I would completely agree that many relationships exist prior to any and all language use(causality, spatiotemporal, symbiotic, existential dependency, elemental constituency, significance, familial, biological, etc.); that some relations do not(they depend upon language use for language use is part of the relationship); that some language dependent meaningful relations exist prior to an individual language user's acquisition thereof; that some relationships exist prior to meaning; etc..

...but I would not agree that all relations(or any possible relation) are(is) meaningful. — creativesoul

So you say that some relationships exist prior to meaning, but not all, and that some relations do not exist prior to language use. I have to ask: by exist, do you mean in relation to a self-conscious subject?

I have trouble understanding this sentence:
my suggestion that a necessary condition of this kind of coercion is a denial of female agency.
— Possibility
What I understand is that you claim that a necessary part of the machinery of the coercion is denial of the basic equality of the humanity of women - or even denial of their humanity itself. That is, it is a thing taken from them by force, and the taking involving no complicity by women. Or you could mean a deliberate denial of women's complicity, they being, per claim, complicit. — tim wood

It’s not that simple.

By agency, I mean the capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own choices. The interdependence of humanity - that our actions are not entirely independent, and therefore our choices are not entirely our own - has been historically more obvious to women than it is to men. It is this imbalance of perception that has traditionally limited the perception of female agency, but not its evidence in reality. Plausible deniability of male interdependence and its attribution to the female aspect of humanity helps to consolidate illusions of independence in patriarchal society.

This is particularly noticeable in relation to an individual’s capacity to act independently and make their own choices in sexual relations and in the life of an unborn or infant child - two aspects of humanity where female agency/male interdependence appears particularly undeniable.

It is these two aspects that have enabled women to gradually negotiate for expressions of agency within patriarchal society, but has also motivated those societies to strive for a tight rein on the cultural systems of meaning within which women express this agency. So the behaviour or appearance of a woman that might portray her agency (and by extension, a man’s interdependence) as explicitly undeniable is still carefully isolated within or else excluded from the social construct of a valuable, moral or even lawful existence for women.

Most modern cultural systems of language and morality still have structures that protect and promote the deniability of female agency, and it is within these systems that fundamentalism gains a foothold. What women choose to wear is still closely linked to morality and sexual status in relation to men. I’m socially, if not morally or legally, held responsible for how a man might interpret my hemline or neckline in certain settings, as if male interdependence is neatly packaged up with my choice. This makes it easy for men to freely interpret a woman’s expression of agency (as a come-on or a sign of her sexual immorality) while maintaining an illusion of independence. Both Muslim and Christian cultural traditions offer written examples of morality laws and justification for controlling female agency in this way that are of particular interest to fundamentalists.

At this point, I draw attention back to Indonesian culture, where the wearing of the ‘jiljab’ has not been enforced by law, and remains a choice for women that is part of their cultural identity. Until 1998, the government had kept a tight rein on the influence of Islamic groups, but since then there has been a rise in the wearing of more traditional Muslim head coverings than the loose-fitting jiljab, with culturally-specific fashion trends leading the push. The question of how women can or should dress has merged in the last two decades as a highly politicised topic in Indonesia, in a similar vein to the ongoing US abortion debate. Political campaigns have in recent years drawn attention to images of the candidates’ wives with particular head coverings as a show of morality/choice, and fundamentalist groups calling to enforce Muslim dress for all Indonesian women are gaining traction.

What Indonesia illustrates is how easily choice may be eroded in what is otherwise a ‘free’ society. This is how it started for a number of radical Islamic states that currently operate. Hosseini’s book A Thousand Splendid Suns depicts this descent from apparent freedom to oppression, and Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale shows how fragile the perception of female agency remains in modern Western/Christian society.

I see. Understandable.

"Meaning exists in it's entirety long before we've acquired the means to discover and/or take proper account of it" was just making the point that (some)meaning exists in it's entirety prior to language.

In the above, we could exchange "exists" with "emerges" and lose nothing meaningful. Emergent meaning is newly formed. I would not agree that meaning exists prior to being formed, although I realize that several schools of thought believe otherwise. — creativesoul

So you’re saying that meaning may exist prior to language, but we have no means to discover it as such. How would you know that it exists fully formed, then? And what form could this meaning have?

FWIW, I am of the school of thought in which meaning exists prior to being formed. Language enables a suggestion of possible forms, allowing a meaningful relation to emerge as potentially significant.

To say that meaning emerges by virtue of drawing correlations only ‘between different things’ rules out the possibility of meaning emerging from a correlation between a ‘thing’ and some undiscovered existence of meaning.
— Possibility

This deserves revisitation.

That's not what I said. — creativesoul

Ok, I think I’m with you now. So, would you agree that any possible relation is meaningful?

...given that meaning exists before it emerges...
— Possibility

That's not a given. How can something exist before existing? Emergence is coming into existence. — creativesoul

Ok, clearly I’ve misunderstood you, then. My interpretation of ‘emerge’ was this, from Google Dictionary:

1. move out of or away from something and become visible.

Or perhaps this:

2. become apparent or prominent.

Either way, I misinterpreted your statement here:

It exists in it's entirety long before we've acquired the means to discover and/or take proper account of it. — creativesoul

as existing prior to emerging.

Evidence presented in this thread that the level of coercion is extreme and state, religion, and culturally supported. Please address those. — tim wood

Please correct me if I’m mistaken here, because I don’t want to assume: am I to understand that it isn’t the coercion of women that you object to, but this extreme level of coercion where violence against women is sanctioned at all levels of authority?

I’m not denying the evidence, and I really don’t think anyone here is. I’d like to establish a clearer picture of what it is that you believe must be removed, because you seem keen to take the focus off my suggestion that a necessary condition of this kind of coercion is a denial of female agency. Misogynistic violence amounts to ‘any means necessary’ to maintain this denial, but in my view it’s a symptom, not the cause.

State, religious or cultural sanctioning of violence against women is abhorrent and needs to stop. But from my perspective, what we’re not doing here is addressing the underlying conditions that give rise to this violence. I don’t see this coming from state or religious authorities, but from the culture that sustains them. This authority is given, not taken. Surely the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has demonstrated that removing particular state or religious authority does not solve the problem of cultural hatred or violence? It’s like Hydra: cut off one head, and two more grow in its place...

Ok - given that meaning exists before it emerges, are we in agreement first of all that its existence is not necessarily as a ‘thing’?

There is an aspect of existence, then, that exists not necessarily as a ‘thing’ regardless of correlation.

To say that meaning emerges by virtue of drawing correlations only ‘between different things’ rules out the possibility of meaning emerging from a correlation between a ‘thing’ and some undiscovered existence of meaning.

I hope this is clear enough.

Meaning.

What are you hoping to discuss here?

My only quibble that I can see is that it emerges by virtue of drawing correlations, full stop.

But solving this problem doesn’t lend itself to an action-hero scenario. In fact there is no way to predict or control what follows, making it difficult to evaluate the ‘success’ of our actions, let alone get any form of thanks for it.
— Possibility

You seem pretty dedicated to casting a man's dislike of violence against women purely in terms of self-glory. I can't really do anything with or about that. It's not only obnoxious, it's a conversational dead-end. — Kenosha Kid

That’s not what I’m doing at all - I’m simply pointing out a perspective that is conveniently overlooked in these discussions because it calls out the existing patriarchy, and therefore the perceived ‘norm’. Your defensiveness and indignation is understandable - I’m asking you to look honestly and humbly at your motivations for speaking out against the level of coercion that exists in the lives of Muslim women. That isn’t easy, and I’m neither surprised nor offended by this kind of response, which I’m sure frustrates you all the more.

I want to be clear that my comments here should not be construed as an attack on men, but call for a critical evaluation of the systems of value and perceived potentiality that perpetuate the coercion of women. I’m sure it feels like an attack when your cultural identity is constructed from it, but I’m not going to apologise for that. You are more than your cultural identity.

It’s a ‘conversational dead-end’ because you can neither admit nor deny what I’m arguing here. To admit it would be to recognise that you contribute to it, and that the structures maintain your own value and perceived potentiality. To deny it would be to undermine the purpose of your participation in this discussion - to support an end to these incidents of violence and threats against women.

And the fact that I am a woman does in no way give me the high ground here - I contribute to these conditions as much as you do, only in different ways. And I have deliberately not responded to @baker’s suggestions that women are complicit in all of this because I am in the minority here, and therefore neither going to paint a target on my back so you all feel less victimised, nor get defensive about something I recognise to be true. I use the pronoun ‘we’ to include myself, and women in general, in perpetuating the conditions of coercion.

That said, I’m also questioning the predicted effectiveness of removing these structures of coercion in relation to women’s agency. While I recognise that they do absolutely need to be removed, the idea that this removal solves the problem is naive at best. We need to recognise that these situations of coercion are symptoms of a larger issue.

I wish that everyone wasn’t so defensive, it would make these discussions much more productive. I genuinely do not mean to attack those who have engaged with me here, but I do think a dose of humility is in order. I hope it’s not too much to ask.

There is a tendency to focus on the ‘victim’ as the passive object of our concern, rather than as a free-thinking agent who has been limited under conditions of culturally perceived potentiality. Men want to rescue the victim from certain ‘forces’, without examining the conditions that attribute potentiality to these ‘forces’ rather than the agent.
— Possibility

The opposite seems to be the case here, where people are speaking up for a potentially oppressed person's apparent choices without reference to the limitations placed on those choices. Ultimately my argument is that you can only do this once the coersion is removed, e.g. the threat of violence is removed. Is your counter-argument that this coersion should be sustained? If not, and putting aside as unjustified your guesses as to men's motives and knowledge, it's difficult to see what your point is. — Kenosha Kid

This threat of violence is perceived as a ‘force’ that needs to be removed, and I do understand how you can think it’s that simple. But simply removing a ‘force’ as such doesn’t turn an object into an agent, it only leaves the object open to new ‘forces’. A denial of agency is a necessary condition of coercion - this is where the real problem lies.

But solving this problem doesn’t lend itself to an action-hero scenario. In fact there is no way to predict or control what follows, making it difficult to evaluate the ‘success’ of our actions, let alone get any form of thanks for it.

Why do I say that quality, viewed as distinctly non-mathematical could be an illusion?

Take color for starters; for simplicity I'll stick to red, blue, and green, the primary colors. These three colors appear different from each other but the difference boils down to mathematics: red has a wavelength of 650 nm, green had a wavelength of 550 nm, and blue has a wavelength of 450 nm. Simply put, the unique colors we perceive as red, blue, green are nothing more than numerical variations in wavelength.

Next, consider beauty. Beauty, as per the received view, is also a quality. There's the symmetry theory of beauty that states that faces we find beautiful are those that have good reflection symmetry and that's another quality that ultimately about geometry.

One question:

1. Can everything be reduced to mathematics? Is quality an illusion? — TheMadFool

Well, you can quantify colour variation in terms of wavelength, but colour is more than wavelength. You’re quantifying a one-dimensional relation by assuming all other relational structures are identical. Likewise, you can quantify a judgement of beauty in terms of geometrical symmetry, but beauty, too, is more than symmetry.

Quality refers NOT to what cannot be quantified, but to what isn’t quantified in any relation. So, when you quantify a colour in terms of wavelength, its quality refers to the variability in any potential relation to it.

So, no - quality is not an illusion - it only appears to be from a reductionist perspective. I think perhaps everything can be reduced to mathematics - but not all at once.

Toxic masculinity isn't about "too much" masculinity, but about a faulty construal of what constitutes masculinity. In other words, it's when men are socially pressured to do and think and feel things that are bad, both for others and for themselves, on pain of being considered "not a real man" and therefore deficient in some way.

Nobody's against men being as masculine as they want, so long as it's a healthy positive conception of "masculinity" that they're going after. — Pfhorrest

:100: Well put!

My issue is with those in Western cultures telling Muslim women that they shouldn’t wear the chador, or who claim to be offended by women wearing it in a supposedly free, Western culture - this is what the discussion is about, is it not?
— Possibility

The former is wrong, for sure. Best case scenario, it's victim-blaming. The latter is because, at least in part, of genuine concern. Offense is an inappropriate response perhaps, but concern is not. — Kenosha Kid

Agreed. But check your concern and how you interpret it.

There is a tendency to focus on the ‘victim’ as the passive object of our concern, rather than as a free-thinking agent who has been limited under conditions of culturally perceived potentiality. Men want to rescue the victim from certain ‘forces’, without examining the conditions that attribute potentiality to these ‘forces’ rather than the agent. It is these conditions of perceived potentiality - in particular what a woman’s clothing means regarding the potential and value of interactions with her - that women are rarely given a say in as free-thinking agents, in any culture. THIS is an area of concern.

I accept your qualification, but with reservations. There is no symmetry between nuns and Moslem women in general. And I am far from persuaded that Moslem women in the west have a free choice as to what they wear. No doubt some do - more power to them! But if free, in no way similar to the same freedom that non-Moslem women have, in that at least the latter do not have to think about burkas, chadors and the like, and likely don't, whereas Moslem women likely do.

Of some interest is the French effort to outlaw such clothing. When, where, under what circumstances, and even if they have, I am not up on. It seems extreme, but then so has Moslem violence in France been extreme. I imagine a 13-year-old French girl under the gun at home to wear her whatever whenever she goes out of the house, only to be under the French gun for wearing it. Not a good situation. — tim wood

It’s not a symmetry, no. But I do think that some parallels can be drawn (carefully), especially to highlight the question of choice and of how men interpret what women wear as a message intended for men.

The French situation highlights my point: the issue is not what women wear, but how we interpret and respond to what women wear. The young girl is being told on all fronts and under no uncertain terms that what she wears is to be interpreted from an external (male) perspective, and is therefore not a choice she is ever free to make alone. You simply cannot argue for liberty and egalitarianism under these conditions.

I would argue that Muslim violence is supported in France by a culture that traditionally portrays a woman’s appearance as a message intended for men, who are entitled (encouraged?) to respond. It comes as no surprise, then, that they would be at the forefront of moves to outlaw Muslim head-coverings for women, further limiting a girl’s options.

I agree with you that pain and suffering are necessary ingredients of life, and I believe that was a point of contention earlier in this thread, when the OP was still around (it seems that you and I have, however, hi jacked this thread, and it must seem a bit strange to those looking into it for the first time and comparing what is being said in it now with how it began). — Todd Martin

Yes, I do have a tendency to follow tangents in threads, and if the mods find this a problem, I’d be okay with separating out our discussion, or even continuing with PMs - just say the word....

An ongoing state of happiness, as you termed it, is impossible, and if there be an happy human being, he or she too must suffer sometimes. But it must follow, mustn’t it, that if that is true, and there exist a happy human being in principle at least, that his or her happiness depend upon something more substantial and lasting than things like physical comfort or security or pleasure (?) — Todd Martin

Why must it be substantial and lasting, though? If an ongoing state of happiness is ‘impossible’, then so, too, I would argue, is a ‘substantial and lasting’ foundation to reality. It’s an ‘impossibility’ we cannot rule out, at least - to do so would be ignorance.

Forgive me if it is not natural for me to draw the conclusion that the “host of fears” your mother instilled in you as a child must have sprung from her abuse at the hands of those whom a child most obviously can be expected to trust...yet you, as a child or even as a young adult, did not know the source of those fears. I would like to learn, if you are willing, how those fears were transmitted to you, how they manifested themselves in your soul and affected your behavior, and how you were able to overcome them. — Todd Martin

No, I wouldn’t expect you to draw that conclusion from the information I’ve given. And it certainly wasn’t my mother’s intention to pass on her fears. But as a young girl in a limited social circle (my parents had no active social life - they kept to themselves, we attended church on Sundays, were driven to and from school and played no after-school or weekend sports), I learned mostly from my father how to see the world, and mostly from mother (a 50s-style housewife with a habit of saying ‘wait until your father gets home’) how to respond to it. As an example, my experience of ‘the talk’ was being directed to a set of science and medical encyclopaedias, supplemented in later years by my mother repeatedly using the word ‘abstain’.

So I grew up yearning to see the world but not to experience it, whereas I watched my brother experience the world without fear, and see so much more of it as a consequence - more than my father allowed himself to see. From about 16, I decided that I needed to look more closely at the risks I wasn’t taking, and ask myself reasonably, why not? So I began to take carefully calculated risks - to put myself in situations that helped me distinguish between the real danger, what I feared and what I avoided. Little things, like talking to strangers, attracting attention, learning to swim, the dark...

Finally, I would be very interested to learn what impact your mother’s revelation, at the ripe old age of 80, had on you children, and the family, and it’s friends, in general. And how could she have kept it a secret for so long?...or did she? Did anyone else other than the participants know? — Todd Martin

My mother never told anyone after her mistake of confiding in the priest - not even my father. The world doesn’t really want to know these kinds of secrets. As long as you can keep it under wraps, not let it affect your capacity to ‘act normal’, they’d prefer not to know. She only told her children recently because she was aware that it had been a factor in her emotional distance as a parent, and she wanted us to understand before it was too late. For me, it helped everything else make sense, allowed me to forgive her and to admire her strength of character where I had previously thought she was weak. It also put other events into perspective - not least that my own brother had taken liberties with me as a young girl that greatly impacted my relationships, but were so, so minor by comparison.

As an aside, I’m inclined to believe that sexual abuse and misconduct has been more prevalent than we like to think - to the point where what we culturally consider to be ‘normal’ sexual relations have been distorted by it. I’m no longer surprised at the number of friends and family (from apparently unremarkable suburban homes) who have revealed an experience of sexual or physical abuse of some kind, and not all of them women. It’s another calculated risk my talking about it here, anonymously, but I think it’s important that we find ways to discuss its relevance in how we relate to each other.

When those that choose not to are free from coersion and violent consequences, then coersion and violent consequences will cease to be factors in their decision about what to wear. There is a natural priority here. No one is saying that no woman would choose to wear chador. It's just that currently that decision exists within a culture where oppressive and violent misogyny is alarmingly prominent. — Kenosha Kid

I do agree with what you’ve said. My issue is with those in Western cultures telling Muslim women that they shouldn’t wear the chador, or who claim to be offended by women wearing it in a supposedly free, Western culture - this is what the discussion is about, is it not?

Just one of many such articles and references. I am at a loss to account for just how you-all can be as ignorant and stupid as you're being with the arguments you're presenting here, and disgusting. That there exist women who might choose to wear certain clothing is not in question - although one might very well wonder just exactly how they came to make that decision. — tim wood

Hold up - the question presented here was why people are offended by Muslim women wearing head-coverings but not Christian nuns doing the same. I took this as referring to Muslim women in a Western cultural setting, but you keep defending those offended by the wearing of chador from the perspective of a radical Islamic state.

I’m not trying to justify the conditions of women in a radical Islamic state. The fact that this oppression and violence is sanctioned at a state level is a serious international issue that needs to be addressed, but I don’t believe we will solve it by attributing our disgust or hatred to the wearing of the chador itself - particularly if we wish to claim our society to be ‘free’ by comparison.

I’m arguing for the freedom of women in Western culture to express their commitment to a faith that is as much about peace and love as Christianity. That not all Muslim communities are violent, misogynistic or oppressive towards women does not deny that some are - same with Christianity.

I’m saying that our point of difference from the states you’re so passionately against should not be about faith or what women can and can’t wear, but about how men interpret the appearance and behaviour of women. And the arguments here show that we have a long way to go before we can claim the high ground.

The former will allocate unequal power to each individual, and the latter allocates power evenly to each individual. It seems like we are headed for the former-where certain groups are over-represented, while others are under-represented. I thought that was what we were trying get away from. It seems that people like you really aren't interested in equity at all, just more of the same of one group oppressing others. You are essentially fighting racism with racism. — Harry Hindu

No one here has satisfactorily demonstrated the claim that women are over-represented or men under-represented in academia at all. The OP is about a ‘fit, healthy man’ not feeling ‘welcome’ in an academic environment.

It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. This is especially true if you are a fit, healthy male, whereas men who can demonstrate some kind of disability are welcome to some degree, but are often marginalised and made to feel inferior throughout their educational experience. I wonder why this is the case? — User34x

I’m curious: what constitutes a ‘welcoming’ environment for a ‘fit, healthy man’? The sense that he’s among his peers? Reassurance that his virility has value?

Far as I know, if a Christian nun for some reason is out in public in ordinary clothes she runs zero risk of arrest or unwanted official attention. Far as I know, in Moslem countries, if a woman is not "properly attired" in public she risks arrest or other unwanted official attention. Which in turn is just a part, in those countries, of suppression of women. — tim wood

I’m not entirely sure it’s ‘official’ attention - I think this is a misunderstanding. The negative attention uncovered women attract in Muslim countries is from those exercising religious ‘power’ or moral indignation, with police and other ‘officials’ in a cultural supporting role.

By comparison, a Christian nun out in public in ordinary clothes is invisible. If she lived in a monastery and came down to dinner without her habit, she would receive similar ‘official’ attention as the Muslim woman ‘inappropriately dressed’ in public.

It’s the assumptions made by men that she’s making a statement to them about her sexual status that places her most at risk. This is not just about laws suppressing women, but about how men automatically interpret the way women dress as speaking to them directly. You won’t solve this problem simply by changing the laws.

I interpret my father’s question now as a reminder to be self-aware - conscious of how we experience the world. I noticed that much of the ‘happiness’ he sought in his own life required a deliberate ignorance or disconnect from aspects of reality, and that I inherited from my mother a host of fears that would take me years to overcome. They thought they could keep pain, humility, lack and loss out of our lives, but I think we just experience the lesser suffering more intensely.

I don’t subscribe to an ongoing state of ‘happiness’ as the cure-all - I think it’s a false ambition, but it’s also a difficult one to let go of as a parent. I think we experience the most peace, love and joy from our life overall when we acknowledge that suffering in some form is a necessary aspect of living. I’ve raised my children to understand that pain, humility, lack and loss are part of our ongoing relationship with the world: we can negotiate the structure of suffering in our experience through our level of awareness, connection and collaboration - but not its necessity.

@TheMadFool@tim woodFrom the women’s perspective: The Habit and the Hijab: An Exploration on Sacred Dress

This goes back to a fear of what we don’t understand. Often we anticipate the possibility of a negative relation and seek to avoid it - not realising that in doing so we’re deliberately attributing that potential negativity to what we can do something about, not to what’s really causing it: a lack of understanding.

Google definition of Moslem: a follower of the religion of Islam. I don't see "one who is evil and unjust" — TheMadFool

It’s the pronunciation ‘mawzlem’ as an adjective that is a little too close to ‘zalim’, literally translated as ‘dark/night’, but also understood to mean ‘one who is evil/unjust’. Interestingly, the UK Society of Editors also published the following in their (2002) document for journalists on ‘Reporting Diversity’, apparently after multiple correspondence from local Muslim community groups asking them to stop using the term:

“Muslim is preferred. People refer to themselves as Muslims. Many regard Moslem as a term of abuse, like people of African descent dislike being called negroes.”

Not necessarily. The reason is same in both cases - Christian nuns are women who want to showcase their piety and Moslem women want to do the same thing and both do it by following a dress code, the resemblance between the prescribed attire being strikingly similar.

Two points to note:

1. the reason is identical for both (piety)

2. the dress codes are identical

Indeed it's true that not ALL Christian women dress like nuns but not ALL Christian women are claiming to be pious; Moslem women and Christian nuns are publicly declaring their religiosity and since we're not bothered by the latter I don't see why we should get our knickers in a twist by the former. — TheMadFool

I agree that we shouldn’t get our knickers in a twist by women who choose to wear either. But you’re assuming that ‘showcasing their piety’ is the reason in both cases - and ‘publicly declaring their religiosity’ is another blanket assumption that fails to understand the distinction between their identifying with a faith community and their obedience based on religious dogma. There are cases of both among Christian nuns as well as Muslim women.

I think perhaps there’s a hidden assumption here in the terms ‘piety’ and ‘religiosity’ that women’s dress is a statement about their sexual status. That this is how you interpret their dress does not make it the reason for their dress. In my experience, neither Christian nuns nor Muslim women are wanting to showcase or claim ‘piety’ or to publicly declare their ‘religiosity’ - they’re wanting to belong, to matter or have purpose within a perceived value system.

I'm more inclined to believe that the objection to hijabs and the like is mostly from the secular front and definitely not from religion; Christian nuns dress in the same way as Moslem women and Christains are not in the least bothered by it. This clearly indicates that both Christianity and Islam see eye to eye on the issue of women's clothes. Secularists, however, don't buy into the idea and view it as a sign of oppression. The problem with secularists is that they're guilty of double standards - they're fine with Christian nuns' habit but are offended, deeply so, by hijabs and such. Like should be treated alike - an ancient and sensible maxim which those who condemn Moslem women's dresses as misogynistic seem to have missed to our disadvantage. — TheMadFool

I don’t think you can argue that headdress requirements for Muslim women and Christian nuns demonstrate that both religions ‘see eye to eye on the issue of women’s clothes’ at all. This would make sense only if ALL Christian women were required to wear a headdress in public, which is obviously not the case.

Christian nuns factor the wearing of a habit into their decision to take the Holy Orders - this is a conscious choice. And I know a number of catholic nuns in our local area whose Order (Sisters of St Joseph) does not require them to wear a habit at all. Canon law requires only that they are identifiable in their manner of dress as members of a Holy Order.

The problem is that those who condemn Muslim headdress as misogynistic are ASSUMING they are forced to do so. Yes, in a number of Muslim countries it is required by law or enforced as a cultural norm, but my main issue is with those upset by Muslim women in Western society who wear the hijab or chador, interpreting it as nothing more than a symbol of oppression and misogyny. This can be offensive to women who choose to wear the headdress, like nuns, as an identification of their community of faith.

Your argument that ‘like should be treated alike’ assumes that the reason for wearing a headdress is alike. I agree that women who wear it as a mark of their faith are choosing to do so, and taking offence to this is a denial of their freedom to express that faith. Women who wear it as a mark of their obedience to ‘God’ is more of a grey area, as very often it is their obedience to ‘man’ and his interpretations that in fact require them to wear it. But your use of the term ‘piety’ appears to lump both of these reasons in together, whereas modern interpretations of wearing the habit distinguish clearly between the two.

Just as a side note: I believe that the most Islamic communities would object to the use of ‘Moslem’ - the difference seems insignificant to English speakers, but in Arabic Muslim means ‘one who gives himself to God’, whereas Moslem apparently means ‘one who is evil and unjust’...

Finally, my apologies—and I hope that my offense is seen as a peccadillo, not as a crime. — Todd Martin

No offence taken, at all. I figured it was a misunderstanding of the hashtag.

It should be obvious in which camp I suspected you to be, and that is the reason for me asking these questions...though I must confess that, from what I have learned, you are a much more complex subject for analysis than I would ever have suspected. — Todd Martin

I’ve found that people usually are, although most don’t want to be. They want to be perceived a particular way, to be understood without having to explain themselves, and to be valued on first impressions. So they construct a conceptual identity, and then strive to emulate it. But that’s not how I roll.

I think ‘luck’ constitutes our variable relation to an unconsolidated perception of probability/potential in experience. As @counterpunch illustrates, probability is a consolidation of potential, but luck is a relation to it that dissolves this consolidation into qualitative information, to be restructured as a conceptual statement or judgement from a particular perspective.

Okay, so, am I correct to assume that, since your mom responded to the MeToo movement, that y’all are Aborigines?... — Todd Martin

Wha? Apart from the fact that we don’t use that term anymore, no - my mother grew up in the Eurasian Catholic community in Singapore, the only daughter of a high level government official. Her family emigrated to Oz when Singapore gained independence in the 60s.

So, it is easy for me to see how your mom wished to create the “perfect family”, and participate in that...but, what did your dad wish to escape from HIS childhood? What was his upbringing like? — Todd Martin

My dad kept most of his childhood to himself, but I know that his own father ‘officially’ left at the end of WWII, when he was 18mths and his two sisters were maybe 3-5years old; he went to 13 different schools as his stepfather (who he always referred to as his ‘guardian’) moved around ‘following work’; he left home at 14 to live below the poverty line, and eventually turned up on his biological father’s doorstep at the age of 20. There’s a lot of what he wouldn’t say about his childhood that leads me to think he endured it rather than enjoyed it.

I have to ask what your point to all this questioning is - or are you just curious?

When I'm grading students, and it's a tough call on the grade, I often find myself giving the black students a lower grade. I catch myself doing this all the time. — RogueAI

I commend you on your honesty here. How do you deal with it when you do catch yourself? Have you found an alternative way of differentiating grades?

I can only imagine the ethical frustration of ER doctors working to patch up a belligerent drunk who crashed his car, while the ten year old passenger of the vehicle he hit is being raced into surgery...

But I don’t think this is about schadenfreude - it’s about their struggle to reconcile the positive value they attribute to a human in order to treat him, with the negative value they attribute to his drunken appearance and behaviour. The ER doctor likely isolates the drunkenness to enable him to treat the patient, but he/she still needs to ‘deal with’ this relation to drunkenness at some point - to trivialise it in order to express it without harm. It hardly seems surprising that the negative relation of racial prejudice gets caught up in this ‘cathartic’ process, too.

I’m not advocating this behaviour, only attempting to explain it. If the doctor had refused to treat the patient because he was drunk and therefore ‘deserved’ to be in pain, then it’s not only inexcusable, but in breach of the Hippocratic oath.

So what does a doctor do with these negative feelings towards drunkenness that they’re not allowed to attribute to the patient they’re treating? Well, they restructure their experience so that this relation to drunkenness becomes a ‘disembodied’ mathematical value, applied to a trivial game.

Doctors, nurses, police, teachers, etc need to find avenues to express their disdain for the harmful behaviour that informs their everyday experiences, in ways which are not harmful themselves.

Most teachers find themselves picking up the slack in the area of parenting more than parents pick up the slack in the area of education. The best education will always come from an amorphous web of relationships rather than the delineated roles of rigid institutional structures. The moment someone says ‘that’s not my job’ they create gaps in a child’s education - it really does take a village.

The whole idea of what an education system provides should be adjustable in relation to what everyone else is already providing for these kids. I remember a private school located in a community of market-gardeners and small-business owners, whose teachers were frustrated with a low care factor among their students. Their parents were doing well enough to give these kids a ‘better education’ than what little they had themselves, and the kids were all raised with an excellent work ethic - but they saw their parents’ success as proof that a university education wasn’t necessary to build a good life. The parents were blaming the teachers for not ‘earning the good money they paid’, believing that ‘quality education’ = go to university.

I tend to see education as developing potential in the community. Some of the best education structures I’ve witnessed sought to ‘up-skill’ not just the students but also the parents as well as the teachers. I was involved with a regional playgroup and community health initiative when my children were young that took ideas from the Reggio-Emilia formula. They also arranged for a number of informative workshops for new parents about brain development and the importance of the first five years that had a real impact on me as a parent.

What was your mother like? Was she resentful about having to be a stay-at-home mom and not being allowed to pursue a career? — Todd Martin

Not at all - and growing up I often wondered why. But as an adult I recognised that both my parents were escaping their childhood, and together they built their ‘dream’ family life, despite never really experiencing such a thing themselves (my mother suffered ongoing sexual abuse as a child from two of her brothers and the family friend/priest she turned to for help - information she revealed for the first time as an 80 year old widow following the recent #MeToo movement). They were 100% committed to this shared vision of ‘family’, and to each other.

I will say first of all that suffering of one kind or another is a necessary aspect of living.
— Possibility
Inevitable? If inevitable, then suffering for nothing is just suffering, not in this context a problem. — tim wood

This is a common misunderstanding - that suffering of one kind or another is necessary does not mean that ALL incidents of suffering are inevitable.

It is a privilege granted,
— Possibility
The Greek reads, "that/because for/to you it is given." No granting, no privilege, those the sin of eisegesis, reading into, instead of reading out of. And my knowledge of Greek is thin, but enough to come to distrust and hate translations. I have zero fear of being contradicted if I say that a dependence on translation means such a person does not know the Bible. — tim wood

The point I’m making is that it isn’t necessary - it is given. And I’m with you on the translations of Greek.

I was raised not so much to question the ‘social order’ as to recognise multiple hierarchies of value and potential within it. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, after all, and there are many ways to ‘measure’ a man. My favourite catch-phrase of teens today is: ‘don’t judge’.

I think the first step in overcoming prejudice is to recognise it in ourselves and deconstruct it. I am essentially a white European, middle-class, university-educated English-speaker with a secure white-collar job, a happy marriage and two healthy, intelligent kids in private education. The capacity I have to understand the difficulties others face is limited, and starts with me recognising that I contribute unconsciously to a defence of the hierarchical structures of prejudice that edify me. When my ego takes a beating, when my sense of value or potential is low, I rely on these hierarchical structures to avoid suffering from experiences of loss, lack, pain or humility in how I relate socially. Most of the time it’s just a passing thought that reassures me quietly, but sometimes I have to choose between suffering and prejudice in my words and actions. The more I am already suffering, the more likely I am to choose prejudice. I am unconsciously motivated to act in ways that my conceptual structures predict will redress my internal balance of affect in the short term. This is how consciousness works.

But I also know that I am capable of enduring much more pain, humility, loss and lack than I’d like right now - and the more I experience incrementally, the stronger I get. This is how we build our capacity as human beings: our muscles are designed to be stretched just beyond their capacity, torn or ‘damaged’ and then built back stronger.

At this point, I think it would be great if more parents opted to start their own charter schools or create homeschool collectives to experiment with new educational methods. The methods that work would hopefully be praised and continued by the students who were happy with their education. — Megolomania

I’m of the opinion that as parents we should select an educational system and school that delivers what we’re unable to deliver ourselves - what we don’t know that we don’t know. No system is perfect, and we’ll need to pick up the slack in their overall education wherever we send them. Parents who are also teachers have a tendency to support and argue for homeschool collectives and experimental methodologies because they can see where standard education systems are failing kids. But the ideal educational structure is not necessarily one I would agree with entirely, because being able to offer a critical perspective will encourage my child to think for themselves. Experienced teachers who aren’t trying to justify their entire methodology or establish points of difference are also more likely to facilitate the education my child needs instead of the one they’re passionate about or ‘just seeing if it works’.

Experiments with educational methods should be carried out on children in small doses - parenting is experimental enough as it is.

I will say first of all that suffering of one kind or another is a necessary aspect of living. To think that we can or should avoid any suffering at all is unrealistic. And that anyone need suffer FOR nothing is more problematic than suffering FOR something in particular. We are called regularly to ‘suffer’ for our health, for our family, for our future and for future generations - the question here is: at what point are we suffering too much?

But I don’t think Paul is saying here that suffering for Christ is necessary in order to be a Christian. It is a privilege granted, not a duty required, to believe and to suffer FOR ‘Christ’.

Paul also advises the Philippians to ‘do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit’, and to ‘do everything without grumbling or arguing’ - and much of his letter suggests that this is his key message: that what they’re working together to achieve is worth a level of personal suffering beyond whatever they may have been complaining about.

I also want to point out that Paul seems to make a distinction between ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Christ’ - the latter referring to a human-divine relationship that he strives toward and encourages, and the former referring to the specific example of Jesus, who showed such a relationship was possible.

You say that the only compliment you heard as a little girl was that you were beautiful...which suggests to me that you felt under-appreciated for your intellect (?)... — Todd Martin

My achievements at school told me I was intelligent; but my father told me I was beautiful. I never felt under-appreciated, but my academic results suffered from the age of fifteen. It wasn’t so much a general under-appreciation as an acute awareness of different value systems under different circumstances, and the importance of language in shaping our perception of value and potential. Looking back now, I don’t believe my father knew how to compliment his daughters on their intelligence, just as he didn’t know how to show affection within the ‘appropriate’ boundaries of a parent. But he had a clear understanding of what not to do and say, and was guided by that.

Why was your older brother considered the “real future” of the family? — Todd Martin

Because he carried the family name (and reputation) into eternity. Fourth generation Australian, my father believed himself descended by name from Irish kings (Ruiarc), and was on a mission to restore their reputation. Incidentally, my brother approaches 50 as the only one of us still unmarried and without children - my guess is he felt the pressure.

Finally, a dad who was a recovering alcoholic with a violent temper must have been difficult, if not painful, to deal with as a child; how did you and your sisters deal with it? — Todd Martin

My father was very conscious of us not having to ‘deal with it’ as much as possible. We grew up in a dry household, and whenever his temper flared he controlled it within the bounds of ‘parental discipline’, and then removed himself from the home as quickly as possible. I remember being angry that he never acknowledged or apologised for his behaviour, but he taught us all to avoid confrontation, suppress anger, and to spot the warning signs of violence from a mile away. More importantly, he broke the cycle.

I am not sure to what extent people sit down and tell stories to young children no , spelling out wisdom and morality. I would imagine it varies a lot, but I do think that young children are probably starting to spend more and time on computers. Perhaps people on the forum who have children, or work in education, may be able to speak about this. — Jack Cummins

As a parent with teenagers, I’d say there’s not a lot of time spent sitting down and telling stories that spell out wisdom and morality, but I think it does come down to the stories we choose for our children when they are open to hearing them. As parents, we made the effort to control and guide the content of ‘stories’ our children were hearing from a very young age: television, music, books, computer games and internet. It wasn’t only about censorship but about balance of information, and the opportunities we had to discuss the wisdom and morality presented in a context that was relevant to where they were at in their experiences. We often referred to these efforts as their ‘cultural education’. Our children, now 15 and 17, have seen a much wider selection of film and television, heard a wider selection of music, and read a wider selection of literature than most kids their age (we can vouch for this because we also work in education). They don’t cringe at the classics, but are open to the messages they offer. I find that movies are an easy way to bring up a discussion on wisdom and morality with teens - it’s the ‘language’ they’re most comfortable with, and it often ends up being time well spent.

I would argue that anything judged ‘not beautiful’ lacks an element of truth in the relation between our experience and our understanding of it - where we attribute this lack entirely to the ‘objects’ or ‘categories’ of our experience, and uphold the existing structures of our understanding, however limited.

Beauty is an awareness of harmony between the structures of experience and understanding.

The question is: which structure should adjust in order to achieve this? Kant’s overall view is that understanding, not human experience, is the final arbiter. But he also demonstrated that relational structures of experience have contributed to our rational structures of human understanding (eg. synthetic a priori knowledge).

Kant recognised that human understanding lacked an element of truth in relation to the transcendent nature of human experience - but he saw rational structure as a necessary aspect of human reason, and therefore failed to acknowledge the possibility for relational experience of the sublime to adjust the structures of human understanding, and broaden our perspective of beauty.

Beauty is an experience of the truth we understand, or an understanding of the truth we experience. But it can also be a form of ignorance, isolation or exclusion of the truth we don’t understand, or have yet to experience.

...but now I do go there, Mr. Possible, and I find myself drawn to ask you a rather personal question: what was your family life like? Describe your upbringing, if you are willing... — Todd Martin

That’s a very broad question, and I get the sense that you have some preconceived ideas already, but don’t want to presume. To be honest, the way I would describe my upbringing depends on the context of the discussion, and I’m not entirely sure what this context is that I’m walking into.

I could tell you that I was raised Catholic, but that my father was a truth-seeker; I could tell you that I was the eldest of four daughters born in the mid-70s, but that my father’s parenting style was modelled on the 50s, so my mother never returned to her career as an executive PA, and my older brother was the family’s real future; I could tell you that my father was a recovering alcoholic who struggled to control a violent temper, but he strived for a peaceful environment, and had a playful side that made family time a joy; or that obedience and a university education were our highest priorities, but the only compliment I remember hearing growing up was ‘beautiful’, and in adulthood my father’s burning question was always ‘are you happy?’

You mean to say Christians are nervous about how strong a Moslem's faith is? Oddly, Christians and Moslems, even Jews, believe in the same god. For that reason, Christians should be happy to have Moslem women dressed as they're supposed to (hijab, niqab, burka, chador); after all, they're wearing apparel that's standard for Christian nuns, women who've dedicated their lives to god who also goes by the name Allah. — TheMadFool

I’m not saying anything about Christians in general. Those who object to the way Muslim women dress who do identify as ‘Christians’ seem to be presenting a particular consolidated opposition based on a form of faith or belief in a particular source of teachings, and view these particular headscarves as a symbolic expression of what they oppose. The same goes for the consolidated position of ‘freedom’ as opposed to ‘oppression’.

The fact is, Christian women who dress provocatively are not all free from oppression, and Muslim women who wear a hijab are not all oppressed. But to be honest, I don’t think the objection to Muslim headscarves have anything really to do with one ‘God’ or another, or even about freedom from oppression. These consolidated oppositions are a ruse. It’s more about fearing the potential of what we don’t understand - and not having opportunities to develop understanding in an inclusive environment.

There are a lot of men here with much to say about what women wear and why. It seems to me that an important element missing from this discussion is the variable intentionality of Muslim women and nuns themselves. There is a tendency to view these women as limited by dress requirements, but they don’t always see themselves this way. I recognise that many Muslim women who wear the burka in particular, and headscarves in general, can be either required or pressured to do so - whether under the guise of protecting the person, virtue or property, or as an identification of their faith or cultural affiliation - but many also choose this form of protection or identification. To many of these women - particularly those living in Western society - the chador is an expression of their freedom. As a Western woman, the idea of choosing to draw a clearer line between public and private attire when you’re travelling from one place to another seems an attractive option to me for a number of situations. Banning the wearing of Muslim headscarves in Western society can be seen by these women as a form of oppression.

It is curious to me, O Possible One, that you failed to address my second question in your last post: is Rovelli’s theory not compromised by its own self?

Whether his theory is a temporal or atemporal “event” is of no matter, for the atemporal ones, as you have said, only have significance to us in their relation to the temporal ones...and it is all a mishmash of indeterminate “potentiality”...

So, I ask again in a different way: why do you adhere to the theory of a man who acknowledges that human thought is based on uncertifiable certainties? And if all thought is so uncertain, how can we be motivated to think or act in our world? — Todd Martin

My apologies - time gets away from me, and life gets in the way. I wasn’t avoiding the question, just lacking the time to put together a considered response.

I haven’t said that potentiality is insignificant as such, and this is not what Rovelli is saying either. Rather, it is potentiality that IS significant (it is, after all, the structure of the universe), and sometimes more so than certainty, particularly when it comes to motivation to think or act.

I should point out that Rovelli’s main body of work is in quantum field theory - so for him it’s not “all a mishmash of indeterminate potentiality” at all. There are mathematical formulae that render our quantum predictions to think or act far more precisely than the sum of human experience - based on a rational structuring of potentiality. It is these structures of potentiality that make much of our digital technology a reality, and broaden our understanding of the universe far beyond our travelling capacity. The more we acknowledge the role we play as relative observation-events in potentiality, the more we can piece together the broader relational structures of potentiality by which we are motivated to think and act in our world.

The surprise has been that, in the emergence of familiar aspects of time, we ourselves have had a role to play. From our perspective - the perspective of creatures who make up a small part of the world - we see that world flowing in time. Our interaction with the world is partial, which is why we see it in a blurred way. To this blurring is added quantum indeterminacy. The ignorance that follows from this determines the existence of a particular variable - thermal time - and of an entropy that quantifies our uncertainty. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’