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Given all this, there was absolutely no way in hell, when Penn R. put that building up for sale, that anyone would've been able to both buy and rehabilitate it. At all. That's why it eventually got torn down. Penn R. couldn't afford to maintain it and no one wanted to buy it.
Of course, if Penn Station had been in peak condition when it was torn down and if there had been a very viable way of saving it, then its destruction would've been an obvious case of "evil progress" winning out over the past. But that's not what happened in the case of this building. It could not be saved in 1963.
Carnegie Hall and Grand Central were both similar. They were rehabilitated.
I mean cognition, not congnition. This tablet is killing me. First it came out as cogmition, now congnition. I think it is inserting typos on its own. I can't correct them any more, sorry. Also, I didn't mean to say that a stroke could detail me in the old age, but derail me. Etc. Sorry, can't post anything any more until I get something normal to type on.
I make typos all the time. Sometimes I edit, sometimes I do not. I type 80 words a minute. I don't care to always proofread.
Chemical perhaps, but not always curable by the drug that's going to cause you so many side effects that you may not recognize the human being before taking it.
Psychiatrist have a vested interest in the pharmaceutical industry, more so than psychologist and social workers. Many don't even do talk therapy. New synapses can be formed but it takes time and a lot of work. https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1010205325.htm
A lot of studies have confirmed the effectiveness of CBT, DBT and mindfulness. Drugs can be an aid, but performed by itself, it has a lot of limitations. Most people have some form of mental disability. It may not effect them in their work life, but it can effect them in the personal life. Therapy does wonders to fix those things.
A huge benefit of talk therapy is that its effects are long-lasting. This is because you’re not only working through stuff, but you’re also developing the tools to help you deal with future stuff
Self-medicating to “deal” with psychological stuff is incredibly common. But it doesn’t do anything to actually address what’s going on – it just masks it. It also creates an addictive cycle, which may exacerbate the real problem. Getting to the root of your past stuff in therapy will, with time, obviate the need to self-medicate. When you’re no longer living by the negative things in your past, the need to avoid them – and yourself – will disappear. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegw.../#13a8949d4ebb
Yes, and some of your statements broadcast that, abundantly. Especially the distorted point of view and disdain you have for motherhood and all people who have children. It seems like some form unresolved childhood trauma related to poverty and children. It's not the choices made, but the choice of language used to express those reasons behind those choices that clued me in.
The info you have is mostly from people who don't live there and have unacknowledged allergies to brown people. I live here. It's safe, down to earth and friendly. If you walked down the street at 8am, the number of people out walking their kids too school is astounding. It's very quiet, in a good way. The streets around Castle Hill Road; there is new business development everywhere with the Bengalis the predominate culture.
The train however, is a disaster due to overcrowding. Foodtown behind Macy's has all the telltale signs of gentrification. Nearly half the store is organic. It's only a recent discovery for me because my neighbor told me where to go. (It's a bit hidden and not obvious.) Areas nearby are building more and more housing. (Not sure what they are going to do with all the people in terms of transit.) This is a cached map of what's happening all around. https://www.yimbynews.com/wp-content...Y-map/map.html
Physicians (incl psych), have interest in only one thing, ie, patient outcomes. Self-esteem, social esteem, and material profit comes only fro1m that. Pharma does not pay physicians, and state medical boards have com up with regulations lately that make it potentially a violation of ethics to even accept fro1m a pharma representative a pen that says Prozac.
Incidentally, I am not from a Sovet bloc country. My country of origin unfortunately did have communism, but a limp kind of communism which mostly served as a front for theft and corruption, not for building heavy machinery and space rockets as Soviets did. The government of my country wasn't really interested in building anything. My country is the last place where anybody would acquire any kind of discipline or work ethic. And if you think the degree to which I value problem solving and self discipline is a product of a Soviet environment, then 90% of doctors in surgical specialties in the US must have had a Soviet childhood :-).
Your characterization of my family (o f which you don't know a thing, and I don't intend to say more) is entirely incorrect, like all of your other guesses about me. With your "psychology" reasoning you are as prejudicial about me as some others are about "brown" people - but prejudice is also a chemIcal function of human brain, so I don't blame you (or care). In his novel "Pattern Recognition", my favorite writer William Gibson does say that pattern recognition equals risk management. But sorry, I am a person without a clear pattern.
Physicians (incl psych), have interest in only one thing, ie, patient outcomes. Self-esteem, social esteem, and material profit comes only fro1m that. Pharma does not pay physicians, and state medical boards have com up with regulations lately that make it potentially a violation of ethics to even accept fro1m a pharma representative a pen that says Prozac.
"if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" Many people, in all industries don't think outside their box.
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Incidentally, I am not from a Sovet bloc country. My country of origin unfortunately did have communism, but a limp kind of communism which mostly served as a front for theft and corruption, not for building heavy machinery and space rockets as Soviets did.
And that point of view is very evident. I can tell when people are from those places by the things they say.
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And if you think the degree to which I value problem solving and self discipline is a product of a Soviet environment, then 90% of doctors in surgical specialties in the US must have had a Soviet childhood :-).
It's a product of your specific and very detailed circumstances in your life; not replicable in any other shape or form because it's unique. Hence why siblings end up different from each other.
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But sorry, I am a person without a clear pattern.
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not true. (Which is incidentally, how therapy works. A therapist helps people see their blind spots so they can effect change. ) It seems quite rigid and "I'm right, I know what I am talking about, and any other way of seeing a situation is wrong, according to me" point of view. (It's a very common point of view from many, but not all former eastern European nationals.) There is a sort of position taken that is immovable and immutable to discussion, no matter what is said. Your response reflects that since none of the evidence provided was even mentioned and automatically dismissed. It's a product of a particular cultural style. It's seen in many from the east of Europe which is quite conservative. People grow up with cultural ideology and point of views which are ingrained that this is the right way, and other ways are the wrong way. It's very difficult to see it without therapy, and it's very difficult to overcome if any of those things are holding one back. And also, some of those things may hold one back without being readily identified as the source of it. The human mind is complex and insidious.
Carnegie Hall and Grand Central were both similar. They were rehabilitated.
Right. You refuse to understand that the circumstances that led to Penn Station being demolished and the other two buildings getting saved were completely different.
In reply to Roseba: I don't think much about therapy because I have never seen a convincing evidence that it is effective for any purpose (your "evidence" is vague as well, which is why I didn't bother to comment on it). Incidentally, the chief modern apologist of therapy (who significantly is not a physician but a philosopher) comes from my former country where everybody is a rigid conservative (and also somehow a Soviet). Yes, in my country of origin, the predominant attitude is traditional religious conservativism and a very non-Soviet economy of small entrepreneurship. I have nothing to do with the former (being that I am an agnostic and a social liberal who never even thinks about race, gender, sexual orientation, or reproductive choices including of course abortion of a pre-human fetus if necessary, because I don't see how any of that could even be an issue), but I think that entrepreneurship is far better than welfare. How is it not? Yes, my economic opinions are very conservative (which is btw why I think it is time for the third major party in the US, as there are a LOT of Americans - who never saw Eastern Europe, let alone would have any opinions generated by growing up in Eastern Europe - who are socially liberal and economically conservative). I was not so intensely economically conservative until my 40s, when I worked extensively in welfare-dependent communities in the US, and became appalled by attitudes of welfare recipients in this country. That, far more than dying Easter eggs in Eastern Europe or anything else you could unearth from my childhood, has convinced me that welfare generates horrible results, and should not exist.
Btw, it is always good to hear about improvements in Parchester, is it not?
So, the Christmas is over - anyone interested in continuing this thread?
Welcome back!
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
H.Loser has argued that a moronic welfare-dependent behavior is bred into certain people's DNA, while Roseba has argued that almost irreversible patterns of behavior are copied from immediate family into a child's brain by a very early age. But what about people who try very hard (and succeed) to escape negative ancestral patterns of behavior/growing up in negative environment, what is different about those people? Strength of motivating factors, maybe?
I was talking about the standard distribution; there are always outliers, of course.
And being outliers, by definition they tend to escape easy definition!
However, consider the testimony of one such outlier: Warren Buffett, the legendary multi-billionaire investor. He is on record as recognizing the sheer luck of his life, and how despite his native facility with numbers and ability to see remunerative connections between seemingly unrelated events, if he had just been born in the wrong time, the wrong country, had gone to the wrong school (he always credits his Columbia Economics Professor for his value investing ethos), etc., he may very well not have been successful at all.
Or consider Bill Gates' own testimony: he was 1) born into a wealthy family that happened to live in 2) a school district that was decades ahead of its time in having a computer and 3) was able to get access to it and the 4) his mom just happened to be a some social (maybe a charitable function) where someone asked her whether she knew anyone who was good with computers...and then, to top it all off, Gates 5) totally lucked into possession of DOS which the creator sold because he didn't want anything to do with IBM and which 6) IBM in turn didn't want to purchase outright but "merely" license from Gates...and the rest is history.
Malcolm Gladwell is a bit too "quick and loose" at times but he's generally on solid ground and I highly recommend his bestseller Outliers for more details WRT your questions about why some succeed while most do not.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Knowing and discussing a history that might explain a behavior of a social group, like having years of psychoanalysis and discussing one's personal history, might be an intellectually satisfying exercise in rationalization - but it does not change a destructive behavior, either of a group or a person. I think the only things that can change a hardwired brain habit are the factors that increase motivation to change (which can be helped with certain medications actually, although I am not proposing yet to medicate groups of people out of welfare :-)
I'm not one to take medication myself unless I were dying (I've taken medicine only like three times in my whole life once an adult), and I also agree that whatever the causes, what's needed are incentives and disincentives -- carrots and sticks.
Right now, it's a case of too little carrots and barely any sticks, a truly bad situation which incentivizes the likes of Black Lives Matter bellyaching while nothing concrete is actually done and in fact real liberal/progressive policies are harmed as a result of all the violent street theater.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Let's consider my accent. I came into the US at age 23 from a country with a very different language, and at almost 58 I still have a strong foreign accent. But my accent does not prevent people from understanding me, does not impair communication, and does not create problems in practicing my profession - so, I was never sufficiently motivated to expend effort, time and money to erase the accent (which can be done almost to perfection, although with substantial effort, if you work with a speech therapist, practice relentlessly, and listen to your own taped voice). But if having a foreign accent were illegal in the US, I would surely have made an effort to erase it.
Unless, of course, your accent became such a vital part of your identity that you would rather fight than conform to erasing it...this is my problem with minority victimhood ideology -- things have gotten so twisted as to result in Black Lives Matter melodrama (on top of civil service and college entrance exams being "racist"), and it's because all too many minorities (most, even?) have re-ified deviancy into something central to their very identity as a people.
Thus, "gentrification" is bad because deviant behavior involving minorities is being prohibited as a result of gentrification. What are we supposed to do with a demographic that insists on its own disenfranchisement? What can be done for people who believe the very things keeping them down are the very things which make them what they are -- who don't even recognize their hindrances as such?
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Okay then, but - as opposed to welfare lifestyle - my accent does not hurt other people, and I do not take taxpayers' money because I have an accent. My brain habit of having an accent is harmless.
I don't know about your accent in particular, but I will say that it is criminal that undergraduate lab instructors are have thick impenetrable foreign accents (choppy singsong Chinese or "twirly" Indian ones) at CUNY.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
But a brain habit of generational welfare dependence, having numerous kids one cannot support, abandoning education, and pursuing crime - these generational brain habits are very harmful. If one withdrew financial support for these habits, I think there would be a very strong motivation for these habits to disappear, no matter how hard-wired they might be.
Well, I agree with your attitude when it comes to something like so-called drug addiction -- shoot the zombies and you'll see how quickly people manage to cure themselves of their alleged dependency!
But in the case of welfare, I would like to point out that while you are arguing from a very logical perspective, you are not mindful of the history involved: the whole reason there is any welfare is because there always were a lot of numerous unsupportable kids, etc.!
IOW, welfare came about because all the problems associated with welfare were already in existence -- and welfare was created to address those problems. Did welfare make such problems worse? Maybe...but simply having no welfare is not going to solve these problems because they pre-date welfare!
This is why history is so important and why we cannot simply argue out of logic -- logic is just a tool, but it's not always the right one to use, actually.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
PS - as mentioned, I have problems with my tablet (in addition to problems with typing, now it keeps crashing after typing every few sentences - so I have to go back to edit my post several times before I finish what I want to say). Therefore, if you want to comment on my post, please check the final version of it. Thanks.
Well, it's been a few days now so I'm sure you've said what you mean and mean what you said!
Just a quick note, but Taoism as a religion and Tao Te Ching as a text aren’t actually that closely interrelated. Taoism historically drew a lot from the text, but the text exists separately from the religion.
My understanding mostly comes from Huston Smith's The World's Religions as well as some essays of Alan Watts'...so I was actually referring to what Smith wrote as being "School Taoism" (the philosophy) instead of "Temple Taoism" (the religion).
But thanks for the observation that the book isn't actually the religion's holy text; someone could have gotten that misimpression from my context-less remarks, yes.
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Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Tao as a word means way or method so all kinds of things get lumped together. Tao Te Ching is interesting as a way to think through things—Taoism as a semi-religious practice often entails some pretty wacky rituals.
It's like "The Force" from Star Wars...well, before it got all disney-fied (beginning in '83!), anyway...and while science hasn't yet discovered any such force, I wouldn't dismiss something super meta-meta-metaphysical that serves as an "organizing principle" for the whole universe....
H.Loser, I still have to get through the rest of your voluminous contribution to this thread, but just want to point out that the easiest and most natural cognitive therapy, ie, the ordinary school curriculum, grades K-12, has already been given to the entire US population, at a reasonably low cost to the taxpayers.
Um, that's a very novel way of looking at education in the United States!
No, it's not cognitive therapy by any stretch of the imagination, however...education is still mostly thought of in terms of tests and other very formalized practices...while I personally love tests (they're like brain games; I don't understand why people dislike them so) and believe they have a huge place to occupy in any curriculum, I also don't think they should be the only or even the main tool used....
Anyway, no, public education is not cognitive therapy...in fact, insofar as it's been mostly rote-learning, it's the diametric opposite in spirit to cognitive therapeutic motivations!
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Every child dependent on welfare is offered a free alternative and the solution to all his/her social problems already.
What do you mean by this, school???
In high school, there was this poor girl named Paula, a light-skinned black girl, who looked really stupid and was always sleeping in class...and the teachers always allowed it!
Later I found out through whispers that she was homeless -- her whole family was...but I had no idea what that meant (I do now!!) -- just that, logically, they didn't have a home...but I had absolutely no idea what homelessness meant in terms of lacking sleep, lacking even a place to put your belongings, never mind all the other disruptive aspects of such an existence....
Not every child on welfare is homeless, but it's almost guaranteed that such children suffer various similar disruptions against which a teacher droning on about sundry factoids can do very little.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
And despite all the totally unreasonable outcry against quality of public schools, the fact is that public school teachers are some of the most dedicated people in this country, almost like religious missionaries. They have already tried all they could.
Oh please -- while I am also against blaming teachers and public education for problems out of their control, I wouldn't make "saints" out of our teachers, either...the vast majority of them are just normal people who happen to prefer a decent salary and pension with two months off every year. While I certainly recall my teachers fondly (aah, very fondly, in many lovely cases!), I'm realistic enough to realize that many would simply be office clerks and secretaries if they were not teachers (or neighborhood bums if not gym teachers!)....
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
It is now time to withdraw welfare support (and, on the contrary, to institute financial penalties) for dysfunctional behaviors, including dropping out of school, having unsupportable kids, or comitting crimes (including as a juvenile).
The problem is that such behaviors will absolutely continue -- because they predate welfare; indeed, welfare was created to help resolve them!
It's like sex ed...the kids are still gonna have sex so simply banning sex ed or condoms in the gym lockers (LOL) is not going to help....
I think Universal Basic Income is the only real solution long-term -- though lots of details need ironing out (such as whether minors get them, illegal aliens, prisoners, etc.)....
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
The carrot has failed, so don't be surprised if you see the whip soon (judging from Paul Ryan's website, they will probably first go very hard against disability recipients, tightening control over who gets disability payments).
And you should read WaPo's recent series of articles exploring disability insurance in America -- it's been used, in effect, as a replacement system for a totally broken welfare system...broken by the Republicans as well as changing economics (globalization and automation without any job-retraining programs).
Things ain't as simple as an Ayn Rand novel.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Stopping to glamorize wealth is a large topic for some occasion when I have time, but just again, how would you do it?
Education. Ultimately, that's how anything is ever solved -- by awareness and enlightenment.
Our conversations here, as well as those of others elsewhere, are all eddies contributing to the great flotsam and jetsam of ideas.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Have a school program in not glamorizing wealth?
Long term, we need to rethink our economic system and decide what behaviors we really want to reward and how much.
In the short term, education through dialogue so that people understand why it is they praise wealth in the first place....
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Incidentally, I do not glamorize material wealth at all, but I do value a wealth of ideas and experiences, and you DO need some basic money (not a wealth, but some basic money substantially greater than welfare) to have access to ideas and experiences.
Oh yes indeed -- but "praising wealth" is not the same as simply acknowledging that money is a necessity.
It's like the difference between acknowledging the fact of sex as compared to porn....
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