harsh realities
Hm. Some things I wanted to touch upon in this entry are things that I've been thinking about for some time now. I've been attended domestic violence counselor training every Saturday and Monday for three weeks now because I am working to become a state certified counselor for non-profit organizations. The sessions are quite long and I believe that
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I think if your beliefs cohere then there's a reasonable chance of it being an at least passable representation of reality. Reality itself doesn't contradict itself, so if your ideas do not contradict themselves, and if they're checked regularly against reality with evidence from your senses (i.e. the sciences, history etc.) you're likely to have something rooted in at least some truth. Or something along those lines. You might have some core beliefs near the centre of your worldview which if substantially incorrect would make your view of reality somewhat scewed, and those tend to be the kind of questions that philosophy deals in, and the ultimate explanations given by science, among others. These deserve a lot of attention and thought I think. So a Christian Dominionist is in serious trouble, believing a lot of false things right at the heart of their worldview - you can always be sure your view of reality is considerably closer to the truth than theirs, at least :P
I think in terms of everyday position forming, I just tend to shy away from having strong opinions on things I don't know much about. I think it's good to weight the strength of your positions on how much you know about them. A lot of day to day opinions can be held quite strongly by pretty much everyone because we're all citizens of the world - positions on whether or not X should have talked to Y in situation Z, what the best television programmes are, why queueing is annoying &c. I think with other things you need to learn something about it before holding any strong opinions. If you limit yourself to holding quite strong views on things you know lots about, and weaker ones on things you're less familiar with, even if you do hold wrong beliefs, you won't hold them strongly, and thus are open to more evidence - which means you're always open to being lead closer to the truth of the matter, following where the argument leads.
We're inevitably going to believe lots of false things. But we can avoid (as far as we are able believing them passionately.
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Yeah, I agree with what you say about disciplining your child. Kids can be a big handful sometimes (I learned that while volunteering at a daycare) and it would come to the point where I had to grab their arm, drag them up into a standing position and drag them to a corner. I felt bad about this at first but when I saw the teachers doing it, I realized it had to be done. Kids aren't going to listen to you if you just yell at them.
Well...maybe if you have a really scary voice.
Yeah, it is sad. I learned in my training that the most dangerous time for a woman is right after she tries or actually does break up with a boyfriend/husband/whatever. Just yesterday, I read about a case in which a 15 year old was killed by a former boyfriend in another school around here. He killed himself after, too.
Isn't there quite a variation in skin tone across the subcontinent though?
Oh yeah. There's brown as in almost-looking-black and then there's brown like dark-tanned brown. Fairer skinned people ARE seen as more beautiful but those kinds of people are very rare. All the art, movies, etc. only display the idealized "Indian", and it's not necessarily reality.
I just tend to shy away from having strong opinions on things I don't know much about.
I think that's a very good way to be because judging things before you even know them is a really, really stupid things to do. Yeah, what you say is very true and that made me feel loads better because, to put it bluntly, you're right. :)
And that sounds like a very interesting and deep book. Yep. *nods*
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