leafee
You might as well use a different broad category - say 'foreigner' and whatever you say (erosion of society's values etc.) would hold true in general. Then you could draw the conclusion that foreigners are causing the social disruption and so any immigration is to be resisted.
Basically what I'm saying is, if you point to specific values that you respect and that are being eroded (e.g. 'I dont like immigrants that dont support womens rights') it may be better received than if you transfer the blame to a generic broad category, specially along religion or race, because then you might appear to be a racist.
Could you give a specific example here, as others have asked?
I don't doubt that you feel this way. As an immigrant into the US I initially felt there is too much political correctness going on, which prevented some people from expressing their thoughts clearly, which is never good.
But in terms of culture, I am surrounded by, and happily participate in the celebration of American culture. For instance, just to name a few things:
- trick or treating in costume with my kids on Halloween - pumpkin carving - lots of bbq-ing in the summer - incredible amount of decoration, shopping and eating during the holidays, Christmas trees - meeting extended family in thanksgiving, eating turkey - wearing green on St Patty's day (not sure if that counts)
I also don't meet any Americans who are apologetic about any of these types of cultural expressions. I could argue that diversity and celebration of foreign culture is also a distinctively American trait, but that is a separate point.
So my question again would be - can you give an example of a cultural expression or tradition which you would like to see continued, but is disappearing, perhaps due to media pressure from the left?
Not at all. Would you stay Christians want creationism to be taught in schools and not evolution? Would you say Christians are anti-abortion and anti Gay marriage?
But what this does is adds cost to doing business secretly in cash. Also it increases the threat of government taking another bold move in the future to flush out more stores of black money. Basically, it increases the risk of operating outside official accounting, making that option more scary and less appealing.
Watch for real estate crash in New Delhi. On paper there wont be a crash but sharp growth, because the declared transaction value is about 40% of the real transactions, the remaining being in cash. With this move, declared values will move up, while actual values will move down.
Citation needed.
The idea is if you have very large sums of money stashed away in cash, you're now forced to deposit it into a bank and reveal it. If you're not comfortable doing that, you're basically going to lose your money.
Reported PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have reached new records. One newspaper showed that the levels for some metrics are how high that the usual meters are all maxed out and can't even measure it.
I think many people in India, who consider themselves to have morally 'good' - wouldn't bat an eyelid while offering bribes. They don't get push back from peers either. What irked in India is when you try to do the right thing - i.e. not take the corruption shortcut - my peers would tell me I'm stupid or naive or something to that effect. In the US if I say that I attempted corruption, my peers will probably tell me I'm morally depraved. So you need a critical mass of people that enforce and most people just follow along.
So what about those original experiences? How are they important at all if there is nothing to associate them with?
I think this is an excellent point. I like your example with colors, which shows that there is a difference between seeing (i.e. experiencing) colors and producing symbols which give the impression that an entity can see colors.
I don't follow any argument that proposed that computers can be conscious but other machines (e.g. car engines) cannot. In the end, symbols don't really exist in physical reality - all that exists is physical 'stuff' - atoms, electrons, photons etc. interacting with each other. So how can we say that one ball of stuff is conscious but another is not? And why isn't all of the stuff together also conscious? Why not just admit we don't know yet?
Consciousness may be hard to define, but lets take something simpler - experience, or even more specifically - pain. I can feel pain. While I can't be 100% sure, I believe other humans feel pain as well. However I don't believe my laptop has the capacity to feel pain, irrespective of how many times and in how many languages it can say 'I feel pain'.
Perhaps the ability to experience is the defining characteristic of consciousness?