Interests meme

[map_of_the_world]

If you comment on this post I'll choose seven interests from your profile, and you can explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post the answers in your own journal so others can play along.

catskillmarinagave me the following

1) CaerphillyThis is where I live, It’s a valley town just outside of Cardiff. Nothing ever happens here but it has an awesome castle.

2) cardiff I really like Cardiff, I spend a lot of time there. Pretty much all the political stuff I’m involved in happens in Cardiff. It also has an awesome Oxfam bookshop and a really good arts centre. Really I love Cardiff. Give me Cardiff over London any day

3)dyspraxia This is a learning disorder/developmental disorder on the autism spectrum. For me it means I am clumsy, my spatial awareness and hand eye coordination are bad, my sense of balance is not good. My reflexes are slow, my joints over extend (so I have to wear boots to avoid sprained ankles) My fine motor skills (such as writing, sewing etc) are more difficult and take more work than for nerotypicals. And I have trouble sequencing and categorising things because my brain doesn’t make the same patterns as a “normal” brains. However this means that I can make and recognise patterns that “normal” brains can’t. I also suffer from sensory overload on occasion. (This also means I expect people reading my eljay not to get snarky about my syntax/spelling/punctuation/grammar, because dyspraxia effects all of these

4) mind the gap This is the name of the feminist group I belong to in Cardiff. Ive belonged to if for about a year. It started of as just a discussion group but we have branched out and formed an activism group as well now. The groups blog is here.http://mindthegapcardiff.blogspot.com/

5) politicsTo me everything is political, everything we do, every choice we make, politics is everywhere and everything. Everybody is political even if they say they are not. Those who consider that politics isn’t important to them are those that are upholding the status quo. I try and be politically active and try to make things better for people.

6) strength Is the only way any of us who are in any way not “normal” can survive this fucked up capitalist system

7) theory I love reading and talking about ideas especilay those pertaining to the humanities.

Comments

[interfaceleader.livejournal.com]

No. You were belittling from the beginning. The first thing you said to nectarine was that she sounded like a victim. On the basis of one LJ post. On the basis of one sentence. Now, if you want to hold a debate - a classic debate, in which ideas and abstract notions are discussed - you do not bring personal observations into it. You say "please don't presume you know whats going on in my head." This is what you did, from the very first moment.

People are emotional beings. I'm not going to stand idly by while you insult someone I care about, for the sake of answering a 'point'. If you couch your 'points' behind arrogant, manipulative, or unclear language, then they will be ignored or taken the wrong way. You don't debate about someone's sense of self, except, perhaps, if you know them well enough.

If you had come in and said "I disagree with your idea that some individuals need more strength than others, depending on their circumstances. This is why...." this 'debate' would have gone a whole lot better.

But you didn't. You said "strength. i think you're wrong. it does not apply just to those who are not "normal" (as you put it) but it applies to EVERYONE. ..... why do you make yourself sound like a specific victim, when that was not the question asked?"

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Okay. So returning to the 'debate'. You say that everyone needs strength, and that everyone has equal amounts of strength, but potentially there are different forms of strength.

We possibly need to define the word strength. I suppose you can make the point that a person with a lot of muscles has a kind of strength, that is different to the 'strength of character' we've been discussing. I think it's fairly implicit in nectarine's post that she's referring to strength of character. Now, returning to the original example she used: someone with dyspraxia finds it harder to get through university than someone without. Therefore, assuming all else is equal, it requires more strength of character not to drop out, or to be satisfied with a lower mark. Of course, in a real world example, not all else is going to be equal. However, you can generalise to say that a particular group of mainly white, middle-class students, who have benefited from being socialised to accept and excel at university, will on the whole find it easier than a group of working-class students who will have been socialised differently.

Okay. But finding something easier is not the same as lacking strength. However, many middle-class students, rather than utilising their advantages to do better, will instead 'coast', and complain vocally about the 'unfairness' of a lower grade than they felt they were entitled to. Some of these students may easily drop out once discovering that university is harder than they thought it was going to be, or that they are not winning the accolades that they feel they deserve.

Consider Oxbridge. Highest suicide rate of all universities in the country. Why? Well, one reason that has been suggested is that these are students are always did well, who were always top of the class, who are suddenly only average or worse. Rather than choosing to endure and survive, they commit suicide. Someone who has been brought up with a sense of entitlement, suddenly discovers life is harder than expected. They lack the strength to deal with it.

In any crisis situation, you have people who fall apart and are useless, and people who rise to it, deal with it, and make the best of it. There is a difference between someone who drifted through life, doing what was expected of them, and failing to chase any ambitions because it meant leaving a comfortable or habitual situation for a risk, and someone who carves their own route through life despite it being more difficult. Some people are stronger than others, although it generally takes a crisis to demonstrate who falls apart and who stays steady.