@zeible imo the fundamentally useful thing about the trolley problem is that it draws attention to the consequences of inaction as well as the consequences of action, which is something that doesn’t always come naturally
It’s often used as am introduction to Ethics because it hits you in the face with the fact that many choices you make will leave you feeling uncomfortable either way. There is no ‘perfect right path, everyone lives!’ option. There is no path where you can be completely absolved of everything and totally in the right.
The typical progression for those who choose to pull the lever is to ask if you would push a bystander off a bridge to stop the trolley. Why not? Is it different if they aren’t tied to the tracks? If you would push the bystander off the bridge then it goes on – would you abduct and kill a healthy person to use their organs to save 5 hospital patients? Where is the line? Why is the line?
The Trolley Problem is supposed to upset you. Ethics will upset you. Its important to know that even when all the decisions will make you feel bad their is still a decision that had to be made. Turning away does not make you any less involved.
‘Kill two birds with one stone’ in European languages.
Good job, Poland, for being civilized. Interesting hobby, Italy.
Nice ambiguous, free-floating aggression, France.
It’s how we roll, buddy. It’s how we roll.
I like the geographical separation of how people chose tools here. United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Russia, Estonia are using ranged weapons. France may indeed just be throwing rocks. Portugal has chosen to wield a stick, Germany has the correct tool for the specific job and Poland is indeed cooking. But Norway is slapping.
I told @mistresskabooms over and over again that she could come to me about anything, and I’d still love her tomorrow.
So… she did.
She asked me about what the words “wage gap” meant when she heard them on the news. She told me when her friends in elementary school were “pretending to be mean to their imaginary girlfriends,” and she asked me if she’d done the right thing by leaving “and taking their girlfriends with me.” She told me when the kids on the bus started calling her a faggot. She talked to me when she read Night in school.
And she told me she’s a girl.
If kids don’t feel safe coming to you about everything, they won’t come to you about anything. Not anything that matters, anyway, because they won’t be sure that the thing they’re coming to you about won’t get them into trouble.
But, of course, that’s exactly the point here. These things – we know this, right? – aren’t about “keeping kids safe.” They’re about control, and they’re about keeping kids ignorant and – most of all – afraid.
If you are afraid of being contaminated mentally, of being accidentally ruined, of seeing something Bad and becoming Bad yourself, you become easier to control. If you understand that reading about something doesn’t mean you agree with it, and that words and ideas may be scary but that simply knowing that an idea exists, or reading about a thing, does not make you that thing, you become much harder to control. You become harder to control because you become more able to test the things you think that you know against new ideas, things like “are gay people Bad, actually?” and “what if a pregnant person could have more legal rights than a corpse?” and “what did the water and sky look like before the EPA?” or “wouldn’t ranked choice voting be neat?”
Just for starters.
The idea of “mental contamination” is big in Evangelical circles, but that ain’t the only place, not by far. If you’re thinking, “Man, that idea sounds like a concept that shows up a lot in leftist spaces and on Tumblr,” you are correct.
This concept is a concept of control. It does not exist to make you stronger. It exists to make you afraid and to keep you from questioning yourself and the world around you. This lack of questioning becomes like wearing a cast around your leg forever. Technically, yes, it keeps your ankle safe, but in the process, the lack of exercise withers your calf muscle.
This leaves you with a worldview that cannot stand up to any kind of meaningful stress or challenge. Things are right because they’re right, not because you can defend why they’re right. These kind of default beliefs are fragile, soft, and easily shattered or shredded.
This shit doesn’t protect kids. It makes them fragile and weak, unable to formulate worldviews they understand well enough to defend and worldviews strong enough to hold up to the rigors and stresses of life.
Saw this frame on a different reblog by @thatssroughbuddy but why does it look like Iroh is using his phone to take a photo of his nephew at a landmark
“Uncle, make sure you get that glowy light in the picture and send it to my dad to let him know I’m about to capture the Avatar!”
This was so cute I had to draw it
and of course Iroh is doing what-
!!!!!!
Iroh posts it on social media with some caption like “look at my beautiful nephew” and Zhao comments like “is that the Avatar in the background?”
And Iroh responds, “no, it’s the northern lights.”
I have come up with a better metaphor than “you can’t pour from an empty cup” for burnout. You can’t boil an empty kettle. Pouring from an empty cup just gets you nowhere. Trying to boil an empty kettle can ruin the kettle, the stove, and burn down your house if you keep trying it.
