To No A Veil

[NameTaken]

The most important part of Non-verbal communication is what has not yet been coded by words or gestures, and which is what allows any forward thinking and dialogue between two minds at all: and that is what we call simply "thinking", ignoring all that may derive from it , and which comes more evident only when a NameTaken and a fool belamy clash on a message board.

Ugh, we ARE NOT talking about intrapsersonal communication here, we are talking about INTERPERSONAL and as such NVC DOES MATTER.

 

[Rali_hates_Mondays]

The "right" belief is the belief one believes, because people usually don´t have anything else. A belief implies rightness. Beliefs are not arguments, they are tautologies, beliefs are their own logic, "self-evident truths" and all that, that is, something you can´t explain because you don´t know how to explain, because a belief is the suspension of the course of thinking, because that´s what a belief is for, to avoid explanations by being presented as a reason in itself, and that whether you call it "religion", "faith", "ethics", "common sense", "natural facts" or whatever you may please.

"Rightness", "logical" rightness is achieved aside (not "independently" from, like I pointed fleetingly too in my longer post yesterday) from beliefs. Beliefs are made by a few people who have the time to dedicate to that, and then the authority to make them be accepted and followed by the rest. It´s like taking the wild course of human thinking and freezing and cutting it at a point to "programme" the lives of other people.

Well, NameTaken, if not a Jesuit one, what school would you suggest I take my new degree on "common sense" and "facts"?

If you say belief is about rightness then I suppose we can tolerate those who, in their logic and faith, believe that homosexuals are a disease-ridden people, who deserve to be hanged.

What is a "fact" by the way?

 

[trawler69]

I have read this thread with interest and also increasing concern as to how it has degenerated into a slanging match. If I put myself into the position of a student learning english, which I once was, and also look at how I now communicate when teaching others, I would have to say that NVC is a very helpfull tool in gatting a message across. Raised eyebrows, smiles and frowns etc. reinforce what you are saying. Of course it can be done without these but it is much harder. Also eye contact is important, it concentrates people on what you are saying and as they concentrate they learn more. So the best person to be a teacher is someone who can use the full range of communication skills. Now here I will be shot down in flames because I believe that the most important part of a childs life is the quality of their education and if I were employing a teacher I would want them to use all the available skills to achieve this and if their religion removed some of those skills I would have to either not employ them or ask them to change so that they can use those skills.

Ok I'm now waiting for the flames to engulf me but please carefully consider what I am trying to say and realise that I am speaking from my experiences as both a pupil and a teacher and that I have no personal religious beliefs or biasses, I just want people to be able to learn using all of the senses they have available and that includes NVC. Sure a blind person can learn but it is harder, so can a deaf person, but we have facilities to focus on them. So let's use our limited resources to do our best by those we teach.

I'm burning already!

 

[Soilwork]

No, I agree.

but further to that, the kind of culture that makes their women cover up and be ashamed of their bodies and faces isn't one that's I'm willing to expose my children to.

Because I feel that culture is.. well.. unacceptable.

I don't care how many freaking years they've been around, treating your women like that isn't the way humans should act, and i wouldn't allow my child to be taught by one of those people.

Call me a racist all you want.. it's got nothing to do with race. I'd happily have a Muslim woman teach my children, just not one who's covered up like the elephant man.

 

[NameTaken]

I have read this thread with interest and also increasing concern as to how it has degenerated into a slanging match. If I put myself into the position of a student learning english, which I once was, and also look at how I now communicate when teaching others, I would have to say that NVC is a very helpfull tool in gatting a message across. Raised eyebrows, smiles and frowns etc. reinforce what you are saying. Of course it can be done without these but it is much harder. Also eye contact is important, it concentrates people on what you are saying and as they concentrate they learn more. So the best person to be a teacher is someone who can use the full range of communication skills. Now here I will be shot down in flames because I believe that the most important part of a childs life is the quality of their education and if I were employing a teacher I would want them to use all the available skills to achieve this and if their religion removed some of those skills I would have to either not employ them or ask them to change so that they can use those skills.

Ok I'm now waiting for the flames to engulf me but please carefully consider what I am trying to say and realise that I am speaking from my experiences as both a pupil and a teacher and that I have no personal religious beliefs or biasses, I just want people to be able to learn using all of the senses they have available and that includes NVC. Sure a blind person can learn but it is harder, so can a deaf person, but we have facilities to focus on them. So let's use our limited resources to do our best by those we teach.

I'm burning already!

Yaya for agreeing with me! ^_^

 

[belamy]

If you say belief is about rightness then I suppose we can tolerate those who, in their logic and faith, believe that homosexuals are a disease-ridden people, who deserve to be hanged.

What is a "fact" by the way?

I am not talking about believing and "accepting" others´ beliefs, but aobut something more fundamental and, if you want, "demolishing": you can only belief in what you feel is right; but that "feeling" is not based on a critical treatment of it: you accept a belief along with a certain set of other beliefs, "tautologies" like I said, that you take for logical reasons to support all the structure of belief; so what I am saying is that a belief, that morals, are vital only as far as we needed just ANY mental support of belief to lead our daily lifes and, being just a fundamental, vital requirement they don´t need to be sophisticated, more or less "right" or "true", only they need to "be" within you. In short, you can not realize your believe is "wrong" until you abstract from it by accepting the challenge to question it by reasoning, and before that your belief, any belief is right: you may see a fault in others´ belief, but it is useless to dispute with someone who can never accept he can be wrong. Take that stupid Mr. Aznar, for example. As long as you are wrapped in self-sufficient principles, be they called pompously "dignity", "God", "justice", as long as you don´t accept to reason over them, you are not a superior being thanks to moral principles, just an animal with a certain training in definite automatisms.

To further clarify my point you would need to read a slightly longer post than usual. So if you consider it worthy, let my try to explain my position in what follows.

Any belief is unassailable because it places itself above and beyond all reasoning. We all have beliefs, because they are implied in any mental action, and by beliefs I mean not just moral and ethical codes, but the most fundamental assumptions like needing to get feeded (think of anorexia); now you may think that this is an open door to all the excesses of the so-called "moral relativism". But as your own beliefs may have already told you, I can assure I´m not as fool and as to try to shake your beliefs to the extent that anything goes as long as one believes it. Your justification is the "belief" in a vague susbtantial morality, unsakable, unassailable, and I am not questioning its "value", as I say, it´s fundamental for reasoning and all we have until we can go further by working mentally over it, but as long as we don´t take that further step, we may be vulnerable to the attacks of all sorts of sophisms, from racial supremacy to the sanctification of marriage and the "natural" foundation of heterosexuality or all their contraries, which amount to the same.

What I am trying to say is that the realm of absolute truths of belief (moral principles and the like) is not the end, it would be meaningless as I have just showed you and that´s the stupid logical mistake someone may appeal to when, having discovered that what he/she had been taught is not an absolute, unshakable truth, surrenders to that moral relativism which may imply any thinkable crime: having been divested of his/her original support of beliefs, and having been given the freedom to establish new ones, he/she literally loses his/her reason because irrespective of their truth, and irrespective of that because we can´t have any absolute truth, reasoning needs some primal stuff because it´s a "resultant" of the directions given by beliefs.

That is the lesson of science, the awful task of thinking and investigating during all of our lives to achieve no certainty. For comforting certainties you have religion, your morals. That´s why a country may stand without science but not without morals and firm beliefs, and that´s why Europe is so sick: they got rid of the old structures of theocratic and aristocratic absolutes, but what they have substituted is an untenable imposture: they have replaced the absolute of God, which is, as I have said, a coherent concept, for the stupidity of the belief in the "certain knowledge" given by Science. I know that US citizens share, as Westerners themselves, that same belief, but check out old threads about "Do you believe in God" and compare the guileless answer of most Americans to the average sneering post of the average Voltairian European. The Europeans freed themselves from the tyranny of one belief to create a tyranny of an element not fitted for that purpose: they discovered the goodness of reasoning and investigation but, not being aware of their true nature, by making them form part of a moral judgement in a place which is not theirs, they put them in the place of the old destroyed a set of certainties because, once again, can´t live without certainties. To a certain extent we can live "without sicence and without art", to the extent to which awareness has not developed as objects, that is, as linguistical awarenesses, as "concepts", but the activity is always there, we investigations and build the judgements that are behind what we call scientific and artistic activities, just like (we suupose, always encountering the limits of our knowledge, our fallibility) animals may breath without "knowing" what breathing "is".

All this is also the point behind all the debate going over the teaching of evolution. Defenders of the evolutionary theory do not defend it as science but as a belief, as a part of Science like what a Prophet is to the God he preaches. And that´s where they are wrong, plain wrong, and not so much against the Christians as agaisnt themselves, agaisnt the science they think they are defending. From all I have said you could well infer that I believe myself that evolution is what defines the course of the universe, human mind included, but those people defend Evolution as a credo, not as a hypothesis that must be worked over in the constant process on mental evolution of humanity. So they end up, unaware, joining the same side of their opponents, that is, postulating an unshakable, undebatable truth and fact: "survival of the fittest animal" (here you might be interested to know about the moral implications darwinism has had in establishing the political and economical system that the XIXth century left to us to extend to its ultimate consequneces... maybe the concept of "social darwinism" will serve to indicate about the implications an apparently innocent, purely technical and restricted concept may work, with its turn of mind and the adequate pragmatical context, far beyond its initial point), and that´s where, for once, the creationists have a good argument against the scientific, "rational" side, namely, that, like any other scientific theory, darwinism is subject to testing and, thus, eventually to being surpassed. The evolutionists may think that having four centuries of sucessful scientific tradition places them above the creationsits, while in fact they degrade science and reduce it to the same "evangelical" simplicity of the others, under a different form and different name.

But, in their turn, the creationists are wrong in making the Bible a source of sicentific investigation. As I said, religion, faith, the sacred scriptures are a source of mental comfort, nothing to do with the everlasting unrest of scientific activity. So that they may be right in appealing to a right to defend certain beliefs and certainties BUT NOT in making them substitute the scientific approach. In fact, their position is the weaker one because, no matter what they choose to teach, the world in which they live was not build just on the shepherd morals and thinking of the Bible, but on those four centuries of scientific activity that help support the complex system that allows them to appeal to "rights", something that a society based exclusively on the Pentateuch would not offer because it couldn´t afford it. In short, science is not "knowledge", that is, "certainty", but rather "investigation". Certainty is to be found in faith, in religion, in morals, in beliefs.

All that is nothing but the belief-reasoning activity I tried to expose before. Reasoning must be based on something, and in that something enter imagination (fancy, even what generations of received sophisticated rationalized knowledge and beliefs may find preposterously stupid) and belief, so that "belief" is always a base of a forward step and, when we must hold the pace and settle on a belief, when we can´t keep "reasoning", we must at least keep the ability to go on again at any time, and not "believe" that the beliefs we already have are the ultimate end of the universe.

 

[belamy]

I have read this thread with interest and also increasing concern as to how it has degenerated into a slanging match. If I put myself into the position of a student learning english, which I once was, and also look at how I now communicate when teaching others, I would have to say that NVC is a very helpfull tool in gatting a message across. Raised eyebrows, smiles and frowns etc. reinforce what you are saying. Of course it can be done without these but it is much harder. Also eye contact is important, it concentrates people on what you are saying and as they concentrate they learn more. So the best person to be a teacher is someone who can use the full range of communication skills. Now here I will be shot down in flames because I believe that the most important part of a childs life is the quality of their education and if I were employing a teacher I would want them to use all the available skills to achieve this and if their religion removed some of those skills I would have to either not employ them or ask them to change so that they can use those skills.

Ok I'm now waiting for the flames to engulf me but please carefully consider what I am trying to say and realise that I am speaking from my experiences as both a pupil and a teacher and that I have no personal religious beliefs or biasses, I just want people to be able to learn using all of the senses they have available and that includes NVC. Sure a blind person can learn but it is harder, so can a deaf person, but we have facilities to focus on them. So let's use our limited resources to do our best by those we teach.

I'm burning already!

You will never burn, you have a "reasonable" party to defend you.
Please, nobody doubts the importance of NVC in communication, only the EXTENT to which they (the NameT. party ) are trying to "reasonably" make it overweight a much more fundamental element in communication: the sharing of beliefs and the ability to deal with beliefs different from your own.

 

[Lube]

No, I agree.

but further to that, the kind of culture that makes their women cover up and be ashamed of their bodies and faces isn't one that's I'm willing to expose my children to.

Because I feel that culture is.. well.. unacceptable.

I don't care how many freaking years they've been around, treating your women like that isn't the way humans should act, and i wouldn't allow my child to be taught by one of those people.

Call me a racist all you want.. it's got nothing to do with race. I'd happily have a Muslim woman teach my children, just not one who's covered up like the elephant man.

So a fundamentalist Christian has the right not to have their child taught by homosexual teachers "because [they] fell that culture is... well... unacceptable"?

I disagree.

 

[NameTaken]

You will never burn, you have a "reasonable" party to defend you.
Please, nobody doubts the importance of NVC in communication, only the EXTENT to which they (the NameT. party ) are trying to "reasonably" make it overweight a much more fundamental element in communication: the sharing of beliefs and the ability to deal with beliefs different from your own.

No, no, you have my argument all wrong. While I DO maintain that it is important the major point I was making was that they are paying, whether privately or with tax dollars, to learn the language, and as such should receive the BEST possible teaching, and with the face being covered they are missing ou on somethnig they should be learning. Even if it wasn't so importan, don't you agree that they should at leats be given an equal opportunity to learn what others are learning, consciously or not, in the same classes? I do.

 

[-live-]

basically depends what you feel comfortable with, if someone doesnt feel comfortable with someone wearing one then i dont think there shouldnt be a problem in asking them to take it off! if i went into a mosque with 'jesus is lord' tshirt im sure they wouldnt approve of it!

 

[belamy]

No, I agree.

but further to that, the kind of culture that makes their women cover up and be ashamed of their bodies and faces isn't one that's I'm willing to expose my children to.

Because I feel that culture is.. well.. unacceptable.

I don't care how many freaking years they've been around, treating your women like that isn't the way humans should act, and i wouldn't allow my child to be taught by one of those people.

Call me a racist all you want.. it's got nothing to do with race. I'd happily have a Muslim woman teach my children, just not one who's covered up like the elephant man.

Well... I guess it´s all a question of degrees and, if you want, "perspective". A woman making top-less on a beach with children (from 0 to 100+ years ) is "unacceptable" in the US. Luckily for the Western world, exposing your breasts is not yet part of the religious beliefs of thousands of women.

 

[belamy]

No, no, you have my argument all wrong. While I DO maintain that it is important the major point I was making was that they are paying, whether privately or with tax dollars, to learn the language, and as such should receive the BEST possible teaching,

Now we are entering the realm of Utopia. A topnocht institution with skyrocketing fees is what I feel gives you the right to "the best". I may be wrong, but I doubt that sort of institution would hire someone susceptible of bringing to them all this mess and trouble.
So I assume that teacher was part of an institution simply making a living on expending certificates of English.

 

[NameTaken]

Now we are entering the realm of Utopia. A topnocht institution with skyrocketing fees is what I feel gives you the right to "the best". I may be wrong, but I doubt that sort of institution would hire someone susceptible of bringing to them all this mess and trouble.
So I assume that teacher was part of an institution simply making a living on expending certificates of English.

ROFL! Giving everybody an equal opportunity is what we SHOULD be striving for. Letting everybody get a good education isn't trying to become a utopia, it's just a nation with common sense.

So basically your argument is fuck the kids education, we should let her fuck them over so she can wear her veil... That's real admirable.

 

[belamy]

ROFL! Giving everybody an equal opportunity is what we SHOULD be striving for. Letting everybody get a good education isn't trying to become a utopia, it's just a nation with common sense.

... and very good intentions... I may be still a fool, but from my undergraduate and graduate experienceS, in and out of Europe, if you don´t have the support of an exceptionally good institution (and from other experiences I begin to doubt they are very numerous, or at least not so much the ones one always supposed to deserve that appellation) ALL the work falls on your back, as well as the bills of the ceremonies (courses) previous to the issuing of certificates.
That´s the gap between the official belief and beautiful discourse concerning Human Rights and the actual mean reality of institutions striving to survive. AAAARRRGGGHHH, don´t make me remember all the academical Tartuffery I´ve just been through, I still believe one day I´ll develop a cancer out of it all.
Oh, this is ridiculous, still obviating that what is at stake here is even more fundamental that academical training.

 

[NameTaken]

... and very good intentions... I may be still a fool, but from my undergraduate and graduate experienceS, in and out of Europe, if you don´t have the support of an exceptionally good institution (and from other experiences I begin to doubt they are very numerous, or at least not so much the ones one always supposed to deserve that appelation) ALL the work falls on your back, as well as the bills of the ceremony previous to the issuing of certificates.

So you are saying if people don't already have the best it doesn't matter if we fuck them over a little bit more. Wow... great way of looking at htings you have there...

 

[belamy]

So you are saying if people don't already have the best it doesn't matter if we fuck them over a little bit more. Wow... great way of looking at htings you have there...

As I´ve just edited (sorry) on my previous post, you are talking about "ideals", I am talking about the dirty practices hiding behind that shiny discourse.
The only country in the world I know in which you can really aspire to the "exceptional" if you can somehow prove you are "exceptional" is the USA. Why? because they look mainly towards the future, while in Europe they mainly towards the past... well, except in France, which is a country vowed to "l´immortalité", that is, "eternity" other than cK´s.

Now all my life I´ve been hearing that those ***** Americans only care about money, while in Europia (sic) the state fosters the best for all: my ASS!!! Ten years ago the universities down here still ranted about that dirty American practice of running academical institutions like firms and, guess what? now it´s the explicit goal of those who were at the barricades in 1968 and nobody seems to have noticed the tartuffery (if you really notice it, you do care about it).

What I mean by all this? That good education doesn´t depend on airy ideals and the face and attire of a woman, but on the actual kind of state you decide to build.

 

[NameTaken]

Haha... That still changes nothing. You have to start SOMEWHERE if we want people who are exceptional to be able ot succeed in ANY country. And what you are saying is that we shouldn't even start to try here. And that, my friend, is just plain wrong.

 

[belamy]

Haha... That still changes nothing. You have to start SOMEWHERE if we want people who are exceptional to be able ot succeed in ANY country. And what you are saying is that we shouldn't even start to try here. And that, my friend, is just plain wrong.

Yeah, sure, in any country and any planet and beyond... then we bump again into the "beliefs" theme, which is good.
Why do so many people keep going and wanting to emigrate to the US? Because it´s there where those ideals become true because the only nation that matters to all those people is the nation of people sharing the same goals and the same will, and not who set foot on a certain island on October 1492 AD or was capable of building a wall ten thousand li long or the first one to write and declare Human Rights for the Citizen in 1789 AD.
Islamists who object to the rights of women don´t do it so much in the basis of argument as on the basis of their being "a Western import", that being mainly our fault because, like I have been pointing all day in my posts, Westerners hadle those rights not so much as a rational course of argumentation as a revealed truth and credo, a cultural conquest of theirs to be extended throughout the world.

 

[NameTaken]

Yeah, sure, and any planet and beyond... then we bump again into the "beliefs" theme, which is good.
Why do so many people keep going and wanting to emigrate to the US? Because it´s there where those ideals become true because the only nation that matters to all those people is the nation of people sharing the same goals and the same will, and not who set foot on a certain island on October 1492 or was capable of building a wall ten thousand li long.

Holy shit... I've already debunked that same regurgitaed post of your many times now... :/ Yes, we operate on BELIEFS, at it is those same BELIEFS of freedom and equality that you are trying to use to justify being able to wear a veil that you say we shouldn't try to operate on. What a paradox of idiocy you've made for yourself!

 

[belamy]

Holy shit... I've already debunked that same regurgitaed post of your many times now... :/ Yes, we operate on BELIEFS, at it is those same BELIEFS of freedom and equality that you are trying to use to justify being able to wear a veil that you say we shouldn't try to operate on. What a paradox of idiocy you've made for yourself!

You have understood NOTHING. NOTHING!! I can see you haven´t REALLY read my longer posts. It´s not that you haven´t understood, but that don´t seem to be willing to. It´s so frustrating, however foreseen in the "theory" I tried to expose in my previous longer post.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I needed to vent.

I don´t "justify", I go deeper than the appeal to this or that belief or rights which, you are right, would stupidly leave me on both her and you universe of "mere" beliefs, I try to abstract myself from that universe of beliefs and prejudices to analyze both her and your acts, OUR acts in the light of a, if you want to call it academically that way, a "theory" trying to explain what determines her actions, your posts, all our course of reasoning and dealing and not dealing with beliefs and arguments.