NeuroTypical

Along these lines - something that may disturb some folks - cows exhibit personalities too. In any given herd, you can have prankster cows and snuggly cows and mean cows and 'fraidy cows and hypochondriac cows. Then they go get ground into hamburger and we toss them down our well-muscled throats without a second thought. Same reality with pigs and chickens and sheep and any other critters we eat, to whatever extent their life allows such complexity. I can see why people come to such realizations and turn vegetarian. I came to these realizations about 4 years ago, and remain a carnivore, although one who thinks more somber thoughts about righteous stewardship. (Also, after owning and slaughtering chickens, I'm mostly convinced that the measure of their creation includes being eaten, and to refuse to do so, is almost an affront to their existence.)

The thing that gets me, is that not only do animals have personalities, they can also have character flaws. Some might call this anthropomorphism - but I'm thinking these are attributes that animals share with humans, not just human attributes we like to pretend exist in other animals. They can be mean, or clingy, or mischievous, be bullies or kind, or overly melodramatic, they can experience personality-changing traumas, gain both desirable and undesirable habits, etc. For example, just about every goose out there knows how to bluff - how to act like they're bigger, tougher, or more important than they really are. I don't like geese, and whenever they come around me, I let them know it. Believing what I believe about why this earth and everything on it was created, I'm not sure human-animal interaction and bonding is unnatural at all. Dogs seem to fit very well into human families, seeing the family as their pack. Problems arise when the humans don't understand how a pack works, and the dog ends up thinking it's in charge. But yes, I understand and agree with much of what Traveler is saying. Many animals just aren't meant to be enclosed, or around humans.

That actually makes sense, and doesn't seem to be much of a tangent to me. Thanks.

To be clear, the example I gave is surrounded by examples of hatred, intolerance, bigotry, ignorance, and sometimes violence directed in all directions. Athiests against the religious, religious against the homosexuals, homosexuals against straights, rich against poor, and vice versa all of it. A few weeks reading those stories on those websites, and you come to realize that ignorance and hate come from all directions, and head all directions.

In my experience, what you say isn't even the case anymore, if it ever was the case.It's good to run in social circles where such things are just permanently outside of one's experience. But what Lakumi is describing, and the notions behind it, and the people who hold such notions, are most certainly still in existence. I occasionally go to the websites notalwaysright.com and notalwaysworking.com. People post their horrible customer, or horrible customer service stories. Hardly a week goes by without one or two outrageous stories like this: Yeah, people like this caller still exists. I haven't run into one in years, but they're still out there.

I'm reminded of a letter to the editor, published in the Salt Lake Tribune a few years back: My nonlds father was in the same situation as your parents. Here are the thoughts I had on the matter, responding to other parents with hurt feelings:

Oh - you actually wanted us to read the thing? Well ok then. I really liked his speech. I have much appreciation for his transparent beliefs and motives:

Out of the thousands of critics of my church, coming from all backgrounds, levels of education, charitable intent, and overall niceness/meanness, I have to say that Baptists have struggled to rank among the relevant. I think it's maybe because of the various low-quality "experts on mormonism" that get speaking fees to tour Baptist congregations. Peddling outdated nonsense that was well answered a century ago, but still sounds good to a person who doesn't know any better. I welcome Dr. Mohler's visit, and hope it will prompt Baptists to look more closely, and discard some of the silly nonsense some of them believe about me. My wife had the real-life experience of sitting next to a Baptist on an airplane who was genuinely interested about her horns. He wanted to know why he couldn't see them - did she have them surgically removed as a child? No really - this really happened.

Sorry, DrPepper snopes.com: Jeremiah Steepek The photo is stolen, and nobody can find any pastor by that name. The link does talk about some similar-themed stories that are true though, so that's good.

If holding a snake in a park causes a public disturbance, there's not a problem with the snake, there's a problem with the public.The next snake I see in public, I'll make sure I go up and say hi to the owner. And bring my daughters along too.

Heh. "Violence", IMO, is becoming another useless term like "bigot" and "homophobe". It's taken on a negative connotation which doesn't belong, ignores some quite obvious realities, and is just sort of assumed that we want less of it, and if we can't have less of it, there must be a problem somewhere. Violence is part of reality, and the way to a peaceful heart is to accept that fact and deal with it.

So, he's not LDS and you 'sort of are'. Ok - so, when you talked about your children going to church, and you guys paying to send them on missions, what did he say?

Most of my scout leaders were wonderful. But I had one or two who really remind me of these guys. Not evil, just idiots. The gospel is for them too, and our commandment to forgive covers them too.

Ok - this is sort of the critical sentence here. When something like this can get said about any issue or subject, it's no longer about the issue or subject. There is certainly a problem here, but it's not your wife's past. A reaction so strong, so visceral, that it results in such an immovable block to happiness, and even causes thoughts of suicide?It sounds like you're trapped here and need help. I would strongly suggest you find the LDS Social Services in your area and speak to one of the counselors there. They deal with stuff like this, and they can probably help you. If you need help paying for it, start with your bishop.

What a bunch of idiots. Full disclosure - I've got a well-established track record of enjoying the heck out of pushing large things over like an idiot. Every family drive, we pull over to a ravine or a river or something, so I can take the heaviest rock I can find, and roll it down the ravine or throw it into the river. But I've never done this where reasonable* fellow humans believe the place to be exceptionally beautiful or worthy of protection to keep as disturbed as little as possible. I like throwing rocks like an idiot, but I'm not that big of an idiot. * I say reasonable, because I'm counting the days to when I get chewed out by some unreasonable Boulderite for throwing a rock into a river. I can see it now - they'll consider my action a crime on par with what the guys in this video did.

I think when someone experiences a traumatic event like suicide of someone close, and a period of questioning beliefs DOESN'T occur, there's something wrong. As someone with more than his share of suicide stories, I've thought a lot about the subject. Here are some random thoughts that helped me.* We're not on earth to be happy always. We're here to be tried, tested, refined. Bluntly, sometimes life is supposed to suck. Things got a lot simpler and better for me, once I realized that "Life shouldn't stink because [gospel principle a, b, c]" is sometimes the wrong way to think about it. Replacing it with "life stinks - I am being tested - what will I do about it", has been incredibly freeing. * The highest highs are not possible without the lowest lows. This sounds like meaningless Facebook nonsense, but I believe it to be true. The world is full of things I appreciate and enjoy to an extent that never happened until I experienced (and emerged from) big tribulations. Those good things were with me before, but I didn't have the capacity to fully experience them. * Consider - if your husband's friend's death had NOT messed you all up, what would that say about all of you? * Sometimes, there are no words of comfort, and knowing that things should turn out ok is no help at all. Again, we're not here to live lives of comfort and eternal bliss. We're working towards such things, through great adversity. * Everybody dies. As I sit here and miss my dad, I consider that if his life hadn't ended all those years ago, he would have been in his '90's now - old enough to pass on naturally. After enough time goes by, you think less about the "missing years" you "could have had", and reflect back on all that you did have. Hope this helps.

It's an end of the year thing, not a Christmas thing. If the church ever changes the month to something other than December, many bishops will be so happy they jump for joy. My former bishop hated having TS in December, because it took holiday time away from his family.

Here's Stratfor's take on what happened in the 1970's. The Roots of the Government Shutdown

In the 1970's, reformers reworked the political process. Now, candidates are ideologues that cater to their ideologue voter base, because the only people who actually cast votes are ideologues. Holding principles no longer gets you elected - it's where you stand on issues, and much you can appear as a supporter of issues. So, one side will fail to get reelected if they cave to the kill-obamacare crowd, and the other side will fail to get reelected if they cave to the expand government program crowd. And here most of you are, thinking it's the other side's fault. When in reality, this is how the political process works. I personally believe that people who voice opinions without voting should be sat in a corner and made to wear a "my fault" hat.

Our garden was destroyed by bunnies. So we vent our frustration by throwing things at the bunnies. (I don't know which is more pathetic - an old fat guy throwing rocks at a bunny and missing repeatedly, or a bunny too dumb to know he's having rocks thrown at him.)

No. I'm saying that "much of" recycling efforts have no impact, and are not a way to impact my sphere of influence. The "much" I'm referring to, is the stuff where people place an importance on just showing a desire to do something. We toss a bottle in the blue bin and think we're doing our part, yet we remain consumers who increase consumption overall. But the bottle went in the blue bin, so we're impacting our sphere of influence. Again, please clarify why you think it's important to do something to show a desire to do something. Another story: My wife has been big on 'upcycling' with the kids in recent years. Do you know how many plastic grocery bags you need to melt down, in order to fill the space of a single cube on an ice cube tray? Somewhere between 5 and 10. They were going to mold their own toys - but they figured it would take about a years worth of shopping to gather enough grocery bags. How much sphere of influence-impacting do you think you're doing, by recycling grocery bags?

My kid did not like green things. Bowl of multicolored cereal would result with a pile of uneaten green bits. My kids are much easier than I was. I absolutely despised different foods touching each other on my plate. It would make me ill. I grew out of that somewhere in my teen years I think. I used to eat mustard. Then my mommy told me one day mustard was spicy, and the next time I ate it, it burned my mouth and I didn't touch it until my '20's. Now I like it again.

Could you clarify what this means? I'm supposed to do something to show a desire to do something? I know it sounds odd when I put it that way, but in all truth, I see exactly that notion behind so much of the recycling efforts, awareness campaigns, legislation advocacy, and child education efforts. Not trying to actually do or fix something, just trying to get people to look or act concerned. For the record, I live out with the coyotes. I crossed paths with one while walking to my mail box. He was trying to go somewhere in a straight line, and I was obviously directly in his way. He nervously skittered around me in a perfect semi-circle, at some distance he thought was appropriate, and then continued on his way without looking back. I got the mail and returned home.I'm often tempted to take a situation and pull some vast eternal wisdom from it. I'm not sure exactly which wisdom should be pulled from this encounter, but I feel like something ought to be pulled.

I understand your overall point about wise stewardship, but this comment makes no sense to me. He's mad at us for the small handful of extinctions we've had a hand in, but He's ok with the millions of other species that have gone extinct across time without any human involvement whatsoever?From what I can tell, the number of species on earth ebb and flow naturally across time. New life and final death are dealt out constantly by the rules which govern this earth. To put it another way, exactly who is God displeased with? Me? I didn't do anything to make anything go extinct. His children in general? I'm too big on "man will be punished for his own sins" to go there. Individuals who knowingly and willfully end a species? I'm not sure if any such individual exists.

I am close to two people who suffer from various mental illnesses. They both own firearms. One has a concealed carry permit. I'm not the slightest bit worried about this, because as numerous folks have stated on this thread, mental illness is a wide range of conditions. The specific struggles of these two folks make them no more likely to commit acts of violence (against others or themselves) than anyone falling into any other demographic. Psycotics, schizophrenics, sociopaths, folks with uncontrolled anger or broken impulse controls - everyone is best served by keeping firearms away from these people. But ADD/ADHD, controlled PTSD, high-functioning IDD, even most mild forms of depression, - they're only a threat if they're a threat - their illnesses don't make them any more or less of a threat than anyone else. That's not to say that someone with PTSD cannot become dangerous. It means their PTSD is not the cause of the danger, any more than a broken leg would be.