To Err Is Human
We live in a country that glories in other people’s failures. We demand perfection of our movie stars, athletes, politicians, and business leaders. When they turn out to be human, we hammer 
them for it. Reveling in the demise of others is the sum total of today’s news industry.
Here’s a news flash: We all make mistakes—sometimes huge, dumb, and devastating ones. I certainly have. To me the real question is, what happens after you make that horrible mistake?
Rather than taking so much pleasure in others’ failings, shouldn’t we be rooting for them to get better as men and women, fundamentally changing themselves in ways that show they will not do the same thing again? I am a big believer in the possibility of redemption. The true beauty of humanity isn’t in being perfect but in making mistakes … and then waking up from our stupor and doing something about it.
After getting thrown out the house some 15 years ago for being a drunk and a cheat, my now-deceased grandmother—a Quaker woman of great strength of character—told me, “It’s not how you fall in life; it’s how you pick yourself that counts.”
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36 Comments on "10 Things We Should Be Talking About"
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wellokaythen
You don’t get it. There will never be absolution. Apologies for this sort of thing aren’t once&done. They have to be endless. You will never be absolved. Maximum time between apologies is about fifteen seconds. More than that and you’re part of the patriarchy.
Although I support your right to have any conversation you want with this forum, I think publicly funded elections, localization and the diminishing social and economic value of Wall Street are conspicuously missing from the list.
The underlying anger in this country is very real…as you have noted…but nothing is being done to address the conditions which create a lot of the feelings of fear and powerlessness plaguing all but the wealthiest people.
Danny – I’m not the author, but I’ve had to write a couple of papers on this for school, and I’ve found that those numbers are easily available. You can google for things like “prison demographics” and get links like this: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1006 Also, although wikipedia isn’t the source for everything, they do link to the outside sources where the information comes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#cite_note-bjs2006-32
I don’t care where you’re from or what color your skin is… If you have a job, positively contribute to society, AND PAY TAXES LIKE THE REST OF US!!! Then you’re all good in my book…
The amount of women that die of childbirth around the world every year dwarfs that number.
343,000 a year. Mostly due to lack of affordable and accessible health care/prenatal care.
“The amount of women that die of childbirth around the world every year dwarfs that number.
343,000 a year. Mostly due to lack of affordable and accessible health care/prenatal care.”
…And this has what to do with anything? Sorry, you can’t blame biology on men.
Oh, and the people that made the medical advances that ensure that this number isn’t much, much higher? The majority were men.
Sara.
Missed the point. The point is whether the change from mostly women surviving because the men chose to put them first in the Titanic disaster to mostly men surviving in the Baltic ferry disaster because they’re stronger than women and put themselves first is progress.
After all, women are no longer being pedestalized, or whatever the word is.
Good? Bad? Not interesting?
Erin,
Amy Alkon has a piece on apologies by men. Comments are interestting, as well.
A female friend sent me the video and it kind of freaked me out.
I did read Amy’s response and thought it was pretty interesting
as were the comments.
I don’t want an apology. I want equality.
My mother was a single woman stricken with a crippling disability who worked full time and raised two boys who would have made Cotton Mather run for the hills. She didn’t ask for apologies or point fingers at men, some of which had treated her with incredible injustice…she just went out and got what she wanted with an unholy demonstration of will power and guts.
Quit playing the victim and get yours!
Sorry – this video = instant gag reflex. It’s so terribly self-serving and, well, paternalistic. And the insincerity, it burns. Yuck.
I’m a firm believer of changing gender roles, of adopting a dramatically different behaviour towards women, children, family, etc. etc. I believe I contribute. At the end of the day is only makes sense – as has been remarked so many times before, patriarchy hurts men, too.
But none of that is going to make me like new age-ish rubbish videos.
Sorry, I also refuse to play the “collective guilt” game.
Erin, I’m not going to appologize for anything done by a collectivity which I am arbitrarily assigned to. And I’m CERTAINLY not going to do it because two guys who look like stalkers at an anti-abortion rally urge me to.
Where’s the love? Difficult question. I don’t think anyone knows.
Ref. Immigration in AZ.
1. Illegal immigrants are…illegal. That’s a crime.
2. Nobody said ALL our problems stem from immigrants. Or if somebody did, cite, please.
3. You said “immigrants”, not “illegal immigrants”.
4. See California with the expenses of illegal immigrants being part of the state’s bankruptcy. Being illegal, they’re not supposed to be here.
Richard,
” Illegal immigrants are…illegal. That’s a crime.”
No, that’s a tautology.
Immigration law, in my opinion, is largely irrational, unethical and biased. It is, in short, bad law. And nobody is ethically required to obey bad laws. You cannot ethically make human movement illegal.
California has many, many problems and I am not at all convinced that a significant number of them are caused by illegal immigrants. But hey, here’s a solution: make those people LEGAL if they get on the tax rolls. Problem solved.
Long form answers are a step up from multiple choice exams, but I would be cautious by about holding up A-Levels too high. There is still a fair amount of room for rote learning rather than use of critical faculties. In most subjects you will be taught the standard form for structuring an answer. Teaching also inevitably ends up geared towards getting everyone to pass their exams rather than much more than developing their knowledge on a topic.
Thinking about it though, I guess that’s more a problem with exams in general than with A-Levels specifically.
Agreed teaching to any test misses the point. But teaching to a multiple choice test is particularly misguided.
Tom,
This is probably a bit of a tangent, but I think you handled the confrontation with the angry driver very well.
What I heard you saying about that was the driver was smaller than you, so you didn’t feel threatened by him. I can only urge extreme caution if there is any assumption that smaller men are less dangerous. I’m probably reading your narrative wrong, but I had to say something to save you from unpleasant surprises about that in the future.
Scott you are right. I probably should have said I was scared, and frankly wanted to make sure the guy didn’t have a gun or knife before I said a word. Still his anger and violence (he keep pounding me on the chest) was frightening. Specially considering he had broken the law by trying to run me over in a cross walk…and there was nothing to get so upset about other than built up rage at life.
agree on the impatience of the modern world (though I plead guilty on that too) and that the fatherless children stats are hard to parse exactly. I was just going on what is in the census. And on immigrants yes my first hand experience is that the immigrants, legal and illegal, are prepared to bust ass to make a life for themselves.
Ref. education. Non-hispanic whites in this country do about as well as anybody in the world.
As Thomas Sowell said, cultures vary and differences have consequences.
One consequence is in attitude toward education.
Who said immigrants are the source of all our problems? Cite, please.
Oh please, Richard Aubrey.
Stop trying to create a fantasy world where Arizona’s racist law, and rightwing screamers like Limbaugh and others who denigrate immigrants on a regular basis don’t really exist. Except they do.
You strike me as an insincere f–khead, frankly–Someonbe incapable of an hinest discussion on this subject.
Hate much? Keep baggin’ that tea.
How about the law passed in Arizona and being considered by a dozen others regarding illegal aliens?
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