That is simply awful to read.

Can’t imagine her thoughts on equality

The dragon underneath is starting to stirr.

You and your friend seem to not take yourselves too serious, which is a nice trait.

Your sister seems a bit too uptight.

In a democratic country, you can think and say whatever you want from its government. At best, being there, you should expect some side eyeing: you’re there; if you don’t like it, go your own way.

In countries where you know such criticism can bring harm your way, just avoid going there altogether.

I’m missing your point.

I paid exactly for what I was looking for, which was an affordable rugged phone, with hardware adequate for my daily needs for a few years.

Until today, I haven’t had any issue with the phone.

So I’m having a hard time understanding your remark.

Blackview

Intriguing, isn’t it?

Probably marked it as such inadvertently. Thank you for the warning.

I can do one class per semester and pay less than 100€ of tuition. I have a paid house and a source of income besides my salary.

Greed, plain and simple, and a complete absence of checks and balances.

There is no problem in creating an endeavour to achieve some goal and make money from it in the process but it is a problem when making a better life for oneself becomes a trip to hoard as much riches as possible just for the sake of it.

I’ve been lucky enough to know people with a lot of money, both old money and new money. Old money were down to earth people, still working on their family business, leading a very discreet life, with no show off. Polite, well spoken. New money - I prefer the french nouvelle riche - were insuferable twits, that liked to throw around their money as if it meant anything.

The old money people paid whoever worked for them well; I was told, in no uncertain terms, trust is a very high value commodity. They wanted to keep people around them loyal and reliable. The other lot paid pittance salaries.

There is only so much money needed and spendable. I don’t mind paying taxes, although I do say there is a lot of misuse of all the money collect from it, but I consider it the price of civilization. I have an NHS, good roads and somewhat well taken care infrastructure, free public education, subsidized medication, unemployement by the state, paid sick days, paid parental leave, etc. That is money well spent.

Meanwhile, I see companies paying pittances. Tax the blood out of them. Force them to pay higher salaries in order to have higher tax deductions. Throw out deductions for charity; that is white washing greed. Increase paid vacation days (we get paid 14 months here and only work 11, as we have 22 days of paid vacation, plus an extra month salary for holiday “bonus” and another for christmas) and pay higher per diem values.

A company can work to only break even and still produce a lot.

Nothing really deserves that much attention from you.

Reading that comment, the words you chose to express how you view reality, pains me as a human being.

I can’t imagine what you have been through in order to be weighed down with such a bleak view of life and the world.

We are, actually. We didn’t ask to exist. It was forced onto us by a cruel god that thought it would be neat to make humans.

We aren’t owed nothing.

I’m going to take a hit and say I made a poor job at explaining myself and clarify that, for the creed I mentioned, the creator entity did not made humans. What the creator entity did was set off the unfolding of reality as we perceive it: the Universe. Humans contained within it are off shoots of causality.

There was never a direct nor directed intention to create humanity, thus, nothing is owed to it.

The premise is that anything to exist is better than nothing. If the Universe was to be populated with barren rocks and flaming balls of matter - which is, mostly - without humanity to perceive it that creation mythos was already fullfilled.

If we think back to the dumpster baby, god created a child and threw them in a dumpster. For fun. It doesn’t get to wash its hands and say “I don’t owe them anything, it’s up to them to survive.” It’s still responsible for creation and it is derelict in its duty.

That premise is the premise of the christian, islamic, jewish, and all other self appointed omnipotent creating entities. Those entities claim to have created humanity, in their image, to ocuppy a world they devised for that specific purpose. A world created in such a way that, nonetheless, humans make use of their own agency to tamper and distort.

I’m not a believer but that is the short and dirty version of those myths: the world was perfect, until humans decided they weren’t completely happy with it. Which leads us back to pointing fingers at the creator, for making a poor job.

This is a circular discussion.

Who is responsible for birth defects?

Biology, genetics and environmental causes. And poor judgment from the parents. So, it depends.

For natural disaster?

I guess… physics, primordially? Followed by stuborness, shortsightness and stupidity of humans?

For sickness?

Virus, bacteria, exposure, malnourishment, and others?

These things aren’t choices […]

A good part is outside our capability to act upon, I will gladly grant you that. But there are parts where we can in fact influence the outcome.

[…] and we aren’t responsible for them, […]

The moment any individual realizes something shoul not be in such a way, that individual can take responsibility to avoid or mitigate it.

[…] they happen because god created a cruel world for us to suffer and die in. God created the dumpster and threw us in.

At best, reality is indeferent to what happens to an individual, a species, a planet, a star system or even a galaxy.

We have been setting our course in reality from the moment we achieved sentience and consciousness. We find things cruel, unfair, whatever, because they do not favour us. We’re owed nothing for existing. We take a debt towards each other in helping exist in such reality.

There are no gods nor higher powers to shift blame here. We’re here, now, and we have to deal with it. We can choose to try to make this world better for others or allow it to follow its own devises or even actively make it worse.

Individual agency. The stage is set: write and enact your own play.

You got my atention. Explain your point of view, please.

If such happens it is entirely on the responsability and choice of who did. No cop out, no resorting to a scripture to excuse actions, no easy forgiveness.

Tell me you are a broken human being without saying it.

I’m honestly sad for knowing you take life to such regard but there is more to reality and life than our own small sliver of experience and understanding.

I once read about an african creed that states the original creator of reality created it because it found something existing was better than only void - in the sense of absolute nothing - existing, and thus set what we perceived as reality into building itself and let it to its own devise, to never again interfere or meddle with it, to then disappear.

It’s a convoluted way to state: deal with your own mess; I just set the stage, you write and act your own play.

It’s a good way to deny people of the easy cop out.

The ancestors part always brings a smile to my face.

1. they were young, once, hence, they had sex, masturbated, etc.

You being alive is proof enough of the later. No room for judgement there: they’ve been there, done that.

2. the entire “cult of the ancestors” starts on the present.

If the person paying respect to past figures is concerned over such petty parts of life, that person is concerned over the wrong things.

3. you will, theoretically, become an ancestor one day.

Will you be bothered over petty things or be concerned with your descendants living well and happy, like you wanted, tried and wished for others?

I do enjoy the notion of teverence towards the ancestors. It’s like having a personal roster from which to choose and say “not doing what they did” or “they had worst and made it”. Or a personal fan club.

Laic

I don’t care about religion or beliefs. It’s irrelevant to me in my day to day life.

I have a personal code of ethic, developed through personal experience and reading several philosophy proposals, taking from each what I find useful and discarding the rest.

Predator is from 1987; that’s a classic.