None of what you describe are personal attacks. It just so happens that people love to be offended by words, because I have never named anyone and shamed them in a personal manner. All you can say is that I've called "people" manginas. Who? It is not a crime to use this type of humour, no matter how triggered people are. It's still okay and I'm not going to edit my expression just to avoid your hurt feelings.
Why Capitalism makes us sick
- Thread starter ThomasJ79
- Start date
None of what you describe are personal attacks. It just so happens that people love to be offended by words, because I have never named anyone and shamed them in a personal manner. All you can say is that I've called "people" manginas. Who? It is not a crime to use this type of humour, no matter how triggered people are. It's still okay and I'm not going to edit my expression just to avoid your hurt feelings.
This is why Hush is a moderator and you are not. Just because you percieve what I said to be off-topic does not make it off-topic. Hush moderates because she is objective in her approach to forum nonsense and/or personal attacks. What I said was in poor taste and ill-advised humour, but it's not an attack on members, and I was being relevant to the topic, and yes I did watch the video. Why do I suddenly have to explain why I post such things? I don't need to check my posts in-case people don't like what I say. I can say whatever I bloody well want, and your petty attempt to shame me isn't going to bring the mod back to suddenly give me a lashing. This is what a free forum looks like. How many times am I going to get this rubbish from members? Always trying to find a way to make my posts look awful in the hopes that a mod might delete them. Just get back to the topic like she asked you to do.
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You haven't hurt my feelings! I never mentioned my feelings. But since you mention it, I don't see much of the insulting language you have directed towards others as being relevant to me, and I have struggled to understand the meanings of anything that might be relevant. It's just that you had asked about whether you had personally attacked others, so it seemed relevant to mention those things that I had noticed.
Yes, those things you have written constitute personal, "ad hominem" attacks. They express derogatory personal judgments of people who advance certain arguments, rather than responding to the arguments themselves. Whether you have targeted certain individuals on forum by name is completely academic. These are still attacks of a personal nature - responding on a personal level to the persons or personalities of people who propose some given argument or set of arguments. In terms of formal argument they constitute logical fallacies and in any case, do not contribute to discussion in any meaningful way.
Of course it is not a crime to insult people with unkind language! I think that we have all done it at some time or another - perhaps more or less seriously, depending on the occasion. I don't think it is really all that humorous though. "It doesn't take a talent to be mean", I have heard. Other people might find it funny though - have people usually told you that they have found it funny when you have used insulting language on them? Surely it isn't usually considered very polite or considerate to talk that way in regard to others? No, I don't think so. In any case it's useful that you derive enjoyment from it, because otherwise why would you do it?
I think it's generally a better approach to refrain from using insulting language towards other people or groups of people. Because it keeps them on better terms with us, and I think it makes discussion a bit more enjoyable for everyone. Also, sometimes people know things we don't. No individual can understand everything! We are all in this to learn, and I just don't think it's very realistic to describe people as idiots when everyone is so different. But I suppose that these are just my personal opinions about it all.
I hate to break it to you, but there is no law demanding that I still stop using the word 'idiot' to describe people. You still cannot name one personal attack I made, and have just written several paragraps trying to shame me for 'insulting' people using 'insulting language'. I am still not policing my own language for your benefit. You have no authority to do such a thing.
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Yes I remember, we discussed laws already! But I think that you should know, that my personal intentions (ie. what I was "trying" to do) are not apprehendable to you, and are really irrelevant to the validity of any of those things that I discussed. Of course, you are completely free to make up your own mind about anything and everything - let me be the first to acknowledge that I have no way of exercising any authority over you at all!
"Idiot" is kind of a small minded term. Primarily because its definition changes by whoever uses it a great deal of the time. A feeler might call someone and idiot for ignoring their heart as an example. However calling someone ignorant is a different matter. Ignorance implies a lack of knowledge or critical thinking skills and is almost always understood to mean that.
Calling BS. The reason certain diseases are more prevalent in capitalist cultures is because people live longer; and the longer one lives, the more likely one will develop one of the manageable diseases you mentioned.
That is one factor, in particular when it comes to certain cancers and coronary heart disease, but there is definitely more to it than that. Generally, the health of people who immigrate to the U.S. is better than the health of people born in the U.S., but the longer they live in the country the more they adopt the lifestyle and their health declines to match those of people born in the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/health/the-health-toll-of-immigration.html
The same is true in Canada and Australia:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/immigrants-health-declines-the-longer-in-canada-study-1.681134
http://www.deakin.edu.au/news/lates...to-australia-a-bad-health-move-for-immigrants
The stress and lifestyle associated with American style capitalism is detrimental to health. The quality of the health care helps extend people's lives (much more so if you have money, particularly in the U.S.) but people live with chronic health conditions that effect the quality of their life in a negative way.
Capitalism itself is not necessarily the cause but there is definitely a correlation between health and the lifestyle associated with capitalism.
Those articles, which do not cite very well, only point to the fact that the immigrating parent will have a longer life-expectancy than their offspring. It does not claim that their life expectancy will be worse than if they stayed in their original country. (The headline is essentially misleading in respect of the actual article).
The most simple explanation seems to be that if you take any group of middle-aged adults in any population, their life-expectancy will be greater than the rest of the population, because there is a relatively large infant/youth mortality in every population. If you make it to 15yrs old, your risk of dying is pretty low until you reach retirement. Ie. Children's overall life-expectancy is lower than 15+ year old's life-expectancy.
Here is a table of mortality by age, from Princeton University:
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I personally don't care if you call me or anyone stupid names but the fact that I was called out because I said this to you after you had left a flippant comment that had no redeeming value (since deleted) sets a real double standard:
How is my comment any worse than any of the comments you make? That is really how I felt because you had not answered my post in any meaningful way but just flipped it off as worthless.
I know this is all a stupid discussion about supposed hurt feelings, but acting like I unfairly persecuted you with that one little comment while you defend your right to call people names is kind of immature.
If you dish it out you should be willing to get some of it back.
Those articles, which do not cite very well, only point to the fact that the immigrating parent will have a longer life-expectancy than their offspring. It does not claim that their life expectancy will be worse than if they stayed in their original country. (The headline is essentially misleading in respect of the actual article).
The most simple explanation seems to be that if you take any group of middle-aged adults in any population, their life-expectancy will be greater than the rest of the population, because there is a relatively large infant/youth mortality in every population. If you make it to 15yrs old, your risk of dying is pretty low until you reach retirement. Ie. Children's overall life-expectancy is lower than 15+ year old's life-expectancy.
Here is a table of mortality by age, from Princeton University:
I don't have time to look at this in depth right now, but health and wellness is influenced by biopsychosocial factors that are complicated and influenced by so many things that we could have a back and forth discussion about all the risk factors in all different conditions and populations that would be never ending.
If you truly don't think that high stress levels, sedentary lifestyles, bad eating habits, pollution, etc...contribute to bad health then you will not think that a lifestyle associated with that is bad for you, but evidence points to the contrary.
However, countries who have a better health care system can offset some of this by extending lives through treatments, surgeries and medication. The people live longer, but they are living with chronic health conditions that compromise the quality of their life. Of course, socio economic status inside those countries will also affect the availability and the quality of care.
It's not a simple black and white answer.
I will say that the title of the video is inflammatory and not totally accurate as to the content and the actual argument that Dr. Maté makes.
You obviously do care, because you've even went as far as to post a rant on my profile page and you are still commenting on an issue that was resolved on the first page with the moderator. If you have a problem with what the moderator did, then that is your problem, not mine. I simply posted a prompting but relatively harmless and ill-humored comment and you've done nothing but whinge about it and constantly call me out for speaking my mind. Nobody can yet come out with any evidence of me 'personally attacking' someone. Quite frankly, I think you are being rather immature.
It wasn't the moderator calling me out on that comment , but your friend, and then you posted something about being attacked yourself...
Well, I'm over it...the whole thing is silly.
Here is one rational criticism I have:
He states in the video that "alcoholism came around in the 18th century with the rise of capitalism." There is no way to substantiate this claim and sounds false on analysis. While alcoholism seems to be a rather modern phenomenon, there is no reason not to just assume that it has been a problem since the inception of alcoholic beverages. It might be more prevalent due to living in more individualistic societies, in which capitalism is one. But it would seem to me that people are able to use and abuse it because there is an overall lack of the same social pressures one would find in pre-modern societies, where there were harsher forms of punishment, like shunning, for such behaviors.
What about former communist countries that had and continue to have high rates of alcoholism? Capitalism can't be to blame for the high rates of alcoholism that existed in non-capitalist counties. Even if capitalism influenced these countries before the advent of communism, would it have not decreased during this time? Where is the data for that?
He states in the video that "alcoholism came around in the 18th century with the rise of capitalism." There is no way to substantiate this claim and sounds false on analysis. While alcoholism seems to be a rather modern phenomenon, there is no reason not to just assume that it has been a problem since the inception of alcoholic beverages. It might be more prevalent due to living in more individualistic societies, in which capitalism is one. But it would seem to me that people are able to use and abuse it because there is an overall lack of the same social pressures one would find in pre-modern societies, where there were harsher forms of punishment, like shunning, for such behaviors.
What about former communist countries that had and continue to have high rates of alcoholism? Capitalism can't be to blame for the high rates of alcoholism that existed in non-capitalist counties. Even if capitalism influenced these countries before the advent of communism, would it have not decreased during this time? Where is the data for that?
Call me a SJW if you must….calling names is so passé.
The factual data in the United States does actually show that minorities are more disadvantaged than the average white person, pretty much from birth.
The idea of Capitalism is not evil…it can be made to do evil things and the power of it wielded by those who’s intentions may not be very just, but we certainly do have a disparaging difference in how one group is treated vs another.
If you would like the statistics I would be happy to provide it.
The idea that all you need to progress forward in our society here in the US (can’t speak for Ireland I dunno), is to pull up your boot-straps and work harder is hogwash.
A secondary education is now a necessity in the US if you wish to get a job that will make enough to take care of you and possibly a family (but in doing so you put yourself $30,000 or so in debt ((average))…even IF someone can afford to go to college here, those average college graduate wages have fallen.
Where once were single-income families are almost nonexistent now…so if we are truly concerned about family structure then maybe we should pay peole enough so someone can raise the children properly.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that so and so who makes minimum wage and has made the unwise decision to pop out 6 kids should make enough to float them all easily.
What I’m getting at, is the US in now barely a Capitalist society…such a society would have to be very balanced lest the snake eats it own tail.
The income gap is now the largest it’s ever been, and we are still seeing what consequences (good or bad) have really come out of it.
I DO know that the average working class Joe Blow is falling behind more and more.
People haven’t had a significant wage increase since the early 80’s though production and GDP as well as inflation have gone up hundreds of times over.
There was no trickle down effect…and as more and more things were privatized with the promise of competition bringing down prices the value of our dollar has decreased drastically.
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp
If all this is just fantasy…you know like how our now private for-profit prisons (conflict of interest) have made deals with the states they are in to keep a certain census level or pay a penalty…then why do they spend on lobbying?
But yes…it’s all fantasy.
That an African American young man is more likely to be arrested, given harsher sentences, and also longer ones than their white counterparts.
I’ve got statistical data for days if you would like to peruse any of it.
And once again, I’m not against Capitalism…just Capitalism being unregulated and allowed to run out of control such as in the latest Wall Street crash (thank God Bush hadn’t privatized out Social Security, which he was pushing the couple years leading up to it).
In a truly Capitalist society those banks should have failed.
GM should have failed.
But we didn’t do that…we bailed them out.
In a truly Capitalist society we also don’t allow monopolies, and yet that is all we have.
And now they’ve written laws to put the US taxpayer on the hook for the next bank failure.
Fuck that.
If they fail this time and try to pull that bullshit I don’t think they will be met with such wiliness to bend over and spread em.
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For anyone that wants to know my own opinion on the topic(no one has asked and there have been a few assumptions) is that I don't think that Capitalism is to blame for all our illnesses. I don't even think that the premise that stress causes most of the mentioned illnesses in the video is supported with enough evidence, so the premise that stress, caused by Capitalism, causes such illnesses is false.
What I do accept though is that the health of our mental life is extremely important for our overall health and well being and that we should care more and not less about the health of our fellow human beings.
I am neither a capitalist or socialist in their purest sense, but advocate a society that makes a reasonable use of both.
What I do accept though is that the health of our mental life is extremely important for our overall health and well being and that we should care more and not less about the health of our fellow human beings.
I am neither a capitalist or socialist in their purest sense, but advocate a society that makes a reasonable use of both.
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You make it sound like you created this thread to mess with people, when you put it like that.
"Why Capitalism makes us sick" *.5 hour video of some Dr. poorly dissecting the woes of society* — and you waited three pages before you even said what your own thoughts were. You didn't mention the reasoning for starting the thread, there was no "I'm posting this because x, what do you think?".
I'm not saying this was entirely the case, but when you make a click-baity title and no elaboration, the thread comes off as insincere.
That was not my intention, and I only named it the same as the video was named in youtube. I hadn't had time to reflect on what being said as the speaker covered a whole host of points in the video. I didn't intend for the video to be representative of my own views, but people certainly didn't hesitate to assume this was the case. That is not my fault. I wasn't all that interested in refuting capitalism, as I was about the speaker's other messages, which is that we should have empathy and understanding for the life people are given by chance, that we cannot separate individuals from their environment as easily as it seems and that should be included in our overall understanding of human nature.
I am sorry if what I did seems disingenuous, but it was not done with any ill will or intentions. My reflection is in hindsight.