five questions for this week
unfeatured questions stolen from the featured question chatboard, dated from October of 2007
Have you ever hated yourself?
hoshi_froide
What rights do humans have to use animals as they wish?
WondersCafe
Does the internet kill the art of conversation and make people less communicative with those they meet day by day?
FANOFB16
Do you believe perfection CAN be achieved? Why, or why not?
X_jshawty18_X
If you had a ring which would give you the power to turn visible and invisible as you wish and could get away with anything without getting caught, What would you do with it and why?
Tally_Heart
Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully there is at least one question here for everyone.
March 24th
Today I saved the cutest (comparatively) little black jumping spider.
He was about as big as my fingernail and just adorable.
You don’t really need to know what happened yesterday, do you?
This day is sacred to Prytania or Britannia, the guardian goddess of Great Britain (Albion).
Heimdall, guardian of heaven equated with the archangel Gabriel is honored today.
The Phrygian rites of Cybele and Attis begins tonight with the “day of blood.” The sacred pine tree and an effigy of Attis is buried in a tomb and a day of mourning, fasting, sexual abstinence, self-flagellation and self-mutilation commemorating the Mother’s grief follows. The High Priest playing the part of Attis draws blood from his arm and offers it as a substitute for a human sacrifice. That night the tomb is found brightly illuminated but empty, the god having risen on the third day. Initiates undertake the Mysteries and are baptized in bull’s blood at the Taurobolium to wash away their sins whereupon they are “born again.” They then become ecstatic and frenzied and recruits to the priesthood castrate themselves in imitation of the god.
This is Dies Sanguinis, called Bellona’s Day in Rome.
Comments (6)
1. I’ve hated myself a lot. Once I found I could love who I was it opened up a whole new wonderful world to me!
2. What is perfection? To one person it could be the fantastic asymmetry of a flower in full bloom and to another it could be the cake made from scratch that took hours to produce. Therefore depending upon who looks at it there is perfection in anything and totally attainable.
3. It’s not the internet that kills conversation. It’s the overuse of social networking sites that have taken the place of conversations with those we meet day by day. We’ve become more attuned to finding out what is going on through those then interacting with people in front of us. It’s easier to connect when we have the time, than making the time to connect.
This is a pretty good group of questions. Why is it from October 2007? Were the more recent ones not good?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the words “cute” and “spider” used in the same sentence, let alone next to each other.
@heidenkind - I started from the very beginning of the chatboard’s inception, and have been moving forward more or less a day at a time, so these entries date from October 2007. I’m actually on October 30th, 2007, so next week may hit November depending upon the questions people posted. It’s easier to go through the list sequentially. Less chance of repeating or missing something.
And spiders are totally cute. Not like centipedes. Those suckers need a good squishing, but spiders are mostly adorable. Except for camel spiders. They’re mean and much too big.
@harmony0stars - Uhg, I hate centipedes. *shiver*
I wonder. I haven’t been here in so long; I wander. How are you doing recently? I know, I could go back and read your blog to find out, but it’s so much.. nicer to ask in person. Maybe I’ll make an entry, too, but for now I’m just posting here. So.
1. Have you ever hated yourself?
Disliked, to the extreme. Actually time after time, but it never persisted, because I know and understand that it makes no sense. That no matter what, in this life I am I and will always be I.
2. There’s a point at which purpose stops condoning use. Though if we treat animals with the care and respect we show for our own species, using them for experiments involving their death or manipulation isn’t wrong, per se. They are usually “lower” life forms along the evolutionary scale, and generally do not have the sentience that we do, or, hence, the sapience either.
On the other hand, this kind of justification sometimes makes me wonder what more advanced alien species might do to justify using human beings in experiments. And whether or not, at my humble level of sapience and sentience, I’d be able to accept it.
3. Well, that’s a leading question alright. LOL, “less communicative”; “kill the art of conversation”; what an artful way to miss half the point of the Internet. The answer is no; what the internet actually does to the “art of conversation” is change it. It’s a newer medium for people to communicate, and not a new medium that innately restricts the old ones. It’s also a very broad medium; it’s a world unto itself, comparable in many ways to the parameters of the physical world, all that has changed is the way this world is accessed.
It’s humans who create this sort of viewpoint for themselves, by limiting themselves to the ways of one world over the ways of another.
4. Well, yes. But by us? That’s questionable. Maybe in another million years of evolution.
5. Nothing. Sometimes it may be necessary to use sneaky means to accomplish a goal, but to use such a ring would be unfair. It doesn’t draw on any ability I have, or pit me rightly against any odds I face.
Besides, ideally, I’d like to be able to go about life without sneaking around behind others’ backs. More (and more wisely chosen) confrontation usually gets more accomplished, and lets people live a bit more freely.
@Lord_Wu - I hate my job and wish they would fold already. That’s how I am. lol I feel it’s only a matter of time. The writing is on the wall. But anyway, I’m okay for all that. Just on the verge of a nervous breakdown once a week.
How are you doing? I was beginning to wonder if you’d wandered off Xanga for good.
Question #2, I actually get into that argument in my webnovel. lol I agree with you to an extent. But since I believe all matter has some level of sentience, it’s important to treat all life and nonlife with respect, even when not in use. Experiments are one of the worst ways to use animals because not only do they have a nervous system and so can experience pain, they also have emotion and can experience physical reactions to stress. That’s an unkindness very close to malice, even if you argue that you’re doing it for the greater good.