Skip to main content

Home/ New Culture Library/ Group items tagged marriage

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
1More

Human rights: The gay divide | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...rovoked-backlash-elsewhere-gay society psychology human rights sexuality politics rights
shared by James Goodman on 14 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • James Goodman on 14 Oct 14
     
    "THERE was a teenager in Arizona in the 1970s who "could no more imagine longing to touch a woman than longing to touch a toaster". But he convinced himself that he was not gay. Longing to be "normal", he blamed his obsession with muscular men on envy of their good looks. It was not until he was 25 that he admitted the truth to himself-let alone other people. In 1996 he wrote a cover leader for The Economist in favour of same-sex marriage. He never thought it would happen during his lifetime. Yet now he is married to the man he loves and living in a Virginia suburb where few think this odd. The change in attitudes to homosexuality in many countries-not just the West but also Latin America, China and other places-is one of the wonders of the world (see article). This week America's Supreme Court gave gay marriage another big boost, by rejecting several challenges to it; most Americans already live in states where gays can wed. But five countries still execute gay people: Iran hangs them; Saudi Arabia stones them. Gay sex is illegal in 78 countries, and a few have recently passed laws that make gay life even grimmer. The gay divide is one of the world's widest (see article). What caused it? And will tolerance eventually spread? Two steps forward and one back The leap forward has been startlingly quick. In the 1950s gay sex was illegal nearly everywhere. In Britain, on the orders of a home secretary who vowed to "eradicate" it, undercover police were sent out to loiter in bars, entrap gay men and put them in jail. In China in the 1980s homosexuals were rounded up and sent to labour camps without trial. All around the world gay people lived furtively and in fear. Laws banning "sodomy" remained in some American states until 2003. Today gay sex is legal in at least 113 countries. Gay marriages or civil unions are recognised in three dozen and parts of others. In most of the West it is no longer socially acceptable to be homophobic. Gay life in C
1More

The physical reality of mental illness | The Incidental Economist - 0 views

theincidentaleconomist.com/...ical-reality-of-mental-illness politics science mental health illness society psychology health
shared by James Goodman on 29 May 13 - No Cached
  • So mental illness isn’t just about happiness: Mental illness kills. Sometimes by suicide, of which mental illness is a principal cause. But most of the excess deaths among the mentally ill are caused by diseases such as cardiovascular disease or cancer.  In a sense, mental illness amplifies the risk or lethality of physical health problems. This occurs for many reasons.  Mentally ill people are more likely to develop tobacco, alcohol, and substance abuse addictions. Mentally ill people also experience high levels of stress from the loss of jobs, marriages, and families. Chronic diseases such as diabetes require intensive daily self-care routines and mental illness undermines a patient’s ability to carry these out.
1More

Harold Meyerson: The party that truly believes in redistribution - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html society politics economy health wall street
shared by James Goodman on 26 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • James Goodman on 26 Sep 12
     
    Indeed, the United States has experienced an upward redistribution so profound that it affects far more than incomes. Whole sectors of the economy and regions of the country have been decimated by these economic changes. The descent in all manner of social indexes is most apparent among poorly educated whites. Conservative commentator Charles Murray has documented in his new book the decline in marriage rates and family stability within the white working class. And now, as the New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise has reported, that decline includes longevity as well. While other Americans' life expectancy has advanced, the life expectancy of whites without high school diplomas has declined since 1990 - by three years among men and five years among women. The market is not just redistributing income in the United States, then. It is redistributing life.
1More

Café au Lait Publishing proudly presents - 0 views

cafeaulaitpublishing.tumblr.com/...e-in-marriage-no-i-really-dont quote
shared by James Goodman on 14 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • “I don’t believe in marriage. No I really don’t. Let me be clear about that. I think at worst it’s a hostile political act; a way for small minded men to keep women in the house and out of the way wrapped in the guise of tradition and conservative religious nonsense. At best it’s a happy delusion. It’s two people who truly love each other and have no idea how truly miserable they’re about to make each other. But…but when two people know that and they decide with eyes wide open to face each other and get married anyway then I don’t think its conservative or delusional, I think its radical and courageous and very romantic.” Spoken by Ashley Judd playing the character of Tina Modotti in the film Frida (2002)
3More

Happiness, Philosophy and Science - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...ppiness-philosophy-and-science happiness philosophy psychology society health
shared by James Goodman on 01 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • But the most powerful challenge concerns the meaning and value of happiness.  Researchers emphasize that when we ask people if they are happy the answers tell us nothing if we don’t know what our respondents mean by “happy.”  One person might mean, “I’m not currently feeling any serious pain”; another, “My life is pretty horrible but I’m reconciled to it”; another, “I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday.”  Happiness research requires a clear understanding of the possible meanings of the term.   For example, most researchers distinguish between happiness as a psychological state (for example, feeling overall more pleasure than pain) and happiness as a positive evaluation of your life, even if it has involved more pain than pleasure.  Above all, there is the fundamental question: In which sense, if any, is happiness a proper goal of a human life?
  • These issues inevitably lead to philosophical reflection. Empirical surveys can give us a list of the different ideas people have of happiness.  But research has shown that when people achieve their ideas of happiness (marriage, children, wealth, fame), they often are still not happy.  There’s no reason to think that the ideas of happiness we discover by empirical surveys are sufficiently well thought out to lead us to genuine happiness.  For richer and more sensitive conceptions of happiness, we need to turn to philosophers, who, from Plato and Aristotle, through Hume and Mill, to Hegel and Nietzsche, have provided some of the deepest insight into the possible meanings of happiness.
  • Even if empirical investigation could discover the full range of possible conceptions of happiness, there would still remain the question of which conception we ought to try to achieve.  Here we have a question of values that empirical inquiry alone is unable to decide without appeal to philosophical thinking.This is not to say that, as Plato thought, we can simply appeal to expert philosophical opinion to tells us how we ought to live. We all need to answer this question for ourselves.  But if philosophy does not have the answers, it does provide tools we need to arrive at answers. If, for example, we are inclined to think that pleasure is the key to happiness, John Stuart Mill shows us how to distinguish between the more sensory and the more intellectual pleasures.  Robert Nozick asks us to consider whether we would choose to attach ourselves to a device that would produce a constant state of intense pleasure, even if we never achieved anything in our lives other than experiencing this pleasure.
3More

Book review: Armstrong's spiritually bountiful 'In Search of Civilization' - The Washin... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AFKKyYYD_story.html civilization society spirituality philosophy book review
shared by James Goodman on 14 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • the rich accomplishments of China, the West and Islam are not in conflict, but are rather “on the same side in a clash between cultivated intelligence and barbarism. The irony is that such barbarism too often goes under the name of loyalty to a civilization.” In fact, true civilization is “the life-support system for high-quality relationships to people, ideas and objects.” (Love, Armstrong explains, is the one-word version of the phrase “high quality of relationship.”) Civilization, then, seeks “to find and protect the good things with which — potentially — we can form high-quality relationships.” It also “fosters and protects the qualities in us that allow us to love such things for the right reasons. The qualities that inspire love are: goodness, beauty and truth. And when we love these qualities, we come to possess the corresponding capacities of wisdom, kindness and taste.”
  • our tragic sense of life is “founded on the fact that not all good things are compatible: it may be (for most people) impossible to have a happy marriage and a raucous erotic life; or to have a well-paid job and follow your own vocation; it may be that you cannot live in the place where you most want to live; responsibility is tedious and frightening; yet taking responsibility is important.” In the face of such inner conflicts, as well as life’s normal vicissitudes, civilization should help “strengthen us to face inevitable disappointment and suffering,” largely by instilling the stoic virtues: “the capacity to do without, to postpone pleasure, to make ourselves do things we do not want to do (when there is good reason to do them); to put up with minor irritations, to avoid complaint and useless criticism.”
  • James Goodman on 14 Apr 11
     
    What does the word "civilization" mean? 
1 - 8 of 8
Showing 20▼ items per page