Several decades ago I recall Nathan Knorr musing aloud about taxes. He said "It's okay with me if the United States starts taxing us, so long as they make the Catholic Church and every other religion pay taxes too."
Marvin Shilmer
JoinedPosts by Marvin Shilmer
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35
Are we seeing the beginning of the end for Kingdom Halls?
by nicolaou inafter all, "at this time,over 13,000 kingdom hall projects and 35 assembly hall projects are needed worldwide.".
hmmm, not too sure about that but all the recent re-branding seems to be heading .
could this be the long game?
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305
McKinney Texas pool party?
by Marvin Shilmer inso today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.
my response: it shows a clash of expectations.
i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.
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Marvin Shilmer
Can no one learn how to fix a fence or do something constructive? There has to be more to life than sport. Yes, it's an escape but only a very temporary one for most people. A true escape takes a bit more effort and commitment than playing the game you like to play.
From my experience, you start with what draws the target audience and you grow from there. It just happens to be the case that basketball is a good draw for a lot of kids in poor communities. But so is bicycle riding, tennis, baseball, football and other activities (like swimming at a pool!!!). But getting kids' time and attention is, I agree, just a beginning. From that other life lessons and habits can be encouraged through leadership, including the value of education and civic responsibility. But a lot of kids living in poverty have trouble seeing a way out of the circumstances they hear adults talking about so they end up wasting away thinking there is no way.
Oddly enough, of the many folks I've talked to about finding success in life though raised in poverty, quite a few have said when they were growing up they didn't know they were poor. They didn't feel held back by poverty because they never realized they were living in poverty. In each instance of this the parents were responsible for not teaching their kids that they lived in poverty. I found this a novel idea and it really resonated with me. I recall instances of watching our dogs play under the house when I was laying in bed at night looking through cracks in the floorboards. It never occurred to me that we were poor. I knew a lot of kids we went to school with seemed rich by comparison, but otherwise I thought most everyone else had big cracks in their floorboards just like we did. I thought we were normal!
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Is RIDICULE acceptable in online debating?
by nicolaou inthis topic was inspired by one of fhn's comments on the 'warzone' thread, so i'll just restate my post there .
.. "i've been wondering for a while now if ridicule really is an unacceptable feature in debate - it certainly isn't a valid form of argumentation.
the thing is, some individuals really do come out with the most laughable nonsense and parade it as a serious proposition that merits attention.
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Marvin Shilmer
Hey, you can lead a horse to water .... but you can't make them see that they're an ass.
A horse should never see itself as an ass because a horse is not an ass and an ass is not a horse. But, me thinks readers get what you're trying to say!
Sorry. Couldn't help myself.
Oh, and a horse that thinks it's an ass, well, I'd say the real asses better watch out, and everyone else should get ready for a mule or hinny!
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Is RIDICULE acceptable in online debating?
by nicolaou inthis topic was inspired by one of fhn's comments on the 'warzone' thread, so i'll just restate my post there .
.. "i've been wondering for a while now if ridicule really is an unacceptable feature in debate - it certainly isn't a valid form of argumentation.
the thing is, some individuals really do come out with the most laughable nonsense and parade it as a serious proposition that merits attention.
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Marvin Shilmer
What if they are so intent on looking cool or knowledgeable or whatever it is they are trying to "look" that other posters watch them just tear in to posters over and over to the point that on one can concentrate on the actual topic?
You're asking about how a community should respond to abusive and/or needlessly disruptive behavior. In the case of JWN that falls squarely to the sights ownership to do with as it pleases. Those of us who are not owners can, if it is allowed, share our opinion with the sights ownership. But basically each person has to decide if they want to subject themselves to whatever is allowed in the given community, which in this case is JWN.
Frankly, I'm perfectly happy with a wide open forum because I'm perfectly happy to let educated readers decide as they will based on what is put before them. This was how the original H2O functioned, and I found it useful that way. What fools make of things, do or say is not something I tend to worry about, unless their actions present an imminent threat to my person or family.
But I can function in this comparatively tame environment.
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Is RIDICULE acceptable in online debating?
by nicolaou inthis topic was inspired by one of fhn's comments on the 'warzone' thread, so i'll just restate my post there .
.. "i've been wondering for a while now if ridicule really is an unacceptable feature in debate - it certainly isn't a valid form of argumentation.
the thing is, some individuals really do come out with the most laughable nonsense and parade it as a serious proposition that merits attention.
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Marvin Shilmer
The issue is though that humans are very emotional creatures. As a result, to some, a person's character and their views are indistinguishable.
When speaking of debate I'm speaking to discussion of argumentation, conclusions of that argumentation, and whether the form of argument is valid and/or the resulting conclusions are viable based on premises offered in the argument.
To argue that a person's character means a particular argument they offer is unsound or false is argumentum ad hominem when the argument and/or conclusion is of something other than the individual's personal character.
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McKinney Texas pool party?
by Marvin Shilmer inso today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.
my response: it shows a clash of expectations.
i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.
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Marvin Shilmer
One thing that struck me on a program about Baltimore recently was how many people spent their time on utterly useless activities like playing basketball.
Playing basketball is one of the most useful things I see in poor communities local to me. Children who grow up engaging this sport (or others like it) are learning several excellent life habits. They're cultivating a desire for a rigorous form of exercise that will serve their health well in later years. They're learning social interactions. They're learning that hard work and smarts pay off (it takes more than luck to compete in any sport like this). Most kids I know who play basketball have no dream of the NBA. They're just looking for fun with fun people, and along the way they're developing some decent life lessons and habits.
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McKinney Texas pool party?
by Marvin Shilmer inso today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.
my response: it shows a clash of expectations.
i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.
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Marvin Shilmer
Just "voting" doesn't solve the issue because things like zoning and gerrymandering makes voting pointless for large swaths of people. Other types of activism would be necessary to create change.
I don't disagree with that. I'm also a firm believer in civil disobedience, and civil disobedience does not include refusing to follow reasonable instructions from law enforcement sent to a situation they did not initiate and whose duty it is to restore order and public safety in the face of a large gathering with reports of violence like the McKinney pool party incident.
Edited to add: My advice was/is not to "just vote". My advice also included working hard and working smart. Planned civil disobedience is, in my view, party to working hard and working smart.
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305
McKinney Texas pool party?
by Marvin Shilmer inso today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.
my response: it shows a clash of expectations.
i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.
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Marvin Shilmer
Like you said, luck is what allowed me to actually get to the age where I could get out of a bad situation. The arrogance of anyone to suggest that everyone in the ghetto is there because of their own desire or bad decisions is ridiculous.
It is utterly ridiculous to think any individual wants to live in what we term a ghetto. This is why in usage the very term "ghetto" has taken on a connotation of somewhere no one wants to live. Sometimes luck alone gets a person out of a bad situation (think: hitting a mega-lottery jackpot). But most of the time working hard and working smart is what gets it done, though even in this case being at the right place at the right time can make a big difference.
I have lots of interaction with individuals who live in desperately poor neighborhoods. It's common to find lots of very bad decisions being made, like spending money at nightclubs, lots of fast food and lottery tickets when the family/individual does not have the money to afford these things. This is where I come from, and it's where I go to help. I also see lots and lots of bad parenting. I see children taught to stand up for rights at the wrong time (and, yes, from a parent's perspective there are wrong times for children to stand up for rights that belong to them). I could go on and on.
And then we have videos like the McKinney pool party video. And what do we do? We stomp on perceived misbehavior on the part of a law enforcement officer and neglect the utter stupidity and disregard for authority that is staring us right in the face on the part of some of those teenagers and thereby send a signal to those teenagers that the behavior is justifiable. This does not help our children; it cripples them!
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Is RIDICULE acceptable in online debating?
by nicolaou inthis topic was inspired by one of fhn's comments on the 'warzone' thread, so i'll just restate my post there .
.. "i've been wondering for a while now if ridicule really is an unacceptable feature in debate - it certainly isn't a valid form of argumentation.
the thing is, some individuals really do come out with the most laughable nonsense and parade it as a serious proposition that merits attention.
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Marvin Shilmer
False conclusions deserve ridicule.
Unethical behavior deserves ridicule.
Whether an individual deserves ridicule as a human being is a moral question. In contemporary society a person's behavior can be so contemptuous that most would think the individual deserving of ridicule. Regardless, an assertion that a particular conclusion is false because of the character of the person offering the conclusion is fallacious reasoning.
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McKinney Texas pool party?
by Marvin Shilmer inso today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.
my response: it shows a clash of expectations.
i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.
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Marvin Shilmer
There have been many cases where I know I started lower than some of the same people claiming that, worked harder, and achieved more, and yet I'm still not ignorant enough to deny that all that is still just a coinflip and with one minor changed circumstance, I could have ended up on the streets or something. I think a big part of it is that, starting so "low" on the totem pole, you tend to meet more peers who have as much or more potential than you growing up, who never realized it just due to the wrong thing at the wrong time.
That's very true. Because our best opportunity lay in working hard and working smart does not mean working hard and working smart guarantees a good opportunity. Life is a cold, hard thing. Individuals are born into this world selfish and for the most part we go through life with a strong sense of self-preservation (and gratification!) as a first priority.
Collectively humans have, over the years, attempted to construct a wide variety of social spheres called "government" aimed at improving opportunities for whatever citizens are party to that sphere. But it remains the case that no social sphere (read: government in this case) is able to deliver "fair" to everyone's satisfaction for an infinite number of reasons, one being that what is perceived as fair to one person/community is not perceived as fair by another person/community.
Our personal best option lay in opting to live under whatever government we can that, in our view, represents the most in terms of "fair" and then choose to live there, participate as a citizen there and work with whatever that system offers as best we can.