In a recent post, I discussed how some religious people buy into what they are sold in church about needing a god for morality without giving it much thought. There are more problems with this than those arguments about how we arrive at our moral structures. It should come as no surprise that if they're not thinking about the how, they're not putting much thought into their moral system itself. As with the how, this means a sizable portion comes from being told by some sort of authority figure what is good and bad.
I had a discussion with a religious coworker last year on the topic of the why question of morality. They seem to be a good example of someone just gobbling up what the religious authorities told them without much question. A good indication of this was that they went straight to the topic of murder, which, as I stated last post, is a very cliche topic for the religious to bring up.
But a really funny thing also happened later in the discussion. One tactic religious apologists like to use is to make it seem like the world would just be a chaotic place if morality were at all relative. We were unable to finish this part of the conversation, but my coworker presented a hypothetical where I had a dictatorship, but then my son* takes over and changes a bunch of the rules. Again, since we didn't finish, it wasn't clear where they were going with this, but I suspect it was to present such a system as undesirable because of how it can change on little more than a whim. I hope some of the concern was how it is based on the authority of a human, but I have doubts on that.
There were a few things I found intriguing about this. One is how such people seem to be oblivious to the fact that the are trying to make logical arguments for a morality that they imply one cannot make a logical argument for (because their god puts it in our hearts, or whatever). That lack of awareness has both funny and sad aspects to it.
The second thing that I noticed right away is that they were presenting more of a hybrid relative morality. I thought they were trying to discuss relative morality, but that was not what was presented. With relative morality, morality would be relative to those within this hypothetical dictatorship, meaning those under the rule of the dictator need not agree with said dictator.
What was most intriguing, though, took me quite some time -- months, perhaps -- to notice: They were describing something rather similar to religious morality, much like the morality they subscribe to, particularly in regards to the authority part of it.
This got me to thinking how religious morality actually works. Through this process, I realized that a lot of the morality comes from an authority figure in the church, but I know from stories from pastors who lost their religion that the morality cannot be changed on a whim. I ended up figuring out why this is. While it is a church leader that has to dictate the morality, the morality is not associated with the church leader but rather a person or persons that are long dead, if they even existed at all. In the case of Christianity, this would be Jesus or God. With Islam, it is much the same where it is associated with Allah or maybe even Mohammed. Such a structure can even be found in non-deistic religions. Karl Marx being associated with Marxism would be one example. Or, in the USA, one can find a sort of State religion that worships the Founding Fathers.
All of these systems have the issue that one need not think about what they are doing. They just do what they believe their moral guide wants them to do. It's a scary system. One only needs to look at ISIS to see why this doesn't work. If my coworker's focus was on the idea of morality changing on a whim, their concerns seem to be not in the proper place. The authoritarian system is way more problematic. There could be a system of morality that gets everything wrong but never changes. I would hope my coworker would be more concerned about that system, but then they'd have to reject their own morality, which is why I suspect the focus was indeed on the idea of morality changing on a whim. I'm thoroughly unimpressed.
* Of course it had to be a son in this hypothetical! The regressive moral standards my coworker likely has may not allow for a woman dictator.
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Buying the Morality Pitch - The Failure of the Religiously Indoctrinated to Think Through Morality
I saw an article about Jason Lisle, a doctor of some sorts, speaking with Ben Seewald (husband of Jessa Duggar) claiming atheists really don't exist because, essentially, some book says there is sufficient evidence for the existence of god. Yeah, the book was, of course, the Bible. If the circular reasoning wasn't bad enough, they continued to provide a cliche morality argument as a reason atheists don't exist. The argument is rather simplistic and goes something like the following: "God is necessary for there to be a difference between right and wrong. Atheists believe there is a right and wrong. Therefore, atheists really believe god exists." They do have arguments for why they think a god in necessary, but they're not all that great of arguments.
This all just got me to thinking how often I hear morality used as an assertion for the existence of god...people flat out saying that I'm wrong because of this. (Or people saying that religion is required for morality.) But, really, morality, at a basic level, is actually quite simple...if one would bother to put thought into it. So whenever I hear some Christian bring up morality and making claims such as this, I'm often at a loss for what to say because they essentially lead me to suspect that they've just gobbled up what their pastor has told them at church without giving it a second thought. Is it really worth my time to engage? Because their minds seem rather closed off to the topic.
Also, they seem to be really selective in their examples. By which I mean they select examples that would seem to prove their point while avoiding often numerous examples that don't. Jason Lisle uses an example of baking powder, saying, "What one chemical accident does to another is morally irrelevant. I mean when baking soda and vinegar react and they fizz up...that's just what they do. You don' get mad at the baking soda." The idea here being that without a god and us just being a chemical "accident,"* it doesn't make sense to get mad at an accident.
Except we do. I can quickly think of numerous counter examples: People getting upset at a tornado ripping up their town. People getting upset at a rain storm(s) for causing flooding. People getting upset with tectonic plates for causing earthquakes. Etc, etc, etc. Sure, they're not upset with those things in the same way they'd be upset with people, but that has to do more with the difference in the sentience of the thing they are mad at. The point here is that people do get upset over chemical accidents. (It is also worth pointing out that people speak of "Mother Nature" as though nature were sentient.)
I find it rather obvious why Lisle does not use those examples. He's saying since getting mad at chemical reactions is not rational that a god is necessary to create a moral standard in order for us to be mad at other human beings. Now, here's the question he doesn't want you to ask: "Why would god set up a moral standard in such a way that we'd get mad at inanimate objects?"
Any answer I can think of is not satisfactory. They can't say that this is not part of the moral standard created by their god and is just something that humans do because that would shoot down that premise that it is impossible without the involvement of a god to get mad at a chemical reaction. Another option I could see is to say that this god's moral standard is not perfect. I shouldn't need to state why that answer is problematic.
What I really want to talk about, though (which was only given a very brief mention in the linked video), is how they tend to bring up murder as their key example. The idea seems to be that since virtually every culture has prohibitions against murder that there must be a universal standard.
It always seems a bit silly to me because it should be blatantly obvious that there are numerous issues in which humans do not agree. A few excuses are made for this. For some, they try to claim that there only appears to be a difference, but if you take a closer look, there is no difference at all. One example of this I found in the book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist was about Hindus not killing cows. It isn't that Hindus have a different morality, see! It's because Hindus believe their grandmothers get reincarnated as cows and they don't believe in killing their grandmothers, just like you and me! I just find that jaw-droppingly stupid. (For one, while I'm not an expert on Hindu religion, I don't believe that's quite how it works. I had always thought the belief in reincarnation also included what they considered "lesser" animals that they have no problem killing.) A second example, also from that book, used the killing of so-called "witches." They excused that claiming that people thought these "witches" had killed people. That would imply they think capital punishment is acceptable. That, then, is problematic because they then need to explain why people disagree on capital punishment.
Getting back to murder, it's just not true that this is universal in quite the way that they claim. Most cultures are absolutely fine with murdering people they deem to be enemies. Oh, but I suppose that goes back to the idea of capital punishment. I'm going to suspect that they don't call that "murder;" that's just "killing." "Murder," you see, is an unjustified killing, but all these other forms are totally justified. Or so they would claim. I'm darn near rolling my eyes just writing this over how weaselly Christians can be about their claims. It's not only that their claims are silly, but they are a bit frightening as well when I think at how easily they can find justifications for killing people...and then turn around making these claims that one needs religion to be moral.
Yet, as I have suggested, figuring out murder isn't all that hard. We can work it out with only just a few premises:
1. I don't have a desire to die anytime soon.
2. The family members of a person who is murdered often wish to seek revenge, often in a form of "an eye for an eye" type of revenge.
From here, we can then figure out that if I were to kill someone, then others would want to kill me. I don't want that happening because I don't want to die anytime soon. So, if I don't want that to happen, what should I not do? Right! I shouldn't murder!!! Pretty frickin simple.
What would probably happen now is the Christian will engage in a tactic called "shifting the goal posts." They'll likely now assert that it is because of their god that I have that desire not to die and/or it is because of their god that people seek revenge. At such a point, I'm most certainly done engaging. If a person comes to me with a claim and I show their claim to be bogus, they don't get to readjust their claim. If that was really their argument, they should have started there in the first place. That they didn't says to me that they are just trying to fit their god into the equation anyway that they can. Much like I said near the beginning of this post, it shows that they are beholden to the idea of a god and are not actually open minded. I'm not interested in carrying on such dishonest discussion.
* I also love how they use loaded terminology to make their points. Go ahead and look up "accident" in a dictionary. While you can probably find some definitions that fit what he's trying to describe, the more common definitions of "accident" refer to an event being unfortunate. That, though, seems to be the point of using such language...get your audience to react with a "I'm not an accident!!!" emotional response as opposed to a rational response.
I also want to bring up another odd argument Christians will sometimes use, which is to compare morality to math. I suppose the idea here is that they would think most people would agree that math is universal. Therefore, if they can make morality seem much like math, then one would have to agree that morality is universal, too. This comes from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity where he is quoted as follows: "Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five."
In order to be making such a comparison, though, he would need to think that a god is necessary for two plus two to equal four. Seriously? He thought it takes a god for two sets of two objects to produce four objects? That's just mind boggling. What that says to me is that this person is so predisposed to the existence of god that they may be beyond the capability to be reasoned out of that belief. (It also suggests that they think that anything universal must come from a god. Yet, they don't really bother proving that premise, which is largely why such arguments don't phase me. In order to be comparing morality to math to show that morality comes from a god, they also need to demonstrate that math comes from a god.)
On a side note, C. S. Lewis is said to have been an atheist at some point of his life, so one might argue that he wasn't predisposed to the existence of god. I disagree. While I'll accept this claim that he was an atheist, he has also been said to have been "mad at God for not existing." It would seem to me that he was an atheist predisposed to believing in a god, even if he couldn't actually convince himself at the time. In short, one need not actually believe in the thing they are predisposed to believing.
This all just got me to thinking how often I hear morality used as an assertion for the existence of god...people flat out saying that I'm wrong because of this. (Or people saying that religion is required for morality.) But, really, morality, at a basic level, is actually quite simple...if one would bother to put thought into it. So whenever I hear some Christian bring up morality and making claims such as this, I'm often at a loss for what to say because they essentially lead me to suspect that they've just gobbled up what their pastor has told them at church without giving it a second thought. Is it really worth my time to engage? Because their minds seem rather closed off to the topic.
Also, they seem to be really selective in their examples. By which I mean they select examples that would seem to prove their point while avoiding often numerous examples that don't. Jason Lisle uses an example of baking powder, saying, "What one chemical accident does to another is morally irrelevant. I mean when baking soda and vinegar react and they fizz up...that's just what they do. You don' get mad at the baking soda." The idea here being that without a god and us just being a chemical "accident,"* it doesn't make sense to get mad at an accident.
Except we do. I can quickly think of numerous counter examples: People getting upset at a tornado ripping up their town. People getting upset at a rain storm(s) for causing flooding. People getting upset with tectonic plates for causing earthquakes. Etc, etc, etc. Sure, they're not upset with those things in the same way they'd be upset with people, but that has to do more with the difference in the sentience of the thing they are mad at. The point here is that people do get upset over chemical accidents. (It is also worth pointing out that people speak of "Mother Nature" as though nature were sentient.)
I find it rather obvious why Lisle does not use those examples. He's saying since getting mad at chemical reactions is not rational that a god is necessary to create a moral standard in order for us to be mad at other human beings. Now, here's the question he doesn't want you to ask: "Why would god set up a moral standard in such a way that we'd get mad at inanimate objects?"
Any answer I can think of is not satisfactory. They can't say that this is not part of the moral standard created by their god and is just something that humans do because that would shoot down that premise that it is impossible without the involvement of a god to get mad at a chemical reaction. Another option I could see is to say that this god's moral standard is not perfect. I shouldn't need to state why that answer is problematic.
What I really want to talk about, though (which was only given a very brief mention in the linked video), is how they tend to bring up murder as their key example. The idea seems to be that since virtually every culture has prohibitions against murder that there must be a universal standard.
It always seems a bit silly to me because it should be blatantly obvious that there are numerous issues in which humans do not agree. A few excuses are made for this. For some, they try to claim that there only appears to be a difference, but if you take a closer look, there is no difference at all. One example of this I found in the book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist was about Hindus not killing cows. It isn't that Hindus have a different morality, see! It's because Hindus believe their grandmothers get reincarnated as cows and they don't believe in killing their grandmothers, just like you and me! I just find that jaw-droppingly stupid. (For one, while I'm not an expert on Hindu religion, I don't believe that's quite how it works. I had always thought the belief in reincarnation also included what they considered "lesser" animals that they have no problem killing.) A second example, also from that book, used the killing of so-called "witches." They excused that claiming that people thought these "witches" had killed people. That would imply they think capital punishment is acceptable. That, then, is problematic because they then need to explain why people disagree on capital punishment.
Getting back to murder, it's just not true that this is universal in quite the way that they claim. Most cultures are absolutely fine with murdering people they deem to be enemies. Oh, but I suppose that goes back to the idea of capital punishment. I'm going to suspect that they don't call that "murder;" that's just "killing." "Murder," you see, is an unjustified killing, but all these other forms are totally justified. Or so they would claim. I'm darn near rolling my eyes just writing this over how weaselly Christians can be about their claims. It's not only that their claims are silly, but they are a bit frightening as well when I think at how easily they can find justifications for killing people...and then turn around making these claims that one needs religion to be moral.
Yet, as I have suggested, figuring out murder isn't all that hard. We can work it out with only just a few premises:
1. I don't have a desire to die anytime soon.
2. The family members of a person who is murdered often wish to seek revenge, often in a form of "an eye for an eye" type of revenge.
From here, we can then figure out that if I were to kill someone, then others would want to kill me. I don't want that happening because I don't want to die anytime soon. So, if I don't want that to happen, what should I not do? Right! I shouldn't murder!!! Pretty frickin simple.
What would probably happen now is the Christian will engage in a tactic called "shifting the goal posts." They'll likely now assert that it is because of their god that I have that desire not to die and/or it is because of their god that people seek revenge. At such a point, I'm most certainly done engaging. If a person comes to me with a claim and I show their claim to be bogus, they don't get to readjust their claim. If that was really their argument, they should have started there in the first place. That they didn't says to me that they are just trying to fit their god into the equation anyway that they can. Much like I said near the beginning of this post, it shows that they are beholden to the idea of a god and are not actually open minded. I'm not interested in carrying on such dishonest discussion.
* I also love how they use loaded terminology to make their points. Go ahead and look up "accident" in a dictionary. While you can probably find some definitions that fit what he's trying to describe, the more common definitions of "accident" refer to an event being unfortunate. That, though, seems to be the point of using such language...get your audience to react with a "I'm not an accident!!!" emotional response as opposed to a rational response.
I also want to bring up another odd argument Christians will sometimes use, which is to compare morality to math. I suppose the idea here is that they would think most people would agree that math is universal. Therefore, if they can make morality seem much like math, then one would have to agree that morality is universal, too. This comes from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity where he is quoted as follows: "Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five."
In order to be making such a comparison, though, he would need to think that a god is necessary for two plus two to equal four. Seriously? He thought it takes a god for two sets of two objects to produce four objects? That's just mind boggling. What that says to me is that this person is so predisposed to the existence of god that they may be beyond the capability to be reasoned out of that belief. (It also suggests that they think that anything universal must come from a god. Yet, they don't really bother proving that premise, which is largely why such arguments don't phase me. In order to be comparing morality to math to show that morality comes from a god, they also need to demonstrate that math comes from a god.)
On a side note, C. S. Lewis is said to have been an atheist at some point of his life, so one might argue that he wasn't predisposed to the existence of god. I disagree. While I'll accept this claim that he was an atheist, he has also been said to have been "mad at God for not existing." It would seem to me that he was an atheist predisposed to believing in a god, even if he couldn't actually convince himself at the time. In short, one need not actually believe in the thing they are predisposed to believing.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Thanks for Contributing to Your Ideologies Demise (I hope)!
A coworker of mine (who, thankfully, I don't actually have to interact with) seems to be quite conservative in his political views. His cubicle is next to mine, so I am able to eavesdrop when he has political conversations. Yesterday (which, by the time I actually got around to publishing this post, was three weeks ago) was one of those days. My attention was grabbed when he said something about how "people are going to have to accept reality." That was ironic, since he has said things in the past to suggest he is an Anthropogenic Global Warming denier.
The irony didn't stop there, to no surprise. At this point, I must pause to say that I am getting posts out of order. I've been meaning to respond to Mitt Romney's 47% comments (and now his "gifts" comment), but have not done so. Some of the things I am about to say should have links to reference my sources. I'm linking things in that other post, so watch for that later. (Update: Ehh...so I'm getting quite lazy about this whole blogging thing. That post is bound to never show up.) As you can figure out, my cubicle neighbor was spouting off similar comments.
At the time, I found it frustrating. Honestly, I felt that way for a few hours. Then I considered how immoral it all was. Those thoughts helped turn that frown upside down! I think there are a lot of people, such as myself, who see the hideousness of the conservative propaganda when we realize that the means conservatives propose don't match the claimed goal. Eventually, we can conclude that the conservatives may not be sincere with what they claim those goals to be.
Now what the hell am I talking about? It is this idea that a large portion of the population are lazy and are just mooching* off the government and want to continue government programs so that they can continue to mooch. This is much what my cubicle neighbor was claiming. The phrasing he used a couple of times was that the "social safety nets have become a hammock**."
There are many problems with this. One being that a lot of that safety net money goes to states that tend to vote Republican. It should be the other way around. (Sure, Republicans could claim that it must be all the people who vote Democratic in their state that receive that money, but I don't buy it. This is in part because Social Security and Medicare make up a lot of that "moocher" money, which goes to senior citizens who tend to vote Republican. And it fails to explain why the states with larger numbers of liberal voters aren't bigger on the "moocher" money.) The biggest problem is that this is simply a lie. Now, I grant that there are indeed people who do live off the "government dole," as he put it. I have met such people***. But they seem to be a small minority. There are a number of people who do work, but don't earn enough to make a living.
Take some time to grab a calculator if you need, and let's do some math! Currently, federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Let's say you work 40 hours per week at that wage. In a year's time, you will make $7.25/hour * 40 hours/week * 52 weeks/year which amounts to a whopping $15,080/year. Apparently, this is near the 2012 poverty guideline for a household of two, but... Damn. That's not a lot of money****. And what if you were a single parent making that wage? You'd be living in poverty and you would qualify for that dole money. Similarly, if we talk about people who are getting by on unemployment, I have heard the average unemployment benefits are just under $300 per week. At a full year, that again is only about $15,000. Who's going to be chilling on a hammock making that?
So the conservative propaganda begins by painting a picture that does not match reality. This in itself could be forgiven if the conservative were willing to be educated on what life really is like for those supposedly mooching on the dole. But it gets worse. I sometimes hear conservatives demand that people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (as Steven Colbert often says to satirize conservative ideology), but they then take away a person's bootstraps! I wrote above about the minimum wage. You could be trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but if the best job you can get (if you can get one at all) only pays that minimum wage, that is going to be extra difficult. Wouldn't it help if the minimum wage were higher? Yet, conservatives tend to be against increasing the minimum wage or sometimes even having a minimum wage. (Admittedly, I do not know the views of my coworker on this issue.) I could perhaps forgive this, too, if the argument were that people need to demand better wages for themselves instead of having the government set wages for them. Well, one of the best ways to do this is to form unions. But guess what? Conservatives tend to be against unions, too!
This is the hideousness of conservatism. If a poor person receives any government assistance, they are considered a moocher and are told to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But then conservatives turn around and make that task more difficult! It's as though they don't really want these people to pick themselves up at all. That, my reader, is the immorality of conservatism. I think there are a lot of people out there that have picked up on this. Unfortunately, it may be because so many have been impacted directly by this immorality.
* This should have been the first clue that their ideology is immoral. Calling poor people lazy is their way of justifying their ideology. They realize that it is immoral not to help people, so they have to paint the picture that these poor people don't actually want help to explain why they won't help.
** When originally telling my wife this story, I claimed he said it was a cot. My memory is thus not completely reliable. But I find it safe to conclude that he must have either said or intended to say hammock.
*** And I wouldn't necessarily call what they do "living." For those who truly are living on the dole, it's not the cozy lifestyle of relaxing in a hammock that he implies.
**** It is important to consider, too, that this guy is a senior engineer...been with the company for years. I don't know exactly which level he is at, but it looks like he could be making anywhere from $63,800 to $142,100. I expect his earnings would be more in the middle of that. So here is this guy perhaps making $100,000 a year (plus he has health care!) calling the people who make $15,000 a year (who may not have health care) moochers. Fuck that shit.
The irony didn't stop there, to no surprise. At this point, I must pause to say that I am getting posts out of order. I've been meaning to respond to Mitt Romney's 47% comments (and now his "gifts" comment), but have not done so. Some of the things I am about to say should have links to reference my sources. I'm linking things in that other post, so watch for that later. (Update: Ehh...so I'm getting quite lazy about this whole blogging thing. That post is bound to never show up.) As you can figure out, my cubicle neighbor was spouting off similar comments.
At the time, I found it frustrating. Honestly, I felt that way for a few hours. Then I considered how immoral it all was. Those thoughts helped turn that frown upside down! I think there are a lot of people, such as myself, who see the hideousness of the conservative propaganda when we realize that the means conservatives propose don't match the claimed goal. Eventually, we can conclude that the conservatives may not be sincere with what they claim those goals to be.
There are many problems with this. One being that a lot of that safety net money goes to states that tend to vote Republican. It should be the other way around. (Sure, Republicans could claim that it must be all the people who vote Democratic in their state that receive that money, but I don't buy it. This is in part because Social Security and Medicare make up a lot of that "moocher" money, which goes to senior citizens who tend to vote Republican. And it fails to explain why the states with larger numbers of liberal voters aren't bigger on the "moocher" money.) The biggest problem is that this is simply a lie. Now, I grant that there are indeed people who do live off the "government dole," as he put it. I have met such people***. But they seem to be a small minority. There are a number of people who do work, but don't earn enough to make a living.
Take some time to grab a calculator if you need, and let's do some math! Currently, federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Let's say you work 40 hours per week at that wage. In a year's time, you will make $7.25/hour * 40 hours/week * 52 weeks/year which amounts to a whopping $15,080/year. Apparently, this is near the 2012 poverty guideline for a household of two, but... Damn. That's not a lot of money****. And what if you were a single parent making that wage? You'd be living in poverty and you would qualify for that dole money. Similarly, if we talk about people who are getting by on unemployment, I have heard the average unemployment benefits are just under $300 per week. At a full year, that again is only about $15,000. Who's going to be chilling on a hammock making that?
So the conservative propaganda begins by painting a picture that does not match reality. This in itself could be forgiven if the conservative were willing to be educated on what life really is like for those supposedly mooching on the dole. But it gets worse. I sometimes hear conservatives demand that people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (as Steven Colbert often says to satirize conservative ideology), but they then take away a person's bootstraps! I wrote above about the minimum wage. You could be trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but if the best job you can get (if you can get one at all) only pays that minimum wage, that is going to be extra difficult. Wouldn't it help if the minimum wage were higher? Yet, conservatives tend to be against increasing the minimum wage or sometimes even having a minimum wage. (Admittedly, I do not know the views of my coworker on this issue.) I could perhaps forgive this, too, if the argument were that people need to demand better wages for themselves instead of having the government set wages for them. Well, one of the best ways to do this is to form unions. But guess what? Conservatives tend to be against unions, too!
This is the hideousness of conservatism. If a poor person receives any government assistance, they are considered a moocher and are told to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But then conservatives turn around and make that task more difficult! It's as though they don't really want these people to pick themselves up at all. That, my reader, is the immorality of conservatism. I think there are a lot of people out there that have picked up on this. Unfortunately, it may be because so many have been impacted directly by this immorality.
* This should have been the first clue that their ideology is immoral. Calling poor people lazy is their way of justifying their ideology. They realize that it is immoral not to help people, so they have to paint the picture that these poor people don't actually want help to explain why they won't help.
** When originally telling my wife this story, I claimed he said it was a cot. My memory is thus not completely reliable. But I find it safe to conclude that he must have either said or intended to say hammock.
*** And I wouldn't necessarily call what they do "living." For those who truly are living on the dole, it's not the cozy lifestyle of relaxing in a hammock that he implies.
**** It is important to consider, too, that this guy is a senior engineer...been with the company for years. I don't know exactly which level he is at, but it looks like he could be making anywhere from $63,800 to $142,100. I expect his earnings would be more in the middle of that. So here is this guy perhaps making $100,000 a year (plus he has health care!) calling the people who make $15,000 a year (who may not have health care) moochers. Fuck that shit.
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