Reply #17: gee, pardner, thanks for proving my point and your own adolescence. [View All]

and as usual, you, like all youth think that all those older never were themselves young and went thru the same thing. we all do. when you are in fact "older" you will understand this.

beforehand, you might want to spend some more time in the library (rosseau, locke, and kant on theories of rights perhaps) and on the highway of life before you subject the rest of us to more teen-aged brain farts.

your posts are so adolescent and so utterly ignorant that you dont even know it, yet.

knowing that you someday will is that which i find quite amusing in dealing with you, and the only reason i am posting a response back.

nestled in my post, which you obviously and obliviously ignored was my clear declaration that society has used age itself as the benchmark for granting full rights as a matter of convenience. there was no subjectiveness to that statement, but i did note that such an arbitrary benchmark is in and of itself subjective (that's kind of what the adjective "arbitrary" means), a matter of societal convenience so to speak, and which, if you had stopped to think more clearly, actually supports much of what you insist upon, viz., that some youth are more mature than others and should have more rights.

you fail to realize that you are not an adult just because you think you are or because via copulation can bear young. there are external features which society places valuation upon that determine if a person is to enjoy full-fledged rights. if you are not deemed totally responsible for all that you do and receive from society then your rights are subject to restriction.

its really that bloody simple.

if you are not paying all your own bills, carrying all your own weight as a functioning member of society, so to speak, under what scheme of yours is one to be considered an adult with fully granted rights in the society? and more to the point, define for us how such a society operates effectively and upon what is society valuating by doing such.

ponder that rights have nothing to do with the individual alone or what the individual innately is. it is only in the context of social interaction that rights exist, only because there is interaction between individuals. there are no "self-rights" just as there are no "self-ethics" and any right or ethical behavior is formulated only within the context of a social system which has placed valuation on certain things and ideas, and these are, without exception, always based upon experience, not adolescent wishes.

its why i pointed to my sig line.

do yourself a favor. print out our little discussion and put it away for a year or two, then come back to it. you'll see how funny and ignorant you were here.

BTW i have taught high school and college for years, and kids with ideas like yours are about as rare as the fish in the sea.

you, and your statements are in fact, quite normal.

and i wouldn't want it any other way, because it is a reflection of the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young as they reach for maturity.

just remember to keep on reaching.

"Ah!...But a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Robert Browning