I think you've nailed it (and hope you get modded up). Just to take one example: in my experience, one of the reasons a lot of highly creative people use drugs is because it offers a way of temporarily reducing the amount of sensory input they're getting from the world. Paradoxically enough, some drugs also offer a way of temporarily turning off those filters!

Most geniuses struggle to find the right balance between being overwhelmed by the intensity of their experience of the world, and being intellectually limited by the conceptual structures we use to filter that experience. It's a perpetual balancing act: tip too far one way and genius is blunted by banality and preconception; tip too far the other way and you get madness, autism, and other phenomena associated with malfunctioning "filters".

"A black Chicago-area teenager has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly beating a 19-year-old white youth during a robbery because he was angry about the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Chicago Tribune reports."

But the other side of the Kitty Genovese case is that the media constructed a narrative -- "38 people watched and did nothing" -- that demonstrably wasn't based in fact. There were maybe 2-3 people who (probably) knowingly ignored it, and at least one who tried to help. Most of them had no idea of what was going on.

It's worth thinking about why the story became what it did. From the media's point of view, mayhem sells -- "if it bleeds, it leads" -- and a ghastly, horrifying story is made all the more attractive when you add the "38 witnesses" angle. From a political point of view, there are certain...advantages...to making people feel fearful, cynical, and isolated. When you combine that with the right mix of anger and indignation, it can be very useful indeed.

Maybe if you believe no one cares, it's partly because the people who control the narrative want you to believe that no one cares.

I think its importance is somewhat overstated. Albert Speer, who was practically Hitler's second-in-command during much of the war, eventually admitted that he'd never actually read it.

(Then again, plenty of self-described Christians throughout history have never actually read the Bible, either because they weren't literate in its language or because they only feel the need to internalize those parts of Scripture that reinforce their existing beliefs.)

False.

It isn't worse, and AFAIK, the law as written doesn't make any claim to that effect. If a white hipster moves into a poor black urban neighborhood, and a bunch of black teens beat the shit out of him and tell him "Your kind don't belong on this side of town", then they should -- they must -- be prosecuted under hate-crime legislation. Their lives should be destroyed; they should lose their youth, and a good chunk of their adulthood, to prison; they should be subject to the full power of the penal system.

And -- just to be clear -- the exact same thing should happen to white kids who beat up black newcomers. Racially motivated violence is a dagger thrust at the heart of a civil, egalitarian society; it endangers its very premises. So the point is to send a message to everyone who feels even the whisper of a temptation to pull this crap, and the message is: try it, and we will fucking wreck you.

Look, it's not a big secret that most people are reluctant to talk about the fact that a lot of black-on-white crime is racially motivated, or at least has a strong racial subtext. It wouldn't surprise me if police departments and DAs are reluctant to use hate crime laws against black perps for fear of touching off a shitstorm. (Not to mention that in some urban areas, a lot of the power brokers are black, not white.)

That said, it doesn't really have anything to do with hate-crime laws, which offer the same penalties regardless of the targeted race AFAIK. It'd be unconstitutional to write a law that said that white-on-black crime was "worse" than black-on-white crime, or vice versa. But as we all know, there are places in the US where people find every possible reason to excuse the behavior of black criminals, blaming everything they do on poverty or racism or whatever...

...and then, there are other places in the US where law-abiding, middle-class black citizens are openly threatened by the local authorities, and told that if they stick around after the sun goes down, their lives may be forfeit.

So maybe it all sort of balances out -- not that that means much to the victims of any of these crimes.

It didn't cure my friend who was addicted, but then again she'd had one since birth.

Yes, one of these days our fearless mods will learn not to meddle. Me, I remember a day when things were different -- and it would be so nice if we could let there be more light humor and, well, free-for-all (when you're in the mood, anyway), and have fewer people burning bridges wherever they go. I'm just biding my time until then.

I think you're overreacting a bit with that wall of text. My point was simply this: if you look for the hole in the doughnut, you're always going to find it.

Your post makes a couple decisions in terms of perspective: you make a point of linking Buffett's charitable donations to doing penance for his infidelity, and you choose to look at the BMG's time limit as a bad thing. (One could as easily say that it prevents the board members from endlessly finding excuses to reinvest the money and dedicating their energies to the foundation as an end-in-itself, rather than doing the maximum good possible in the short- to medium-term.)

In short, you choose to put a negative spin on things. Fine, that's your prerogative. But what's the endgame for that mode of thinking? What good things come from taking that stance? It's worth thinking critically about the way we choose to talk about things, and exactly what we're trying to accomplish.

My post was directed at your words, not your person; I have no opinion on you, your merits as a human being, or your absolute or relative level of bitterness. Nor do I worship at the altar of "the great Messr Gates and Buffett". When they do good, I appplaud them; when they pull meretricious crap, I do the opposite.

I just find that there's a lot of purer-than-thou rhetoric going around in the world, most of which boils down to "Nothing anyone ever does is good enough, and everyone's actions can be faulted if we look hard enough". And TBH, I think the notion -- implicit in your post -- that "real" charity has to be anonymous is an example of that purer-than-thou attitude, and ultimately doesn't accomplish anything positive.

Eh, I don't like this argument. If you go looking for it, you can find a potential ulterior motive for just about anything anyone does, and a reason to belittle anyone's efforts. But most people I know who choose to live their life from that perspective -- everyone is corrupt and in it for themselves; nothing is genuinely altruistic; everyone has a damning skeleton in their closet that proves they're really a worthless piece of crap; etc. -- wind up bitter and miserable at best.

Everything we do in life is inevitably flawed and ridiculous; every effort we make to help is compromised by our own shortsightedness and humanity. But all that is still better than being so fixated on being "perfect" and unimpeachable that you never do anything positive at all, and turn into Waldorf & Statler instead.

"We have top minds working on it now."

"Who?"

"Top. Minds."

Out of curiosity, what was the lesson?

(I'm not being a wiseass BTW. Just wondering how that experience has changed your behavior since then -- mainly, how you've protected yourself from having the same thing happen again, while still doing first-rate work in an efficient manner.)

To me, his description doesn't sound like happiness, or even contentment, but more like someone who's adjusted to a kind of anethestized, depressed state, in which life is all rather grey and solitary.

In some ways that's still a better life than the majority of humanity has -- but IMHO, it still sounds like he-e-e-e-e-e has become comfortably numb.

Absolutely. Speaking from my own experience, one of the things I knew was a potential issue before I started seeing my current girlfriend was that she was pretty dead-set against having kids. I wasn't (and am not) in a rush to have them, and would rather wait until my life, career, and finances are more settled than they are now -- but I certainly lean much more towards "yes" than "no" on the subject, and the thought of potentially never having kids was a downer. But I was super-attracted to her on multiple levels, so it wasn't a dealbreaker.

As it happens, she's gotten more open to it over the past few years, not through any attempt on my part to "convince" her but just through organic changes in perspective. We'll see what happens. Having a kid would be terrifying and life-changing, but it could also be incredibly profound and enriching. (Or the kid could turn out to be a cruel, ugly, stupid jerk, and then that'd be pretty terrible.)

Meanwhile, I know some married men who are older and childless, and are brokenhearted that they never had kids. But everyone's different, and if you know you're not cut out to be a dad, or don't want to ever be one, then you definitely shouldn't be.

Either way I wouldn't assume that other guys are bullshitting when they say they want kids; it's uncomfortably reminiscent of the way that sociopaths say that everyone else is like them, and don't actually have feelings or emotions, but are just pretending. (Not saying you're a sociopath since a sociopath would be indifferent to the "moral obligation" you mention, but...it's just not a good look.)