You raise a good point. The consistency of California's weather reminds me a bit of the movie Groundhog Day. Seasonal changes are so subtle that it is easy to forget that years have gone by...
> Many Texans conceptualize government and state uses of force (ie prosecution that can lead to imprisonment) as restrictions on their rights. This "negative rights" conceptualization is pretty common in the US, but especially common in Texas
So, the government/state has guaranteed a negative right to life, i.e. citizens are prohibited from actions that deprive someone's right to life, and in order to enforce this prohibition, citizens are deprived of their right to arbitrarily commit violence to each other, while the government/state has a monopoly.
Where does our right to arbitrarily commit violence come from? Is it just a "natural right"?
See that's why there's a big difference in conceptualization. Texans would certainly not say you have a "right" to arbitrarily commit violence. They conceptualize rights "negatively", as things the state shouldn't take away from you. In this case, the right is the freedom to not not go to prison after protecting your property.
In fact, a Texan may also believe that since you have no right to violence, it would be perfectly fine for a police officer to stop you from using deadly force, as long as that police officer doesn't use deadly force on you!
Thanks, but I guess I just don't understand how this concept - negative rights are things that the state shouldn't take away from you - fits the concept of a "negative" right given here [0]. Following that definition, negative rights require that some actions are not allowed - the government/state (i.e, society?) takes these actions away.
The basic principle is that your negative rights are a prohibition of what others can do to you. If someone violates the negative rights of others, they forfeit theirs.
for example, people have a "negative" right to be free of physical violence.
If someone uses physical violence an another, that person forfeits their rights, and the state can use violence against them. It can also take away their freedom of movement and incarcerate them.
In the property case, my understanding is that people cannot take your property, this you are permitted to defend your property.
In the positive rights case, the state extends property protection via the law and police, thereby implicitly granting you property rights. This is a grant, and you are not allowed to defend your own property?
> Where does our right to arbitrarily commit violence come from? Is it just a "natural right"?
If you down the rabbit hole far enough, rights do not come from anywhere other than the extent to which an opposing party is able to punish you. Aka, might makes right.
Minority rights are well-protected in America as a constitutional republic.
An actual direct democracy, like Switzerland, isn't as great as protecting minority rights. There's plenty of examples of democracies trampling minority rights, and there is a legitimate fear of tyrannical majority in most democracies.
America is quite unique in its system and how well it protects rights.
a metaphysical victory for atheists who consumes the concept of soul would be that the concept ceases, which is equivalent to its physical death in the competing theist's view, and completely unconsequential to the atheist, which only proves that atheism is at least not that bad.
I have a similar story; undergrad at a public state school and grad at a private Ivy. My experience at the Ivy was eye-openi. The loudest [1] Ivy undergrads came from private elementary/high schools and had a very dismissive view of the students who matriculated from public elementary/high schools. Academic breaks were used for luxury travel.
[1] "loudest" in the sense that they made sure that other students knew where they came from.
At the risk of coming off as cantankerous, I think that this has worsened with the increasing immediacy of social sharing. Due to both the ephemerality and deluge of content that expedite a post's expiration date, there's even more pressure to stay on that FOMO-generating content treadmill. There were groups of students who kept partying throughout the pandemic and bragging about how "magical" their weekend wine tours and date nights were; any time I've been in a comparable situation, it's been kids acting and recording each other on their phones, feeding the simulation machine.
Perhaps people experience cognitive dissonance when reconciling the things that you mentioned with beliefs about reincarnation?
I am relying on a rather common and uninformed understanding of Buddhism here, so I may be way off base.
EDIT:
I had to look it up, but I guess European culture has contained some sort of belief in reincarnation (Plato's Republic, Book X / Myth of Er). I don't suppose this belief has much traction anymore, despite the strong influence of Plato (or Greek philosophy in general) on Christianity.
> Perhaps people experience cognitive dissonance when reconciling the things that you mentioned with beliefs about reincarnation?
Reincarnation was the only thing to come into my mind when I heard "buddhism" when I was a schoolboy. I had zero idea of what else is Buddhism about back then. Later, as I learnt more I found out (or came to an opinion) "reincarnation" itself is a fairly unimportant concept. Perhaps it is only there to attract/repel public and to be another target for becoming indifferent to as you progress.
It may also be beneficial to imagine you being reincarnated in a particular realm of existence and contemplating what you would experience. Imagine you are going to heaven where you are going to live millennia never forgetting... that you are going to hell after that, inevitably, like for real, and try to come in peace with that. That would be an exercise.
It's not reinkarnation. It's rebirth. Buddhism explicitly rejects the idea of a soul so reinkarnation would be very strange. Rebirth is something else that can be difficult to explain...
Did you mean to write the reverse? i.e the ratio of the surface area to volume decreases the larger you make a container.