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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (31389)	2/21/1999 1:10:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

No doubt the teachingof young minds does make on contemptuous of the young's intelligence and learning. Yesterday, I askeda class in leadership for the most influential books they'd ever read. The first question was "Do Cliff's Notes Count?" It turned out if I omitted cliffs notes I got these answers: 1. (Mainland Chinese Student) Confucius, Analects 2. (Taiwan student) Confucius, Analects 3. (Vietnam student) Chaucer, Canterbury Tales The other 15 or so so students couldn't remember reading a whole book, although I'd given each of them several to carry around and keep warm. None of the American students seem to be sure what a book was! ON further examination it turned out that "Analects was just an old guy with a lot of confusing advice." "Canterbury tales was just a bunch of stories with the dirty ones taken out so it wasn't the whole book. He wasn't sure any particular character was, but he thought there were several." I'll take another 40 years before I ask that question again. The reason some professors have contempt for students' knowledge is that they have so little of it. One student told me he hadn't read a book (he is a professional kick-boxer) because he was never told he had to read a book. He asked me if I could recommend a good book on kick boxing. You will notice that lawyers think people are trying to escape the consequences of their acts, accountants think people cheat on their taxes, physicians think every one is sick. I guess people come to college because they think they know less than their professors. It happens I also asked them before to write down what their codes of ethics were, and when no one knew, I asked them how they determined what was right and wrong. MOst of them complained that no one had ever told them what was right and wrong, and since they hadn't an assignment on it, they had failed to think about. One of the reasons we ask this embarrassing stuff is that several of our former students have locked up for business misbehavior. We supposed to teach them ethics, but no one tells us what the official ethics are, so we are on our own, I guess. I would appreciate any suggestions you have except the ten commandments which I think are still banned. As to our first paragraph I think we are in agreement. Real homophobes will sometimes (usually) answer when they are asked that they have never thought about having sex or sexual love toward a person of their sex. When they do, answer this way, I sometimes suspect them of hypocrisy. I have no magic way to identify homosexuality, but Gary Bauer looks much queerer to me than Michael Jackson does. If I had to bet ... I'd bet on Bauer. I certainly don't think that anyone aroused by same-sex material is necessarily likely to engage in homosexual acts. But I will assert that such an one is not "purely heterosexual." I don't think there are many people who cannot be aroused by printed, painted, or sculpted material relating to the same sex. I don't know what male or female music is (the Greeks did) so I excluded from the discussion -- verse and lyrics I consider the most sexually charged of all forms of art. Many years ago I taught a group of adult illiterate soldiers to read there general orders in less than three days. I taught them using mimeographed dirty stories ("Behind the Green Door", etc.) They know most of the words by sound already, but the funny part was seeing a group of grown men (many of them fundamentalists) bent double as the result of reading this crap aloud and trying to conceal the results from each other. I certainly didn't want to declare yourself on a higher level. When you said "surely admiration and even arousal can be felt anyone for beauty in either sex" you made the point I wanted to be made. I simply believe that the capacity for arousal by same-sex beauty is probably necessary for greatness. I think many (not you) deny this and deplore that capacity. As for my supposed belief that my personal opinions are superior -- forget it. I think this is a free country, still, just barely. I think that here it means anyone with the money and a civil tongue can say just what he pleases. I don't believe I've ever told anyone they shouldn't believe what they believe except in a few cases on Ask God when I thought they were preaching a pogrom and in another case or so in which they spelled it wrong. I do think it is important for different moralities to clash. I believe they can be discussed reasonably and even in a friendly spirit. Intellectually, I believe that most people are strongly influenced by their sex and their sexual agenda. There may be some totally asexual people (a genetic disorder, perhaps). I think that a man who believes that he cannot love men (whatever that means to him) has a limited view of the world. I think that a woman who is incapable of loving men has the same problem. One who operates on all wave lengths is more likely to get his message through. Finally, please don't take anything I say seriously. I'm just a 14 year old boy deep over her head.