Well that makes sense.

I suppose it is similar to what happens when one is confronted with the loss of trust in someone or something they relied on (a marriage, job, religious leader, etc). I couldn’t imagine feeling that unsure of everything all the time.

I agree somewhat but don’t think it’s the case for everyone. I think being true to oneself and one’s sense of morals is important for happiness but that flexibility is also important. Having said that I have found more happiness in the last few months having decided to slow down and stop chasing after every thought in my head than in the last 10 years.. but if you’d asked me then to gain consistancy in order to be happy and out of misery I wouldn’t have bought it. I mean THIS (living at home, slowing down and really living my values) used to feel burdensome to me but now it feels like support.

I agree with him.

I saw this in my parents with their very strong religious beliefs. Even if their reasoning made no sense to me whatsoever, they were always at peace.

Absolutely no reason here to refute him. It is my beliefs, standards, values, morals that keep me up and going and with an attitude of gratitude as much as I can.

It would be so hard for me to think that things in the world were just random and there wasn’t any synchronocity or that one action causes another equal and opposite reaction….or whatever Newton’s law of physics …

“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seems like the more inconsistent people are, the more they want to foist their beliefs on you, too – or denigrate yours – I’ve noticed.

I think Charles is talking about something different…my interpretation of Emerson’s quote is that consistency in small-minded thinking thwarted creativity and progress and that this was the reason philosophers, clergy kept to this mindset…..like a person doing one task over an over out of fear to branch out and explore new ideas or methods. this to me is different than having inherent faith….does that make sense? or am I wrong, Charles…this is what I took from that quote…I do like it and believe it too, by the way…

I do tend to agree with Charles (and Emerson.) I also want to point out that “teabaggers” are self-identified. It wasn’t a name given to them, it was one they labeled themselves with.

I can think of a couple of different ways to come at the question, from my own personal experience of what a certain rigidity of thinking about the definition of “success” was–and what happened to my own head when I could no longer meet that standard–but I think it might be more useful to point out how this kind of thinking plays out in schools.

“Zero-tolerance” policies mean things like: 6-year olds are suspended for bringing Boy Scout eating utensils to school and 4-year olds are kicked out of pre-schools for “sexual harassment.” I taught at the college level, and you get the same kind of one-size-fits-all thinking, and it just doesn’t work. Kids who skip a test and then show up later, whining to retake it, are different from the kids who were actually in the midst of a nervous breakdown and who really couldn’t show up that day.

There has to be room for a person to use their own judgement, their own experience, in deciding where allowances can be made, chances can be given. Where the best chance for a good outcome may be not to stick to the “rules” but to put another’s well-being first.

And yes, even for cheaters. There are sometimes reasons for cheating. It may not be ideal and no wife ever wants to think about it that way, but sometimes a man is actually doing her a favor by dealing with some of his needs in another way and keeping his family intact. Values are so culture-bound. Plenty of Europeans see cheating that way. It’s a particularly American thing, imo, to be so rigid on that issue. In theory, anyway. In practice, it’s always a lot more gray. (Insert whatever name of political wife, etc.)

Actually, Elsa, I do kind of believe that. This is the postmodern condition, we need the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in our head without having to reconcile them. People would be considerably happier if they didn’t expend so much mental effort on trying to make their whole psyche into once self-consistent mechanism. It just can’t be done. A man is a multitude.

But i wouldn’t say it was ‘consensual’…

From the huntington post…
“I had sex with my own father,” she[Mackenzie Phillips] says. She says he shot her up with drugs and raped her. When she confronted him about it, she writes in her memoir, she said “We have to talk about how you raped me.” He responded, “You mean when we made love?”

i think one can be consistent to ne’s approac to concepts that also require one to be able to take multiple perspectives at once and examine them.

i think, more of the problem that the soldier’s talking about… is people who are so afraid of being wrong or being judged that they come up with rationalization of the moment to explain their behavior and deflect blame.

anyone who can’t face blame or is unwilling to take responsibility for themselves and draw up some sort of code that they will stand for… will have an unpleasant relationship with saturn, which never ends well… i do think saturn’s specifically the guy most likely to be rising the tides of depression… they’re correlated, anyway, yes?

just because some people self identify as teabaggers, doesn’t mean that everyone who gets called one judges themself to be one. just like i get confused when people call me a hippie.

I disagree that the ability to hold differing ideas, theories, opinions, etc has anything to do with actually being consistent.

I contain multitudes – I have Libra and mutable to the max but I hope I am consistent.

Well I can see you’re not going to let this teabagger thing go, Elsa. So let’s get this straight.

I have been mocked for years by right wingers for my perfectly reasonable liberal political ideas. And now the shoe is on the other foot. Except that the teabaggers, for starts, embraced that label until they figured out what it meant. And then they are still oblivious to being sold out by their political “leaders.” They are being whipped up into a frenzy of political activism against their own interests, on behalf of the ultra-rich. Now that totally deserves mockery. How can anyone live in a universe where Glenn Beck is taken seriously, without having an urge to mock these people? Even political comedians like Jon Stewart says it’s difficult to mock Beck, he’s so over-the-top that he can’t be mocked. There’s an old internet axiom, that judging by just the written word, it is impossible to tell the difference between someone parodying conservatives and religious nutcases, and the real thing. By using explicit notations, we deliver a keyword that tells the difference. Fox News uses terms like “Democrat Party” instead of “Democratic Party,” knowing it offends Democrats. It’s one of their keywords. Permit us on the other side to use our own terms, without you labeling them as tantamount to racism. Political ignorance by right-wingers crosses racial boundaries.

The Emerson quote is about Willful Ignorance – The practice or act of intentional and blatant avoidance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded arguements because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs. Not wanting to have to do the work to rethink their opinions, the fear of the unknown, the fear of being wrong, or sometimes simply close-mindedness.

Consistency is the ideal. Inconsistency is the reality. Political manipulation. While we end up fighting one another’s inconsistencies guess who’s in peace.

I agree on that a lack of theory, though I’d rather call it principles, is the main cause of misery.

I think it’s good to have a foundational set of values but then to look at each situation on a case by case basis. If you only adhere to a set of values without being open to the facts and nuances that each situation presents, it’s called fundamentalism. Those guys present a stable, unwavering front their entire lives. Yikes.

I don’t know anyone who thinks what Roman Polanski did was ok. Including, thankfully, the cops.

tinaroma, Whoopi Goldberg stated right on TV it was not a “rape-rape” in regards to Polanski and dozens of Hollywood types signs a petition he should be let go.

Fi – I don’t know. I don’t think I would ever lump all Taurus together and make a statement about the.

My husband is a Taurus with ruler Venus in Gemini which might give him 2 faces but instead gives him 5 languages and he says the same thing in each. He’s also Jupiter in Sadge so his beliefs would develop throughout his life and they have. But you see what I mean. He is a very particular Taurus.

Charles, I can’t even read your remark to try to respond to it because what I read is that is it is okay for one group to beat another for whatever reason and having grown up with Henry, I can’t even get a concept like that to go in my head.

As for using terms, you have free speech. However I know you consider yourself mannered and I have made it very clear that I think that disparaging people by calling them “teabaggers” is offensive so maybe around here you could come with an alternative term?

Dictionary definition of consistent = ‘not contradictory,in agreement or harmony’.

Consistency = ‘agreement or harmony between parts of something complex; accordance with facts, form or characteristics previously shown or stated’.

I see nothing there having to do with fundamentalism or inflexibility. Or politics, come to think of it.

Well, I’m going to stick my fingers in my ears and “lalalalala” around the political discussion because I don’t care much for talking politics.

I will say that what I get from this topic is a focus on internal consistency, meaning how much the morals a person publicly holds match with the morals they privately hold and adhere to. I think the more inconsistency there is with this, the more miserable the person might be.

Now, hypocrisy is part of the human condition. I think the amount of hypocrisy a person engages in can affect how miserable that person might be. If a person can accept that they are going to engage in hypocrisy to a degree, that can lessen misery. But that’s also a form of consistency too, I suppose.

Ah, I’d like to say more on this, but my mind is wandering all over the place to all sorts of scenarios. Maybe another time.

I absolutely agree with The Soldier. Consistent values, morals and ethics create a deep sense of self respect which gives a person a strong foundation and to me that allows a person more freedom, sort of like a tree or a skyscraper etc…the stronger and deeper the roots or foundation are, the more a person is able to grow and adapt and accept others and their differences. When you know who you are you are not threatened by others who believe differently, you actually feel secure enough to listen and absorb and consider and question. You can have open discourse which is the only thing that leads to solving problems and something that has all but dissapeared in our world.

I’ve always felt that when people feel they must diminish others it is simply because they feel so insecure with their own belief system that anyone else’s beliefs are a threat to them and they must lash out.

In regards to the Tea Party. They have not taken the name Teabaggers to be representative of who they are. It is insulting and diminishing. As someone who has been involved with the Tea Party movement I can tell you that these are people who are sensing their freedoms slipping away and are willing to fight for what they believe. However, even if a person does not agree with what they are doing I would think that there would be a certain amount of respect for people who would be willing to get off their couch and do something. And it seems instead of mocking them that people who feel differently would talk with them not simply take what the media says as gospel, and rather than lashing out or name calling they would follow the example and organize the people who feel and believe what they do.

I would rather die than lose my freedom to government intrusion. But if someone believes that the government needs to play a bigger role in our lives I could not imagine lashing out or diminishing their beliefs…that would be reprehensible to me and completely unproductive.

Rox: I want to a little more precise. It’s not that I think cheating is okay, but that I think that so much of the discussion (read: moralizing) about it is unproductive.

Briefly, if the stats are correct, at least half of all married people cheat, perhaps more. It seems to me this indicates a problem with the institution itself. SOMETHING clearly doesn’t work, though I don’t know what it is.

I mean, if you had a high school in which half of the students failed out, would you assume that it is all the fault of the kids? Or would you think there might be a problem with the school?

I get bored with all the Tiger (and now-Edwards) bashing. I also get fed up with the hypocrisy. If the stats are accurate, some of those journalists (and my FB friends who are now posting nasty jokes about this) are also cheaters, right? There’s some kind of social denial about the reality out there, or something. It just doesn’t make sense to me, it doesn’t seem to work the problem, somehow.