¡Ululación! ¡Todos es flexión del género!

[paulhope]

The narrator of Unbearable Lightness recommends that we notice and cherish the coincidences of life. For Tereza, that means seeing significance in the coincidence of Beethoven, a book, and Tomas. Being in tune with these coincidences lets us live our lives with a sort of novelistic beauty.

I am in two minds about this. I don't want to go into them

Comments

Re: AHHHH!! SOUND THE ALARMS!!! RAISE THE WARNING LIGHTS!!!

[theshowmustgo0n]

You're right that perhaps I should probably read what Pinker has to say before refuting any of it. I'm sorry you have beef, Seb. All I'm saying though is(and here I will sinply cut and paste)"that I air more on the side of culture." The Nature/Nurture argument can be very hairy when it comes to gender and sex identification. And I'm NOT BY ANY MEANS saying we should not explore the matter of innate gender differences more. Ignorance does scare me, and it's not worth ignoring scientific findings to push a political agenda, but neither is it worth overstating the role of biology, because it can be dangerous. There have been many instances where certain traits were thought to be biologically determined (by sex, race, etc), innate, or universal, but were later found to have been a result of cultural influence (and vise versa!), so it's highly possible that what we take to be innate differences are caused by the social environment. And don't forget that scientific findings tend to reflect cultural attitudes as well (how curious!) - you can talk to miles more about the science-relfecting-culture topic if you're interested.
That said, again, I'm sorry you have beef. :( I'm nice.

Re: AHHHH!! SOUND THE ALARMS!!! RAISE THE WARNING LIGHTS!!!

[paulhope]

Fair enough, nice person, you're right about being cautious on this stuff. I ungnash my teeth.