The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget
zenmoments.org
zenmoments.org
I'm a volunteer EMT with the ambulance service in my town, with several 'assisted living' facilities in our district. My rough guess would be that 25-30% of the folks we take to the hospital are in the last year of their life, and likely will spend the rest of their days in the facility where we picked them up (with occasional 'field trips' to the ER).
While it's popular to complain about these sorts of calls (they certainly lack the excitement of a car wreck, or the glamour of saving a child), I generally enjoy them. Even in the grips of dementia, many of these people have fascinating stories to tell. We're stuck together in the back of the truck for 20 minutes... I can either get a head start on my paperwork, or I can engage them in conversation. In the past month, I've met a WW2 bomber pilot (who flew in a pathfinder squadron) and a former Rockette (plus a schoolteacher, a librarian, a surveyor, and several others I'm sure I've forgotten). I learned something from each of them (well... most of them... grumpy old people are still grumpy...).
The statement "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated," really rang home for me. I've heard that same sentiment (practically verbatim, just s/passengers/patients/) from several providers, all of whom I regard very highly. I think it's one of the best predictors of someone's ability as an EMS provider. While I know a few extremely capable medics who have a lousy bedside manner, every medic I know who seems to genuinely care about their patients is a top-notch medical provider.
Beats all the other grumps down below complaining about how this has nothing to do with hacking or technology.
I think the grumps should start thinking about where they'd want the cab driver to drive them during those two hours.
'Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel...the mask of cruelty'
What we can't all agree on are absolute standards for excessiveness, spuriousness, or ostentatiousness. So what Baldwin wrote is irrelevant unless you first show how the article is an example of excessive and spurious emotion.
Otherwise, you're simply saying "It's bad because it's bad. Q.E.D."
1. The quote itself is not intrinsically question-begging.
In my case, I'm actually a volunteer firefighter/EMT with my local fire department, which also runs the ambulance.
The first step would simply be to call your local agency.
You can transfer licensure between states.
You have to be licensed to volunteer as an EMT, as I said.
It isn't great moments that catch us unaware as he says, it's that our life is a constant stream of such moments, usually unbeknownst to us. It's only occasionally that we realize the sort of impact we have on those around us.
This story reminds me to continue applying these principles (within certain limits, the golden rule isn't a moral panacea) to every interaction, including the most incidental. The feelings expressed in the story are exactly the sort from which I derive my compassion and which I use as the intuitive component of my ethical reasoning. It reminds me to consider the side-effects of not just my actions, but also how I express my internal states to others.
How we should treat others is rarely an easy-to-discern topic. Lot of room for error there. We could say, "oh, but it's assuming they know what they're doing; or, oh, it's assuming they're a normal functioning person; etc". But the fact is, in life, a lot of people don't know what they're doing. They struggle with their relationships, their finances, and their very purpose of life. Whether it's a high school sophomore desperate for friends or a successful, rich guy with a mid-life crisis, we all have moments of weakness where we make irrational decisions and have irrational desires.
Building on that point, further complicating matters is that people often don't know what they want, often including how they want to be treated. Oh, we know it usually means that people want respect, love, money, happiness, whatever. But what does it mean at a tactical level that actually gives us the insight for how to treat them well? Was my mom really jealous of me getting a box of cookies for a friend instead of her (long story), or did she just wish we could hang out more together before I left again for my new home? Well, turns out that although she was jealous of the cookies, she didn't care about the cookies at all. She wanted to spend time with me. Now, how is a normal person who sucks at conflict resolution supposed to pick up on that? It took me 30 minutes of talking with her.
I really think that this rule is useless, unless one is some kind of prophet who can see into people's innermost hearts. It offers little real-world tactical advice. You might argue that the Golden Rule doesn't either, but I'd say it's much easier to implement, and much more difficult to screw up. And as the other guy notes, this Platinum Rule would derive from the Golden Rule anyway.
My point isn't about how simple things are simple. It's that human interactions and relationships can be complex things, and we shouldn't take them lightly. And there have been plenty of times where I screwed up in even the simple things. If you never have, I applaud you. But I see Platinum Rule being difficult to implement with a high success rate, especially in complex scenarios, given what I've already discussed above.
A better way to refute me is to explain how I overcomplicate things and why life is really as simple as you describe. But I don't think I am overcomplicating things at all.
Yes, as an example of how it commonly fails.
Of course I screw up simple things (or are you just being rude?). Sure, the Platinum Rule is harder to implement but that doesn't mean it cannot be a good rule or preferred to the Golden Rule.
The Silver Rule is the negative form of the Golden Rule.
Your whole comment seems ill-conceived.
Email me if you'd like to continue the conversation. I do find it interesting and also important. My mind is full of this topic having finally gotten around to reading Speaker of the Dead. I love Ender.
And I'm sorry if you thought I was rude.
Only help people worth helping.
But I hope you'll get over it. For sure, cynicism, won't bring you happiness.
2) How do you know? Sociopaths break the trust of people and can easily break a working system. A classic real anecdote of mine:
We were about 100 people in a very large open space office. The vast majority of us were normal or nice. But two selfish idiots kept stealing/hoarding anything that was freely available. From coffee cups and plastic cutlery to toilet paper. This drove everyone to hoard all those resources, creating a bigger problem and masking the original culprits.
My point is a tiny fraction of the population can easily break a healthy system/society. Don't underestimate this.
Instead, you seem to (and if I'm misinterpreting you here, I'm sorry, but I see no other way to read it) say that the second assumption jwb pointed out is irrelevant because your anecdote demonstrates that the power of the horrible few can be larger by orders of magnitude. Not that I'm good at analogies, but it's like saying cats are absolutely horrible because 1 cat you used to have made 10 dogs go wild, while jwb is saying that whatever trouble cats may cause in our world, the world is still better off for having them.
And then ekanes responded to you with a statement that also reflects my own life experience. I can't think of a single time in my life when a small or large group of people have been unable to identify such similar culprits and then either reform or eject them. Aside from the fact that 1 anecdote does not a study make, I feel you're falling prey to anchoring bias, attentional bias, insensitivity to sample size, and belief bias all in one (the belief bias being the most ironic, given what appears to be your antagonism towards people of faith). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
edit: better word arrangement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
"the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion"
edit: Looking at the lancefisher thread, you're not being just obstinante, but also dismissive. I don't think it's fair to complain that others aren't using reason if you're not willing to respond with reason. Whether you think of it as a waste of time or not, I think you lose the right to complain about lack of reason if you're not willing to display it yourself in detail like the way I'm trying to do now and the way others are trying to. If you think it's a waste of time, then it's better to just exit the conversation.
At personal level the work of detecting them is distributed, so it scales. If addressed at group level by controllers (e.g. HR) it doesn't. If the group follows blindly the Golden Rule, HR is lost.
Also knee-jerk solutions making strict rules trying to enforce the Golden Rule tend to make things worse, in my experience.
The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22&v...
This is the best chapter in the entire Bible IMO. It's funny how many Christian couples think they'll still be married in Heaven.
You are shifting the argument. That has nothing to do with my comment. Straw man fallacy.
> The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
No, in the christian bible it says a man named Jesus gave a new commandment. The "Golden Rule" is a generalization made in more recent times to try to find a common ground across religions. And it's very vague as many religions are closer to what's named as the "Silver Rule".
> If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.
That's not on the bible and even if it were, it's your dogma book. You provide me no proof it is that way. Not even a decent hypothesis.
alleco: The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths.
lancefisher: People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others.
alleco: You are shifting the argument. That has nothing to do with my comment. Straw man fallacy.
It isn't a straw man fallacy. It is a direct paraphrase of your statement. "enabling" and "giving license" are pretty much the same thing. As are forms of "sociopath" and "deranged (who will) hurt others" -- at least in common vernacular.
"People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others", this vague accusation first generalices all criticism of the golden rule as the same. Second it states something that has nothing to do with my coments. I did not claim "if you are deranged, [the golden rule] gives you license to hurt others'. I wouldn't be surprised if that was made up on the spot by lancefisher.
Your points are hard-headed nonsense and a waste of time.
Edit: minor typos
Your claim of obviously is not true because you say so. You may have meant it the way you claim, but an equally valid interpretation of the term enabling is:
The golden rule allows sociopaths to justify behavior by claiming "I expect to be treated the way I am treating you". In a society that puts the golden rule at the top of social norms, this allows the sociopaths to do their thing while within the guidelines. Allowing something to be justified is in fact enabling it. This is why the term for codependent family who make excuses for their addict loved ones and who clean up the addict's messes is enabler.
It is important to note when there are multiple subtly different ways of defining words, it can lead to confusion when you think you are being clear.
I once had a flat on my bike, and tried for about 20 minutes to flag down cyclists (on a busy route) that I could see had a pump (I didn't have one, but I had a new tube). Eventually someone that passed turned back rather reluctantly - then stated they'd go home and fetch me a pump as they'd experienced a good deed the night before. They left and then returned to assist when others just tried their best to ignore me. Kindness has a habit of spreading.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Because+I+drove+the+night+sh....
The author quite likely did work as a cabbie, did pick up an elderly woman on her final trip to hospice care, and did make an unexpected detour around town to look at some landmarks from her life.
It probably also happened in the middle of the day, only took about half an hour, and the patient probably didn't say "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," because she fell asleep near the end of the ride.
This is sad, because, just like Mike Daisey's story, there's plenty of value in what really transpired, and by exaggerating it, it loses its believability. By becoming overly sentimental, bordering on mawkish, it loses the impact that a frank, thoughtful reflection on the actual event could have had.
Or it reflects how the event happened to him, as opposed to how the event just happened.
When writing narrative essays, remember that truth is subjective, and you have a choice between being loyal to how it impacted the narrator and how it 'objectively happened'. If you want the latter, you'll just end up with an overdetermined logfile.
I don't know what parts of David Sedaris's stories are true, and I don't care - all I know is that some of them are incredibly powerful emotionally, and that man sure knows how to nail the ending of a story.
Wow, is that seriously what they're calling it now? I guess that's genius. But I feel like that poor guy has been put to new lows just because he was out of his depth. Doesn't excuse him for what happened, I guess though.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
on the other hand:
"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Now that you know the criteria, I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions as to whether this story belongs.
And it sparked a religion flamewar in the comments.
Or perhaps it means that not every story on this site exists for me. Many of the stories here do qualify for my intellectual curiosity. Many stories I would like to see discussion on are not discussed, and many that are discussed I don't care about. Perhaps I should go to every story about basic Vim and declare that they just don't belong here because my intellectual curiosity is not properly being pandered.
Or perhaps everyone should grow up a bit and not chicken-little every story they don't like but which gets major points. It always baffles me how:
If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
a statement that implies in itself that it isn't the end-all-be-all definitive rule, gets turned into some sort of hard rule. And that hard rule application somehow ignores the fact that some people find different things interesting, if those things disagree with the reader's personal taste.
I didn't say that. I just stated it was a shitty emotional story and it didn't find it intellectually interesting at all. Also stated as others it brought up the religious flame war. The comment doesn't say the story doesn't fit HN rules.
You are the one intentionally misinterpreting other people's comments. You are the one diverting the point of this thread to other cases to back your point.
1. why is this hn worthy?
2. guidelines about what is worthy including statement of intellectual curiosity.
3. counterpoint about not satisfying one specific person's curiosity (and another seemingly unrelated counterpoint about religion)
4. (ignore second counterpoint) focus on intellectual curiosity and how focus of it for one person is not the same as for the group.
How is my reply is misinterpreting? It certainly isn't intentional. Nor is it diverting the thread away from how it is HN worthy. It is an example of how one person's view of what is intellectually stimulating may not match another's.
I honestly found the discussion in this thread far more interesting than comments on almost all vim articles. This counts as satisfying my intellectual curiosity. Including the debate about religion.
[edit: it doesn't matter whether it's real vs fiction, it's a question of how you would react if you did something in the normal course of what you do, and then come to realize at it had a profoundly positive impact on someone else. Is not the romanticized part of the modern conception of a startup a blend of changing people's lives positively at skill via products that make the world better plus a dash of hopefully positioning yourself to there after only work on projects that capture your eye?
I will not dispute that the story here is cute and possibly fiction. But even if your day to do focus is building better tech in some domain, it's about building better tools for other people. ]
I can agree that the person telling the story did a good deed without feeling overly moved by the story.
edit: it seems to be true in the sense that the guy wrote it in a book years ago http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cabbie.htm
Because it's so fake, and so corny.
Also he mentioned that impoverished people relied on the taxis. Impoverished people cannot afford taxis and taxi drivers are not big on giving free rides.
It's part of how it's easy to stay poor. There was a while when all I had was a bicycle. When my bike got stolen I didn't have the money for another one, but over the next three months spent more than a bike would have cost on unavoidable and otherwise-impossible transportation. Mostly I walked (including three miles to work each day), but sometimes the cost of the cab was less than the money I'd loose by not being somewhere.
I do understand that public transit is not available for everyone, but for people who are impoverished, often the $10 - $20 for a cab ride isn't available either.
Honestly the inclusion of him helping the impoverished and old ladies just seems to be him buttering up his image for the story.
But there are plenty of large towns and cities that have terrible bus service.
May you choke on your cynicism while you sleep.
Edit: what, no downvotes? Clearly I have no idea what motivates you people.
EDIT: Oh wait, I see now! It was not your intention to actually emulate the hilariously 2D caricatures in the story and be sympathetic and nice to all comers, no that something you reserve for the safe idealized realm of fiction where there is no chance for disappointment by the messy and contradictory things we call humans. I've got your ticket man and you seem to be in good company with the majority of HN, I mean who would have guessed that the money hungry posers on this site would be into empty sentimentality?
Edit: you talk too much.
Seriously, #1 on HN and it's not even remotely about hacking.
Flagged.
Not to discount it, just saying that not making you cry is t that bizarre.
Off topic question: I know many here aren't necessarily religious (Though some would say they are spiritual)... Do the non-religious among us still find value in the writing of overtly religious authors? I'm not interested in arguing about religion. I'm just curious if the HN crowd find value in the words of people with differing opinions.
Point being, say no to monoculture, say yes to having interesting caring people who enrich those around them.
For a non-religious person, death is an even sadder event than it is for the religious... because we view it as permanent.
Given an infinite time and an infinite universes, there becomes a small possibility of existence again after death.
(I'm Christian, so I admit that I may be a bit more optimistic than is warranted)
However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid.
Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the fact that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences.
There is a very deep well of value in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied.
I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature.
He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion.
Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.
I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.
What's the difference between an "atheist" and a "new atheist"? I've found that religious people use "new atheist" almost as a derogatory term, but I just don't get where the insult is supposed to come from?
[edit] Ah, I looked up "new atheism" on wikipedia and got: "New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of 21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."
Also, 'new' atheism is viewed as actively oppositional - loud, proud, 'coming out' in public, etc. Being aggressively atheistic is a hallmark of those labelled 'new atheists'. It's probably more accurate to refer to this more aggressive public movement as antitheism, but that would be another label/word which would confuse people. Putting 'new' in front of the old word, I think it becomes easier to rally the troops, so to speak.
I disagree that this "movement" is aggressive. It is only perceived as aggressive because people are not used to having their religion publicly questioned, and held to the same standards of rational scrutiny as other products of human thought. I also disagree that it is "probably" anti-theist. The "new atheists" sometimes ridicule theists, but concede that merely believing in a personal god is fairly harmless in itself. I think they are definitely anti-dogma.
I was using 'aggressive' from the perspective of those using the term 'new atheist' - should've been more clear on that. I don't think 'new atheism' is 'aggressive', except to the extent that it's being vocal vs 'in the closet' year ago.
Rational, literal, dead religion is often harmful but mystical, experiential, living religion is quite the opposite.
I'm with you until there. The point of science is to make testable predictions, to further our knowledge of the world. It's easy to single out creation stories and point to their falsehood to dismiss religion, but religion is not limited to an explanation of how the world is constructed, and it's also not built like a proof where it all hinges on whether or not this story is more allegory or fact. It's not about creating testable hypotheses. It doesn't have to be factually accurate to enrich lives. There is a wealth of truth about humanity that has nothing to do with our physical properties.
Science is tangible and real, and absolutely necessary for discovering and understanding the universe. Any emotional content or context you overlay on top of the application of the scientific method is essentially a religious experience. And that's perfectly fine; in fact, I think it would be weird to know much about science and not feel a sense of awe and wonder, but those senses, that emotional connection, is not science.
I'd say Mohammed certainly got one thing right in saying "there is no compulsion in religion." Either you appreciate it or you don't, like any other form of art. There's no sense in forcing it on people but there's also no sense in talking people out of it. Live and let live.
However, I also believe it is not true.
Also: Blind and stupid? Nothing against criticism, but i think something more neutral would be better, like short-sighted and willfully ignorant.
In this case by religion I mean the sort of things commonly associated with religion, minus the "clearly" religious stuff. For instance, consider utilitarianism. It's a "life-guiding philosophy", which is already treading into religious waters, but the real killer is, what utility metric do you use? Many people who claim to be one or another variety of utilitarianist often try to use some sort of global metric that accounts for not just their own subjective utility, but that of others. But... why? Why not just act based on your own utility? (Including an enlightened utility metric in which one understands that harming others is generally not the right answer due to retaliation or general degradation of the local environment, so not just stereotypical selfishness.) It's awfully easy to call that a sort of non-god/non-spirit religious decision, because there's no objective rational basis for that metric. (And there's not necessarily an objective rational basis for choosing any particular metric when it comes down to it.)
Most of them are way off. Not even close.
We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.
You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.
Does changing the label of the same set of actions make it better somehow?
Also, there is a bit of irony in the statement "there is no dogma in science" as it is a fairly dogmatic statement :)
Similarly in science you do get certain axioms:
* occam's razor * reductionist analysis is the best path to truth * this new theory is more elegant even though it currently unanswers certain questions.
They are axioms without empirical proof, that are argued fairly strongly fairly regularly.
NOTE: I don't disagree with them, just pointing out that there are non-empirical axioms that are fairly dogmatically taught and followed. One frequently under fire is reductionism, particularly in medicine and other biological areas.
On the other hand, the virgin birth of Jesus (for example) is a dogma of Christianity. From what we know about our world, a virgin birth is not possible, not with the technology that was available at the time the Bible was written. Christians still accept this tenet of Christianity at face value, despite the ample evidence against it (evidence they would never ignore in other aspects of their lives). That's dogmatic following.
I never denied nor tried to refute that there are many empirical axioms associated with science. I only stated that there are also a priori axioms which are structurally dogma.
Please stop changing the subject.
It also has a strong theoretical basis. Add enough epicycles and you can smooth out any irregularity's. But, over fit your data and you lose predictive capability.
PS: Preferring the more complex theory is unworkable, because E=mc^2+(10^(-900))m is going to give the same results for any test you could actually carry out. Having no preference has the same basic limitation.
http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614...
The observation was that in less developed societies there are bad religions, good religions, and better religions that promote social cohesion. It was not a statement about modern society and religion vs. morality and lawfulness. Sorry if I offended you.
I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof.
I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential.
Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion.
That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.
I really enjoyed David Bently Hart's defense of Christianity a few years ago. Thick material, but it was fascinating to hear several popular versions of historical events challenged by somebody well-educated. ( Affiliate link: http://amzn.to/IupRsn )
But after thinking about your question a bit more, it occurs to me that you might mean reading religious authors writing about religion. The answer here is also yes, at least for me. A few years ago I completed an audio course in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition and it included several religious authors. This makes sense. Modern western intellectual thought has deep roots in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. Can't study the ancients without understanding what they believed and reading what they said in their own words.
I'll look around and see if I've written up anything.
The worst offenders are self-help books. The moment the author starts rambling about spirituality, religion or other nonsense, it immediately destroys the author's credibility for me: how can I trust what someone is saying when they refuse to apply the rules of evidence to their world view? I'm forced to step back and evaluate what they are saying with more extreme scepticism, and in the end I'm left feeling like I may as well have just thought through the issues myself rather than reading the book (note, thinking for yourself is a good thing - but you don't need some dumb book filled with religious rubbish to give you permission to do it!)
Some of the most narrow-minded fools I've ever met have been atheists, and some of the most analytical have been religious. The reverse is also true. I'm reading a bit of confirmation bias in your observation.
His 'autoblography' is fairly enlightening as to his reasons and experience with it (it's about more than just that, though). You can read about it here if you wish: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=13918
Secondly, at its core Zen Buddhism is more philosophy than religion. I'm an atheist and can still agree with most of the concepts found in Zen Buddhism. It's not about worshipping gods but more about the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha who most Zen Buddhist regards as having no particular supernatural powers.
I would hope most non religious people have no bias against it and if they do I would recommend they give that a second thought.
It's not a religion. It doesn't describe a god, nor does it preclude one. It isn't even a philosophy, because it doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do.
It really is psychology. And as an old programmer from way back, who has always been cynical about life and laughed at the hypocrisy and dogma in religion, I can say straight up that Buddhism is the most intelligent thing I have ever encountered.
These stories, these moments, are not just life, they're what life is about.
I can't even imagine what that taxi ride must have been like for her.
I graduated from college 20 years ago, and a few years back I drove through the old neighborhoods there and something just blasted me in the gut, or heart, or something. A flood of memories of friends and lovers and struggles and parties and fun and hurt and everything.
What is that? Is it a realization of time passed, or opportunities missed, never to be available to us again?
I can't imagine what it would be life after 80 years or so, and knowing that the door of life is closing quickly. Wow. Didn't mean to wax sentimental but I do love these ideas.
Don't be ashamed. It's appreciated.
There's so many things we have left to learn from "The Greatest Generation" yet when given the opportunity, most would rather downplay the story, or simply go back their smartphones social networks.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wznsub_...
https://plus.google.com/104314192726025938964/posts/4GjXTPTz...
1. The beautiful moral of the story is a split-finger fastball that you never saw coming.
2. Maybe she had heirs who would receive her assets upon her passing.