So, the other night I was looking at fstdt.com with a friend and laughing at the idiocy of it all, when I joked idly about whether someone could just kill them off, since the world is overpopulated anyway
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Right, so, I've been meaning to comment on this for ... a week. Oops.
Firstly, FSTDT is just fantastic. Easily one of my favourite websites. Do you post either in the comments on the mainpage or on the forums? If so, I'm Axver there too. I'm Axver everywhere, for that matter.
'I have friends with whom I have to avoid discussions about anything serious because they simply don't care, I have to pretend part of their personality isn't there, and I wonder how I managed to become friends with them in the first place.'
This has happened to me too. I hate trying to tell people why they should care. Even worse are my friends and relatives who purport to have some political interest but work in total generalities - usually because they've bought Liberal Party propaganda wholesale. It makes me sad to see people so rightwing so young. It's a trait I associate with grumpy old men and staid old women, not people who are meant to be the future. It drove me insane when one of my friends was trying to explain the issue of farmers' deforesting regions of the Outback by lumping together anybody who didn't agree with his viewpoint as "Greenies" who are "actually destroying the environment". I just stopped listening so I don't even remember what his point was. For all I know, his core contention could have been a good one - it was just his total lack of nuance that put me off entirely.
That tangentially leads to another point he tried to make, which you may appreciate. His view on Maori place names is not that spelling and pronunciation has changed to rectify European errors and restore the correct Maori. Oh no. His view is that the Maori keep changing their minds. Goddamnit, fuck that latent racism. When I accused another acquiantance of being a bigot after he explained the reasons why he voted for the Liberals, he just smiled and said that he was cool with that.
'I mean, I know that some of them are arts-major'
As an Arts student myself, I'm not quite sure how to take this! History for the win. Even if every man and his dog can't seem to comprehend why the hell I want to do my PhD in 1840-1980 New Zealand history.
'And some of them are even scientists, just caught up in their own narrow scientific world and ignoring the bigger picture.'
This is one thing I like a whole lot about History - you simply cannot avoid the bigger picture. If I'm writing on, for example, something seemingly narrow like the opening up of rural New Zealand for settlement in the 1880s, I have to keep in mind the Long Depression affecting the global economy, the position of political control after the very recent abolition of the provinces, the vicissitudes and intense rivalry behind the expansion of the railways, access to coastal shipping and patterns affecting its provision, attitudes towards Maori affairs and Maori attitudes towards Europeans, the social origins of European settlers ... I could go on and on. It's bloody difficult. I often feel very overwhelmed. But as someone who is inclined to hone in on detail and happily get bogged down in a comfortable specialised area, the fact I absolutely cannot choose to ignore the bigger picture is something I appreciate immensely about History. That sort of thing has a flow-on effect to pretty much all other aspects of my thought.
I don't comment there, I just happen to get linked to it by one person or another occasionally.
And yeah, I have two friends our age who are liberal, and it's really amazing how closeminded they are about it. They seem a whole lot more zealous than the rest of us, and as you say, lump things into generalisations. Of course, we may be biased, but I don't think quite that much.
You called him a bigot, and he was cool with that? o_O There are certain christian friends of mine who are horribly prejudiced against gays and such, but not too many bigots, thankfully.
History is awesome, I miss it from high school. But one could say that being an arts major gives you an excuse not to care about geography and science and global warming and that sort of thing, because it's not in your field, or something. Which is concerning, because it's not like you can pretend the wider world just doesn't exist.
I suppose, at a lower-level of history you look at things in isolation, but I guess everything's connected. I just remember, in high school Australian History (terrible subject that it was, post-1900, muttermutter) they were making us study Australia at War without providing the greater context... luckily, our teacher ignored that and taught us, you know, what was actually going on in the rest of WWI/II, because our involvement didn't make any SENSE without the context. I mean, there was nothing about Hitler or any of that in the syllabus iirc, it was ridiculous. Silly educational system. However, I took an extra history subject for one of my electives in 9/10, which was just fabulous, and more than made up for it.
But yeah, I can agree with your desire for more history focus, although (being a girls-only school) my school had quite a strong humanities department, yay. But more important than making more classes/resources available is to first restructure it so the subject is actually interesting, because Australian History was just a bad idea from the get-go... but no Ancient History at all?? Ancient was the BST subject in the HSC, except for 4U english... although it didn't scale very well, I noticed.
And... yeah, well, regarding death... I didn't expect it to, but life just kinda... goes on. I feel bad that I'm not feeling worse about it, you know? But things are much the same as they were, before, and we're all... yeah, as you say, not talking about it much.
Firstly, FSTDT is just fantastic. Easily one of my favourite websites. Do you post either in the comments on the mainpage or on the forums? If so, I'm Axver there too. I'm Axver everywhere, for that matter.
'I have friends with whom I have to avoid discussions about anything serious because they simply don't care, I have to pretend part of their personality isn't there, and I wonder how I managed to become friends with them in the first place.'
This has happened to me too. I hate trying to tell people why they should care. Even worse are my friends and relatives who purport to have some political interest but work in total generalities - usually because they've bought Liberal Party propaganda wholesale. It makes me sad to see people so rightwing so young. It's a trait I associate with grumpy old men and staid old women, not people who are meant to be the future. It drove me insane when one of my friends was trying to explain the issue of farmers' deforesting regions of the Outback by lumping together anybody who didn't agree with his viewpoint as "Greenies" who are "actually destroying the environment". I just stopped listening so I don't even remember what his point was. For all I know, his core contention could have been a good one - it was just his total lack of nuance that put me off entirely.
That tangentially leads to another point he tried to make, which you may appreciate. His view on Maori place names is not that spelling and pronunciation has changed to rectify European errors and restore the correct Maori. Oh no. His view is that the Maori keep changing their minds. Goddamnit, fuck that latent racism. When I accused another acquiantance of being a bigot after he explained the reasons why he voted for the Liberals, he just smiled and said that he was cool with that.
'I mean, I know that some of them are arts-major'
As an Arts student myself, I'm not quite sure how to take this! History for the win. Even if every man and his dog can't seem to comprehend why the hell I want to do my PhD in 1840-1980 New Zealand history.
'And some of them are even scientists, just caught up in their own narrow scientific world and ignoring the bigger picture.'
This is one thing I like a whole lot about History - you simply cannot avoid the bigger picture. If I'm writing on, for example, something seemingly narrow like the opening up of rural New Zealand for settlement in the 1880s, I have to keep in mind the Long Depression affecting the global economy, the position of political control after the very recent abolition of the provinces, the vicissitudes and intense rivalry behind the expansion of the railways, access to coastal shipping and patterns affecting its provision, attitudes towards Maori affairs and Maori attitudes towards Europeans, the social origins of European settlers ... I could go on and on. It's bloody difficult. I often feel very overwhelmed. But as someone who is inclined to hone in on detail and happily get bogged down in a comfortable specialised area, the fact I absolutely cannot choose to ignore the bigger picture is something I appreciate immensely about History. That sort of thing has a flow-on effect to pretty much all other aspects of my thought.
Rambling continued ...
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And yeah, I have two friends our age who are liberal, and it's really amazing how closeminded they are about it. They seem a whole lot more zealous than the rest of us, and as you say, lump things into generalisations. Of course, we may be biased, but I don't think quite that much.
You called him a bigot, and he was cool with that? o_O There are certain christian friends of mine who are horribly prejudiced against gays and such, but not too many bigots, thankfully.
History is awesome, I miss it from high school. But one could say that being an arts major gives you an excuse not to care about geography and science and global warming and that sort of thing, because it's not in your field, or something. Which is concerning, because it's not like you can pretend the wider world just doesn't exist.
I suppose, at a lower-level of history you look at things in isolation, but I guess everything's connected. I just remember, in high school Australian History (terrible subject that it was, post-1900, muttermutter) they were making us study Australia at War without providing the greater context... luckily, our teacher ignored that and taught us, you know, what was actually going on in the rest of WWI/II, because our involvement didn't make any SENSE without the context. I mean, there was nothing about Hitler or any of that in the syllabus iirc, it was ridiculous. Silly educational system. However, I took an extra history subject for one of my electives in 9/10, which was just fabulous, and more than made up for it.
But yeah, I can agree with your desire for more history focus, although (being a girls-only school) my school had quite a strong humanities department, yay. But more important than making more classes/resources available is to first restructure it so the subject is actually interesting, because Australian History was just a bad idea from the get-go... but no Ancient History at all?? Ancient was the BST subject in the HSC, except for 4U english... although it didn't scale very well, I noticed.
And... yeah, well, regarding death... I didn't expect it to, but life just kinda... goes on. I feel bad that I'm not feeling worse about it, you know? But things are much the same as they were, before, and we're all... yeah, as you say, not talking about it much.
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