Agreed. They depend on us to take care of them. Abusing animals is right up there with child abuse or spousal/partner abuse.
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A guy who was involved in a bias incident a few years back that left me both mentally shaken and physically injured keeps trying to weasel his way into a team project Iâm leading.
What I donât think he realizes is that by trying to force me into having to answer questions about why I wonât let him participate is that Iâll be honest with everyone involved about why I havenât added him to the team.
Keep grinding my gears, pal.
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Do you have an HR department you can go to and say: I need to register an accommodation, because of what this guy has done to me in the past he and I cannot work on the same projects?
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I really wish. This isnât at my actual job, itâs at a non-profit that doesnât have an HR department. Iâve been volunteering to maintain some educational resources for them for a few years.
Itâs a little bit of a mess. Heâs actually married to the director of the non-profit. She hires heavily (for what few salaried positions this NP has) from his academic unit.
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HOLY FUCK the GOP is confusing the tax bill with their Christmas wish list!
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There was never any confusion.
They are clarifying who gets to be first against the wall.
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Is the revolution in fact coming?
Iâve been sharpening my pitchfork for ever so long now.
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It starts next Tuesday at 1:30PM UTC. Donât be late.
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But will it be televised?
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Misuse of ethnonyms, such as:
âPhilistineâ for someone who doesnât like the arts.
âSamaritanâ for a charity.
âVandalâ for someone breaking stuff.
âGothic languageâ not to refer to the Gothic language, but to the English language in that branch of English literature called Gothic.
It begins with someone using their knowledge to spread ignorance, and then it ends up with ignorance obscuring knowledge. People canât imagine that the Philistines built cities, had art, and so on.
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I wonder if the average Vandal might not have been entirely insulted that over a millennium later, the successors of Roman learning would still remember just how well they broke their things. Likewise I could imagine Byzantines taking it as an unintentional compliment that our language shows our ancestors never did quite understand them.
Iâm sure the Spartans at least would have considered our adjectives a fitting memory. Philistine on the other hand is definitely a completely unfounded insult, and one never even suggested by their enemies at the time, at that. Samaritan is a strange compliment based on a story for people who otherwise hated them. There are still Samaritans today â I wonder if any have said anything about it?
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Blame Carlyle.
Also J B Cabell, who in Jurgen refers to the United States as Philistia
Ah! Philistinism. [ooopsâŚ]
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Since Sunday school, Iâve always had the impression that the Good Samaritan was thus labeled to reflect he was a good guy who happened to be identifiably Samaritan. (Not, I hope, to distinguish him from all other Samaritans because they are not good.) At any rate, I donât often run into usages without the âgoodâ modifier. Even though that story is the only modern mention of Samaritans that gets much day-to-day usage, it seems awfully weird to imply that someone who does kindness to strangers would be some generic Samaritan, as opposed to being metaphorically comparable to the Good one.
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What Iâve always heard is this:
The parable starts with Jesus being asked âWho is my brother?â (i.e. âWho should I love as I love myself?â). The Israelite in the parable, who had been beaten and robbed and left for dead, was passed by a priest and a Levite, who should, as holy men, have been inclined to help a fallen countryman. And then the Good Samaritan came along. It was important that the person helping was Samaritan not because Samaritans are bad, but because a Samaritan in particular would have no reason to help an Israelite.
Isaac Asimov said that to interpret the parable correctly, you should imagine it happening in Alabama in the 1950s, where a white man lying wounded in the street is passed by a white minister, a white mayor, and then finally helped and taken in by a black sharecropper. Itâs not that the Samaritans were bad people among themselves, but there wsa a lot of hate going both ways which makes it shocking that the Samaritan, of all people, would be the one to stop and help, and would be the one held up as an example of the brother you should love as you love yourself.
If Jesus were preaching today, I can only imagine that the robbery victim would be dressed up in Antifa gear, and the Samaritan would be wearing a MAGA hat â or vice-versa â and the ones passing by would be the assault victimâs supposed ideological allies. I have a hard time imagining, in either case, that the âSamaritanâ would stop and help rather than taking the opportunity to kick their foe while they were down. But then, that seems to be the entire point being made.
I still think of my morals as being Christian ones, despite the underlying faith that inspired them no longer being there. And it pains me deeply to think that a nation which considers itself Christian would discard the message of that parable so thoroughly that any two groups would adopt the historical hatred between the Samaritans and the Israelites against each other, rather than treating each other as brothers as they were commanded to.
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Damn smart man, even though Iâve never really cared for his style of writing.
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I actually have a harder time imagining the kicking taking place. I was reading, earlier today, about bystander syndrome, and how weâre less likely to help somebody in need if thereâs a crowd of bystanders, the âlogicâ more or less being an affirmative assumption in our minds in response to âwonât somebody help that poor man?â Sure, somebody will, so it doesnât have to be me.
But on our own, isolated road to Jericho, without an audience to perform in front of, and without a crowd of others who could assume responsibility, I think it relatively (even surprisingly, to myself) easy to imagine the antifa dude helping out the guy in the MAGA hat, and vice versa. Iâm not saying it would happen nearly often enough to be counted on, alas, but somehow I still kinda expect that behavior.
I donât think weâve completely murdered that part of the human condition yet.
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My memory of Religious Education classes two decades ago is admittedly a little hazy but I thought that the parable is intended to be a criticism of piety, in contrast to the spirit of Christian fellowship embodied by the Samaritan; the people who passed the wounded man didnât just ignore him because they didnât want to get involved but because contact with blood would have made them ritually unclean and therefore unable to enter the temple.
The point being that the one person who exhibits proper Christian behaviour in the story is the person that the pious, who did nothing, would have looked down upon for not observing religion in the ârightâ way.
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The Jews and Samaritans of the day hated each other. Or, perhaps only Jesus had issues with themâŚ
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Sure, but his point was that just because someone is hated does not mean that they are actually bad. The two guys youâd expect to be helpful, because they are both pious and philosophically on the victimâs team, were not as helpful as the decent human being (the âGoodâ part) who happens to be on the wrong team (the âSamaritanâ part). The takeaway is that even the people you think you have cause to hate may turn out to be better than you think, and that you really ought to strive to be a better person than the people who hate you think you are. Even (or especially) when you have them at a disadvantage. Loving oneâs neighbor doesnât have quite as much impact on improving the world when theyâre easy to love.
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From the Sermon on the Mount:
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
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