[Mystic Mock]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

"Why judge others by your own standards?" - What does this actually mean in the context of the OP? Don't we all actually judge everyone and everything by 'our own standards'? In real life, I mean, not on a forum for the sake of argument.

It is actually meaningless outside of Scripture - where the saying originated from and actually meant; 'Judge not for ye shall be judged';

"l Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye." - Matthew 7:1-5

How can we NOT judge anything or anyone by any metric other than our own standards, viz; by our own thoughts, education, intelligence, knowledge, experiences - everything which makes us US?

Exactly WHOSE standards do we judge by then if not our own?

Do you judge OTHER people's attitudes to immigration, war, taxation, the NHS, benefits, and politics by MY standards or your OWN?

'Ageist' - yet another term whose definition has been hijacked by the 'Politically Correct' set, and its definition 'stretched' to cover situations which it did not originally apply to.

If 'The Truth' was a 20 year old with the same opinion - that 16 year olds were too immature to be given the vote (and there are some) - would he still be accused of 'Ageism'?

No, of course not, because the term is useless outside of the context it was originally devised to apply to - 'the workplace'.

Our own JoshBB is extremely intelligent, knowledgeable, and has - so evidently - a thirst for knowledge, and while he may not be unique among 16 year olds, he is more 'the exception than the rule' and in a definite minority if my own considerable direct experiences and knowledge is anything to go by, because most 16 to 18 year olds I know of are more likely to tune into 'Towie' and to appear on 'Jeremy Kyle' than they are to tune into 'The Andrew Marr Show' and to be found in the audience of 'Question Time'.

Every survey which I personally have encountered 'indicts' teenagers in general for 'soaring rates of STD STI's,an alarming average age at which they first have sex, deficiencies in education and diet, as well as an obsession with 'superficiality' ie; designer labels and gadgets'.

Among other shocking results, 66% of 'young people' surveyed in one National Poll, were clueless about the year the Great War ended, and 54% of those also did not know that the war began in 1914. Even worse; 12 per cent thought that the battle of Waterloo, (1815 - Napoleonic Wars) was part of the Great War (1914 -1918).

Similar polls have shown that the average teenager is astonishingly ignorant of Trade Unions, The Monarchy, The EU etc etc.

In my opinion, a lot of adults are nearly as ill educated and ignorant, but this is about 16 year olds and the vote, so we will not go there.

I will conclude by saying that even our greatest writer, the Bard William Shakespeare knew all those centuries ago about the naivety of the young and how ill equipped they are to deal with life's complexities, when he wrote for Ceopatra in 'Antony and Cleopatra':

"......My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood....."

Okay the BIB are the stuff that I'm quoting.

1. I hate TOWIE, but just because some 16 to 18 year olds might find it more entertaining to watch than some Political shows doesn't mean that they're thick, uneducated when it comes to Politics, or that they should be taken less seriously for watching TOWIE which is kind of the message that your post seems to come across to me Kirk.

2. What sort of survey was that? When I was 12 I knew when the Great War ended, and I certainly knew it wasn't apart of the Napoleonic Wars.