Russian feet in the door

I appreciate the email last night the explained how Russia had promised to honor Ukraine's sovereignty in return for Ukraine handing over its nuclear weapons.

It would seem once the Russians got that danger out of the way they had no intention of keeping their side of it.  They just needed to wait a decent interval and for something to take place that gave them an excuse.  (I also note an unsettling tendency of Russian authorities here and there casually mentioning that Russia still has nuclear weapons -- lots of them).

Russia seems to be in the business of setting up small enclaves out of parts of former USSR republics.  It has done it in Moldova and Georgia and now apparently will in Ukraine.  They find an area where, because of Stalin's brutality, Russian ethnics predominate, and force the creation there of a separate political entity, controlled, however, by Russia.  These are basically criminal regimes run by criminals with no legitimacy or international legality.

There is a temptation to think the locals should be allowed to make the decision, but this cannot be allowed unless the sovereign country agrees to it (as with Czechoslovakia).  Otherwise the world will end up with no end of ethnic groups and sub-groups, majority or not, clamoring for independence.  One can imagine the Navajo setting up their own state in the U.S. Southwest.  A state, once legally constituted, can decide for itself whether it wants to divide itself up or not, but this cannot be imposed from outside and inhabitants who try to do this on their own can and should be suppressed.  (Of course here in the case of Ukraine they were being suppressed -- we have instead a foreign invasion -- come to think of it, that is what happened in Georgia too).

When one either moves or otherwise comes to be a citizen of another country, it is incumbent on that person to give up their loyalty to the mother country and be patriotic, loyal citizens of the new country.  That doesn't require giving up one's culture, at least right away (it usually happens naturally after a few generations).  People who do not do this but stick to loyalty to a foreign state set themselves up to become traitors.

Still, these enclaves present to Russia an excellent foot in the door for eventually gaining back its empire, although of course now it won't be Communist but more Fascist in nature.

East Ukraine

I begin to think Russia will first set up an East Ukraine rather than emulating Hitler and using nationalism to occupy the whole country.  That is good, but of course it means a hostile Ukraine (much more hostile now) will remain on its western border, so we will see.

Still, this East Ukraine, populated mostly by ethnic Russians, will be subservient, and probably quickly invite the presence of full-time Russian soldiers.

That would mean being, legally at least, an independent country, which has the small benefit of giving Russia another vote everywhere, but otherwise means nothing and can be undone any time with a simple annexation vote.  There is a dollop of hypocrisy here -- Putin can pull back and say he didn't invade and didn't annex, while in fact of course he effectively did.

It is, however, now probably the best possible solution, considering the rabid Russian nationalism we are seeing.  It is interesting that similar attitudes in Serbia gained them nothing -- I guess Russia is a bigger country.

Ukraine should have been left to work out its problems on its own, but Putin saw personal political advantage domestically, and went on to prove that he is without scruple or honor.

Atheism

There are several kinds of definition of what an atheist is, used by different groups to give them a debating advantage.

Probably the worst is that atheism is a religion of no God.  That is as far as I can tell absurd.  Religion, except for a couple of them originating in India, is all about gods, and these two (that I know of that don't have gods or at least don't assert them) are religions on their own -- not a "religion" of atheism.

No.  Atheism is not even a belief to most people, but just an opinion, albeit usually a strongly held opinion.  The way I would put it is that I am as sure that there is no God as I can be sure of anything, the world being such that one is never absolutely sure about anything.

Of course those who are truly on the fence, who doubt there is a God but have strong doubts about that doubt, who are usually called agnostics.  There is an important distinction here.  The agnostic is on the fence; the atheist may admit a remote possibility but is pretty damn sure.  The atheist only sees the fence but is nowhere near it.

There is a sense in which agnostics could be classed as a type of atheist, if one defines atheism as "no God" since the usual off-the-cuff definition is one who does not believe in God, and the agnostic does not believe -- he or she is just more unsure than the more typical atheist.

Back to the really bad definition of atheism as a religion.  The reason religionists like that definition is then they can say it is just a belief, like other beliefs, and one is not more valid than another -- we just choose.  The thing is these people believe because they want to believe, and maybe even cannot imagine not believing, generally because they were taught to believe in childhood and hence are fully indoctrinated (religions like to get the children before the children are mature enough to think for themselves and with full rationality).

The atheist on the other hand takes the view that although one cannot prove a negative, if one wants to assert something important one must have proof, or at least lots and lots of evidence.  It then becomes a matter of looking at the evidence present that God exists and coming to the conclusion that it is all wishful thinking and doesn't hold any water at all and that there is really no persuasive or even slightly convincing evidence.  The heavens do not declare the glory of God, nor does nature.  There are no asterisms spelling out the Tetragrammaton.

Absence of evidence in favor of an important assertion logically requires a negative conclusion.  An honest person does not accept things because one likes them or because one wants to or because one wants to go to Heaven or because one's parents and culture believes it.  The only honest way to think something is true is because one is persuaded by an honest investigation of the arguments (not just reading theist stuff).

Would you believe it, so far I have not tried to define "God," usually the first question in this sort of discussion.  There is God and there are gods.  To me the former has to be, to be God, omni- various things, such as omnipotent and omniscient.  Omnipresent or omnibenificient would count but aren't necessary.  Even a transcendent, spiritual being would be something like an angel or superman, not God.

This leads to the self-referential contradictions we have known about since the Middle Ages, having to do with whether or not God can make a rock so big he can't move it or whether or not we can really have free will, and not just an illusion, if God knows all the future (these are two different issues and theists have differing approaches, but I want to keep this fairly simple).

The way the theist tends to deal with this sort of thing is simply by saying that God can do anything except something impossible for God to do.  Think about that for a minute.  That has got to be one of the great cop-outs of all time.  Besides, I can do anything except something impossible for me to do, so am I God?  No.

What the theists do to get around their logical contradictions is to make God into a god.  Zeus can do a lot of things too, but not those things he can't do.

Trying to fix representative democracy

Yesterday, in the context of how copyright laws have come to be so absurd and hurt the public and defeat the reason they exist, I made a strong attack on the distortions money and press access have on the legislative procedure, to the effect that I have abandoned hope in democracy.

This is largely true, except as Churchill once noted, it is hard to come up with a viable alternative that doesn't risk dictatorship (not that democracies don't generally evolved into dictatorships too, or at least societies where people have little freedom).

Several things.  First, the legal profession has to be prevented from controlling things.  Lawyers are generally disliked everywhere for good reason, although there are good lawyers, there are an awful lot who do much more harm than good, but that is for another blog.

The issue here is that they tend to, as a profession, dominate legislative processes, and their solution to everything is to complicate the law.  Society ends up with more and more regulation and regulators and bureaucrats and litigation and in the end vast amounts of corruption needed to function at all.

They also of course routinely act in their personal interest, so we have laws about things like "practicing law without a license" and an utter inability of legislatures to get litigation under any reasonable control.

So the first thing I think needs doing is to ban any member of the legal profession from politics, or anyone who has been in the past.

Another thing is pork.  One approach might be to let the executive make the budget and the legislature either approve or disapprove, up or down, with no amendments.  A lot of pork can be dealt with by having at-large representation in the legislature, with staggered terms.

That still doesn't eliminate it as the executive will have to make compromises in order to get the budget passed, and the executive itself will probably have its own bits of corruption.  (Yes pork is corruption -- we need to recognize it for what it is.)  This also seems putting a lot of power in the executive's hands, so institutional checks here need to be thought up.

Of course largely the root of the problem is the voter.  They vote for all sorts of silly reasons, although more often in their selfish interest or based on the position of the candidate on a limited range of issues.  So candidates lie or take bad positions just to get elected.  Or, even worse, ideologues get elected, and some really stupid people who don't understand the real world and function from within an ideology or even a religion.

The thing is the voter has little choice.  He or she only can assess the candidate by the campaign and what and how they say things, and this is so easily manipulated.  Negative campaign adds, for example, have been shown to be effective over and over, when in fact it should drive voters into the camp of the person being attacked.

A much more limited voter roll seems needed -- one where stability and education and reasonableness and so on are considered when one applies for the franchise.  Of course such things inevitably get used to keep groups, such as racial minorities, from having a say, so it would have to be much more complicated than just a board reviewing applications and more automated.

Then the voters are a small number who can get to know the candidate personally and who know what is going on.

I suspect my views are just too radical for most people, and smack of Platonic ideas and of course of Leninism, although there are differences.  One thing is I would have the whole thing non-partisan and eliminate political parties (which have the effect of turning elections into sporting events).

Of course no system is perfect, and all can be criticized, but it seems to me we are so badly governed nowadays in most countries that something pretty radical needs to be done.





 

Assessing scientific studies

How does one deal with a "scientific study" that contradicts what you know or that seems improbable or that supports ideas that are usually rejected as pseudo-science?

The fact is a lot of "studies" aren't really and are either outright lies or contrived to "prove" what people want to prove.  The ordinary person is not really able to assess such things, since even "peer reviewed" is more and more becoming meaningless (except for of course certain publications, but getting them and reading the original article is not terribly useful for all the jargon).

Generally even these reputable studies get misused and misinterpreted by both marketers and the press.

So what to do?  I don't really know, except be aware and as informed as possible and generally follow what the scientific consensus seems to be.

Where is Mozart?

One of the problems I perceive with traditional Buddhist (and Hindu) rebirth (mislabeled "reincarnation") teaching is where is Mozart?  He should have been reborn several times now.

The thing is his voice is unique.  From earliest age his compositions are recognizable as his.  This is true of many composers and artists and writers, but Mozart makes the best example.

So why haven't there been several Mozart's in history?  Is all of that lost in the rebirth process -- if so what is the point? 

All sorts of rationalizations are possible, of course, but wouldn't it be nice if there were at least one clear example of the rebirth of an identifiable talent? 

Eternal life

I read an item in one of the scientific web sites to the effect living forever is impossible.  The basis was a survey of the age of death of the very oldest, and while lifetimes have been getting longer, this maximum age has not.  Therefore no matter how good medical care and so on get, there is a maximum age.

While I agree living forever is impossible, this evidence draws the wrong conclusion.  We age for some unknown complex of reasons, but each species seems to have a different and evolving maximum age, and there is no reason for that not to apply to us.  There are biological reasons we age and die, and each species reflects these in accordance to its lifestyle and the normal age of death from disease or predation.  That humans overcome these would remove the biological reason for aging and dying, and we would expect maximum lifetimes to slowly increase -- but on evolutionary terms this would require thousands or millions of years, not the short time of the observations.

The important thing here is that the fact that maximum age varies from species to species tells us it is not inherent but evolved, and that therefore there ought to be ways to interfere with it.  

The reason living forever is impossible is simple -- one may never die but at the same time one has never reached infinite age.  One may be a million or billion or gazillion years old, but never infinite.

One day the earth will become uninhabitable, a little later the solar system.  Humans will of course know it is coming and we presume will have the ability to go elsewhere.  Even orbiting a red dwarf, long-lived as they are, would someday have to come to an end.

There is reason to think, though, that space-time has unlimited low-entropy energy available -- this is after all how our present universe got its energy.  Just separate the positive and the negative keeping the total at zero.  So humanity could go on.

Back to nearer to us in time, what might a society where there is no aging and presumably very few if any deaths (technology would also steadily improve safety) be like?  One can imagine frightening scenarios -- say a Stalin was in power and would live on and on -- and other messes, but one can also imagine things being pretty nice.  Remove death and you also remove a lot of human angst.

Don't worry about overpopulation.  That particular worry is trivial.  If it came to it children would stop happening, but I think more likely humanity would expand.  It's a big universe.

Hamas lobbing its missiles

Maybe somebody will tell me why on earth Hamas persists in lobbing missiles into Israel when they achieve nothing except occasionally kill a toddler.  Israel will never stop what it's doing, and the rest of the world will not apply enough pressure to Israel to stop, so long as this is going on.  Hamas should know by now it achieves nothing, so why not try a different tactic?

As things are, Israel knows and gets daily proof, that if they let up they are to be destroyed.  So Hamas has condemned and continues to condemn Gaza and maybe all the Palestinians to miserable hovel lives of poverty and deprivation and danger.  Is this what they want?  Sheesh!  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

How do we know if something is right or wrong?

Yesterday the post about abortion pointed out that there is nothing immoral about a pregnant woman getting an abortion.  How can we know?  How do we know if anything is right or wrong?

The usual ways, such as how we feel about it, or what we've been taught by our religion, or what is legal, or what our conscience says, or what is traditional, while they all usually get it right and should therefore be thought about, in the end just do not work.  I don't know that it's necessary for me to go into all that -- they just don't work.  We need to have a rational basis for saying something is wrong, immoral.

Of course anything that happens has both right and wrong about it.  A volcano killing people is wrong, a volcano letting off pressure and fertilizing the soil and building land is doing right.  A lion killing its prey brutally and causing it a suffering, fearful death is doing wrong, a lion culling the herd and keeping it from ruining the environment and so on is doing right.

We don't make moral judgments in such situations because we argue doing good or causing suffering are not at issue -- volcanoes and lions cannot make right and wrong assessments and hence are not held to account.

Actually the same applies to people.  We may think we make our own decisions, but this is rarely really the case.  Most people act automatically according to instincts and personality and other factors and never really make a moral decision, although they could and in many cases where the decision is truly difficult they are forced to.

Therefore we can judge what others do no more than we can judge a volcano or a lion.  We don't know that they have actually made a conscious decision to be immoral, and if we think about it we know that is unlikely (although of course definitely possible).  We don't know the whole story and therefore cannot judge.

But we can judge ourselves.

Most of the time, presented with a moral question (a real one, not a hypothetical), we can see pluses and minus and have to decide whether the good outweighs the bad.  It turns out that some things are more wrong than others, even though both are wrong.  It depends on the suffering and harm we cause.  Lying to the Gestapo strikes me as harming the Gestapo, but almost certainly by making their job more difficult, and so is the thing to do, and rationally in that case telling the truth is morally wrong.

Of course this is a simple, if not simplistic, theory of ethics, but it has something to say for it that the traditional ethics don't have -- it is rational.  Do the good aspects outweigh the bad?  Most of the hypothetical situations people use to object to this depend on our gut feeling or one of the traditional tests to raise questions.  I think that is the wrong way to proceed.  That we don't like an outcome is not a rational basis for a decision.

There are however a couple of serious problems with it.  The first is the ability we have to fool ourselves and rationalize the goods as exceeding the harms when in fact this is not so.  The other is how do we know we have all the facts when in fact we know we surely don't?  Ain't easy, but if one is serious about being an ethical person the effort must be made and a decision must be reached.

Sticking my nose in the abortion debate

My "official" view use to be that abortions are morally wrong but not a serious enough "sin" to cause one much harm (karmically speaking if one thinks that way) except late term, and that the practical problems trying to make them illegal, along with the worse harms this can cause, is enough to say that the government should not involve itself.  For the most part government should not involve itself in personal moral decisions absent damn good reason to do so and then only if making the act illegal doesn't itself cause harm.  Abortion fails on both points.

I have changed my mind.  I no longer think an abortion immoral.  There is no logical basis for such a conclusion that bears scrutiny.  To be sure sentient beings must be accorded all possible compassion, but that does not go so far as to say one should never eat meat, and, besides, a fetus is barely if at all sentient.  A human being does not become sentient for quite a while even after birth.

Of course this opens one up to the question of whether infanticide should be legal, and for the most part, with a few exceptions, the answer has to be no, for the legal issue of defining murder, not for moral reasons.

Pregnant women who, for whatever reason, do not want the child are under no moral obligation, in my view, to carry it, and should not be told otherwise.  Part of the psychological harm done to girls who do have abortions are people's judgmentalism, which is misplaced and harmful.

In fact, I think girls having abortions, if they are to receive counseling, should not be to try to change their minds.  Such things should be illegal and open the person doing them to tort liability.  Instead, any counseling should be to the effect that it is not immoral, along with perhaps some training in contraception techniques.

Mistakes in my grammar

I was reading the comments on a web story and in one the person posting the post used the word "ain't."  The next post criticized that -- to the effect of learn good English.

Now we all know that "ain't" is tabu to some, although those who make a deal of it are only showing their own ignorance, as the word has excellent credentials in the language for several hundred years.

Still, nowadays it is usually used only for humor or for special attention, no doubt as a result of the complaints of blue-noses.

I make a lot of "mistakes" in my own posts, and usually they are on purpose.  "I is happy with that" says things that "I am happy with that" can't, depending on context.  However, it is probably best most of the time to stick with convention -- there are judgmental people out there who just do not understand because of their eagerness to condemn.  It irritates me that this is necessary because some people have such tight asses.

I think of such errors as the equivalent of musical discords.  They hit the ear as wrong, but sometimes wrong is good.

Still, some errors, while they should be ignored when others make them, should be watched for in one's own writing.  Pronoun disagreement is trivial, but using "it's" for "its" or "effect" for "affect" and other often-confused spellings is that sort of error.

One final thing -- one of the beauties of English and other agglutinative languages (English is not really "agglutinative," but it does have some of the characteristics -- the ability to build words with prefixes and suffixes) is that this means we can coin words even when alternative words are already in the dictionary, and when the dictionary lacks the word wanted, we especially should do so.  Packaging a lot of meaning into a single word is sometimes much, much better than some dependent clause or whatever.

Causes of unhappiness

It is widely thought that a core Buddhist insight is that our desires cause our unhappiness.  This is because nothing is permanent, so we are either frustrated by our inability to satisfy our desires or, if they are satisfied, by our inability to keep them satisfied.

Desires, or "clinging," is actually one one of three things Buddhism defines as causing unhappiness.  The other two are revulsion and delusion.  A revulsion is a negative desire -- something we want to avoid, like a stinky outdoor toilet or a bee sting or growing old and seeing death ahead.  Yea, they do cause unhappiness.

But it's that third one -- delusion -- that is the real hard one to deal with.  It is not something we can deal with meditating or adapting or disengaging.  It comes on us -- a mental illness is mainly it -- being unable to see any hope in the world, being convinced one is possessed by demons, being convinced we are being persecuted, hearing voices that tell us to do horrible things.

Mainly it is the diseases of depression and of schizophrenia.  They put us out of touch with reality and remove our ability to understand this -- that last part is what makes them so intractable.  Nowadays medications that can help (and generally do) are available and people should not discourage them or be afraid of them, as long as professional advice (not just an ordinary doctor, who may be as prejudiced on the subject as many people) is where the drugs come from.

Recognizing the delusion for what it is, is not usually going to happen, but it should be tried and tried again and again.  "This too will pass" applies mainly to depressives who have the condition on an intermittent basis, who have to learn to wait.  Others have it even more difficult and dangerous.

China and Vietnam in context

A large country next to a smaller one cannot help but be patronizing and exercise at least some hegemony.  This is always resented in the smaller country, even when the interference helped the country and was needed and the larger country was the only nation that could do anything.  We see this in the Americas regarding the States, in parts of Europe regarding Germany, and in East Europe regarding Russia.

As with most of SE Asia, there are large numbers of Chinese ethnics in Vietnam, mainly in the cities in enclaves somewhat removed from the rest of the population, such as the Cholon area of HCMC.  They tend to hold onto their South Chinese language and Chinese names more than perhaps they should.  These populations are entrepreneurial and generally successful, and as one might expect this can generate resentment.

While the Vietnamese language seems Sinitic today, scholars tell us that it is not at all related to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.  Of course nowadays over half the vocabulary is from Chinese borrowings, but borrowing is one thing, it is not descent.  Even the Vietnamese tonal system that causes American learners so much difficulty apparently was borrowed from Chinese in the first millennium and Vietnamese had previously been atonal.

Vietnamese religion is Chinese in many ways, with the major Taoist deities and Confucian notions of the universe widely accepted.  Most important, the Buddhism is Mahayana out of China, not at all like the nearby Theravada Buddhism of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.  Vietnam does have its own local twists on things and several native religious groups.  Of course there is a significant Roman Catholic population in Vietnam, much larger proportionately than in China.

The Communist Parties in Vietnam and China have followed similar paths, both opening to the rest of the world and creating institutions designed to prevent "Cult of Personality" figures and dictatorship by one man.  These include limited terms and mandatory retirements.  They are in this way distinct from the other two remaining Communist states, Cuba and North Korea.

They have also both had considerable success economically, unlike Cuba and North Korea, which remain poor and seem to be getting poorer, although there are signs of light in Cuba nothing much will happen until the Castro's are gone.

One hopeful thing that is happening in China and Vietnam is that they are evolving toward meritocracy, both in who becomes a party member (family still counts but less and less) and who rises in the party.  Both also have their problems with corruption, but not really any more than practically any other country on this planet -- although the Western press tends to give it more attention, for its own reasons.

Still, the Chinese, like all ethnic groups, have their tendency to nationalism and the population has its share of anti-foreign bigots who think only Chinese institutions are valid.  Americans, Russians, Germans, Japanese, and so on, all suffer from bad reps because of similar attitudes found in those countries.  Such nationalism is often used by politicians to gain unfair and irrational advantage.

Right now China has its hands full in the western autonomous regions, where it is obvious they are not welcome, and should look to removing itself from them, but this might be impossible because of this nationalism found in the Chinese party.  As long as China practices trying to rule over other peoples or nations, their claims to any sort of moral standing or legitimacy will remain hanging.  It is seen as nothing more than old-fashioned imperialism.

Expansionist adventurism elsewhere, even for essential materials, is bound to hurt China in the short run, and won't ever help.

Stupid remarks about suicide

I think maybe a certain rather spoiled rotten rock star doesn't understand is that depressed people should not be given sympathy, but should be understood as having a disease that needs treatment.

Yes the world is a rough place, or at least often is, but that is beside the point.  Depression is a fatal disorder of brain chemistry not really well understood, for which some treatments do work.  They need to get them.

About all an ordinary person can do when dealing with a depressed person who may well resist getting treatment because sometimes the disease works that way is physically interfere with suicide attempts, pay attention, and get legal hospitalization if possible if suicide is actually attempted.

I don't think sympathy or lack of sympathy do much either way, although a "get it over with, I'm tired of hearing you" is an immoral and probably criminal thing to say and may well be the thing that pushes  over the edge.

Suicides that are not successful in an attempt are almost always glad they didn't succeed, even though in awhile they may try again.  

Ferguson Police

I lived in Kansas City many years, on the other side of Missouri from St. Louis, and visited St. Louis several times, and was not aware that a good-size town of Ferguson was nearby.  Now I am aware.  It is probably a nice enough place, but I don't think you could get me to go there.  Sad though.

Why does someone decide to become a police officer?  There are no doubt many reasons, but you have to wonder if maybe those who go through the process and apply don't have subtle reasons that have to do with authority and guns and uniforms and power more than serving the community.

Personally I would find the job demeaning and boring most of the time and a drudge.  "A policeman's lot is not a happy one," although that song is about the policeman's sad duty to put an end to the criminal's freedom, that is I am very sure not one of the ordinary cop's concerns.

Some people though want to do it, and again I have to wonder.  Especially why one would want to be a white cop in a largely black town.

Rossini's "William Tell Overture"

Many serious music lovers would probably prefer that Rossini in general and in particular his "William Tell Overture" would just go away.

As programmatic music (music that either kinda tells a story or at least sets a scene -- as this one does separately in each of its four sections), it ain't too bad.  Pleasant, even.

Maybe I like it because we played it in high school, and I remember the fight between the conductor (teacher) and our cornet player (we only had one) about Rossini's volume indications in the last section.  He felt it should be played as his solo, sort-of, very loud.

Maybe, at least in a high school setting, it should be.  Orchestras follow Rossini, even though it is not in the spirit of the Lone Ranger, and try to keep it musical, even though I think secretly we all wish they wouldn't.  Of course they have to keep their dignity.

By the way, in the end the teacher lost that one.  The kid did as told in rehearsal, but in concert he let rip.  She about fell off the podium with her efforts to quiet him down, without effect.

Interestingly, afterward she didn't say a thing.  I don't know what his grade that term was.

More on being fat

I can see how my last post is subject to less-than-favorable interpretation.  I say fat people are lazy.  What an unfortunate way to put it!

The problem is the connotation (or implication or loading) of the word "lazy."  It is a negative judgmental call about someone, and I oppose judging people.

We do, however, have to understand them and not be naive.  What I mean here is that fat people don't like physical exertion.  They just don't like it, and avoid it, even when they are out "exercising."  It and other personality traits having to do with one's relationship to food, lead to obesity, in spite of medical warnings and efforts and strong desires to have a different outcome.

In other ways a "lazy" person is not lazy -- they may be hard workers, great students, accomplished artists, whatever, but they do not like labor and hate breaking a sweat.

It's not their fault -- it is what they are, part of their personality.  Our society is in denial about "nature" in the nature-nurture spectrum -- we want to say we can do things and often we cannot.  We cannot for the most part change what we are, and we need to be wise about that and change what we can but accept and not judge what we cannot.

It's like being gay or straight -- most people are mainly straight with an occasional gay impulse, most gays also have occasional straight impulses -- so the impression can be gotten that what we are can be changed.  One can change one's behavior if one is truly bi-sexual to ignore one side of our sexuality, but if one is not, then one is mainly gay or straight and no amount of cruel therapy is going to alter it.

The fact is most of what we are, we are born destined to be.  Good upbringing and nutrition and so on help a lot, but there are personality types that persist -- on the unhelpful side there are always bigots, criminals, airheads, addictive personalities, judgmental people.  I will someday have to do a blog on the personality attributes that make for criminal behavior and on the consistent failure of well-meaning people to rehabilitate them and how to really do it (clue -- let the criminal get older).