Scott Mayers

You have a right to your opinion. But regardless of what set of cultures have been conserved by 'our' constitution, it is not one I signed on for. I was born into this country and do NOT have any right to go elsewhere even if I wanted to. So I have every right to complain about such a constitution that discriminates against me and doesn't represent the individual as the most significant minority. I've compared our system in a direct isomorphic relationship to the Nationalism elsewhere in history to show what we have to look forward to if we keep this mentality up. You, and not I, are in support of 'Colonialism' as this is precisely the same kind of Nationalism where we are expected to accept the authority of the very Royal Colonialists who devised the problems to which you think we should owe allegiance to. The 'agreements' of those past people had no right to even agree to any perpetual agreements of specific peoples in disrespect of the progeny that we are all inherited of. And to make it sink home, if you are a female as you indicate, do you also think you should 'own' the tradition of requiring women to be treated as they were as the founders of this country interpreted where women stood then? You can't respect those ancestors' authority where you favor them and select out ones you don't approve of. The same goes for the cultural laws here. You cannot accept laws that grant 'favoritism' to the stereotypes you like but toss away the ones you don't. If traditional cultures should be preserved, this should include the expectation to accept the bad ones as equally as the good. And this is why it WILL fail OR end up creating an ugly future for us all.

At your 16,000 and some posts, I can understand. But I don't come to a forum merely to read your own 16,000+ posts among everyone else's from the past just to catch up.

Mulcaire's failure is due to favoring special interest groups in opposition to other groups rather than appealing to individuals. I'm social democrat in principle but don't believe the NDP is being representative of this. AND, they are not being democratically responsible. Their party, as with the rest here in Canada, are exclusive clubs that create the ideals and platforms behind closed doors and don't welcome those who don't belong or can't financially contribute. So the voices that gets to be represented by them are limited to the large group pluralities that merely have the goal to oppose the group interests of the Conservatives or the Liberals. And that's why they will NEVER succeed unless they alter these factors. Multiculturalism, as the Liberals had introduced, was clever to assure we will always see the traditional cult as the most significant minority and prevent the individual from being recognized in any party platform that could survive here. So Mulcaire's NDP is only becoming a different form of Conservatives as the rest of the parties are. But even given their agreement to Multiculturalism they lack the powers of the groups in consolidation because it is impossible to favor all cultures without excluding specific ones no matter what.

I'm for a mixed system and believe that this is what SRV is supporting. However, I accept much of Tim's arguments in responses too. Religion itself is a form of Nationalism or Culturalism to which I don't propose be destroyed, only taken out of the purview of government except where they appeal to all people as individuals without asserting some explicit favor or disfavor. Communism fails with the fact that it's ideology is still religious where they require a dictator as a medial stage to get to the ideal of communism. The U.S.S.R. was NOT a Communist country, by the way. It was this intermediate stage proposed by Marx because he couldn't figure out how you could remove government without some enforcement to impose the ideal of communism. He erred too in that he assumed that once a state could exist, it would be self-assuring and permanent without any dictator or other form of government. It requires sacrifice of those in an early stage to even get there and the personal biases of its dictator still creates some form of Nationalism where they tend towards nepotism for those they believe are their 'own'. Unions too become problematic through the soviet idea where the particular union losses its necessity. For instance, a particular soviet union might be a group of people who create and build some technology that would normally die out where new ideas compete against old ones and threaten replacing or even removing that group. But if you belong to that union and depend on it for your local existence, you would turn into a self-serving interest group who believes in maintaining the status quo in the illusion that since it provides employment, it is sufficiently reasonable to keep that union. This is where I think those like Micheal Moore errs when he points to industries that leave his home town merely because it makes people jobless. You need the resource of the product or its manufacture to be viable. If a mine becomes empty, for instance, do you think it appropriate to still pay miners to continue mining even where there is no more ore? This is what happens in 'Communist' country a lot. It reduces to the nationalism in this respect. I like Tim's references above. In particular, I too find it inappropriate to make the North American Native into some innate culture who preserves the environment. Everyone seems to pick and choose which factors apply and which don't in order to keep some form of nationalism alive with insanity. You should know, for instance, that ALL horses were killed off and went extinct by the ancient North American ancestors, for instance. The 'reserve' system also was inappropriate to represent anything remotely Native to their ancestors. They believed in 'ownership' too. But the type of things to which people had a right to their 'own' was based on their lifestyle. For the northern Americas, this was still tribal, meaning that they 'owned' routes, not fixed territory. It was merely accidentally 'communistic' in that among any group of tribes who were similarly transient, they didn't necessarily settle to agriculture as a means for sustenance. Obviously, such a lifestyle will clash with those who come and even simply build a house. What occurred to those who would build a house in the 'path' of some tribe's route would be things even most if not all people, including Natives today, would NOT accept: Freely walking into one's home and help themselves to what they need. We call this stealing today! It wasn't perceived a crime because the routes themselves were understood as 'owned' by the Aboriginals. Reserves actually are merely limited 'pastures' that the settlers (of all races and ethnicities, even newly settling Aboriginals) had established as a means to negotiate some perceived midway to both senses of 'ownership'. But the tribal form is NOT capable of surviving rationally regardless. It had already begun in Central and South America in part and so it is delusional to think that we should permit the Aboriginal rights they had in some period before that no longer exists. Even the remote societies demand the modernization that makes them complacent to the tribal lifestyle. You can't have it both ways. Either you live transient in tent-like temporary homes using the traditional bow-and-arrows (not guns, as this is a modern tech) and without the horses that didn't exist either, OR you adapt to the modern life. You can't pick and choose which things you consider 'cultural' without accepting it all with exclusion of the privileges of the present.

Jacee, Although you've opted out here and removed specific responses here, I assure you that I or others are NOT taking an anti-Aboriginal stance (or to your assumed 'Neo-nazism'.) I'm against ANY Nationalism to which I've defined before to you and others. "Nazis", for instance is a Nationalism FOR the Aboriginal German or whom they perceived was the 'true' natives of the land simply based on historical pre-existent ancestors prior to immigration of others. So ONLY in the light of one defending an Aboriginal stance as if they ARE distinctly and rightfully a group of people deserving either GOOD OR BAD treatment is equally wrong to me. Think of it this way: What is occurring is that people who demand recognition based on some genetic inheritance is getting some BAD treatment because they are being stereotyped with BAD factors. Yet you can't simply demand that people should simply learn to treat such a group as GOOD and maintain only GOOD stereotypes because it is the stereotyping that is causing the problem! Just because you assign people 'good' stereotypes doesn't solve the problem because moral or ethic values (assignments of 'good' or 'bad') are always relative to individuals and their group associations. If you don't want BAD stereotypes that cause BAD treatment, you can't impose GOOD stereotypes to assure GOOD treatment and require broadening the class to a larger general class, such as "people" rather than "Specific People A", "Specific People B", etc, to fix the problem. Then you assure that each person gets treated the same of all things in common. The way the right-wing parties will often handle this may be to preserve "Specific People A" in exclusion of all others; the way the left-wing parties (here, anyways) merely takes the groups of people that are NOT "Specific People A" and inversely makes them significant. That is they might define the set of "Specific People B" + "Specific People C" + "Specific People D" +...etc, instead as the group(s) that should be favored. You can summarize this left-wing preference as "non-Specific People A" as it means the same as the above. What this demonstrates is that both are being equally racists and inappropriately discriminatory because you see things in black-and-white terms. What I am proposing is to take the whole class of ALL people inclusively. Yet, I also propose breaking the boundaries (only in law) that define these groups distinctly for the purpose of created segregated rights based on nothing more than their cultural inheritance. It doesn't mean that we can't treat logical classes that are essential to us all for specific purposes. For instance, every individual in all peoples require both sexes to procreate or at least to be birthed as a cause from. As such, "Women" does act as a logical class with respect to a specific class in law as "Pregnant or impregnable Persons". This in law makes sense as it doesn't speak of whether a woman has the right or not to wear pink as this is absurdly irrelevant. But the 'pink' example is precisely what is being imposed as the significant logical rights that you or others are imposing has some rational right because this is a culturally defined concept.

Then you give me permission to simply ignore you too. If you want simplistic responses, go to Twitter, or, use a larger screen to read rather than your cell phone on forums. This topic requires more depth than a simple sentence or two could possibly do other than to vote for one side over the other. I read you anyways! (How nice of me to give you the equal respect you don't of me, huh?) If you want any further response to you, it is in context to what I already wrote that you refuse to by default.

I hate using my own status or experience as any normal reason to generalize from. But I don't use it in expectation to impose what your own thinking does in sync with majorities or sub-majorities. In your type of thinking, if I should have any justice to complain, I require formalizing another distinct group to defend it as the case is with women or Aboriginals. You don't fight racism/sexism/X-ism your disagree with by merely creating your own 'race', 'sex', or 'X', to positively stand for and fight for that instead. This is just behaving in kind to what you claim to oppose and why I see it as insincere mentality. I DON'T propose that I 'belong' to the class, "male", "white", etc, as YOU and others are forcing upon me. My own argument is to show how I reflectively suffer, not ALL those YOU interpret me belonging to those stereotype classes to which you or others propose I fit in. I'm showing a counter-example to your presumption of what is or is not "white", "male", or "X". I would NOT stand for a Masculinity group to oppose stereotypes against men, for instance and disagree to those who do in the same way I don't support Femininity as a group. My position is if one feels a sexual unfairness, for instance, you become a Humanist as a group to not demonstrate bias for or against any one group over the other. "Corrective" action IS appropriately discrimination because the word means to define distinct differences between things with clear boundaries. To 'correct' behavior is to look at the problem as defined in common of its elements without bias to favor one or the other in law. You and others in this mindset interpret the causes of special imbalances as due significantly to one's race or sex with complete ignorance. And so you believe that to repair this is to forcefully balance out the membership that what you FAVOR between the groups by FAVORING the ones who are perceived to be treated less FAVORABLY. All this does is to (1) Assert that the CAUSE of the disfavors of one group IS due to one or more of the other groups making them into the opposing 'enemy' and (2) Force laws to FAVOR your preferred group with ignorance that this implies DISFAVOR to at least some other excluded. If you oppose that some Group A is behaving bad due to X, you don't look at group's B, C, etc, who suffer from Group A because of X and solve the problem by giving the other groups the equal power to X. X IS the cause of the problems! This is similar to the NRA's irrational thinking in kind: Since people are using guns (an X) to harm innocent people (Group A), the NRA intrinsically believes that guns are not the problem and so believe the 'correct' solution is to encourage innocent people to fight back by buying and using guns equally. If you see this logic, you'd KNOW that while the NRA actually overtly asserts favor for guns, they also FAVOR the group of their own, the Group who are innocent owners of Guns, by their own definition. In comparison, to take sexism as the equivalent of the 'gun' in the case of any unfairness against the class, women, some set of women stand up and argue 'corrective action' by NOT targeting sexism but the group, women ONLY, and do whatever it takes to ARM them with an opposing sexist policy of favoritism for women. And then who are the sincere idiots to NOT think this 'favoritism' FOR women doesn't logically imply 'disfavoritism' AGAINST men?

What do you even mean by "there's no need to hate?" If you accept inheritance based on one's culture or ethnicity, the hate is coming from those defending these factors by imposing alternate hardships upon those excluded based on an equal STEREOTYPE that All White people are by default inheritors of wealth and privilege. This irks me and other, not simply of those being 'white' and poor, but to all those various mixtures of people being excluded in kind. The taxes thing that Tim mentions is a significant example. For instance, I don't know HOW smoking is somehow an intrinsic property of ones' cultural rights simply by being the first on the land to have discovered tobacco? It's bad enough that I used to hear often how evil the white man was for bringing alcohol to poison the Natives or blankets from some particular incident of someone in history supposedly acting on behalf of some 'white' and universal conspiracy to wipe them out! As a smoker, I am being FORCED to pay 666% tax (no doubt not a coincidence) which means that of each pack I buy, 85% of that on average goes to taxes without any presumption that it has anything to do with my 'culture'. As a poor person with the same background family problems as most of my Natives peers, I lack at least this one factor that penalizes me by the very privilege they are guaranteed. The function of government to favor the Natives is to placate certain complaints from the class of those poor by appealing simply to the largest majority who would risk government continuing to do this should they stand up against tobacco laws. As such, it isolates those of us who have to pay the taxes simply based on our apparent 'culture' we are supposedly inherited our riches from in a clearly inappropriate way. To make up for the loss of taxes from tobacco, the additional demand is to raise the tax to extortionate levels, knowing that as addicts we WILL pay. This is just one issue. Other examples lie in job creation incentives which overtly declare up front they favor Aboriginals first, Immigrant minorities second, female minorities third, and last, the white male who is arrogantly assumed to be ALL rich. So give me a break. You can't expect me nor anyone else to lay back and sacrifice our chances to survive better by sucking up the loss. You don't lose. The real establishment of 'whites' don't suffer where they are benefiting by their own discrimination. It is the lone individuals who get excluded who pay the penalty. And what for? You find this a kind gesture of love for me? No, its revenge through stereotyping.

I'm with you on this. I feel like I was born a 'floater' for merely not being a legitimate inheritor of any land, property, genetics, or cultural tradition anywhere on this Earth. Am I to accept my alien status? Am I NOT an Earthling too?

What specifically needs to be done to solve the problem. I'm saying that our Multicultural policies, or even Assimilation, are problematic because these are intended to allow laws to be made TO discriminate and fosters more hatred, not less. We need an Intercultural appeal that initially requires redressing the Constitution to rid it of a right to conserve culture, especially with regards to those based on inheritance (ie, tradition/history). These prevent the right of individuals to be treated equally based on similar REAL circumstances by 'gerrymandering' the way we define the causes of problems as due to culture over economy. The reverse is true. Ones economy creates the problems that get 'excused' by culture in reaction. This includes how those in the Middle East appear to be irrationally religious zealots competing for religious reasons. It hides the real causes such as the theft of the resources and economy of Iraq, Syria, Iran, etc, by their opposition, the Israelis and the Americans who are capitalizing on the same religious type excuses for their own justifications. Take out the cultural/religious excuses in laws, and you expose the real problems.

Agreed. But do you think it wise to moderate CBC forums? We have no capacity to interpret the sincerity of those 'censoring' if they are doing so out of their own political bias. Are we supposed to just blindly trust their words when they say they experience something as abusive? Do you not think that a place like North Korea, who would no doubt do this too, would argue rationally to their people that their acts to censor are due to sincere abuses of 'others'? This is the Catch 22 of the whole concept of censoring any public communications between its people.

Yes. This is the point I'm saying is our genetic fittest-for-survival animal instinct. Yet we ignore that when one attends positively to one specifically favored group, this necessarily implies discrimination AGAINST the outsider to the degree you FAVOR your own. Do you think it acceptable to selectively FAVOR one or more of your children over one or more of the others based on inherent appearances or behaviors? This isn't about judging one child who is merely being 'difficult' or abusive to the family unit. This kind of discrimination actually causes the motives to BE in opposition to one another. The one treated most favorably thinks the 'culture' of their parents is just because one's internal pride is derived from the selfish appeal they naturally have for it, even if it is done with mere shallow or non-real qualifications. In contrast, the ones who lack the FAVOR, while it may not always be about direct abuse, is a form of indirect abuse through neglect. But if the parent should recognize their behavior, if they sincerely care about this, merely saying they 'love' them cannot be interpreted as real if they do not voluntarily ACT on such words. And equally, should the parent opt to simply begin to offer gifts to placate the undesired child, it doesn't actually make them love the child any more than the words they think magically work. And the 'gifts' often lack the sincerity in that they are merely given out of the parent's guilt without a willingness to address their own mindset to favor one over the other.

It's your choice. But why are you even here then? Are we only here to 'vent' without trying to convince each other our points of view? I'm trying to be constructive to what skill I believe I have to contribute. And it doesn't come by merely tweeting likes and dislikes without substance and depth. If these problems were 'simple' they'd already be solved and no one would actually have anything to complain about. This is my own fair appeal to help. And you, as much as anyone here, qualify to participate in equal depth and willingness to discuss and debate our differences.

Yes. But as simple as you word this, it will only appeal to those who agree they are NOT the bigots....which is EVERYONE! It doesn't repair the damages we want to resolve.

Culture IS merely a facade of Nationalism by those who believe TRADITION is the root of all culture. You ignore that culture to the VAST MAJORITY of people is a choice of one's present environment, not merely of traditionalists. But since the traditionalists have the force of precedent by past gains, it is their idea of 'culture' which supersedes those who believe culture is transitional and ever-evolving. This is the most appropriate forum in which I even have a hope to speak on these issues. I do NOT have any other 'place' to go to to competitively prove this. The CBC, as a prime example, will NOT allow dissenting views against the traditionalists of the groups robbing the attention of the individuals in the more impoverished classes. The same goes for all the other media outlets but they only differ on which 'groups' get the voice. While it may seem too complex for you, I hope you DO take the time to invest in reading and understanding what I'm saying and contribute in kind. But don't tell me to simply 'go away' because you can't or won't try to understand. I am completely being relevant being here and to go to another venue that is restricted to the philosophers is like sending me to my own 'reserve' so that I cannot be heard or seen by the majority I'm trying to appeal to.

You either misinterpret my sympathy and are reacting without concern to attend to the details. The Aboriginals WERE violated and discriminated by default of the conflicting differences in the stage of European advancement against the Americans (all of America) prior to their move here. The clash is precisely what occurred in many places before AND each civilization has gone through these stages. The stage of the North American Aboriginals was still in an earlier stage of development by contrast to the Europeans. It doesn't mean one stage is 'superior' or 'inferior', even while one will interpret the other in this way. Tribal lifestyle is transient until settlement is established through an era of agricultural evolution. This began in Central America and they had just passed the phase of initial overproduction of the land in their pyramid phase that had already occurred more than four thousand years ago in Egypt from which the Old World ancestors had gone through. The Egyptian, Middle East, and Mediterraneans had struggled with this phase and the repercussions of it still exist as we are experiencing now in the present conflicts there. These are all derived from the differences in 'ownership' claims or ideals, and to the idea of who should have a 'right' over others to inherit. In North America, it was unfortunately most drastic since the phase differences were so drastic. You can't simply make a large population in an early tribal phase adapt to the technological and intellectual advances that had already occurred to that point in Europe when they were expanding to the rest of the world. Even the Europeans who came over were and still are insufficiently evolved to appropriately address any ideal to handle the concepts of ownership and inheritance in a world that is limited in resources but unlimited in demand. So when the Americans first came over, while unfortunate, the ideals of the newcomers clashed NOT because of any significant difference in genetic capacity but to the impossibility of change to occur as quickly as it is demanded of ALL people. What may have been 'fair' may have been for the early Old World immigrants to have turned back home. However, realistically, many of those immigrants were as much victims from places they originated from regardless. The point here is that just as any and every 'culture' of the Old World had equal interest to come here to claim what they understood was 'free land' since the natives of the Americas had not completely reached the stage of saturation in agricultural settlement. So, especially to the North American natives, their tribal lifestyle seriously clashed merely by accident. But DO NOT mistake the idea that somehow the populations here prior to the Old World immigration, that all tribes were somehow angelically altruistic towards each other and had any intrinsic 'culture' that was any more nor less superior to those newcomers. The only difference is that the power of the New Immigrants had the needed time to get the advancement they had which granted them the technology to competitively overcome the American Natives. Had the Natives been somehow magically empowered with this at that time, the reverse scenario would occur without a doubt. And if you or others insist anything different, you are deluded with a sincere internal belief in a racial supremacy AND inferiority as much as the worst of those from any immigrants who felt the same whom you may find most criminal. I sympathize with the problems that have lead to present problems in discrimination. However, I believe that, as I argued in my OP here, that what we tend to do is to only enable those qualities of hatred of groups where we have those who believe in the supremacy/inferiority classifications are a justified, and often, religiously derived belief that we SHOULD segregate into clear and distinct groups based on genetic as much as to environmental inheritances. And it is always these people who represent the vast minority of ALL people who steal the powers due to their internal agreeing hatreds of others as much due to the insane LOVE for their own with clear boundaries. To you or others who think our multicultural ideal is a 'good' thing, this is more about your absurd beliefs that we should be allowed to segregate with forces that CONSERVE exclusive distinction of peoples so as to impose these forcefully in law and allow you to pass this same Nationalistic set of standards upon your children. This is natural if we return to the purest survival-to-the-fittest thinking that the rest of the animal kingdom adheres to. But if and only if you appeal to ANY intellectual advancement with compassion to us all as a part of the same world, a Nationalistic imposition to segregate entices more hatred than to defeat it. You are encouraging a continuation of our natural instinct to be selfish as our genes command us to be. And while this is 'natural', you can't then feign that you are somehow MORE compassionate and righteous by all people to impose this on the rest of us. Segregation laws DO aid some people merely on the accidental nature of what it means to a child in a family who gets spoiled over other siblings: while the sibling who gets exceptional treatment will naturally advance and appreciate their favoritism, they cannot fairly accept losing this favor regardless of their intellect against it. They think, yeah, I don't like the fact that my brothers and sisters are suffering at my expense, but if I give in and allow them equal treatment, I'll lose my own benefits. And my 'parents' have been treating me so well even though they are abusive to some of my siblings unfairly. So the sibling will justify this by openly supporting segregated treatment but try to entice others at least with a false hope that they too could get the treatment they receive if they only find their OWN fortune separately. It is the story of the 'Ugly Duckling' in practice. I can't figure out how this story ever gets thought of as something even remotely compassionate let alone REAL for people as it was to the adopted swan!?? This fable says that if those who suffer in some family, they should merely recognize that they are just some 'different' species and go ELSEWHERE to seek their appropriate home with those of their 'kind'. It transfers the burden to be compassionate by the ones who are being treated badly by 'going away' and to seek their OWN kind. Therefore, the exclusive nature of segregation forces the 'ugly ducklings' among them to either CONFORM to their group (assimilation) OR to find their own group (as distinct beings), even if they don't exist, to equally create a group that looks at them as Swans while the rest as Ducks. This creates the anger and frustration of those who get expelled from their own to rightfully turn into hyenas, not swans, as this is what it takes for the rejected to survive where there truly is no such fantasized Swan family they belong to. Its a myth. Do you think that half-breeds (intercultural inherited people) are worth being discriminated against since they don't have a distinct group they 'belong' to? Do you think they should take on your own pretense that others are 'out there' simply to satisfy YOU even while this is a complete an utter lie only intended to make the undesired 'go away'? It's HATE, pure and simple! And it is NOT owned merely by the large MONO-culturalists who are in more power; the MULTI-culturalists only feign their own internal MONO-cultural love for their own and hatred for others by contrast of need to do so UNTIL they could become powerful enough to take over the last Conservative interests.

I'm opening this thread to discuss the political philosophy regarding how and what is the underlying nature and causes of what we determine is or is not behaviors that discriminate in a derogatory way. In particular, I'm personally offended by the way our system is tackling real problems of abuses that occur to people by using an even worse type of discrimination that targets select other peoples in a type of vengeance that only enhances more problems than it solves. I am using the issues surrounding our Aboriginals here in Canada with an opposing contrast to the Caucasians here without any personal intent to signify favor for any one group or the other. I happen to be Caucasian but do NOT speak to defend any REAL discrimination that occurs by any Caucasian any more than by an Aboriginal. I believe that this abuse is a universal problem that occurs everywhere yet the 'solutions' to overcome them always tend to distract us from what I believe is the sincere and logical causes of discrimination among ALL people everywhere. So this discussion is inclusive of most world peoples everywhere. Let's begin by introducing the 'problem' which we are commonly trying to address. What appears to be the problem is that certain group or groups of people based on some identifiable genetic inheritance seems to be targeted by one or more groups somewhere at some times by some or all others in a derogatory way that defeats the success of individuals based in this. If you or others agree who are reading this, please mention this in your response to assure that we at least agree to this much up front. To help clarify, I am not saying who or which groups are the cause or the recipients of the abuses as I am defaulting to assume this is a function of all people with concerns to the group identities. If we can at least agree to the problem first as a most generic condition, we can try to move forward to see if we can resolve it. I will begin with my own belief of the cause and effects with my proposed means to repair the problem. Causes and Efffects (1) Evolution itself commands that any individual interprets what is 'good' or 'bad' based on their initial experiences in life to assign what these values to adapt to their local environment. This means that when we only assign any values based on our initial self-derived needs or interests from early childhood on. Once 'assigned' they are often at least partially hardwired to assure a means to instinctively react to real dangers and to determine which things we can trust. For example, much of our 'moral' values derive from a hardwired program that has a variable form that seeks the environment to assign whether what it experiences is 'favorable' or not to what it presumes is consistent. These occur through windows or periods of time where the brain is developing to both test the worthiness of experience to save brain space for it or to ignore it so that the space can be used for other things. A cat, for instance, is born without sight during the initial month whereupon a period of time is necessary to 'test' whether the brain should allocate memory space for that sensor or to use it for other things. While not technically a 'value' in the way we think of morals, the purpose is no different. If the cat for whatever reason has an eye that does not work or is blinded in this period, the window testing the area of the brain where sight is assigned only stays open for a month or so after its initiation. Should that part of the brain receive no data during that period, it reassigns it to some other window for testing, like hearing, so that it can optimize that space in the brain rather than feed it when it has no use. This is a type of pruning of environmental 'values'. In the same way, we have initial windows that open to seek what we will or will not "favor". It is NOT based on a predetermined idea of pleasure and pain as these too are 'values' which get assigned. For instance, if your window opens to determine how to interpret a cut on your skin through the pressure sensors that get affected in such a case, you may have a case where insufficient information is being active during this period OR another set of events are traumatizing (overwhelming) this window's expectation to assign value of skin sensors. A flu or some other sickness, for instance, during this window may be affecting your brain that occupies attention at the time. But because of this, if the window should close in this period, the assignment for the brain may interpret ANY strong sensation of the skin as at least more worthy of assigning value even if it is NOT a survival trait. You may be 'cut' to bleed the brain due to Meningitis in this window, a 'good' or survival factor, which your brain then assigns as a 'good' sensation. But this assignment may then accidentally assign the sensation of being cut as a 'good' feeling even though it is objectively not with respect to the possibility of getting infected. There are a few 'diseases' like this. For instance, leprosy, is one kind of misassignment to the value of what should be 'pain'. The lack of it in such people makes them unable to sense when or where they get injured and so it affects them with dire consequences. This is also the kind of thing that occurs with most moral values as well. For the purposes of this argument, I specifically think that these type of assignments are what initiates the bonding values we associate with close family and environmental groups we experience with a tendency to bias more favor for and against external ones. These do not mean that one necessarily favors their own. If you experience assignments that go against through trauma, you may find even bonding to similar apparent stimuli as 'bad' or even just 'indifferent'. (2) Because of the above, assigning who or what we favor forces us to 'discriminate' between those we deem safe and 'good' as opposed to unsafe and 'bad'. There is likely much variation to include many degrees in between including the middle position of 'indifference'. So from the individual, we judge what is 'good' for us is what is 'good'. Because those we associate with as next in line as essential in our environment, we assign values to the people and things next in significant proximity to 'favor'. Then, we extend this to weaker and weaker associations the further out we go. Obviously, this causes us to tend to favor our ethnic group or culture in better ways when or where these things are most productive to our survival. However, survival itself is a matter of degrees too. Even if one gets assigned values that are not necessarily destructive as some disease which affects our capacity to be healthy, sometimes the very assignments we receive early on are also lost soon after we develop them. For instance, most babies have limited needs in the beginning. As such, even a struggling and relatively poor mother may be able to nourish the baby sufficiently in windows of development to be assigned values which are productive to survival. But if and when that baby grows and begins to require more nutrients of reality from its environment it lacks, the hard wiring they received could create real problems. As such, even if our initial experiences make us healthy, the very assignments we hard wire can also backfire on us where we then experience another stage of life that lacks or goes against those values we learned. That is, if you appropriately acquired the assignment to feel pain when hungry, such an assignment if permanently hard-wired can create a worse condition for another period when or where you lack food later. As such, the hunger acts to make one suffer. This of course is a normal means to entice our consciousness to seek the environment in order to survive. Yet it also makes us suffer without it. So this cause creates the means to most people everywhere to feel the 'value' of pain and suffering as much as it does to the pleasures and comforts that most of us equate with. Where we suffer early on can thus conflict with the environment we are in as we still develop further values which turn against ourselves as individuals as well as to our groups. We might then tend to feel 'favor' for what others may appear to have which we value externally and begin to interpret how discrimination affects us differently based on what appears to be true, which is most evident in our outward appearances. (3) We begin to interpret the larger representations of our own identities and the corresponding virtues of their comforts as opposed to sufferings as dividing lines between ourselves and others based on external appearances, including behaviors. So if many of your own 'kind' appear to suffer in some way, AND others do not to an equally admirable degree, you seek justification for this. Since these are often about statistical averages we induce upon experience, it will always tend to be the extremes we see which help us interpret what we favor most over which we don't. If you are of a suffering group, you only see your own group as suffering as the furthest extension of oneself and see the out-group who represents the most prosperous as the representative group taking in all the benefits. The simplest is based on race and ethnicity. Notice though that the 'cause' here can err in significant but imbalanced ways. For one, while one extreme to you is your own group with positive certainty, the out-group with the strongest symbolic representative of the virtues you believe your group lacks, will be stereotyped as if the whole of the other group is equally in similar prosperity by contrast. In an opposite way, the more 'prosperous' group will NOT necessarily see their in-group as a whole as prosperous because they themselves are potentially suffering too. They may 'see' the same group of people as the others objectively prosperous but cannot logically include themselves if they too are suffering even for being a part of that supposed 'favored' group. To them, their perception feels stuck between two general classes simply because they are a 'minority' within the prosperous group. In contrast, the ones prosperous in the objectively determined group by statistics may also interpret themselves as being fortunate as a whole, even where in error. Summary example: Assume 10% Race/ethnicity group A is suffering while 90% of A is prospering. Then assume 90% of group B is suffering while 10% of their race/ethnicity in the same group B is prospering. The Majority of both groups tend to steal the best and worst of each group and is generated by the 90% in each but never by the whole. Yet stereotyping is most strongest on both extremes and so the assumption if adjustments are to be made by both extremes will be to trade 'favors' between those majorities in both to keep them at peace, if it should exist. (4) The last point means that we now have a concern to resolve any problems by appealing to balancing fairness to attend to the majority. Yet this ignores two other minorities in each group. The 10% of B who are prospering won't complain because while they may be in the minority of those prospering, they do not actually suffer the consequences of it and so stay silent. In contrast, the 10% of A who suffer in the class who normally prospers, has an even more opposing need to complain as they get targeted as being of the class who DOES prosper by statistics yet more appropriately fit in with the same group B of the 90% who DO suffer as well. As such, the very ones who suffer as a common class, we might define as C, such that they are the 10% of group A + the 90% of group B, are pitted most strongly against one another without justice. The ones who prosper consisting of the 90% of group A + the 10% of group B, say group D, are then most apparently the least who consequentially suffer from any proposed changes that either favor or disfavor their group. So this last point is where I see the causes meet the effects that get distorted to be about race and ethnicity in a false logical concern. Yet this tends to create a never-ending cycle of abuses because it doesn't recognize that the way we classify the issue IS the end cause in a chain that begins in our nature as animals. It is irrational thinking if we sincerely believe there is some common moral significance to fairness. If 'fairness' is not a concern by focusing on our innately genetic predisposition (our genetic inheritances), then the only thing any resolution will remain concerned about will take the extremes as they both believe in tackling things BASED on genetic and evolutionary factors. My suggested solution: Although this should be obvious from the above, we reclassify the sincere issues based on our less natural but more 'humane' ideal of altruism based on real conditions as individuals and not on statistical majorities of those who are most suffering as opposed to those who are most prospering. It is these extremes who are commanding the problem. AND, they are both targeting the minority of the supposed prosperous group who also represent a minority but get ignored by all sides. All it does is to make those minorities potentially become the next 'terrorists' as the ones in those minor-minor sufferers are demonized most universally as well as being isolated more intensely. I believe this is what our problem is with the Middle East. The minority of the minority in the Muslim-Arabic groups are demonized by those like Israel most significantly who represent the strongest and most prosperous group by extreme contrasts. They both act with a fervor to stand strong for themselves as a strictly defined group and command the way all means to possibly resolve them. And to outsiders looking in who prosper, we interpret the way the 'prosperity' of the Israelis to act without such obvious direct violence but through exclusion as non-problematic as if they aren't doing anything wrong. And then we see the most violating acts through the desperate 'terrorism' by those in the Arabic community as MORE responsible to ALL the problems. What ends up happening is that we interpret the strongest extremes of the ones who suffer as the most villainous creators of all the problems while the majority of the ones who are targeted for being of the 'prosperous' class escape culpability no matter what their actual responsibility to the causes are. For Canada, the Caucasian Male is deemed to be the largest plurality of those benefiting in society. But no matter what kind of arrangements are made to overcome it, only those in that class who most benefit are also the ones most likely to both escape the liability AND actually appear as 'friends' to the largest plurality on the bottom. It is in there interest to do this as they most FAVOR their own and so equally believe that the ones who are on the opposite spectrum are losing because they do not by contrast for the same reason. Thus they are both the sincere racists when they appeal to favoring CULTURE as the definitive measure of all mankind. And yet, this creates just another group beyond both who are non-CULTURALLY related to either but become the next extreme group that either MUST conform by forming associations with others who suffer like them and become a NEW CULT, ...OR accept themselves as measly sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered in another future cultural war. Notice that there is a kind of Trinity here? Extreme group A and B are culturally opposing with their economy until the losing group makes a big enough force that both negotiate to favor each culture in exclusion of a third, group C who lack cultural connection but are forced to become one. The group D is an indifferent group and so participates only by standing back to observe C appear to 'terrorize', allowing group B, who suffer by statistics to gain because of group A, who last belonged to a previous C in the past. The cycle is endless until we intellectually realize this.

I added a response with a good analogy but it was removed. Then jacee responded with a 'huh?' and I couldn't respond as it was gone. I'm discussing this with a moderator who said they did this as they considered it 'off-topic'. But I'd like a chance to use the analogy as I feel that is is a good one. I'll wait for a response and may open it in a different thread if still deemed 'off-topic' or permitted on its own. Scott.

I understand. But without knowing for certain, the case could have been lost merely by the lack of good council or by another's capacity to keep the case going. There are many factors which CAN be altered to address these. One is to require no one use generic names, like "Big Guy". Another is to find newer means to register the people online with better accountability. Google, for instance, does this and improves over time as it evolves. For instance, while not ideal for all, they ask for a confirmed phone number usually of a cell phone which adds a means to confirm. However, this method can discriminate against those of us who prefer NOT to use cellphones. But they too have evolved to handle this slightly although not very convenient as of yet. The law has not caught up on this. In the case of your station, this can represent justification to alter the law to reflect whether a site may or may not be held liable. If they use an affirmed means to register, this CAN work. You can grant the option of a site to either risk their own liability or USE a standardized form of confirmation through the registry process to assure the individuals speaking openly online are at least able to be tracked. And then, this can in turn be used to hold those responsible for speaking accountable. I've noticed from arguing on another forum this factor in what started out to be their own 'right' to censor content. I argued that they should keep the content where those of us contribute instead of deleting whole threads where they might see personal concerns. Yet they felt that they would PREFER the right to censor privately. I argued that since our governments and law demand the right to information where they would no doubt voluntarily give this information up, they should equally be required to preserve the words of the members for equal concerns (legality, like one's personal input of novelty they could use for publishing elsewhere, for instance. Destroying it can be an attempt to co-opt one's record of initial ideas for profit by the sites. Since such sites still want the luxury to have this capacity, they, and not the laws that make them liable, MUST remain. But this CAN be addressed. It is just that those in media want their cake and eat it too. So your station should be held liable unless they are willing to be universally accountable. [You can't have the right, for instance, to free copyrights to member content that the site FAVORS while opting to choose what they don't FAVOR. Thus, liability is accepted when or where they do this with good reason. The CBC can do this too. But because they want to have the right to profit on preserving copyright with more strength than anything, this is why they are preserving the right to discriminate through censorship. I think we need to ban the CBC or other public funded institutions the right to censor AND allow open rights for people to copy what they see there for free use. It is the political greed to preserve the copyrights, at high rates, which also makes them utilize censorship the way they do. And they DO have at least a partially secure way to assure accountability to transfer to those who are legitimately being abusive. They just don't want to.

It's fine to watch Star Trek or Star Wars. But the reality far outweighs any function to actually travel to other planets or places. If one wants to preserve their genes for some potential other planet, send out a jar of DNA to space and hope that should it come across another civilized entity who could interpret us with similar intellect and drive, they may opt to regenerate us. At least this would be the only sincere thing to do unless you could hope to find some empty planet for the dozen or so inhabitants of the ship you brought with you to live and expand on. Its an absurd waste of money that could be spent to repair other real political concerns here on Earth. (At least at this time) So trips to Mars, for instance, would even be a dumb idea. But if all the Billionaires want to do so, kudos to them. But they should be required to leave their wallets behind just in case they don't make it back. We could all use a break.

I was going to say something and went to check the CBC for backing but they seem to have altered what they had set up before on the site. I already pointed out my disapproval of public sites censoring to even a slight degree. Supposed trolling is easy enough to curtail and stop by members themselves. Ignoring the ones that appear to be doing so. Avoid the internal emotional drive to want to voice even the word, "troll", as it only enhances the abuse. Don't presume that even if one is doing so that they ARE a troll (emotions get reasonably heightened in political arenas) and accept that you yourself may potentially be stepping over bounds on contributing to abuses too. However, the worst thing to do is to ban. It also creates MORE real and righteous anger and resentment against those like the CBC and the ones they are 'protecting'. I am a preferably social democrat and yet find now that I can no longer support the CBC based sufficiently on this last straw! They've completely screened out the average person to fulfill a likely mandate to more than over-represent the strictest and extremest pluralities with an ax to grind that only adds more fuel to the fire as they don't even represent those they think they do. To me, they're worse than the stereotypes against a Donald Trump. If anything, they are acting as multi-Trumps in a veil of communal support they no longer represent. If they don't change things, then our media is no longer viable here in Canada. They are all speaking in tune now for a select and limited set of Constituted cults of powerful interests.

I ask why were they even trekking in the first place? I admire the science and search along with the imagination and drama of going to other places, but realistically, who would waste the energy even to run a ship which would technically have better efficiency staying in one place and using that energy instead to fire up the old holodeck?

If you are listening to a "Sad Song" by Elton John at present because he relates to you, you are certainly NOT listening to a "Sad Song" by We The Kings, nor "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss, nor "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton, nor "Dancing on My Own" by Robyn, nor "Nothing Compares 2U" by Sinead O Connor, nor "Ain't No Way" by Aretha Franklin, nor.... ... ... ... ... ... nor "Crying" by Roy Orbison, etc ad infinitude. So do you nominate to censor and ban Elton John's sad songs because the majority too may happen to be listening to it and aren't to all those others they could be listening to instead? And what would you say to the idea of also taking the ones who most don't favor, like perhaps Gospel music, because it only appeals to the Christian enthusiastic who happen to be a large plurality of a minority class, and demand that they be only played on the radio and sold in stores in exchange for most if not all the others above? Would you think the lovers of Elton John's music might simply 'understand' and accept? My guess? The very banning of Elton John would enhance and intrigue people more because of it and they'd seek it out with more fervor and even more dissent, new people who draw attention to the same distaste against Gospel music and worse, find more hatred where none may have existed before in these!

Your right...but it is NOT simply just targeting Aboriginal women if you want to learn the real truth. http://thestarphoenix.com/news/national/women-pressured-to-have-tubal-ligations This is the problem. You may think that the target is "Aboriginal Women" when in fact, the discrimination is related to "Poverty" as a more appropriate classification. And it is this which is pissing people off. By merely picking out the preferential majority or plurality as being "Aboriginal", you are acting no different than those supposed majority you opposingly target as "White" and (most often) "Male". Thus you are actually using the very same populous means to justice to which you accuse the next largest identified majority to which you blame. And who suffers? Everyone, because (1) it feigns without overtly declaring, that women who are Aboriginal deserve more attention than non-Aboriginal women under the same situations and abuse. It demeans those women who really do have the same issues by trivializing and even implying this doesn't happen to them, simply because they may be an even more minor minority of those represented by the impoverished classes. (2) It targets an ultimate 'understood' enemy of the race/ethnicity of your perceived majority in a simmering hatred just beneath the surface (at present, "Caucasian North European" and "male") (3) Fosters both a discrimination upon those minorities who remind you of 'those' majorities that happen to be of the same race/ethnicity (stereotyping) and creates a justified feedback mechanism by those on them in frustration as they are the ones who get penalized. Again, the White Male who actually aren't those wealthy privileged white male majorities. (4) You save those 'white privileged males' as they openly support you as if they weren't the particular males who caused the problem when they actually at least have to be more likely the ones! How many white welfare males moonlight as secret doctors or officials in power who abuse? (5) You aid the rest of society everywhere to both recognize the ones standing up complaining AND again withdraw attention away from the ones who put the maltreated people there. (6) Thus people lose faith in the system and DO begin to think on more racial/ethnic lines even where they hadn't before [ironically like the link you sent before this on the survivor of ISIS hostage who mentioned that while he was abused by ISIS and not supporting them, the real cause was the Syrian leadership who should be targeted. (Maybe it's because he was a he with lighter skin?) The innocents who become merely considered sacrifices in war on some assumed 'greater picture' doesn't jibe with you: those innocents are thinking Nelly Furtado's words in "Powerless" in now the same light as 'we' might against those "terrorists" we hate so much even where they didn't before. Cool huh?! I could go on but the point should be made here. The cycle of abuse stops first when we recognize the problems by appropriately defining the logical class associations to be prioritized rather than the emotionally driven ones that are based on inherent kinships. The reason why more Aboriginals suffer is simply because they are the majority racial class of the logical class of impoverished people. You can't fix what you don't or can't acknowledge as the real problem. POVERTY is the class that people should be standing up to defend, not RACE X who represent the most! If you're powerless as a Native, then the next minority below you is even more powerless. "So say what you want." But why should they sacrifice their lives for you as you argue ONLY for yourself instead. If its a dog-eat-dog world, how does segregating further contribute?

How does a story on ISIS here relate? Maybe you mixed up which thread you're in? On issue, already the way this (the Residential schools & Aboriginal issues) has been presented is sufficient to assure it is highly dubious. No argument has ever been put forth in our media thus far to demonstrate any validity other than what is known as "hearsay". Anecdotal evidence is the type of 'evidence' that pseudo-science uses and I'm completely appalled at why others have not come forward to say so. I'm guessing that those in position to do it here fear it too much to bother risking their careers. Good think I don't have such a risk!