Tuesday, August 31, 2004 :::
 

Here’s a hypothetical:
If you know of someone who has barricaded themselves in their house (Not a literal barricade, just doesn’t come out.) They won’t answer their phone to anyone. They live in your neighborhood. You don’t know them very well. The mother calls you from Florida and asks you to go over to see if the person is okay and you say no, call the police and ask them to do it because you don’t really want a dead person’s face etched in your memory banks, and when the police come he still doesn’t answer his door, instead he calls out from a window I AM HERE. He refuses to allow the police to enter and he doesn’t want any help so they leave. A week later the same thing happens.
Now as a member of the human race what is your responsibility? Should you allow this person to stay boxed up inside and let whatever happen because essentially a person has his or her own rights to life or death? Or do you call mental health services and ask for an intervention to save a person even if it is against their wishes? Or do you wait a few weeks and see if the man decides to stick his head out into the world again?
Say this person is 50 years old, lost his wife 4 years ago, has a great job in aviation, no children, and an elderly mother living far away. Say you are a twentysomething woman who is merely a neighbor and has had little contact with this man beyond waving hello when he drives past.
I am interested in people’s ideas about if a person truly owns their own life. I have talked to my friends about this and will reveal their answers after I get some feedback from the world at large. For me to say anything now would taint the survey. I will also tell you the outcome.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 12:57 PM

 

I LOVE BEAVER

I’ve been watching those old half-hour black-and-white series from the 50s and Beaver is my fav.
The characters are so formal. The dad mostly wears a suit, and mom wears a shirtwaist dress, permed hair, and earrings when she is making school lunches. They have two sons…Beaver, the younger imp, and Wally, the older more collegiate boy. Wally has a friend named Eddie. Eddie is a charmer who says nice things just to gain favor, but everyone is on to him. So charm is for losers. Lumpy, a goof ball, is Wally’s other friend.
They are all nice to one another, polite even. And when Beaver does something stoopid, like climbing a billboard, the police don’t even arrest him. In the 50s stuff like that must have been allowed because the police are portrayed as a friend that would help you instead of the adversaries they are seen as now. They didn’t slap handcuffs on him, beat him with a nightstick, and he wasn’t on the nightly crime news. They just said don’t do it again and everyone, even the fire department that was called, seemed to be more interested in Beaver’s recovery (and well-being) than in punishment.
Another thing is the house they live in. It seems to be a modest two-story. What we would consider a small house today even though his parents seem to be successful financially.
If you take that time, the 50s, and .mirror it to now, you can see that people are more into materialism (a BIG house is a necessity) and less into caring for the children (moms were home and just the way kids are treated…more like potential adults than animals you throw materialistic bones to). You know how history always states that things get better as a society develops. What if, instead, we got worse?
Contrasted to then, it is apparent we have become more egocentric (I have mine.) and less community-based (Let’s make schools better, care for ALL children, and make the world a better place for EVERYONE) .
To me Beaver’s world looks downright alien.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 12:32 PM