths philosophers are not fools they do not attempt to argue over which brands of meat God views as abominable. They may argue over God’s omnipotence, his omni-benevolence, his omniscience but they know enough to say that it is completely arrogant and impossible to determine what God would have on his deli sandwich or which hole God prefers to stick it in. Taking a look at the odds there is a fifty-fifty chance of God, an all powerful being, existing. Also by the odds there is an astronomically small chance that God, an all powerful being, enjoys being addressed with male pronouns, prefers beef to pork, decided to take six days to make the world instead of one or maybe a billion. Each addition is just another coin to flip and continually adds to the improbability of the claim. When faced with choosing between the impossible and choosing against it we are better served if we choose to say that all religions are wrong for in each case non-existence/non-belief is always the alternative, we have a fifty percent chance of being correct.
Those that are atheist constantly claim that they have lost faith and no longer believe in God or an afterlife. The problem is that they fail to justify a disbelief in both. Every reason for becoming an atheist I have read has always been in objection to the religion not to the existence of God or the existence of an afterlife. There is a distinct difference between a religion and God. There is a difference between God and there being an afterlife. Atheists, on the whole, fail to use reason and philosophy to argue against there being a God. Even in rejecting all religion one does not have to reject the existence of God or an afterlife. God is not inextricably tied to religion nor is the concept of an afterlife to God.
Atheists fall for the same poor reasoning that believers of religion do in their belief. They attempt to claim more about the divine than they reasonably can. It is simple to reject religion for it can be shown to be nothing but the desires and arrogance of man. It is another step and another thing entirely to say that an omnipotent being does not exist. There is no way to disprove such a belief beyond doubt and in an existence of limitlessness, in time or space, one, the other, or both, it is reasonable to say that one has existed, does exist, or may exist in the future. On the other side of the coin, the one atheists blindly leap to without due consideration of the former consideration, there appears to be no indication that such a being is actively doing anything involved in our existence in the present.
It is the same with the idea of the afterlife. Atheists seem to leap to the conclusion that their existence will enter a permanent state of cessation just because there is no God. It apparently never occurs to many of them that there does not need to be a God for there to be an afterlife. In an existence of limitlessness it is arrogant to say that you will never be, never exist, again.
Before I get accused of leaping to a conclusion like atheists and believers let me say that there is no reason not to believe in the limitlessness of existence. This is not the same as ceaselessness as one may cease yet one may also come into being. I exist now, I continue to exist, I have evidence which suggests many things existed before I became aware, I have every reason to believe I, the parts of me, shall continue to exist even after I cease being aware. If the universe had a beginning and will have an end then I see no reason another could not begin or ours begin again. I may yet still exist as part of that universe or one of the many after. If the universe is continuous, without end, then I will without a doubt continue with it. The form in which I do so is irrelevant and in a limitless existence one may have many, similar, and the same form or forms. In these forms I may be aware, or not, yet it is a distinct possibility that in some I will be aware.
At the same time there is no argument to refute beyond a doubt that everything simply ends at some point. I can reasonably argue that believing everything comes to nothing is futile because in believing and arguing for such a thing one’s argument is pointless. The believer, belief, and argument will end up not existing and there is no logic in believing in something that isn’t there, like a mirage. But on the coin of reality existence and non-existence are equal fifty-fifty chances.
When the coin comes into play, then so must faith, in order for one to believe in either the existence or non-existence of something since there is nothing to recommend one choice over the other. Hence, all atheists have faith they merely choose to believe in the non-existence of things rather than in the existence of them. In reaching this faith they commit the same type of errors as believers in leaping to say “since my belief in this religion is wrong then my beliefs that there is/are a God, gods, or an afterlife is/are wrong as well” and in so doing believe unreasonably.
Given what we know, that those of faith, whether of religion or atheist, believe unreasonably it seems reasonable to adopt an agnostic stance to existence, or lack thereof, of the divine. When the answer is admittedly beyond our determination, withholding judgment, suspending belief, and striving to come to a better understanding from which to make a determination is the best we as human beings can do.
In reality agnosticism means “we don’t know jack”, we can never know. That is something that human beings cannot possibly accept because of our nature. We must come to an understanding at some point if we merely collect enough information. It does not factor into our drive for understanding that there may be no way to collect enough information or analyze that which we have thoroughly enough to reach an answer. It seems absurd to us that we could live in such a universe where not all answers may be obtainable.
For salvation from this unceasing cycle and feeling of being trapped where we are in our understanding we turn to faith. We choose to believe in something rather than to withhold belief. Faith is by no means a wrong to have as it can by chance lead to the right answers but it is wrong to take a leap of faith. To take a leap of faith is to choose faith over knowing the possibilities and the likelihoods. If we ignore them then we limit ourselves to being unreasonable. When the possibilities and likely hoods have ended we can choose between agnosticism and faith. But when doing so we do not forget that our faith is merely faith and not truth. It is important that our truth be only what we can reach through logical thought for otherwise we have rejected what we have learned and all reason. It is a human thing to be unreasonable but it is not a desirable thing.
In summation, all religions are wrong, atheists have faith, agnostics don’t know jack, and its ok to believe in something as long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Why All Religions are Wrong, Atheists have Faith, and Agnostics don’t Know Jack.
Humanity throughout its existence has believed many things. There have been sun gods, gods of the underworld, spirits of good or evil, concepts of karma and reincarnation. Many religions have risen and fallen across humanity’s existence. What is constant from religion to religion is the belief of the people of each religion that their own is the one true belief system. It is a frustratingly complex task given the sheer number of religions and their varying denominations to choose among them the one true belief system.
What makes all religions wrong is this overwhelming belief by all of humanity that their religion is the only true religion. It is the arrogance and vanity of such belief that shows religions could only be created by humanity and not of divine origin. Only humanity would put forth the idea “that I, because I believe, am more worthy than the non-believers”. Religions claim the unreasonable.
Many people in the new world died without ever knowing of Allah, God, the Jews, Jesus, Zeus, Osiris, or Satan. Yet to not believe in Christian doctrine, among others, is to be damned. These individuals had no knowledge of the beliefs of the religion yet would be punished by such contrived rules of divine morality. Limbo was brought into being by an inspired mind as the waiting room of God for individuals so unfortunate as these. Still limbo did not and does not exist in many religions. The idea one should be punished for lack of knowledge and even opportunity to believe is in total opposition to the concept of an omni-benevolent deity.
The odds that one’s religion is the one true religion are extremely small when given all the varying beliefs that exist and have existed in the world. To have to choose between them is as good as saying “damn yourself with your choice”. Whichever one you pick you will likely pick the wrong one.
In reality very few people even have the opportunity to make a choice such as the Native Americans before Columbus’s time. In other places one either believes what they are told or dies. It is in complete opposition to the idea of belief to deny one a free choice of their faith. Such a choice is not a choice at all and the forced belief merely the shadow of faith. These individuals go through the motions without ever choosing. Are they damned by their lack of options like the Native Americans?
How many people even question their beliefs even if given the option? We are born into the societies we are by fate or chance. What beliefs are there we are taught and they become our own beliefs. What our parents believe we generally believe. We never set out to decide from the start what our beliefs will be. It is by happy chance that a human ever decides to question and then make a choice as it generally goes against everything one is taught.
What makes one so fortunate as to be born in such a situation that one is given the opportunity to know of God and the one true faith from birth or even to hear of it, learn it, and believe it later? A truly omni-benevolent God would want all to benefit so such a God is in complete contradiction to reality. An omnipotent God would have the power to make it happen yet it is not so. If a divine being exists then it must not be what many religions teach for such a being and our reality do not lend themselves to be compatible. Such a being is either not omni-benevolent or not omnipotent. If not omnipotent why call him God, if not benevolent then why worship him?
The best chance one has of choosing correctly is to say that all religions are wrong. There is good evidence that they are all contrived by humanity and to choose one among many is an exercise in futility. Religions go far beyond the belief and concept of a divine being they outline scores of rules and ways of behavior. Unlike believers of many faiths philosophers are not fools they do not attempt to argue over which brands of meat God views as abominable. They may argue over God’s omnipotence, his omni-benevolence, his omniscience but they know enough to say that it is completely arrogant and impossible to determine what God would have on his deli sandwich or which hole God prefers to stick it in. Taking a look at the odds there is a fifty-fifty chance of God, an all powerful being, existing. Also by the odds there is an astronomically small chance that God, an all powerful being, enjoys being addressed with male pronouns, prefers beef to pork, decided to take six days to make the world instead of one or maybe a billion. Each addition is just another coin to flip and continually adds to the improbability of the claim. When faced with choosing between the impossible and choosing against it we are better served if we choose to say that all religions are wrong for in each case non-existence/non-belief is always the alternative, we have a fifty percent chance of being correct.
Those that are atheist constantly claim that they have lost faith and no longer believe in God or an afterlife. The problem is that they fail to justify a disbelief in both. Every reason for becoming an atheist I have read has always been in objection to the religion not to the existence of God or the existence of an afterlife. There is a distinct difference between a religion and God. There is a difference between God and there being an afterlife. Atheists, on the whole, fail to use reason and philosophy to argue against there being a God. Even in rejecting all religion one does not have to reject the existence of God or an afterlife. God is not inextricably tied to religion nor is the concept of an afterlife to God.
Atheists fall for the same poor reasoning that believers of religion do in their belief. They attempt to claim more about the divine than they reasonably can. It is simple to reject religion for it can be shown to be nothing but the desires and arrogance of man. It is another step and another thing entirely to say that an omnipotent being does not exist. There is no way to disprove such a belief beyond doubt and in an existence of limitlessness, in time or space, one, the other, or both, it is reasonable to say that one has existed, does exist, or may exist in the future. On the other side of the coin, the one atheists blindly leap to without due consideration of the former consideration, there appears to be no indication that such a being is actively doing anything involved in our existence in the present.
It is the same with the idea of the afterlife. Atheists seem to leap to the conclusion that their existence will enter a permanent state of cessation just because there is no God. It apparently never occurs to many of them that there does not need to be a God for there to be an afterlife. In an existence of limitlessness it is arrogant to say that you will never be, never exist, again.
Before I get accused of leaping to a conclusion like atheists and believers let me say that there is no reason not to believe in the limitlessness of existence. This is not the same as ceaselessness as one may cease yet one may also come into being. I exist now, I continue to exist, I have evidence which suggests many things existed before I became aware, I have every reason to believe I, the parts of me, shall continue to exist even after I cease being aware. If the universe had a beginning and will have an end then I see no reason another could not begin or ours begin again. I may yet still exist as part of that universe or one of the many after. If the universe is continuous, without end, then I will without a doubt continue with it. The form in which I do so is irrelevant and in a limitless existence one may have many, similar, and the same form or forms. In these forms I may be aware, or not, yet it is a distinct possibility that in some I will be aware.
At the same time there is no argument to refute beyond a doubt that everything simply ends at some point. I can reasonably argue that believing everything comes to nothing is futile because in believing and arguing for such a thing one’s argument is pointless. The believer, belief, and argument will end up not existing and there is no logic in believing in something that isn’t there, like a mirage. But on the coin of reality existence and non-existence are equal fifty-fifty chances.
When the coin comes into play, then so must faith, in order for one to believe in either the existence or non-existence of something since there is nothing to recommend one choice over the other. Hence, all atheists have faith they merely choose to believe in the non-existence of things rather than in the existence of them. In reaching this faith they commit the same type of errors as believers in leaping to say “since my belief in this religion is wrong then my beliefs that there is/are a God, gods, or an afterlife is/are wrong as well” and in so doing believe unreasonably.
Given what we know, that those of faith, whether of religion or atheist, believe unreasonably it seems reasonable to adopt an agnostic stance to existence, or lack thereof, of the divine. When the answer is admittedly beyond our determination, withholding judgment, suspending belief, and striving to come to a better understanding from which to make a determination is the best we as human beings can do.
In reality agnosticism means “we don’t know jack”, we can never know. That is something that human beings cannot possibly accept because of our nature. We must come to an understanding at some point if we merely collect enough information. It does not factor into our drive for understanding that there may be no way to collect enough information or analyze that which we have thoroughly enough to reach an answer. It seems absurd to us that we could live in such a universe where not all answers may be obtainable.
For salvation from this unceasing cycle and feeling of being trapped where we are in our understanding we turn to faith. We choose to believe in something rather than to withhold belief. Faith is by no means a wrong to have as it can by chance lead to the right answers but it is wrong to take a leap of faith. To take a leap of faith is to choose faith over knowing the possibilities and the likelihoods. If we ignore them then we limit ourselves to being unreasonable. When the possibilities and likely hoods have ended we can choose between agnosticism and faith. But when doing so we do not forget that our faith is merely faith and not truth. It is important that our truth be only what we can reach through logical thought for otherwise we have rejected what we have learned and all reason. It is a human thing to be unreasonable but it is not a desirable thing.
In summation, all religions are wrong, atheists have faith, agnostics don’t know jack, and its ok to believe in something as long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The Desk
More to the surface than meets the sense of touch.
More that is not seen.
We do not know what.
The shine of metal gleams
and emptiness presides through time.
-The Major
More that is not seen.
We do not know what.
The shine of metal gleams
and emptiness presides through time.
-The Major
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The Art of Violence and Justice 3
If you have not read at least the second post on The Art of Violence and Justice then please do so before reading this or you will be lost.
In answer to the first hypothetical scenario of my last post the prisoner would always be morally right in not killing the guards in his attempt to free himself. Such an individual would be a martyr of a sort. If the prisoner kills the guards then it is my belief that he does not become evil even with the fact that the guards are good individuals. The reason for this is when one does evil then one’s right to not have evil inflicted upon one in return is nullified. The guards, even unaware of this, have opened themselves up to the possibility of retaliation against themselves by their actions and choices i.e. holding an innocent man captive. The prisoner is, of course, taking his own chances in this moral system by escaping. In the guards’ reality the prisoner is the evil one forfeiting his right not to be harmed by what they believe he has done and by inflicting harm upon them in an escape attempt. So in the end no one is doing any wrong here as far as the prisoner and guards are concerned.
While I do not make the claim that killing is purely good in this instance of the guards and prisoner I do make the claim that it is morally acceptable or neutral. Killing in self-defense I should think would be viewed in much the same way as the defender does not likely enjoy having killed his/her attacker but deemed it as necessary to his/her wellbeing and in line with an individuals moral rights.
The essential rule of this moral system is demonstrated in the following example. Suppose one is attacked by another individual and that individual is intent on killing you. You would be on sound moral ground if you killed that individual. Now suppose that you had the option of instead of killing this individual in return to merely subdue him with a reasonably high chance of success say around 99.99%. By taking the action he has this attacker has forfeited his right to not be killed but the defender has the option of killing the attacker or sparing his life. So killing the attacker would be a neutral action because he has forfeited his moral rights but sparing his life would be a good action because it was not necessary but went a step further.
Acts considered evil in one instance and neutral or good in another lead us to the conclusion that it may possibly be that the end justifies the means. This is not supported at all as the moral system here is situational but also governed by a rule system. When one is committing evil acts one is morally open to them being inflicted upon oneself. While those acts may become neutral and forgiven in the end (or after the fact) when the results are clear the present shows them to be immoral and unjustifiable. It may be entirely up to moral luck as to whether or not the end result comes out as something good as well. So when one does evil one is essentially taking a gamble with one’s essence as to whether or not one is good or evil in existence and not just taking one single wrong action. This brings in the situational aspect. When one has other options it is inherently wrong to do evil therefore the ends do not justify the means as long as there are other means.
Now as to the second example the person involved is free. As such this individual has other options than to initially kill the guards and help the prisoner escape. Following this moral system the individual should exhaust all other means to free the prisoner before killing the guards. Though if all other means are exhausted then such an action would be acceptable.
These examples unlike in the original post of The Art of Violence and Justice do follow true justice as all actions happen merely to establish equity and give those wronged back what they had lost or were threatened with losing. The original post dealt with an example of a person without options other than vengeance and possibly vengeance with equity. I’m not entirely sure I made that distinction well but it was meant to be there as that individual was meant to be recouping loss rather than merely inflicting it back upon others.
I believe I have sufficiently answered these moral dilemmas and introduced the system of moral rights. I intend to go more in depth with this system in later posts.
In answer to the first hypothetical scenario of my last post the prisoner would always be morally right in not killing the guards in his attempt to free himself. Such an individual would be a martyr of a sort. If the prisoner kills the guards then it is my belief that he does not become evil even with the fact that the guards are good individuals. The reason for this is when one does evil then one’s right to not have evil inflicted upon one in return is nullified. The guards, even unaware of this, have opened themselves up to the possibility of retaliation against themselves by their actions and choices i.e. holding an innocent man captive. The prisoner is, of course, taking his own chances in this moral system by escaping. In the guards’ reality the prisoner is the evil one forfeiting his right not to be harmed by what they believe he has done and by inflicting harm upon them in an escape attempt. So in the end no one is doing any wrong here as far as the prisoner and guards are concerned.
While I do not make the claim that killing is purely good in this instance of the guards and prisoner I do make the claim that it is morally acceptable or neutral. Killing in self-defense I should think would be viewed in much the same way as the defender does not likely enjoy having killed his/her attacker but deemed it as necessary to his/her wellbeing and in line with an individuals moral rights.
The essential rule of this moral system is demonstrated in the following example. Suppose one is attacked by another individual and that individual is intent on killing you. You would be on sound moral ground if you killed that individual. Now suppose that you had the option of instead of killing this individual in return to merely subdue him with a reasonably high chance of success say around 99.99%. By taking the action he has this attacker has forfeited his right to not be killed but the defender has the option of killing the attacker or sparing his life. So killing the attacker would be a neutral action because he has forfeited his moral rights but sparing his life would be a good action because it was not necessary but went a step further.
Acts considered evil in one instance and neutral or good in another lead us to the conclusion that it may possibly be that the end justifies the means. This is not supported at all as the moral system here is situational but also governed by a rule system. When one is committing evil acts one is morally open to them being inflicted upon oneself. While those acts may become neutral and forgiven in the end (or after the fact) when the results are clear the present shows them to be immoral and unjustifiable. It may be entirely up to moral luck as to whether or not the end result comes out as something good as well. So when one does evil one is essentially taking a gamble with one’s essence as to whether or not one is good or evil in existence and not just taking one single wrong action. This brings in the situational aspect. When one has other options it is inherently wrong to do evil therefore the ends do not justify the means as long as there are other means.
Now as to the second example the person involved is free. As such this individual has other options than to initially kill the guards and help the prisoner escape. Following this moral system the individual should exhaust all other means to free the prisoner before killing the guards. Though if all other means are exhausted then such an action would be acceptable.
These examples unlike in the original post of The Art of Violence and Justice do follow true justice as all actions happen merely to establish equity and give those wronged back what they had lost or were threatened with losing. The original post dealt with an example of a person without options other than vengeance and possibly vengeance with equity. I’m not entirely sure I made that distinction well but it was meant to be there as that individual was meant to be recouping loss rather than merely inflicting it back upon others.
I believe I have sufficiently answered these moral dilemmas and introduced the system of moral rights. I intend to go more in depth with this system in later posts.
The Art of Violence and Justice 2
In my previous post The Art of Violence and Justice I discussed a hypothetical scenario involving an individual who was in an irreconcilable situation from which there was no apparent escape without the use of violence. In the end of the line of thought I found that violence was unnecessary even in that airtight hypothetical situation. However, I also found that the individual was left with the options of defeat or committing illegal acts. Illegal was found not to be the same as immoral. I also wrote that even though this hypothetical situation did not pan out to leave the individual with a violent option as the only recourse to extricate one from one’s problems, it was conceivable that there were other situations in which one might be forced to do violence without having violence first done to oneself. Since writing that post I have continued to think on the subject and have come up with a couple more hypothetical situations.
The first situation is one in which an individual is falsely accused of murder, tried, convicted and imprisoned. The individual is not on death row as that would mean the possibility of violence would be visited upon him first and doing violence in self-defense to escape that would make a certain moral sense. The question in this case is if a person has a right to harm or kill others to secure one’s own freedom. Most specifically when one has done no wrong yet has been imprisoned. We’ll say that in this hypothetical society in which he exists he has no hope for an appeal or chance to be proven innocent and released. Suppose that this individual is held in a maximum security prison yet one day finds himself in a position with the chance to escape in a transfer to a new facility of equal security. The only problem is that to do so he would have to kill a couple of guards. In other words, he won’t get as lucky as Harrison Ford in The Fugitive and have them die of their own accord. This presents something of a paradox since in order to escape he must become a murderer even though he wasn’t a murderer to begin with. One might question whether or not killing these guards would be murder since they are in fact serving an immoral justice in keeping this individual imprisoned. But that begs the question of whether these guards are evil or not. It is not immoral to destroy evil so if the guards are evil then they may conceivably be killed without tarnishing one’s soul. It leaves the prisoner with having to judge the moral fiber of the guards. In this case, I will simplify the situation and say that one can be good and still serve evil though I think one would have to be almost totally deceived by it to do so. So the guards appear to be good individuals who have wives and go to see their children’s school plays. Our prisoner is not going to be able to get out of this one and still remain a good person. He is left with either suffering in his existence or becoming a murderer. Yet this again confuses our problem entirely because the individual is only seeking something good for himself and if anyone knew the truth of his predicament they would most surely seek his release. Yet we also are saying he cannot do it because by committing one (or two evil acts if you count it separate for the death of each guard) would make this individual evil. Maybe he escapes to a tropical island and has a pleasant existence for the rest of his days and isn’t caught during his escape attempt. It may very well be that after killing both guards the individual escapes and never kills/murders anyone ever again. So we are brought back to the problem of the guards committing evil acts without knowledge of doing so. We are working from the premise that one can be good even while one is or has in the past committed evil acts so that would mean that it is entirely possible our individual could still be a murderer and a good person. The other option is that acts matter and if you engage in certain ones then you are automatically evil. In the first case the individual could get away with murder because he isn’t evil though he might feel deep regret over doing so and in the other case he could kill the guards without pangs of conscience because they are evil by the fact they are committing evil acts. It seems that in this case violence is unavoidable save the individual taking upon himself another’s punishment till the time at which his dismal existence ends. This problem is deeply complex and I am unsatisfied with any of the options available.
The second situation is one in which an individual knows another is being held against his/her will yet to free him/her one would need to kill many innocent people. We’ll say there are guards at the prison who think this second person has committed murder. The guards are merely doing their jobs but they are undoubtedly committing an evil act by keeping this individual imprisoned. The free individual has a moral obligation to see that the other individual is not imprisoned against his/her will. Yet to carry out on that obligation one is forced to commit seemingly evil acts. As you can see we are left with the same quandary in this situation as the first one. The answer to these situations is in the distinction between evil acts and evil existences as well as good acts and good existences.
Finding the difference between these things is a complex task which I have set for myself. However, it is a vital question to morality and yes I have come to some conclusions about it. I ask that anyone who reads this thinks upon the problem of these hypothetical situations and once having given it some thought, then read my next post.
The first situation is one in which an individual is falsely accused of murder, tried, convicted and imprisoned. The individual is not on death row as that would mean the possibility of violence would be visited upon him first and doing violence in self-defense to escape that would make a certain moral sense. The question in this case is if a person has a right to harm or kill others to secure one’s own freedom. Most specifically when one has done no wrong yet has been imprisoned. We’ll say that in this hypothetical society in which he exists he has no hope for an appeal or chance to be proven innocent and released. Suppose that this individual is held in a maximum security prison yet one day finds himself in a position with the chance to escape in a transfer to a new facility of equal security. The only problem is that to do so he would have to kill a couple of guards. In other words, he won’t get as lucky as Harrison Ford in The Fugitive and have them die of their own accord. This presents something of a paradox since in order to escape he must become a murderer even though he wasn’t a murderer to begin with. One might question whether or not killing these guards would be murder since they are in fact serving an immoral justice in keeping this individual imprisoned. But that begs the question of whether these guards are evil or not. It is not immoral to destroy evil so if the guards are evil then they may conceivably be killed without tarnishing one’s soul. It leaves the prisoner with having to judge the moral fiber of the guards. In this case, I will simplify the situation and say that one can be good and still serve evil though I think one would have to be almost totally deceived by it to do so. So the guards appear to be good individuals who have wives and go to see their children’s school plays. Our prisoner is not going to be able to get out of this one and still remain a good person. He is left with either suffering in his existence or becoming a murderer. Yet this again confuses our problem entirely because the individual is only seeking something good for himself and if anyone knew the truth of his predicament they would most surely seek his release. Yet we also are saying he cannot do it because by committing one (or two evil acts if you count it separate for the death of each guard) would make this individual evil. Maybe he escapes to a tropical island and has a pleasant existence for the rest of his days and isn’t caught during his escape attempt. It may very well be that after killing both guards the individual escapes and never kills/murders anyone ever again. So we are brought back to the problem of the guards committing evil acts without knowledge of doing so. We are working from the premise that one can be good even while one is or has in the past committed evil acts so that would mean that it is entirely possible our individual could still be a murderer and a good person. The other option is that acts matter and if you engage in certain ones then you are automatically evil. In the first case the individual could get away with murder because he isn’t evil though he might feel deep regret over doing so and in the other case he could kill the guards without pangs of conscience because they are evil by the fact they are committing evil acts. It seems that in this case violence is unavoidable save the individual taking upon himself another’s punishment till the time at which his dismal existence ends. This problem is deeply complex and I am unsatisfied with any of the options available.
The second situation is one in which an individual knows another is being held against his/her will yet to free him/her one would need to kill many innocent people. We’ll say there are guards at the prison who think this second person has committed murder. The guards are merely doing their jobs but they are undoubtedly committing an evil act by keeping this individual imprisoned. The free individual has a moral obligation to see that the other individual is not imprisoned against his/her will. Yet to carry out on that obligation one is forced to commit seemingly evil acts. As you can see we are left with the same quandary in this situation as the first one. The answer to these situations is in the distinction between evil acts and evil existences as well as good acts and good existences.
Finding the difference between these things is a complex task which I have set for myself. However, it is a vital question to morality and yes I have come to some conclusions about it. I ask that anyone who reads this thinks upon the problem of these hypothetical situations and once having given it some thought, then read my next post.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
My Pro Obama Thing
Why not Hilary? White Water, has already failed to get one health care bill passed, voted to invade Iraq(then tried to rescind vote), I don't buy the experience thing(the first lady picks out china doesn't decide foreign policy WITH China), anyone notice how much Hilary likes to say she's for change AFTER Obama said it?, the crying thing was as phony as Guilliani's phone calls from his wife(put it on vibrate), did you ever plan to win any of the last 8+ states?(play it down play it down), wow she's really lucky to have avoided all that sniper fire, five letters supported by Hillary and destroyed the US economy Answer: NAFTA(I guess Ohio likes being in the rust belt), I don't want to hear another 4-8 more years of Monica Lewinski jokes on SNL.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Don't Kiss in India... they might arrest you.
This is an old story but still worth commenting on. It is safe to say that Richard Gere will not be invited back to India anytime soon after he kissed actress Shilpa Shettyat an awards ceremony. It, of course, caused cries of outrage from many Indians because such public displays of affection are frowned upon. Gere has apologized for offending those who watched the awards ceremony. One Indian province actually issued an arrest warrant for both Gere and Shilpa! This incident makes India the laughing stock of the western world for sure since FOX broadcast two women kissing here in the states and no one got arrested. I take offense to this sort of behavior coming from a supposedly civilized democracy. It is ridiculous and to put it mildly, impolite to arrest guests of your country for making social gaffes. Gere, like most Americans, I’m sure had no clue about the no kissing in public taboo of India. On top of that he apologized, yet they went ahead and issued a warrant anyway, though a higher court canceled it later. Punishing someone from a foreign land who clearly is unaware of certain cultural niceties is horribly unfair. Heck, I think punishing someone who is unaware of a law in general should be unconstitutional. Such laws place the entire burden on the individual to know everything about the law, or in this case society, no mater how obscure or face punishment. Society has a duty to be understanding to the circumstances of the individual. We do not execute our mentally challenged individuals for murder in this country because they are unaware of the wrongness of their actions. I have problems with the court ruling that decided this since I feel the level of incapacity of the individual in that case wasn’t enough to justify commuting his sentence but I still feel the general principle of forgiving those who know no better holds true. The Indian courts and public have certainly been less than understanding to the circumstances of Ms. Shetty. While Mr. Gere has been somewhat forgiven, at least enough to not face further legal action, Ms. Shetty still has a court battle ahead of her. Amazingly, the geniuses behind issuing the arrest warrants think that just because she got kissed by Mr. Gere the offense to there overly sensitive sensibilities is her fault. I’ve seen the video footage, she was as surprised as everyone else. These officials should be ashamed of themselves blaming this on the poor woman when it was Richard Gere who did the grabbing and kissing. All I see from this fiasco are a bunch of vindictive and by American standards prudish individuals who are trying to punish whoever they can to save face because they can’t punish who they really want, Richard Gere. If anyone knows anything about the evolution of Indian culture I would sincerely like to know how kissing in public came to be considered public indecency. Please post up in comments if you have them.
The Student's Paradox
The Student’s Paradox
1. If you know a subject (S), then you waste your time going to a teacher of S in order to learn S from her. [p(remise)]
2. You shouldn't waste your time (i.e. do less valuable things when you could be doing more valuable things). [p]
3. Therefore, if you know S, you shouldn't go to a teacher of S. [1,2]
4. If you don't know S, then you take an unreasonable risk (of acquiring false beliefs) in going to a "teacher" of S in order to learn S from her. [p]
5. You shouldn't take unreasonable risks. [p]
6. Therefore, if you don't know S, you shouldn't go to a teacher of S.
7. But there are only two possibilities: you either know S or you don't know S. [p]
8. Therefore, either way, you should never go to a teacher of any subject. [3,6,7]
This paradox is an old favorite of mine since it proves why one should never attend class. It was part of the first lesson of my ancient philosophy course. Fortunately for my professor everyone still attended pretty regularly for the rest of the semester so he still gets paid. This paradox works well enough that my entire philosophy class failed to refute it and we moved on to other things later in the week. For my part, I haven’t really tried since I was amused the entire time watching my professor argue with his students about why they shouldn’t attend his class. So I think I’ll take up refuting this paradox now. 1, 2, and 3, are all fairly reasonable arguments since if you know something you’d be wasting your time going to a teacher to learn it. The key to the paradox is in part 4 where learning from a teacher is put forth as an unreasonable risk of being taught something which is false. If risking learning a false belief is unreasonable then the paradox is true. If the risk, however, is reasonable then it fails to be a paradox. The problem for the student is that in going to a teacher to learn a subject, he places himself at risk of learning false information. The student has no way of judging the validity of any information from the teacher because he has no prior reference from which to judge the truth of the information. It seems to me that in order to be taking an unreasonable risk the student would have to be learning from an individual who has shown no prior indications of trustworthiness, or worse, indications of being untrustworthy. The student could judge whether or not to believe what the teacher tells him based upon what the teacher tells him about what he already knows to be truth. A teacher who is in agreement with the student about what the student already knows to be truth is thereby trustworthy and learning from him/her is not an unreasonable risk. Another method might be to compare the instruction of several scholars who claim to know the truth. If they agree then they are either all right or all wrong but one has a 50/50 chance to learn true beliefs from them. This is better odds than visiting a casino (unless you are betting on black or red at the roulette table or card counting at Blackjack) so I wouldn’t consider it an unreasonable risk to learn something from a teacher when all teachers are in agreement. In the case where teachers do not agree on the truth then the safe bet is to bet against all of them that they are all wrong and to not learn from any of them. There can be only one truth but there may be many falsehoods. Out of 30 different answers from 30 different scholars only one may be right i.e. 1/30 chance of picking the right one to learn from. This leaves 29/30 false beliefs one could acquire. Trying to find the one true belief out of 30 scholars is an impossibility with no prior knowledge of the subject. This leaves us with what we do know for certain and that is 29/30 have to be wrong. Also, it is a possibility that even 30/30 could be wrong since we have no way to judge the validity of the 30 different truths. I think this satisfactorily demonstrates the difference between unreasonable risk and reasonable risk. While writing this I’ve thought about its application to religion. It could be said that it is entirely unreasonable to believe in any religion because there are many, many different religions each with its own truth. The person trying to decide which religion to believe in has no prior knowledge of the truth of any of them. This is why in order to believe in a religion one is said to have faith. To a mathematician this mean, you are taking your chances. By my calculations those are probably something like 1?/2600 the question mark meaning that with no prior knowledge to judge even the one religion that is supposedly right could really be wrong. So lets make it something like 0/2601. That is as good as saying the truth, if such a thing even exists, hasn’t been found yet. Which makes the agnostics right, so far. Good luck, in your own searches for truth. Until next post, keep thinking on this.
1. If you know a subject (S), then you waste your time going to a teacher of S in order to learn S from her. [p(remise)]
2. You shouldn't waste your time (i.e. do less valuable things when you could be doing more valuable things). [p]
3. Therefore, if you know S, you shouldn't go to a teacher of S. [1,2]
4. If you don't know S, then you take an unreasonable risk (of acquiring false beliefs) in going to a "teacher" of S in order to learn S from her. [p]
5. You shouldn't take unreasonable risks. [p]
6. Therefore, if you don't know S, you shouldn't go to a teacher of S.
7. But there are only two possibilities: you either know S or you don't know S. [p]
8. Therefore, either way, you should never go to a teacher of any subject. [3,6,7]
This paradox is an old favorite of mine since it proves why one should never attend class. It was part of the first lesson of my ancient philosophy course. Fortunately for my professor everyone still attended pretty regularly for the rest of the semester so he still gets paid. This paradox works well enough that my entire philosophy class failed to refute it and we moved on to other things later in the week. For my part, I haven’t really tried since I was amused the entire time watching my professor argue with his students about why they shouldn’t attend his class. So I think I’ll take up refuting this paradox now. 1, 2, and 3, are all fairly reasonable arguments since if you know something you’d be wasting your time going to a teacher to learn it. The key to the paradox is in part 4 where learning from a teacher is put forth as an unreasonable risk of being taught something which is false. If risking learning a false belief is unreasonable then the paradox is true. If the risk, however, is reasonable then it fails to be a paradox. The problem for the student is that in going to a teacher to learn a subject, he places himself at risk of learning false information. The student has no way of judging the validity of any information from the teacher because he has no prior reference from which to judge the truth of the information. It seems to me that in order to be taking an unreasonable risk the student would have to be learning from an individual who has shown no prior indications of trustworthiness, or worse, indications of being untrustworthy. The student could judge whether or not to believe what the teacher tells him based upon what the teacher tells him about what he already knows to be truth. A teacher who is in agreement with the student about what the student already knows to be truth is thereby trustworthy and learning from him/her is not an unreasonable risk. Another method might be to compare the instruction of several scholars who claim to know the truth. If they agree then they are either all right or all wrong but one has a 50/50 chance to learn true beliefs from them. This is better odds than visiting a casino (unless you are betting on black or red at the roulette table or card counting at Blackjack) so I wouldn’t consider it an unreasonable risk to learn something from a teacher when all teachers are in agreement. In the case where teachers do not agree on the truth then the safe bet is to bet against all of them that they are all wrong and to not learn from any of them. There can be only one truth but there may be many falsehoods. Out of 30 different answers from 30 different scholars only one may be right i.e. 1/30 chance of picking the right one to learn from. This leaves 29/30 false beliefs one could acquire. Trying to find the one true belief out of 30 scholars is an impossibility with no prior knowledge of the subject. This leaves us with what we do know for certain and that is 29/30 have to be wrong. Also, it is a possibility that even 30/30 could be wrong since we have no way to judge the validity of the 30 different truths. I think this satisfactorily demonstrates the difference between unreasonable risk and reasonable risk. While writing this I’ve thought about its application to religion. It could be said that it is entirely unreasonable to believe in any religion because there are many, many different religions each with its own truth. The person trying to decide which religion to believe in has no prior knowledge of the truth of any of them. This is why in order to believe in a religion one is said to have faith. To a mathematician this mean, you are taking your chances. By my calculations those are probably something like 1?/2600 the question mark meaning that with no prior knowledge to judge even the one religion that is supposedly right could really be wrong. So lets make it something like 0/2601. That is as good as saying the truth, if such a thing even exists, hasn’t been found yet. Which makes the agnostics right, so far. Good luck, in your own searches for truth. Until next post, keep thinking on this.
The Songbird
Like a songbird he lies
In his nest, in his cage
Protected from the world outside
From anger, hatred, and covetous crimes.
Does anyone hear the songbird cry?
The despair and anguish floating from his cage
Through the woven wicker bars he cries
As the seasons slowly change.
Finally, the songbird rests
Trapped behind thorny vines
Waiting for the light of day
As darkness smothers his heartfelt cries
Enfolding his song until it dies.
No one listened from outside.
In his nest, in his cage
Protected from the world outside
From anger, hatred, and covetous crimes.
Does anyone hear the songbird cry?
The despair and anguish floating from his cage
Through the woven wicker bars he cries
As the seasons slowly change.
Finally, the songbird rests
Trapped behind thorny vines
Waiting for the light of day
As darkness smothers his heartfelt cries
Enfolding his song until it dies.
No one listened from outside.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
The Art of Violence and Justice
The key question to any philosophy of morality is "When, if at all, is it permissible to do violence to others?"
In one of my earlier posts I discussed the idea of self-defense as being a reasonable instance in which one can morally do others harm. When one attacks another physically one is breaking the compact of "do no harm to others" and therefore leaves the protection granted by that moral clause and can be harmed in turn.
What I failed to discuss in that writing was any sort of case where an individual is harmed not by physical means but by social, economic, or bureaucratic means. In such a case would it be permissible to resort to physical violence? Most people would probably answer no, but then no one would think that it would be impossible to solve such problems by non-violent means.
However, let us make an example of such a case where communication and bargaining will not work. Let us say that there is an individual who's boss hates him. This could be for a variety of reasons, perhaps he is of a different race, perhaps he is gay, or perhaps he simply refuses to cover up a mismanagement of funds by the department(not embezzlement just poorly managed). Suffice it to say that the man is hated by his manager to the extent that manager makes his work a living hell and will eventually fire him if he can't force him to resign. The man has clearly done nothing wrong to the company but he is none-the-less at the mercy of his manager. Because he is such a hard working individual he will put up with all the indecencies of being moved to the office by the toilets and getting stapler stolen. In the end he is fired. The higher ups he appealed to were all friends of the manager and ignored his please that he had done nothing wrong. They had trumped up charges of insubordination and lack of positive work ethic to fire him on. The next day he sets out to find a new job and in the coming weeks realizes that his previous employer has spread his name around town as someone who is not to be hired. He can't find a job and in the meantime the rent is coming due. He has no money left with which to hire a lawyer to fight his employer in court over his unfair firing. He is up a creak and will have to move elsewhere to find a job probably in a city several states over and he will have to sleep in his car until he can afford to pay rent again. Those who did him wrong get off without so much as a filed lawsuit.
So there is our conundrum, what is our individual to do? Should he go do some massive property damage to their vehicles? Or maybe rough one up in an alley some night for payback? Perhaps he should stick to non-violent means and spread vicious rumors about his employer to get him fired? But what about the lawsuit that is sure to follow since he has no proof that his employer did anything wrong... they'd end up taking his car and the shirt on his back too. Our options seem to come down to some sort of vengeance.
Most people would likely say that vengeance is wrong, an eye for an eye leaves all men blind etc. etc. But in the end there is no justice left for our poor evicted employee. Sure some might say that there will come a final justice after death but I'm not one for counting on that. After all we didn't wait for Hitler to die to try to make him pay for his crimes why should we wait for someone much easier to punish? Just a few slices of some tires or maybe a baseball bat and our dear friend will have taken back his loses or well... at least inflicted them equally upon those who have done him harm. This seems to be the key difference between vengeance and justice. Vengeance inflicts similar harm upon others while justice lends itself to retaking that which has been taken. So for our dear individual in order to engage in justice would need to do something other than bash in a few windshields.
While vengeance can be somewhat cathartic what seems to make it immoral is that one is not trying to achieve equity but instead inflict the same inequity upon others. This can be a difficult distinction for one to make especially in moments of injustice being inflicted upon oneself. One's anger can often get the better of one. This brings us back to figuring out what options our homeless individual is left with that do not lead him down the immoral path.
The answer I have come up with is quite simple but may be difficult in execution none-the-less if one wants justice sometimes one cannot follow the letter of the law. The law and justice do not always coincide as many unfair convictions of people who were thought to be rapists attest to(Thank you DNA testing). Essentially, our man would have to commit grand theft auto and take his employer's vehicle to the local chop shop. Upon his arrival he will be paid a sufficient enough sum to move to another town pay for an apartment with his restitution money and find a new job. Hopefully, it will be one with a kind individual as a boss. This is justice and not vengeance for the pure reason that our man takes no violent action against his employers or their property. In stealing his boss's car he gets restitution for the harm that has been done him not some cheap thrill of merely bashing a few windshields. All in all, it is the round about way of getting what would have come to him if he would have had a lawyer to fight his employers in court and a fair trial which would have seen through his boss's underhanded dealings.
So my answer is that there seems to be ways out of impossible situations of injustice without resorting to violence. Such situations may only be solved by violating the law but are none-the-less just in their outcomes. Perhaps, there is some impossible situation I haven't thought of where there is no way out but vengeance yet I do not think that is the case. One just has to think outside the box and outside the rules sometimes.
Another case which comes to mind is that of our forefathers. When Britain began overtaxing Americans and violating the property of the colonists they felt it necessary to break away from the mother country and say no. One might think that they could have waged a war of civil disobedience instead of one of guns but the British weren't adverse to making examples of those who disobeyed them. This being the case I have to conclude that outright war was inevitable since defending oneself while being disobedient might have required offing a few redcoats in self-defense. This would have lead to outright war or cowering colonists taking the abuse they were given and probably eventually giving in. It seems to me that civil disobedience while proven relatively effective in the past when demonstrated on a united front has lead to many individuals being sacrificed as examples. This is why I'm not a pacifist. If someone is beating you then you should beat them back. Turning the other cheek while still resisting peacefully only gets you hit again, probably harder, and most likely until your skull fractures and you die. My point, I guess, is that when violence is finally used by one party then the time for peaceful resolution is over.
Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear any impossible philosophical problems you guys can come up with where pure vengeance is the only option left. Good night.
In one of my earlier posts I discussed the idea of self-defense as being a reasonable instance in which one can morally do others harm. When one attacks another physically one is breaking the compact of "do no harm to others" and therefore leaves the protection granted by that moral clause and can be harmed in turn.
What I failed to discuss in that writing was any sort of case where an individual is harmed not by physical means but by social, economic, or bureaucratic means. In such a case would it be permissible to resort to physical violence? Most people would probably answer no, but then no one would think that it would be impossible to solve such problems by non-violent means.
However, let us make an example of such a case where communication and bargaining will not work. Let us say that there is an individual who's boss hates him. This could be for a variety of reasons, perhaps he is of a different race, perhaps he is gay, or perhaps he simply refuses to cover up a mismanagement of funds by the department(not embezzlement just poorly managed). Suffice it to say that the man is hated by his manager to the extent that manager makes his work a living hell and will eventually fire him if he can't force him to resign. The man has clearly done nothing wrong to the company but he is none-the-less at the mercy of his manager. Because he is such a hard working individual he will put up with all the indecencies of being moved to the office by the toilets and getting stapler stolen. In the end he is fired. The higher ups he appealed to were all friends of the manager and ignored his please that he had done nothing wrong. They had trumped up charges of insubordination and lack of positive work ethic to fire him on. The next day he sets out to find a new job and in the coming weeks realizes that his previous employer has spread his name around town as someone who is not to be hired. He can't find a job and in the meantime the rent is coming due. He has no money left with which to hire a lawyer to fight his employer in court over his unfair firing. He is up a creak and will have to move elsewhere to find a job probably in a city several states over and he will have to sleep in his car until he can afford to pay rent again. Those who did him wrong get off without so much as a filed lawsuit.
So there is our conundrum, what is our individual to do? Should he go do some massive property damage to their vehicles? Or maybe rough one up in an alley some night for payback? Perhaps he should stick to non-violent means and spread vicious rumors about his employer to get him fired? But what about the lawsuit that is sure to follow since he has no proof that his employer did anything wrong... they'd end up taking his car and the shirt on his back too. Our options seem to come down to some sort of vengeance.
Most people would likely say that vengeance is wrong, an eye for an eye leaves all men blind etc. etc. But in the end there is no justice left for our poor evicted employee. Sure some might say that there will come a final justice after death but I'm not one for counting on that. After all we didn't wait for Hitler to die to try to make him pay for his crimes why should we wait for someone much easier to punish? Just a few slices of some tires or maybe a baseball bat and our dear friend will have taken back his loses or well... at least inflicted them equally upon those who have done him harm. This seems to be the key difference between vengeance and justice. Vengeance inflicts similar harm upon others while justice lends itself to retaking that which has been taken. So for our dear individual in order to engage in justice would need to do something other than bash in a few windshields.
While vengeance can be somewhat cathartic what seems to make it immoral is that one is not trying to achieve equity but instead inflict the same inequity upon others. This can be a difficult distinction for one to make especially in moments of injustice being inflicted upon oneself. One's anger can often get the better of one. This brings us back to figuring out what options our homeless individual is left with that do not lead him down the immoral path.
The answer I have come up with is quite simple but may be difficult in execution none-the-less if one wants justice sometimes one cannot follow the letter of the law. The law and justice do not always coincide as many unfair convictions of people who were thought to be rapists attest to(Thank you DNA testing). Essentially, our man would have to commit grand theft auto and take his employer's vehicle to the local chop shop. Upon his arrival he will be paid a sufficient enough sum to move to another town pay for an apartment with his restitution money and find a new job. Hopefully, it will be one with a kind individual as a boss. This is justice and not vengeance for the pure reason that our man takes no violent action against his employers or their property. In stealing his boss's car he gets restitution for the harm that has been done him not some cheap thrill of merely bashing a few windshields. All in all, it is the round about way of getting what would have come to him if he would have had a lawyer to fight his employers in court and a fair trial which would have seen through his boss's underhanded dealings.
So my answer is that there seems to be ways out of impossible situations of injustice without resorting to violence. Such situations may only be solved by violating the law but are none-the-less just in their outcomes. Perhaps, there is some impossible situation I haven't thought of where there is no way out but vengeance yet I do not think that is the case. One just has to think outside the box and outside the rules sometimes.
Another case which comes to mind is that of our forefathers. When Britain began overtaxing Americans and violating the property of the colonists they felt it necessary to break away from the mother country and say no. One might think that they could have waged a war of civil disobedience instead of one of guns but the British weren't adverse to making examples of those who disobeyed them. This being the case I have to conclude that outright war was inevitable since defending oneself while being disobedient might have required offing a few redcoats in self-defense. This would have lead to outright war or cowering colonists taking the abuse they were given and probably eventually giving in. It seems to me that civil disobedience while proven relatively effective in the past when demonstrated on a united front has lead to many individuals being sacrificed as examples. This is why I'm not a pacifist. If someone is beating you then you should beat them back. Turning the other cheek while still resisting peacefully only gets you hit again, probably harder, and most likely until your skull fractures and you die. My point, I guess, is that when violence is finally used by one party then the time for peaceful resolution is over.
Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear any impossible philosophical problems you guys can come up with where pure vengeance is the only option left. Good night.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
MySpace Police
For some reason I have a difficult time coming up with titles for my articles on the stupidity and deplorable behavior of others. Every time I try to write a good one I end up thinking of titles involving what I would like to do to the ignorant jerks. Usually, these involve various forms of telling them to do anatomically impossible things combined with veiled threats that they should suffer physical or mental harm. I have another article to write on that later but suffice it to say I'm going to keep my titles rather bland so as not to risk disturbing people at first. Hopefully, they might care to read further and discover why I would want to write such titles. If so maybe they'll be convinced my feelings would make better titles than what I'm using.
Stacy Snyder a 25 year old woman who attended Millersville University was allegedly refused her bachelor of science in education degree and a teaching certificate after the University administration found a picture called "Druken Pirate" on her MySpace. She has filed suit in federal court.
You will notice the picture below:
She was apparently accused by the University of promoting underage drinking. In my opinion, the University's actions against Ms. Snyder are ridiculous. Not only is she of legal drinking age(25) but they can't even prove there was an alcoholic beverage in the cup! I'd really like to know how these bloody Nazis of University officials can get off saying someone is promoting underage drinking by wearing a party hat!
To the best of my knowledge the majority of individuals on my freshmen hall drank underage at least once. With the exception of myself and a couple other nerds I'd say around 90% had done so at least once and 50% had done so multiple times. Guess what folks? People drink. Its bound to happen at any University because access to alcohol at Universities is open door.
Millersville should be happy she was well over the legal drinking age and stayed the hell out of her private life. I'd bet half those jerks that denied her her degree drank underage at least once. From all indications Ms. Snyder had completed all her coursework with a good GPA. If drinking legally is encouraging underage drinking then we should probably fire most University professors staff and elementary through high school teachers. I know dang well most of them have consumed alcohol at least once and I'm sure there are more than a few of them who have been in a picture while their blood alcohol content was higher than normal. Eggnog at Christmas anyone?
Getting a degree is about grades not one's personal life. The fact these people make it about that is disgusting. I've seen far too many of these social police actions by employers and schools in the news not to be angered by the pettiness of people in power. So I hope you'll forgive me for suggesting the anatomically impossible in this case.
Source 1
Source 2
Source 2 continued
Stacy Snyder a 25 year old woman who attended Millersville University was allegedly refused her bachelor of science in education degree and a teaching certificate after the University administration found a picture called "Druken Pirate" on her MySpace. She has filed suit in federal court.
You will notice the picture below:
She was apparently accused by the University of promoting underage drinking. In my opinion, the University's actions against Ms. Snyder are ridiculous. Not only is she of legal drinking age(25) but they can't even prove there was an alcoholic beverage in the cup! I'd really like to know how these bloody Nazis of University officials can get off saying someone is promoting underage drinking by wearing a party hat!
To the best of my knowledge the majority of individuals on my freshmen hall drank underage at least once. With the exception of myself and a couple other nerds I'd say around 90% had done so at least once and 50% had done so multiple times. Guess what folks? People drink. Its bound to happen at any University because access to alcohol at Universities is open door.
Millersville should be happy she was well over the legal drinking age and stayed the hell out of her private life. I'd bet half those jerks that denied her her degree drank underage at least once. From all indications Ms. Snyder had completed all her coursework with a good GPA. If drinking legally is encouraging underage drinking then we should probably fire most University professors staff and elementary through high school teachers. I know dang well most of them have consumed alcohol at least once and I'm sure there are more than a few of them who have been in a picture while their blood alcohol content was higher than normal. Eggnog at Christmas anyone?
Getting a degree is about grades not one's personal life. The fact these people make it about that is disgusting. I've seen far too many of these social police actions by employers and schools in the news not to be angered by the pettiness of people in power. So I hope you'll forgive me for suggesting the anatomically impossible in this case.
Source 1
Source 2
Source 2 continued
Monday, April 16, 2007
Personal Account: The Virginia Tech Rampage
I'm sure everyone has already seen the news coverage of what the major channels are calling "the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history". It's a tragedy that will likely stay with people here for a long time to come. Its one of those events like 9/11 which demarcates the before and the after in people's lives. In this case it is the before and after for people here at Virginia Tech and their families not the before and after for the United States. That makes it no less significant for the people here.
My own story of this day begins at 9:00AM. I got up and began to prepare for class. I had a quiz this day. Sometime between 9:15-9:20AM I check my e-mail. I continue with my morning routine and leave for class around 11:50-11:55AM, it is in a building behind Buruss Hall. As I reach the drill field via a route beside Slusher Hall I notice a line of cars blocked by police further up. I assume like many that the police are responding to another bomb threat since we've had a couple the last few days. I proceed to cross a fourth of the drill field and I am yelled at by the police and told to turn back. I do so just to appease them but I don't feel alarmed(considered it just another fake bomb threat) and kind of wonder why if I can't cross the drillfield on that side if they haven't bothered to block it off. I overhear a couple of guys talking, as I get back to the sidewalk, about someone being shot in Ambler-Johnston and that classes are canceled. Seeing that there is no point in continuing to class I return to my dorm. From there I learn that there is a mass shooting in Norris/Holden Hall. Before this I was operating under the impression the situation was similar to the escaped killer William Morva we experienced here last semester. It turned out to be much, much bloodier.
Well, as you can see I missed all the relevant e-mails due to my routine and nearly ended up walking across the drill field because it wasn't blocked off fast enough, or at least not at the end I was crossing. I've found out I'm not the only one who missed these e-mails so I don't consider myself particularly unlucky. I mentioned before the bomb threats from the previous week. Below is the e-mail I received the day before pertaining to those events:
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:01:48 -0400
From:
To:
Subject: Engineering Buildings to Reopen Monday
To The University Community
Three university buildings, Torgersen, Durham, and Whittemore Halls, have been closed since Friday because of a bomb threat. Police have swept the buildings with search teams and deemed the buildings suitable for use beginning 7 a.m. Monday, 16 April.
The university has posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in either bomb threat incidents occurring April 2 or April 13. The university encourages anyone with relevant information to contact the Virginia Tech Police Department at 232-TIPS (8477) or 231-6411.
Virginia Tech Police, in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, continue to investigate both incidents.
What I do know of events so far is at around 7:15AM the shooter killed both a girl and an Resident Adviser who supposedly showed up to break up/mediate an argument they were having. The building was swarmed and sealed off by police who conducted searches for the suspect and secured testimony from witnesses. The did not find the shooter. The search for the shooter proceeded and no e-mail notifying students was sent out until around 9:25AM. I do not know when the campus authorities responsible for sending such e-mails were initially informed of the incident. The first e-mail I received is as follows below:
A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.
The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. Contact Virginia Tech Police at 231-6411
Stay attuned to the www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information.
There was no indication from this e-mail that anyone should stay indoors or that the shooting was lethal. It does not specify that there were multiple victims. It was released roughly two hours after the first shootings took place.
After returning to my dorm I checked my e-mail and in addition to the first e-mail I found the following e-mails. This is the second:
A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows
Nearly two and a half hours after the first incident it is decided to have the students stay inside their buildings. This e-mail appears hastily typed and the final period after "windows" was left off originally.
The third e-mail:
Virginia Tech has canceled all classes. Those on campus are asked to remain where there are, lock their doors and stay away from windows. Persons off campus are asked not to come to campus.
This message was received 25 minutes after the second e-mail. It reaffirms the directive to stay inside and appears more calm and collected.
The fourth e-mail:
In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.
Police and EMS are on the scene.
Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.
All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.
All entrances to campus are closed.
Nearly 45 minutes later this e-mail confirms a second shooting and incorrectly reports that the police have a shooter in custody. I had already been informed by watching the local news reports that a second shooting had occurred.
The following is a fifth e-mail I received from housing and dinning services of Virginia Tech. At this point I was kind of wondering what I would be doing for food since I'd run out of snacks in my room the other day.
Residents:
First and foremost, stay indoors and away from windows and doorways
until you receive the all clear from the university.
D2 will remain open this afternoon once the all clear has been announced
through dinner time for students to get a meal.
Kenneth E. Belcher
Associate Director for Occupancy Management
I have edited out the lower part of this fifth e-mail so as to protect Mr. Belcher's contact information. The main bodies of all the previous e-mails are intact and I only edited the TO: and FROM: headers to protect the listservs.
The following is the sixth e-mail, this one from our university president:
Shooting at Virginia Tech / Statement by President Charles W. Steger
The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.
We currently are in the process of notifying families of victims. The Virginia Tech Police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions. Crime scenes are being investigated by the FBI, University Police, and State Police. We continue to work to identify the victims impacted by this tragedy. I cannot begin to covey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act The university will immediately set up counseling centers. So far centers have been identified in Ambler Johnson and the Cook Counseling Center to work with our campus community and families.
Here are some of the facts we know:
At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Amber Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.
We will proceed to contact the families of victims as identities are available.
All classes are cancelled and the university is closed for the remainder for the today. The university will open tomorrow at 8 a.m. but classes will be cancelled on Tuesday. The police are currently staging the release of people from campus buildings.
Families wishing to reunite with the students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We are making plans for a convocation tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.
The final e-mail after the shooter was confirmed dead is as follows:
Virginia Tech remains closed on Monday, April 16, 2007. Vehicular entrances to campus are severely restricted to essential personnel only. Additional security remains on campus as the investigation continues.
Counseling assistance for students in available at West Ambler Johnston and McComas Hall until 9 p.m. tonight. Students are encouraged to utilize these services. Counseling for faculty and staff is available at the Bowman Room in the Merriman Center (athletic complex). Student may also be together at the Old Dominion Ballroom at Squires Student Center.
The university will also close on Tuesday, April 17. Essential personal are to report for work. Classes will be canceled.
A public gathering will be held Tuesday, April 17 at Cassell Coliseum at 2 p.m. (a time change from the originally scheduled 10 a.m. gathering).
All students are urged to contact their parents as soon as possible to let them know individuals are safe.
Students, faculty, and staff who may have any information related to the incident at West Amber Johnston Hall and Norris Hall are encouraged to go to the Blacksburg Police Department to make statements, or call 540-231-TIPP (8477), or 231-6411
Parents with concerns are asked to call the Dean of Students Office at 540-231-3787.
Individuals injured in the two shootings have been taken to area hospitals.
The restrictions on traffic allowed into campus prevented anyone from ordering out for food. That was annoying tonight but the on campus food services staff were brave enough to stick around for us. More than just D2 opened up again after the all clear was signaled. What I know at the moment is 33 people including the shooter are dead and 15 more injured. He used two 9mm handguns and committed suicide. The identities of the shooter and the most of the victims have not yet been released.
I would like to thank our medical professionals at the regional hospitals for doing there best to help during this crisis. It couldn't have been easy to deal with the flood of casualties especially when the high winds prevented more critically injured patients from being airlifted elsewhere. Our local law enforcement officials also did what they could to stop this tragedy and I thank them also. Good night folks. I'll update this when I can.
Update: Well the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui. Also, as a correction he used a 9mm and a .22 not two 9mms as previously stated. As it happens he also lived in my dorm, Harper Hall. I'm fairly certain he lived on one of the upper floors but I don't have any information yet as to what room or who his roommate was. Odds are I could have passed him the hallway sometime event though he was probably on the other side of the building. Damn, that is kind of disturbing. Also, I'm fairly certain Virginia Tech removed his name and room number from their online person search to make it difficult to learn anything. So I guess I'll just have to talk with people.
My own story of this day begins at 9:00AM. I got up and began to prepare for class. I had a quiz this day. Sometime between 9:15-9:20AM I check my e-mail. I continue with my morning routine and leave for class around 11:50-11:55AM, it is in a building behind Buruss Hall. As I reach the drill field via a route beside Slusher Hall I notice a line of cars blocked by police further up. I assume like many that the police are responding to another bomb threat since we've had a couple the last few days. I proceed to cross a fourth of the drill field and I am yelled at by the police and told to turn back. I do so just to appease them but I don't feel alarmed(considered it just another fake bomb threat) and kind of wonder why if I can't cross the drillfield on that side if they haven't bothered to block it off. I overhear a couple of guys talking, as I get back to the sidewalk, about someone being shot in Ambler-Johnston and that classes are canceled. Seeing that there is no point in continuing to class I return to my dorm. From there I learn that there is a mass shooting in Norris/Holden Hall. Before this I was operating under the impression the situation was similar to the escaped killer William Morva we experienced here last semester. It turned out to be much, much bloodier.
Well, as you can see I missed all the relevant e-mails due to my routine and nearly ended up walking across the drill field because it wasn't blocked off fast enough, or at least not at the end I was crossing. I've found out I'm not the only one who missed these e-mails so I don't consider myself particularly unlucky. I mentioned before the bomb threats from the previous week. Below is the e-mail I received the day before pertaining to those events:
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:01:48 -0400
From:
To:
Subject: Engineering Buildings to Reopen Monday
To The University Community
Three university buildings, Torgersen, Durham, and Whittemore Halls, have been closed since Friday because of a bomb threat. Police have swept the buildings with search teams and deemed the buildings suitable for use beginning 7 a.m. Monday, 16 April.
The university has posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in either bomb threat incidents occurring April 2 or April 13. The university encourages anyone with relevant information to contact the Virginia Tech Police Department at 232-TIPS (8477) or 231-6411.
Virginia Tech Police, in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, continue to investigate both incidents.
What I do know of events so far is at around 7:15AM the shooter killed both a girl and an Resident Adviser who supposedly showed up to break up/mediate an argument they were having. The building was swarmed and sealed off by police who conducted searches for the suspect and secured testimony from witnesses. The did not find the shooter. The search for the shooter proceeded and no e-mail notifying students was sent out until around 9:25AM. I do not know when the campus authorities responsible for sending such e-mails were initially informed of the incident. The first e-mail I received is as follows below:
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:26:24 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Subject: | Shooting on campus. |
The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. Contact Virginia Tech Police at 231-6411
Stay attuned to the www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information.
There was no indication from this e-mail that anyone should stay indoors or that the shooting was lethal. It does not specify that there were multiple victims. It was released roughly two hours after the first shootings took place.
After returning to my dorm I checked my e-mail and in addition to the first e-mail I found the following e-mails. This is the second:
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:50:07 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Subject: | PLease stay put |
Nearly two and a half hours after the first incident it is decided to have the students stay inside their buildings. This e-mail appears hastily typed and the final period after "windows" was left off originally.
The third e-mail:
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:16:40 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Subject: | All Classes Canceled; Stay where you are |
This message was received 25 minutes after the second e-mail. It reaffirms the directive to stay inside and appears more calm and collected.
The fourth e-mail:
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:52:45 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Subject: | Second Shooting Reported; Police have one gunman in custody |
Police and EMS are on the scene.
Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.
All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.
All entrances to campus are closed.
Nearly 45 minutes later this e-mail confirms a second shooting and incorrectly reports that the police have a shooter in custody. I had already been informed by watching the local news reports that a second shooting had occurred.
The following is a fifth e-mail I received from housing and dinning services of Virginia Tech. At this point I was kind of wondering what I would be doing for food since I'd run out of snacks in my room the other day.
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:33:09 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Reply To: | |
| Subject: | Housing Notice: Dining Operations |
Residents:
First and foremost, stay indoors and away from windows and doorways
until you receive the all clear from the university.
D2 will remain open this afternoon once the all clear has been announced
through dinner time for students to get a meal.
Kenneth E. Belcher
Associate Director for Occupancy Management
I have edited out the lower part of this fifth e-mail so as to protect Mr. Belcher's contact information. The main bodies of all the previous e-mails are intact and I only edited the TO: and FROM: headers to protect the listservs.
The following is the sixth e-mail, this one from our university president:
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:41:44 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Subject: | Statement by President Charles W. Steger |
The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.
We currently are in the process of notifying families of victims. The Virginia Tech Police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions. Crime scenes are being investigated by the FBI, University Police, and State Police. We continue to work to identify the victims impacted by this tragedy. I cannot begin to covey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act The university will immediately set up counseling centers. So far centers have been identified in Ambler Johnson and the Cook Counseling Center to work with our campus community and families.
Here are some of the facts we know:
At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Amber Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.
We will proceed to contact the families of victims as identities are available.
All classes are cancelled and the university is closed for the remainder for the today. The university will open tomorrow at 8 a.m. but classes will be cancelled on Tuesday. The police are currently staging the release of people from campus buildings.
Families wishing to reunite with the students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We are making plans for a convocation tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.
The final e-mail after the shooter was confirmed dead is as follows:
| Date: | Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:31:29 -0400 |
|---|---|
| From: | |
| To: | |
| Subject: | Campus Update on VT Shootings |
Counseling assistance for students in available at West Ambler Johnston and McComas Hall until 9 p.m. tonight. Students are encouraged to utilize these services. Counseling for faculty and staff is available at the Bowman Room in the Merriman Center (athletic complex). Student may also be together at the Old Dominion Ballroom at Squires Student Center.
The university will also close on Tuesday, April 17. Essential personal are to report for work. Classes will be canceled.
A public gathering will be held Tuesday, April 17 at Cassell Coliseum at 2 p.m. (a time change from the originally scheduled 10 a.m. gathering).
All students are urged to contact their parents as soon as possible to let them know individuals are safe.
Students, faculty, and staff who may have any information related to the incident at West Amber Johnston Hall and Norris Hall are encouraged to go to the Blacksburg Police Department to make statements, or call 540-231-TIPP (8477), or 231-6411
Parents with concerns are asked to call the Dean of Students Office at 540-231-3787.
Individuals injured in the two shootings have been taken to area hospitals.
The restrictions on traffic allowed into campus prevented anyone from ordering out for food. That was annoying tonight but the on campus food services staff were brave enough to stick around for us. More than just D2 opened up again after the all clear was signaled. What I know at the moment is 33 people including the shooter are dead and 15 more injured. He used two 9mm handguns and committed suicide. The identities of the shooter and the most of the victims have not yet been released.
I would like to thank our medical professionals at the regional hospitals for doing there best to help during this crisis. It couldn't have been easy to deal with the flood of casualties especially when the high winds prevented more critically injured patients from being airlifted elsewhere. Our local law enforcement officials also did what they could to stop this tragedy and I thank them also. Good night folks. I'll update this when I can.
Update: Well the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui. Also, as a correction he used a 9mm and a .22 not two 9mms as previously stated. As it happens he also lived in my dorm, Harper Hall. I'm fairly certain he lived on one of the upper floors but I don't have any information yet as to what room or who his roommate was. Odds are I could have passed him the hallway sometime event though he was probably on the other side of the building. Damn, that is kind of disturbing. Also, I'm fairly certain Virginia Tech removed his name and room number from their online person search to make it difficult to learn anything. So I guess I'll just have to talk with people.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Bush Supports Gay Rights... sort of
As much as I've criticized the conservative anti-homosexual groups in some of my other writings I have to give credit to President Bush in appointing General Peter Pace. If anyone is sure to work hard at keeping homosexuals out of the military its him. I have to applaud our country's efforts since 1994 to throw out close to 10,000 able bodied soldiers for their sexual orientation. Just think that by continuing this policy President Bush not only sacrifices more upstanding, moral, straight soldiers in the Iraq war but is willing to bite the bullet and accept lower numbers of troops than necessary to complete our mission there. He could easily have used thousands more to get the job done. By continuing this policy President Bush is doing an excellent job to support gay rights by saving hundreds of homosexuals who may have died had they actually been sent to fight for this country in Iraq. Its wonderful to know that even in these times conservatives do their best to save the lives of citizens in America's minority groups.
If the above paragraph doesn't sound ridiculous to you for a variety of reasons then there is something seriously wrong with you. If you are a conservative who hates gays then logically you should support them serving in the military on the front lines. Not only would their deaths help save the moral straight soldiers in Iraq but would help to keep control of a worsening situation in that destabilized country.
On the other hand if you support the rights of homosexuals to not be penalized for their orientation then you should support their sacrifice for the benefit of this country that allows them such freedom of choice.
Really, its absurd that during wartime our country does not use every able bodied soldier who has volunteered to server his or her country. Removing soldiers from the ranks for things that don't conflict with their ability to fight is retarded. Sun Tzu would be rolling in his grave at the idiocy of it. As for my personal opinion I don't think giving homosexuals a disproportionate number of dangerous assignments so they die in combat is fair either but thats just another problem to overcome in gaining some much deserved acceptance and respect for homosexuals. Seriously, as long as the guy or gal isn't grabbing you constantly you shouldn't give a crap if you have to bunk with them.
No longer having 10,000 more soldiers that you could have used is just another thing that adds up to how to lose a war. Maybe President Bush will think about it when chaos breaks out in the green zone sometime.
Source
If the above paragraph doesn't sound ridiculous to you for a variety of reasons then there is something seriously wrong with you. If you are a conservative who hates gays then logically you should support them serving in the military on the front lines. Not only would their deaths help save the moral straight soldiers in Iraq but would help to keep control of a worsening situation in that destabilized country.
On the other hand if you support the rights of homosexuals to not be penalized for their orientation then you should support their sacrifice for the benefit of this country that allows them such freedom of choice.
Really, its absurd that during wartime our country does not use every able bodied soldier who has volunteered to server his or her country. Removing soldiers from the ranks for things that don't conflict with their ability to fight is retarded. Sun Tzu would be rolling in his grave at the idiocy of it. As for my personal opinion I don't think giving homosexuals a disproportionate number of dangerous assignments so they die in combat is fair either but thats just another problem to overcome in gaining some much deserved acceptance and respect for homosexuals. Seriously, as long as the guy or gal isn't grabbing you constantly you shouldn't give a crap if you have to bunk with them.
No longer having 10,000 more soldiers that you could have used is just another thing that adds up to how to lose a war. Maybe President Bush will think about it when chaos breaks out in the green zone sometime.
Source
Texas Against Public Health
Isn't it wonderful that this day in age the government won't even look out for the welfare of its own people by helping everyone get vaccinations? Or are they planning further ahead and hope that a bunch of women dropping dead of an entirely preventable cancer will reduce our ever growing population and stave off overcrowding and mass starvation?
Forgive me for being so blunt, but it seems like the Texas House of Representatives are a bunch of morons. They stop mandatory vaccinations which would save thousands of lives and the only excuse they make is that they think the governor has a vested interest in requiring it because he has ties to drug companies. Well yes, the drug companies are going to make money off of it but thats what they do and it still benefits the public not to die of cancer. Basically, all they are doing by blocking vaccinations is being jerks for their own political reasons.
My parting advice to Texas is, get rid of the jerks next election. Maybe then people won't have to die of cancer.
Source
Forgive me for being so blunt, but it seems like the Texas House of Representatives are a bunch of morons. They stop mandatory vaccinations which would save thousands of lives and the only excuse they make is that they think the governor has a vested interest in requiring it because he has ties to drug companies. Well yes, the drug companies are going to make money off of it but thats what they do and it still benefits the public not to die of cancer. Basically, all they are doing by blocking vaccinations is being jerks for their own political reasons.
My parting advice to Texas is, get rid of the jerks next election. Maybe then people won't have to die of cancer.
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A Comedy of Errors
Some of you may be familiar with this story but for those of you who are not, a substitute school teacher is facing a considerable amount of prison time because she is clueless about technology.
It is incredibly stupid that prosecutors charged Julie Amero with anything. The investigators failed to check the computer for spyware and malware which could have directed it to porn sites creating the prior search history she was convicted on. The poor woman has been criticized for failing to protect the children from seeing the pornography on the computer even though witnesses have testified that she not only pushed them away and tried to block the screen from their view but ran to get help to remove the pop-ups because she didn't know how. Considering her lack of knowledge she did everything right that she could do except lock the door when she left to get help to keep kids from wandering in.
I don't know about everyone else but I can forgive her for that one mistake when she is obviously so frantic to get rid of the pop-ups and concerned for the wellbeing of children that it slipped her mind.
If she is at fault then the school system must be doubly so because due to not keeping their security updated the pop-ups were allowed through their filter. The point is this sort of thing can happen because there are dirty people out there who make these kinds of spyware and malware programs. The prosecutors should spend their time charging them instead of a clueless substitute teacher.
I have had a similar experience with pop-ups on my home computer years ago. I was visiting a site totally unrelated to pornography and a pop-up came showing porn. When I hastily clicked the X to remove it about a hundred other pornographic pop-ups began flooding my computer screen. I ended up having to unplug the computer because its was locking it up.
My father has also had a similar experience at our public library when someone who had previously been using the computer left pornographic pop-ups on the screen. He tried clicking X and more pop-ups flooded the screen. He ended up going to find one of the librarians who took care of turning off and restarting the machine. He may not have been as clueless as Mrs. Amero but he certainly didn't want to damage or violate library policy by turning off the library's computer himself.
Julie Amero obviously felt the same way about respecting other people's property so instead of unplugging it and chancing that she would damage it by doing so she got someone who would be qualified to make such a decision. She clearly didn't know if it would hurt the computer or not to turn it off and did the only thing she could reasonably do, get help.
Yet these idiotic people want to punish her for it.
Source
It is incredibly stupid that prosecutors charged Julie Amero with anything. The investigators failed to check the computer for spyware and malware which could have directed it to porn sites creating the prior search history she was convicted on. The poor woman has been criticized for failing to protect the children from seeing the pornography on the computer even though witnesses have testified that she not only pushed them away and tried to block the screen from their view but ran to get help to remove the pop-ups because she didn't know how. Considering her lack of knowledge she did everything right that she could do except lock the door when she left to get help to keep kids from wandering in.
I don't know about everyone else but I can forgive her for that one mistake when she is obviously so frantic to get rid of the pop-ups and concerned for the wellbeing of children that it slipped her mind.
If she is at fault then the school system must be doubly so because due to not keeping their security updated the pop-ups were allowed through their filter. The point is this sort of thing can happen because there are dirty people out there who make these kinds of spyware and malware programs. The prosecutors should spend their time charging them instead of a clueless substitute teacher.
I have had a similar experience with pop-ups on my home computer years ago. I was visiting a site totally unrelated to pornography and a pop-up came showing porn. When I hastily clicked the X to remove it about a hundred other pornographic pop-ups began flooding my computer screen. I ended up having to unplug the computer because its was locking it up.
My father has also had a similar experience at our public library when someone who had previously been using the computer left pornographic pop-ups on the screen. He tried clicking X and more pop-ups flooded the screen. He ended up going to find one of the librarians who took care of turning off and restarting the machine. He may not have been as clueless as Mrs. Amero but he certainly didn't want to damage or violate library policy by turning off the library's computer himself.
Julie Amero obviously felt the same way about respecting other people's property so instead of unplugging it and chancing that she would damage it by doing so she got someone who would be qualified to make such a decision. She clearly didn't know if it would hurt the computer or not to turn it off and did the only thing she could reasonably do, get help.
Yet these idiotic people want to punish her for it.
Source
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