h that's a shame. Perhaps you are the new enlightened family member that shows them how the world works and how to empower themselves to lead a more fruitful life?

Education can be be recieved from others or from the self (through rigorous/thorough and balanced observation - all things considered).

We ought to listen to wise teachers. And when our wisdom parallels or overcomes theirs, we ought to offer it in turn to those less educated. It's our duty to give those tools to the ones without them, level the playing field as it were. Restore the balance to avoid exploitation. — Benj96

Heavens no! I wish but the last thing the young want is advice from an old person. Books advise grandmas to hold their tongues and experience has taught me the wisdom of what they say.

There was a time when a great-grandson was my best buddy. Then he became a teenager and I told him I was losing him and he sweetly said, "I will always love you." That was a long ago and we haven't spoken much since then. I used to have so much fun with the great-grandchildren. We went on adventures and did science in my kitchen. I still can't let go of the things I had for them. I am hoping to pass the really good stuff on to another great-grandson when he is old enough.

I am not sure we can turn the clocks back to when grandparents were more important than technology has made them. Our whole culture has changed. We are much more materialistic than we once were and our children are exposed to so much and are pushed so hard in school that they don't have the time to just be children.

In responding to Vera Mont I felt aware of how drastically military technology has changed us. I don't like to think about that but denying our changed reality is not a good thing. Even when we entered WWII we thought our best military advantage was our patriotism and our individual judgment. That is what we educated for but the technology of WWII changed all that. In the past, it took us a year to mobilize for war. Today we can enter a war and do more damage in four hours than several troops could have done in several months. Our patriotism is no longer needed. We can wage wars without disturbing our morning routine. That is not how it was in the past and with enemies like China, I don't think we can ever again demobilize as we once did after every war. We are as focused on war as the Prussians who lived for the love of war as much as the US lived for the love of God and family.

I know it's off topic, but as an SF aficionado, I have to defend the Star Trek personnel. Starfleet is a military organization, with a chain of command and uniforms and all that, (and Kirk was a bit of a maverick) They're not supposed to be independent individuals. There is plenty of individualism and scholarship in the civilian population of their time, as well as entrepreneurship - just no money used in the Federation. — Vera Mont

Okay, I love the original Star Trek, and if you can watch and compare the original Star Trek with the Next Generation. The original Star Trek comes from education before 1958, for independent thinking and good moral judgment. The Next Generation comes with the change in education and "group think". While some may think the group thinkers are good for democracy, they might want to think about China and about our reactionary politics and the very biased media we have today.

Star Trek frequently had the theme of a computer-run society. We have a computer-run society now but don't see it that is humans controlled by policy. The National Defense Education Act shifted the purpose of education and who makes the education decisions. Even if we threw all our weapons into the sea, we are organized by policies set by others, and not family order and independent thinkers.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. Aldous Huxley
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

Our effort to establish a base on the moon is being presented as an idealist challenge for the glory of mankind, not as a desperate star wars race for the control of the moon and whose missiles will be there. We have gone beyond fear of a nuclear bomb to star wars and I don't mean the movie but the reality of controlling missile bases and satellites. Our high-tech military is very vulnerable because it does not work without our satellites that can be taken out with the same technology of hitting an asteroid off course.

NASA says China wants to control the Moon in shocking claimhttps://tech.hindustantimes.com › tech › news › nasa-sa...
Jul 20, 2022 — NASA is concerned that China might control the entire Moon. China has sped up its target of building a research base on the Moon within eight ...

How does a government step in and recycle assets?
— Athena
Regulation, tax reform, public works, welfare legislation. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/franklin-delano-roosevelt-and-the-new-deal/ Similar measures were taken by the Bennett government in Canada. In some other countries, of course, the political upheaval knocked down existing regimes.

I think if we are serious about defending our democracy, we also need to get serious about replacing the autocratic model of the industry with the democratic model.
— Athena

The trouble is, not enough of you (and not enough of us, either) are serious enough about it to stop the large minority that are eager to destroy it outright. The destroyers have a huge advantage: they're never hampered by truth, principles or scruples. — Vera Mont

Okay, I am not sure but I suspect people who have the same information tend to agree and that disagreements are the result of not having the same information.

I am going to start with quotes
This is to get a laugh and lift our spirits....

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex. Aldous Huxley
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes+

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

In the past, personal and political liberty depended to a considerable extent upon governmental inefficiency. The spirit of tranny was always more than willing; but its organization and material equipment were generally weak. Progressive science and technology have changed all this completely. Aldous Huxley That is certainly true about Eisenhower's warning of the Military Industrial Complex.

Now back to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Hoover and Roosevelt worked together to give us a fascist form of government. That is leaving property in the hands of private owners, but regulating industry. WWII intensified the new relationship between government and industry because government contracts were greatly increased, bringing us to the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned us about. Eisenhower could have put the Military Industrial Complex in place without the bureaucratic organization that Roosevelt and Hoover gave us and because we do not talk about the bureaucratic and then education change and the Military Industrial Complex, none of that exists in the minds of citizens.

However, in a college text about Public Policy and Administration, it is mentioned that the US adopted the German model of bureaucracy and this shifts power and authority from individuals to the beast, the governmental bureaucracy over the people. This bureaucratic organization begins with the Prussians and is what made Germany strong enough to engage the allies in war.

Now during Eisenhower's administration, he asked congress to support the National Defense Education Act and replaced our Domestic Education (education for good moral judgment without religion, and the culture that made liberty possible) with education for a technological society with unknown values and that brings us to where we are today.

People know fascism for the horrors committed by Nazis, and I have a book for teachers explaining how they should treat every child exactly the same, and they should be impersonal. At all levels of bureaucracy, policy demands being impersonal and a person can be fired for violating policy. What rules, is policy not individual moral judgment. We were sold this reasoning on the idea that it is more efficient. We mostly are totally unaware of the bureaucratic and educational changes and what that has to do with what is happening today.

If you can't have "decided principles" through religion, then the principles need to have a rational, logical, and empathic core that automatically makes people gravitate toward that logical good as doing otherwise would lead to misery. A truly liberal society free from religion requires the people to understand morality as a system that is logical and not decided upon them. — Christoffer

In the past gods and goddesses were connected with nature and that means they had to be kept happy or bad things would happen. Today this is environmental science. We understand the forces differently, but both, are understanding doing the right thing has good consequences and doing the wrong thing has bad consequences.

As scientific as we think we are, we are doing a very poor job of living with finite reality and each other. Christianity is part of the problem because Christians ignored the wisdom of aboriginal people. Christians rejected the notion that Gia, our planet, is a living organism that we must take care of and we destroyed the environment for many years and created an economy dependent on oil, knowing in the 1920s that this was a bad idea. We have ourselves completely disconnected from the rhythms of our planet and the heavens.

I believe spirituality is a vital part of having mentally and physically healthy lives. I am a part of something much bigger than myself and what I do or do not does matters. Science gives us better information about what should and should not be done than the mythology a religion built on a belief in miracles!

The Greeks asked, how do the gods resolve their differences. They answered, the gods argue until there is a consensus on the best reasoning. That is science, and democracy is an imitation of the gods.
It is also the meaning of logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe. Science looks for the reason, not the reasoner, and our judgment must depend on good reasoning, because the reasoner is not going to clean up the messes we make, nor give us a new planet to screw up. This is unless we believe the destruction of Florida (by water) and California (by fire) are the work of God and not a man-made problem. How different are we from the ancients who tried to appease a god when a natural disaster hit?

It's the large organized religions, washing hands with the secular elites, that promoted uncontrolled fecundity, to ensure unlimited cheap labour and expendable armies for their wars. — Vera Mont

Oh, oh, I think we are getting further and further off the topic of labor and technology, however, when Billy Graham, the Evangelical leader, met with Eisenhower, we could liken that moment in time with Constantine announcing he saw a cross in the sky and said the Christian god would make it possible for Rome to win wars, and he made Christianity a legal religion in Rome. We got "in god we trust" on our money and "One nation under God" was put in our pledge of allegiance and we all knew we had to save the world from those godless people in the USSR. Now we believe a book about kings and slaves taught us about democracy, evidently forgetting the Bible is what made the power of those born into royalty legitimate.

God is good for wars and wars are good for God. Except for the Greeks. Those oddballs didn't think highly of a god of war and they were too retarded to have an empire. Although they did colonize much of the known world. :chin: And when we want wisdom and culture we do turn to them.

I did mention the world's debt-load - with three links to graphs illustrating it. That's what will the break capitalist system: it runs on the expectation of future growth. When expectation outruns the capability for growth, you get a recession or depression. Then the government has to step and recycle the assets. But now, the assets are not available to government: they've been block-chained and bit-coined and legerdemained out of reach.... if they ever existed in the physical world where people need food and shelter.
Wars used to grow economies, both in the arming phase and the rebuilding phase, because people worked their asses off to produce munitions and supplies for the soldiers and the soldiers got paid and spent money and the war profiteers raked in the money and hired more people and invested in peactime construction.
When you wage war on margin, you're gambling with your national economy. And when wars are waged not for territory and resources but hegemony, there is material return for the winning nation.

n the future what will organize the people and how will that organization be maintained?
— Athena
Local war-lords. By force of arms. Except, they won't be able to get into the rich people's bunkers, which will be occupied by the late rich people's ex-servants, ruled by the self-promoted mercenaries. — Vera Mont

You speak of modern economic realities that I know very little about. I am sure that information is very important here. I googled an explanation of chain blocks and bookmarked it. I will need time to assimilate this new information. It is very foreign to me so I can not simply go from what I know to this new information.

How does a government step in and recycle assets?

"When you wage war on margin, you're gambling with your national economy. And when wars are waged not for territory and resources but hegemony, there is material return for the winning nation." should the word "no" go in that sentence, "there is no material return".

Nations have fallen because of excessive military spending. I like Nintendo's original Gengis Khan game because you have to keep your economy balanced or you lose. We are highly aware of Rome's military expenses leading to increased taxes that hurt the economy.

The neocons wanted military control of the mid-east, which would mean more affordable oil for the US and high profits for oil companies. This requires a partnership with the government that pays for the wars and supplies the military personnel while companies like Haliburton get extremely rich supplying the military needs. That is the Military Industrial Complex. Our economy benefits only if the cost of gasoline stays low. If we don't get that cheap oil, we have a Roman situation of destroying our economy by taxing the people too much to pay for the acquisition of resources. Higher taxes and higher prices for oil and everything dependent on oil, are crushing us. We have not lived with finite reality very well.

The future you speak of is possible but this last election in the US gives me more hope for democracy than I did have. I seriously need to give time to look into education in my community. If democracy is not learned our democracy is not protected and I am not sure we are doing a good job of preparing our young for democracy. I think if we are serious about defending our democracy, we also need to get serious about replacing the autocratic model of the industry with the democratic model.

I have been watching old western TV shows and they are terrible! Again and again, the shows are about people with guns and rifles having power and those who are inept with the gun or rifle are the losers. Star Trek's Captain Kirk is the John Wayne of outer space, and the new Star Trek Generation is "group think" and less individualistic. We need a balance of individualism and "group think". Do we want a future that is ruled by a force of arms and self-promoted mercenaries?

The problem with deciphering capitalism is that it doesn't have a constant value. In a poor nation, capitalism can very rapidly improve the quality of life for the people and increase wealth. But as soon as capitalism enters a stage where the majority of the people already have accumulated wealth it starts to tap into just being about cash flow, earnings, and gains. It stops being a system of change and instead becomes a "Baudrillardian eldritch horror" in which people become a slave to it, regardless of whether they want to or not. It starts to corrupt the people and divide them into rich and poor and over time increases that gap until the rich becomes so powerful that they essentially take over power from the government.

This is the state where people start to work themselves to death. Because they're not part of a society that is gaining wealth as a collective but rather has become a new type of slave society. In this new type, people live in an illusion of existential value that they cannot distinguish from any other reality. People lose track of basic existential questions like love and death and replace them with a monetary valuation of status. People start to think they are in love with someone when they're basically just together with them because of the status it produces, they get children because that's a family status, and they have a certain job which is a further acquired status. In the age of the internet, this has also been intensified as people project these statuses out to people surrounding them, further blinding them into this system.

This is the Baudrillardian horror, modern western capitalism has evolved into an unseen monster that people think is "quality life". It's so ingrained into our psychology that we're never even questioning how this life works. Everything we do is part of this capitalist mentality, everything is about some kind of status or monetary gain and loss, and the most obvious sign of this is how much more popular "quick fix" existential treatments have become. The desperate search for "meaning in all the chaos", without people understanding what that chaos really is.

And so, some, like Marx, developed political philosophies that examined the inner workings of capitalism and alternatives to it. But Marx is also outdated since it focuses entirely on the industrial age of development, which had entirely different inner mechanics, especially lacking the Baudrillard perspective.

With so many people in the world today, with such a technological explosion that the last 150 years have produced, it is impossible to maintain a society based on Marx's ideas and it's also impossible to maintain a society of modern capitalism. Because essentially any political philosophy regards the citizen as a cog in a machine, without essential value other than its function.

If these cogs are changed into automation, into robots and we dislocate humans from the traditional machine, then that becomes an existence that has never been available on a large scale before. We are so ingrained in the idea of "work" that people don't know how to manage their time outside of it. It has, throughout history, either been about survival or monetary gain at its core and occasionally, for a few, been a place of meaning. But on a large scale, how can everyone find meaning?

That is the core problem that philosophy and people need to solve when advanced automation starts to reshape society. — Christoffer

I need to take your post in smaller pieces. :lol: A weak brain you know. Let me begin with I love your post because it is mentally stimulating. I argue because that moves the discussion forward.

"If these cogs are changed into automation, into robots and we dislocate humans from the traditional machine, then that becomes an existence that has never been available on a large scale before."

You reminded me of a story about a White man going to the top of a mountain with a native American and looking down on a large city, with great pride the White man says, "before all this what did your people do?" The native American said, "we sang a lot". Our athletic games come from ancient times when people had time on their hands and a person could gain status by accomplishing physical feats. Civilizations had many gods and many festivals and we would do well to take the money out of our community events and get back to participating because that is what a community does. I used to love going to the fair with my children and we all entered something and won ribbons. Now the fair is a money-making event with no appeal to me at all! I don't want to see the newest and best pans or whatever. I want to see how my family compares with all the others.

I was a homemaker. That means taking care of all the family needs using my domestic skills, and also participating in the community as a volunteer and sitting on decision-making committees. In a democracy, we should all experience committee work because that is where we learn on democracy works. In the past, I would have ground corn with other mothers and grandmothers and we would talk about how things are and how they should be, and what needs to be done. It is time for the strawberry festival, isn't it? What do you plan on bringing? I ramble and I may not have made a point, but I think there are still women who remember when life circled around our families and perhaps making music together. And planning for our community. :broken: Thank you for giving me a place to share what I value and to talk about democracy and achieve arete.

"But on a large scale, how can everyone find meaning?" Everyone can turn to their family and if that is not a pleasant experience, turn to the community and act on your talents and interest. We the people, give us all meaning and purpose when we understand democracy and good citizenship. :heart:

Your "Baudrillardian eldritch horror" has also been called "the beast." Even in ancient times, Rome was the beast consuming everything its citizens could give in exchange for bread and circus. I especially see this when the wealth of the nation depended on importing metals and gold, which required armies to secure that source of metal and gold, leading to military people coming to power and taxing the people into poverty as well as taking their sons to keep the beast healthy. I have a problem with Jesus saying to turn our backs on family and put God first. I think there are good reasons to put family and community first.

We already have lots of wars. Climate migrations will start some more. So will the totalitarian backlash that's engulfing more and more democracies. Once the economy breaks down, who pays the warring armies? Who buys the munitions? Who makes the machines? When money stops making money, there will be no more investment; no more capitalists. Once they're gone, whoever takes over the broken pieces of civilization will have to decide what leftover automation they want to keep and to what purpose. I don't know who that will be. Whatever we think of it now won't matter then. — Vera Mont

No worry, no one is paying for wars in the US because we do them on credit. :joke: That sounds really stupid but we are not paying for wars as we once did. The world wars were funded by selling war bonds, and while much was done to make people patriotic and willing to support the wars, we drafted the men our nation needed to sacrifice in the struggle to win wars. Until technology replaced the troops needed to win a war. With technology, we don't have to draft people into a war and that makes it much easier to hook us into wars that we can carry on without disturbing our daily lives.

In the future what will organize the people and how will that organization be maintained?

Democracy is like religion in that it is a way of life that must be learned. A democracy may choose a Mussolini or Hitler and tyranny may rule. What does that look like? How is power gained and maintained? Should we prepare for the collapse of our civilization and if so how?

It does. And that is how capitalism operates. I pointed it out as a demonstration of that fact. Not because I believe its the ethical thing to do.

My beliefs are that those at the top, ought to have the greatest sense of responsibility and duty to those at the bottom. Not an easy task for sure.

They must exert their knowledge and wisdom and position of power in an effort to serve the most vulnerable/uneducated and protect them from exploitation. They may not even enjoy the responsibility but see it as a duty they must rise to.

If at any point such a leader is not truly serving the foundation of their society, then they ought to resign and let those who are take over the wheel of the ship of humanity.

If one wants to speak for everyone, they had better be sure they have the skills to do so. — Benj96

What a delicious subject! :nerd: The historical Roosevelt family would certainly agree with you. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

Andrew Carnegie was as morally compromised as Doctor Jeckly and Mr. Hyde. He talked a good talk about the dignity of man and was known as a philanthropist, but when it came to the reality of economic competition he took the wrong side of the coal miners' fight for fair wages. He was cutthroat when it came to getting rich. At the time the science of Darwinism made our industrial reality very ugly, with the elite believing they were superior and entitled, and that created a terrible reality of using and abusing laborers. But Andrew Carnegie met your criteria of benefitting society.

In addition to funding libraries, he paid for thousands of church organs in the United States and around the world. Carnegie's wealth helped to establish numerous colleges, schools, nonprofit organizations and associations in his adopted country and many others.
Founded: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Ass...
Spouse: Louise Whitfield Carnegie
Works written: The Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's Story — Carnegie Corporation

And when coal is cheap, many families could enjoy warm homes. Throughout our industrial history wealth was built by exploiting laborers and it made the good life affordable to many. We would not be where we are today without human sacrifice. If the masses want better lives let them take advantage of education. If we give them free education and they do not take advantage of it. then of course they will have little value and why should worry about them? They made the choices that left them valueless. My family is among these people who did not make the effort to be educated.

I know that. Also the other way around. There are very powerful forces pitted against public and democratic education in the US right now, and they've been making considerable gains.
Republicans, and white conservatives, have long been hostile to public schools. School desegregation drove white evangelicals to become the strongest Republican demographic. Ronald Reagan promised to end the Department of Education in 1980. Trump put Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education,
At the same time, the same states that curtailed women's reproductive rights and ban books.
There has been an “alarming” surge in book censorship in the United States since last year totaling 1,586 book bans or restrictions in place, according to the director of PEN America, a nonprofit focusing on free speech and literature.
The "we" to which you belong is being pushed to the margins. — Vera Mont

You make a good argument and you speak of the biggest reason I am opposed to Christianity. I have a book about the organized Christian opposition to the Nation Education Association and I have dealt with Christians who hate John Dewey.

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. Wikipedia
Born: October 20, 1859, Burlington, VT
Died: June 1, 1952, New York, NY — Wikipedia

I may not agree 100% with John Dewey but I highly respect him. The following is why so many Christians hate him. That link is restricted but the explanation given here is good. And if you are familiar with my post, you know where I agree with him.

John Dewey developed a pragmatic theory of inquiry to provide intelligent methods for social progress. He believed that the logic and attitude of successful scientific inquiries, properly conceived, could be fruitfully applied to morals and politics.

Pragmatism and moral progress: John Dewey's theory of ... — Kory Sorrel

About the increased banning of school library books, I wish school librarians and teachers had better judgment. I strongly disapprove of socially inappropriate books such as "Captian Underpants" being in school libraries and the classics not being in the school libraries. When I teacher has to explain to young children that what makes a book funny is inappropriate behavior and they should not behave like that, then prehaps it should not be in the school library. We work hard at home to teach our children how to behave and I can not imagine a thinking parent wanting the school to make socially inappropriate behavior okay.

That brings us to social engineering and what you said about a philosophical debate about what is good citizenship. This is a very difficult subject and my favorite approach to it is what science has to do with good moral judgment. Today one of the most hotly debated issues is our sexual differences, and :lol: the importance of wearing a mask. How many people wouldn't mind if they needed open heart surgery and no one in the room was wearing a mask? If someone thinks that is okay, that person needs a science lesson and it is shocking how many people are scientifically ignorant. Our sexual differences is another scientific subject, but unfortunately, the Bible is the only book many people read and trust and when such strong emotions are tied to religious beliefs it can be impossible to have a rational discussion about some things such as our sexual differences.

I am sure today many more books that could be highly offensive are being published and sold to schools. When I objected to a school's choice of books, I was told children will read "Captain Underpants" but they will not read the classics. That is amoral thinking and its focus is on the technology of reading, ignoring how the book could lead a child to believe unacceptable social behavior is condoned and funny and Mom and Dad are just out of touch with the modern world. Now, this is a very sensitive subject! Who is the proper authority over children, the school or the parent?

Wonderful idea! How? Who are "we" and where do "we" get the power to take decision-making out of the hands of corporate boards? Before anything positive can happen in education, industry, utilities or infrastructure, you need to clean up the democratic process. At this point, that's a helluva tall order!
It's still doable, but only with a huge surge of support from the polity. At 51/49% split in electoral clout, I don't see whence that impetus can come. — Vera Mont

Here is a google page with many choices for learning about the Demming institution. Beside links it is on Twitter and Facebook https://www.google.com/search?q=Demming+instution&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS926US926&oq=Demming+instution&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i512l3j0i13i30l5j0i8i13i30.8570j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Wonderful idea! How? Who are "we" and where do "we" get the power to take decision-making out of the hands of corporate boards? Before anything positive can happen in education, industry, utilities or infrastructure, you need to clean up the democratic process. At this point, that's a helluva tall order!
It's still doable, but only with a huge surge of support from the polity. At 51/49% split in electoral clout, I don't see whence that impetus can come. — Vera Mont

I believe education is essential to democracy. Democracy is like religion. It can not be the way of life if that way of life is not taught. Same as there would be no Christianity if it were not taught.

However, humans need to do something with their time and not all can manage a sense of purpose without work. Some will work with what they like, some will probably revive extreme religion in search of purpose and some might go insane. For this there need to be a new philosophical movement that focuses on existential questions from the perspective of a life without work. — Christoffer

I very much like your awareness of culture and how mass migrations can be very disruptive to established cultures.

The original purpose of free public education in the US was to teach good citizenship and thereby prevent social problems. There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. To have liberty there must be a culture that makes that possible we replaced that past education with education for a technological society with unknown values. Some good things came out of this and it appears some bad things are also coming out of leaving moral education to the church and not transmitting the culture we once had.

For how to manage life without work, families and cultures have given civilizations social order for thousands of years. For sure we need to discuss what that might look like today.

No, because a better question would be: "is it ethical to keep people working themselves to death in a system that doesn't care for them?

Define if capitalism is healthy or an illusion of healthy. The way the world works today consolidates wealth to a very few on the backs of workers working themselves to death.

Automation would cut out the "working to death" part and present a conundrum for the wealthy in that there won't be people having money to purchase the goods they produce with automation. So in order to keep the economy running, some kind of universal basic income is required so that the loop is kept intact. The less people work, the larger that UBI needs to be, leading to more freedom for the people to do what they want instead of "working to death".

Essentially, automation is a capitalist's dream of cheap labor and high income, but it would kill the market if no one has the money to buy products or services these capitalists provide. So essentially, it's the end of capitalism by maximizing capitalism.

The more advanced automation gets, the less we will be able to keep capitalism as it exists today and in the end, we would require a new system to replace the old.

If we do not figure out a working system, this will lead to future wars and conflicts. — Christoffer

This thread has moved fast and I lost track of what people are talking about. Sorry, everyone.

This post is back to the beginning and I love the lines "a better question would be: is it ethical to keep people working themselves to death in a system that doesn't care for them?" along with this line
"The way the world works today consolidates wealth to a very few on the backs of workers working themselves to death." However, this is such a big subject it is like being lost at sea with no sense of direction.

Especially in the beginning of industrialism humans were treated very badly but it lead to wealth and that wealth is essential to progress, education, hospitals, and public utilities. When something like printing makes art and books cheap, low-income people can afford them and that makes their lives better. I worry about how many liberals understand the importance of good jobs and big industry that provides those jobs and those affordable products and wealth? Exactly how do we establish an economic and social system that works for everyone?

There was a time when we had a family order that meant the woman stayed home to care for the family and the community as well. I think her role was vital to a humane society. The family was financially supported by a man. This was not ideal because the division of labor became too great. When women went to work, increasingly women and children fell below the poverty, because the women worked for lower wages than men and they had to pay for child care unless someone in the family cared for her children, and the divorce and abortion rate began to climb. At the same time, two people working in the family meant more families buying homes and more families buying homes made one paycheck too small and the cost of housing too high.

Who is caring for the people? What else happened to our social order besides an increase in jobs and wealth? How about community planning and banking? Can community planning and banking be adjusted to better serve the people?

And my favorite- what if we replaced the autocratic model of the industry with the democratic model?

I love drumming! How about the Japanese drummers? Do you like them too?

The bagpipe is wonderful and my goodness the bagpipe player in the video had a lot of lung power. In general, the aggressive male behavior is sexually arousing and the female belly dancer was a great of expression of what is happening. The one known exception to the taboo of fathers having sex with their daughters is a tribe that hunts and kills hippos. That is a dangerous thing to do and upping the testosterone increases the chances of success.

Along this line, the Roman soldiers in their metal and leather suits are also hot. Hum, I wonder how much our sexuality plays into war?

We have lots of ways - have had for thousands of years: wind, rivers, tides, sun, ground-heat. Not wasting so much of it would be a good start. Maybe making fewer people - but then, weather, its resultant competitions, and the crash , along with the usual war, famine, pestilence, etc. will take out much of the surplus population. And more efficient living arrangements? Cities are already moving underground; that'll help some people survive.
So, yes, there is likely to be a viable remnant of humans - always assuming, which is a big assumption - there is no all-out nuclear war - and they will likely start some kind of human activity. (Probably killing one another over the last clean pond, which they will contaminate in the conflict.) — Vera Mont

I think if we educated for a better reality our young would be on a path to a better reality, as our literate forefathers were on the path to democracy, instead of being consumed with notions of doom and gloom that robs of the ability to move forward on a positive path. A positive for Christianity is assuring people, God will make everything good again. Well, that is not all good because God did not build Noah's ark and I think life is what we make it, not what a god makes it, but staying positive is very important to working for what could be instead of slipping into despair like the horse in the movie, "The Never Ending Story".

The Behaviorist Method is good for training dogs.
— Athena

No, it isn't!

Excuse me, but can you give me a hint of how you came to know of the Behaviorist Method of education and training dogs? Your flat-out denial of professional dog trainers using the Behaviorist Method to train dogs is a shock to me. It is as shocking to me as denying the sunrise begins in the east. We might add commercials and political campaigns are also based on the behaviorist understanding of our behavior. Ring the bell and we rush to buy the item that we might be able to buy in the future. Shocks us with the bad behavior of a candidate and we will vote for the opponent. No political discussion or debate is required.

How can the post-crash civilization, which is almost 100% guaranteed, have hope without preparing the young for that?
— Athena

The best way to prepare them is to teach them elementary survival skills: how to find your way home, how to build a fire, where to dig for water, how to build a raft and a lean-to out of wreckage, how to season termite stew, how to avoid pissing off the big guy sitting next to you.
There are some good books, like https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15798335-scatter-adapt-and-remember

:lol: Ever since patriarchy replaced matriarchy women have lived in fear of pissing off the man, but women's liberation has changed that. Now we have a better understanding of what we can achieve when we are united and our children are doing better than they ever have in the history of civilization.

I have survivalist books and I understand very well the threat of tyrants and bullies. That is what we must educate against because things will not be good for humanity if those jerks are the only ones with power.

Summary
Effective communication requires both feeling and facts and using a language that is fundamentally logical yet can express ideas that are far from logical. — RussellA

Reading your explanation while listening to classical music is an awesome mental and feeling experience. All the posts here have been extraordinary, one building on top of another bringing me to a thinking and emotional crescendo and this is something we should experience every day. It is what I seek when I turn on my computer. It is what gives me faith in human beings along with Elvis singing if we can think it we can make it so.

I gather we are from different countries and that certainly improves the discussion because it gives us different points of view. I suppose some of you may not be familiar with the past news reporter, Walter Cronkite. He seemed to take great care to report the news with the balance we need to understand the facts and think for ourselves. That fairness of reporting is something our young have not experienced and that distorts their understanding of democracy and our human potential. Our present amoral society being the result of education for technology with unknown values, and very bad for humanity.

I have a book on economics that explains how important trust is to doing business and having a good economy. We must return to education for good moral judgment. We must return to grammar and math as it was taught before our infatuation with technology. You all give me more hope than I have had in many years. :heart:

I never saw that Elvis performance. It brings tears to my eyes. All our democratic campaigns should be using that song. He embarrassed the soul of democracy. Our democracy and liberty do not mean doing and saying anything we want whenever we want. Democracy is about achieving arete and the highest morality.

"Arete - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Arete
Arete (Greek: ἀρετή, aretḗ) is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to 'excellence' of any kind—especially a person or ..."

That goes with Greek debates about the good life and morality, and the need to expand our consciousness for good moral judgment.

Thank you so much for that Elvis video.

One aspect of your posts that I find reinforcing is your exemplifications that are happening or have happened in the real world. A lot of posters don't offer many actual exemplifications that they have read about or witnessed in detail. It adds such a lot to posits when good exemplification is included.
As a teacher of 30+ years, before I took early retirement, I don't think I only ever focussed on merely producing trained monkies for the tech world as you seemed to suggest is happening today.
I think there is a great deal of social and moral training/debate/discussion that goes on, at least in Scotland's Secondary Schools. I was involved with a lot of 'link' initiatives with employers and universities such as 'The Glasgow University Ambassador scheme' etc. The morality, ethics, politics, social impact of my field of Computing Science was very much an aspect of what and how I taught the subject, but perhaps it was not as big an aspect as it should and needs to be. There was the enormous pressure of getting through the material, preparation, intermediate testing and reporting, etc etc in preparation for the big final exam. So, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the balance correct. But the pupils I taught seemed to have a higher quality of inputs compared to what I remember receiving or being offered when I was at school. — universeness

Thank you for your explanation. Teachers generally feel like I am attacking them and not the system. My grandmother was a teacher when it was a very low-wage job with no benefits. She was totally devoted to teaching because her generation believed they were preparing the young for good citizenship and that was essential to having a strong and united democracy. That is why I keep hammering away at the importance of education for democracy. It is a very idealistic understanding of democracy and education.

At the 1917 National Education Association convention, we were preparing for WWI and it was the teacher's job to turn her students into patriotic citizens who understood why our democracy must be defended. One teacher argued schools should be models of democracy and that teachers should have the power and authority to teach as they see fit rather than be under the authority of the administration. Another speaker said we should model Germany's education for technology because of its great war successes and advanced technology. For technological reasons (relatively low technology) our education continued to focus on patriotic citizens until the military technology of the second world war which gave us air warfare and the nuclear bomb.

The US, being a young nation with huge resources, and dominated by Christians, flipped into the German model of education and our industrial background made this more radical and war-focused. In the past it took us at least a year to mobilize for war. Now we can strike and do more damage in 4 hours than any nation could have done in several months. We were known for our resistance to war. Now we believe it is our military might that makes us great and this is the will of God, thanks to Billy Graham and how presidents used him and Christianity to turn us into what we are today.

We decided to prepare our young for a technological society and leave moral training to the church. That was a huge mistake! We went from using the Conceptual Method of education to the Behaviorist Method and the Behaviorist Method is good for training dogs. It does not prepare the young for independent thinking and that is why this thread is so important! There are many reasons for our moral crisis, as has always been so because humans are not born knowing good citizenship. Even in primitive tribes, the young must be taught how to be adults. From tribes to the present we must have a culture to have social control instead of a tyrant and authority over the people. I am saying we prepared our young for Q-anon just as Germany prepared its young for the Nazi party. The Behaviorist Method is good for training dogs. It is not the education people in a democracy must have, and neither is Christianity. Faith in technology or God is not better than faith in what well-educated humans can achieve.

Yes, that is hopeful. Meanwhile, the Proud Boys are marching and the glaciers are retreating, entirely oblivious to each other.
All those previous upheavals in human civilization - including, let us not forget, the complete eradication of previous civilizations - were confined to a locality, affecting no more than one continent at a time. The train we've been collectively seeing approach for the past century and done nothing to avoid, is about to crash into the entire globe at once.

My hope is for the post-crash civilization. (even if it's ants) — Vera Mont

How can the post-crash civilization, which is almost 100% guaranteed, have hope without preparing the young for that? All industrial economies depend on oil and that is a finite resource. When it is gone it is gone and economies will crash. What we need is a way of producing energy that does not depend on a finite resource, and lithium is even more finite. Lithium also requires a lot of water and that has become a scarce resource that is getting even harder to come by. Copper is harder to come by. We no longer have copper, silver, and gold in our money because those minerals are now comparably scarce and too expensive. Our coins had real value and that is no longer true. Our coins lasted for centuries and that is no longer true. Thinking what our coins are made of doesn't matter is a mistake. We have to believe a lie to believe it doesn't matter what our coins are made of.

Anyway, education is our only hope. If our young are not prepared for democracy, that is not what they will have after the crash. If the literature for democracy does not survive, as a little of it did survive the fall of Rome, then the future will not carry an awareness of democracy.

If the young are not prepared for democracy they will not have democracy.

If only you were a teacher. — ucarr

I won't become a classroom teacher, but from time to time I think about doing programs for schools that might encourage children to embrace their curiosity and learning. I sure wish I could find someone to do this with me.

This is what a good teacher makes her students experience and feel directly and naturally. No facts and figures hammered into memory, just a direct experience of life as something dynamic revealing itself moment to moment to those paying attention. Life long learners emerge from such classroom experiences because authentic education is half a step from entertainment. — ucarr

Yes, yes, yes! Teachers are forced to teach for the test and are too controlled by the government!

What I want to do is exactly what you said should be done. Yes, entertaining and engaging.

I spent a lot of my life doing that. At one time, I believed improvement was not merely possible, but that it would continue on beyond me. What I have seen instead is the erosion of much of the social progress my generation brought about. I no longer believe human are capable of sustained progress. I'm not even sure enough of us want it. — Vera Mont

We are in a period of transition and this is not the first time civilizations have been through periods of transition, however, I am very worried about our future and that makes this thread about logical thinking very important.

I am very concerned about what our education for a technological society with unknown values is coming to. I think our faith in what technology will do for us has as many negative effects as religion. I am worried about the family. I think humans need family and the homemaker. Just as doctor's offices and businesses need the receptionist. Technology has disrupted the family order that ordered the whole of society. Eliminating the receptionist is another break in social order that has negative effects. :lol: The receptionist is kind of like a comma in a sentence. It helps make sense of everything.

Bottom line, things are getting better and they are getting worse. Hopefully, as we continue forward, things will be more better than more worse. :lol:

This is a goof question but why do you call it ethical? it has to do what with ethics? It has to do with practicality, with usefulness, with power, with economic reality, but what does it have to do with ethics?

It''s the second thread I see you've started with "is it ethical" and neither one has to do anything with ethics.

Why the obsession with ethics? — god must be atheist

I like the challenge of trying to answer your question.

I begin with a definition of ethics "moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity."

A moral principle of democracy is equality and while at first technology greatly increased our equality, at the stage it is now, it is making us unequal and increasingly marginalizing people who can not keep up with the technology. For this reason, different levels of government have worked to provide low-income people with the ability to use the internet. The disparity between the advantaged and disadvantaged became obvious during the pandemic and the need to home-school. And it is so much more than this!

Not everyone has a college-level IQ and Head Start programs have not been the equalizer we hoped they would be. The 1958 National Defense Education Act lead to focusing education on those who are headed for college, and those not headed for college have been cheated out of the education that would benefit them. And worse, increasingly employment requires those very high degrees and there are fewer jobs for those with just an average IQ. A society that supports those with a high IQ and ignores those with just an average IQ is not ethical. Marginalizing a mass of people tends to lead to rebellion. A moral being cause and effect makes disenfranchising and marginalizing people immoral and unethical, right?

Then there are the elderly who are being closed out by technology. I love technology and believe it is vital to the New Age but I hate the use of technology that makes many older people dependent on someone helping them make a doctor's appointment, or complete appointments because of the blankety-blank technology that has replaced receptionists.

Now I can move on to the possibility that everything is breaking down because of reliance on technology that is not working for us. Tools should remain useful to us. Tools should not be taking over our control of the moment and order our behavior.

This has too much personal depth in it for me to accurately unpackage. I can run it around in my head, but I am sure that whatever interpretations I come up with will not match your intent closely enough.
You would need to explain your logic and the emotional drivers behind the imagery you invoke.
If you simply mean you now feel you are too old to be an effective warrior in your quest for a better world, then you would be better having a PM exchange with Athena on that stuff as you could probably both be a support for each other imo. I am 58, I don't know how I will feel about fighting the good fight, when I am a lot older. That's if I ever reach 'a lot older.' — universeness

I studied gerontology at the U of O and as I age, I have a better understanding of what I suppose to learn. From both angles (book learning and experience) I would say as we age our focus is increasingly on the young. Of course, that is not true of everyone, :lol: pain can greatly narrow our vision, or some never did much thinking as they went through life. However, those who thought their way through life, are even more valuable in their later years.

There was fear that a growing older population would be selfish and use their political power to benefit themselves. That is not what I have seen because the closest we can get to immortality is what we leave for the young. The greatest heartache of the people I know is the young not listening to their words of experience and they are struggling to hold their tongues. However, we can become politically active. We can testify at public hearings on all levels of government. We can join organizations that are doing the work we want to be done.

10 Most Popular Fraternal Club Organizations https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-most-popular-fraternal-club-organizations-saulino-cpcu-rplu

The Older Americans Act is all about keeping us socially connected and involved. That Act entitles us to decent housing, transportation, and continuing education and gave us nutrition sites and senior centers. :lol: Because of the fear of what we will do with our united power, we can't use our senior centers for political purposes. But I must stress our entitlements are to maintain us as contributing members of society.

It's certainly true there is still a great deal of work to do before we achieve a better global human society.
I think today's youth are up to the task and I agree they will still need all the help they can get.
I don't concur with all of the reasons you cite for why we are where we are now but that's not as important as the fact that you do your best to be part of the solutions and that's about as much as anyone can ask of any individual. — universeness

About having a ways to go before achieving a better global society. That is such a big subject and I believe technology is a big part of that. The "New Age" is a time of high tech, peace, and the end of tranny. Certainly, the internet is a big part of change around the world.

I am also thinking of John Kennedy's Peace Core program.

Volunteers work with youth in communities to promote engagement and active citizenship, including gender awareness, employability, health and HIV/AIDS education, environmental awareness, sports and fitness programs, and information technology.

What Volunteers Do - Peace Corps — Peace Corps

That explanation missed a big one, help with farming. Actually, we have big farm corporations because of research on how to help farmers in poor countries. Unfortunately, that research led to destroying small farmers because the best way to feed the masses is lots of fertilizer and huge farms. In a country like India where many owned small farms the change was devastating. It appears the focus of the Peace Core has changed a lot since the beginning. The new focus is social engineering which was not in the original program.

That social engineering is part of education in the US and this should not happen without a lot of social discussion which brings us to the benefit of the internet.

Hum, what should the family look like in the New Age?

And if such words were the Bible, I would read it. I can not praise the people in this enough. I find the posts superior to what can be found in other forums that arouse emotions but do not stimulate the mind.

I am rushing and want to drop another way of looking at language and communication.

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.
https://www.wix.com/wordsmatter/blog/2020/12/ethos-pathos-logos/ — Wix

Recognition of animal reasoning does not promote human devolution. — ucarr

The issue for me is education. Reasoning and logical thinking are not the same. If it is not understood that learning math and grammar are important to learning how to think logically, the necessary lessons will not be taught and the student will not become a logical thinker. The student will remain like an animal basing decisions on feelings instead of on logic. Then we will have young males gunning down people and other social problems because the masses are not getting the disciplined thinking of education.

Let's see, what was the chemical Trump told people to use to avoid getting covid. You know, the chemical that killed a woman's husband. "Trump says he's taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID". "Arizona man dies after attempting to take Trump coronavirus cure". That is reasoning. The information science and doctors use is based on logic and we have a religious mass that rejects science.

You know all those people who refused to use masks and said the government is trying to control us and the attack on the Capitol Building and the man who bashed in Pelois's husband's head. That is all reasoning, not logic.

The US is in a crisis because of bad reasoning and I am arguing we can use math and grammar to improve the reasoning of the masses. And yes, thinking animals and humans reason and confusing that with learning and using logic, has brought us down to the level of animals with half the nation believing Trump, who demonstrates all the characteristics of a tyrant, is a good father to our nation, put in the position of president by the power of God so obviously the election that put Biden in power was corrupted! Great reasoning, huh?

Fantastic, hopeful, encouraging words that our next generation so badly need to hear as they can make it happen. — universeness

They can not make it happen without better information. How many people here know about autocracy versus democracy, instead of left and right, and that democracy is a social order? Autocracy is also a social order. There are social, economic, and political ramifications of replacing education for good citizenship, with education that is preparing our young to be products for industry. How many of our young have a good understanding of democracy and leadership?

We destroyed our heroes in the US and stopped transmitting the culture we had. We educated for a technological society with unknown values. Now may the biggest liar win and if that fails, pull out the weapons of destruction and call yourself an angel of death doing the work of God. So much for dropping education for good moral judgment and leaving moral education to the church.

↪Bret Bernhoft The problem isn't software. Software and machinery have no agency. They are tools. Whether the tools are deployed for collective benefit, or very individual benefit makes the difference. In the present world, collective benefit seems to be more accidental than intended. Mostly enterprise is directed toward corporate profit.

An axiom of Marxism is "labor creates all wealth". If substituting software and machinery for labor also creates wealth, we could -- if we so wished -- distribute the wealth created by machines among the laborers who lost their jobs.

Labor is an essential part of us; in a myriad ways, the work we do defines us -- positively as well as negatively. I have performed tedious detail work that I would have given to a machine in a flash, had one been nearby. On the other hand, creative work I have performed (not "art") was immensely fulfilling.

In a phrase: People over profit. — Bitter Crank

""we could -- if we so wished -- distribute the wealth created by machines among the laborers who lost their jobs. Yes, that is what I said, and will add to that, replacing the autocratic model of industry with a democratic model and preparing our young for reality, not superstitious myths. Never a God nor technology is going to save us.

It is not just industry working for profit, but all our bureaucracies are working for the power of the bureaucracy, and this crushes individual liberty and power. We used to laugh at communist Russia because their paperwork clogged the system making it hard to get anything done and leaving a train filled with food to rot on the tracks because no one had the required authority to move it. Now, this is a US problem with things that took 5 minutes to resolve, not getting resolved for several months.

I am trying to help a gentleman who has severe brain damage in part because of a stroke and in part because of being a victim of a crime. In over two months he still does not have a social worker, and now proving his social security number is his social security has set us back for at least another month, meaning someone who needs help could freeze to death this winter. In the past, this would have been resolved in a couple of days at the most.

I have started talking about the beast. It is a great analogy. What has changed is our bureaucratic and business organization. Now we have shortages that we never had before, and a huge homeless problem while at the same time employers can not find workers? It is like Covid turned our world upside down and dropped us causing everything to break down. Our faith in technology and failure to value our human potential and trust each other, is a huge mistake!

But does it have to be employment in the old sense of working for a boss who takes half or more of the value of your work as profit and does whatever he wants with the product? Might 'work' not be re-imagined so that independent people spend part of their time pursuing their creative endeavours, part of their time in co-operative efforts that benefit the whole community and its environment, part of it in games, social activities and entertainment, and part in solitary contemplation? — Vera Mont

I am glad you gave how we might use our time, some thought. If that is what we want then we have to change two things.

I believe capitalism is best for some things but not Laizefair capitalism built on the autocratic model. We can retain capitalism and replace the autocratic model of industry with the democratic model. I am confident the democratic model would strengthen families and reduce all social tensions because it is about being cooperative to achieve shared goals. Also, it prepares everyone for advancement increasing equality.

The second change would be replacing education for technology with the Athenian model of education that we once used. The focus of this education is good citizenship and lifelong learning. Its goal is well-rounded individual growth.

Before 1958 we used the Athenian model for education. There are two ways to have social order, authority over the people or culture. Our choice for democracy also meant liberty that was protected by education for good citizenship. In 1958 the US replaced that with education for technology and left moral training to the church. The US is now in very serious trouble!

Education for good citizenship was also education for good moral judgment. We could do that without the Bible by using literature exactly as the church uses the Bible for making good Christians, but secular literature does not depend on religious superstition. As Athens did, we created American mythology with American heroes and we destroyed those heroes and that culture when we replaced the past education with education for technology that prepares the young to be products for technology and consumers and makes them dependent on "authority and the experts". We stopped transmitting the culture that made our liberty possible. Now Christians think they created democracy! They have no understanding of democracy.

I must defend that last statement. Knowing the characteristics of democracy does not equal understanding democracy as rule by reason and what science has to do with good moral judgment. Democracy is about knowing truth and that requires education for logical thinking, not reading the Bible, and being ignorant of everything else including the transmission of a deadly virus.

Marc Andreessen can be quoted as saying, "...software is eating the world...". Another way of stating this is to say that automation is downsizing jobs across the planet. This is obviously a problem for a lot of people, especially those who become and remain unemployed because of software, Artificial Intelligence and automation more generally.

With that said, is it ethical for technological automation top be stunted, in order to preserve jobs (or a healthy job marketplace)?

This is, in my humble opinion, one of the more important dialogues that our modern society needs to be having. In some ways, we already are having this dialogue; not just here, but throughout our cultures. Technology is advancing, and people are beginning to push back. This is a tough one.
Is it ethical for technological automation to be stunted, in order to preserve jobs? — Bret Bernhoft

That depends on taxation and government spending. Our potential is to let people die in poverty or provide public assistance so everyone has a decent standard of living. Of course, if government subsidizes its population it needs revenue. If people are not working, they can not pay taxes, so now where does the government get revenue?

In the past, revenue was taken from people who had income-producing property. Income taxes came very late in the game of civilization. The computers and robots are all property. That could mean a return to taxing property simply by redefining what that means.

When the 1958 National Defense Education Act was implemented, a high school teacher explained to the class that we should plan for a future when people did not work 4-hour jobs because automation would replace the workers. Well, here we are in the automated brave new world and we are no more ready for it than we were in 1959.

Some may argue, we must not tax automation because that would retard our growth. To that, I will say industry is supported by the government. If we are not working together for the good of all, things will get very ugly, and allowing that to happen may be the best use of human intelligence.

On the other hand, employment is extremely important to ordering our lives and I am not advocating leaving people unemployed! In my later years I am experiencing the shortage of people willing to help the elderly stay in their homes. I also see a lot of environmental work that can be done and the arts could absorb a huge working force. We need new ideas for a new reality and it is very exciting to think about the civilization we could have, verses the human suffering and cruelty of our past.

I disagree that "formal logic" and "Fortran" are similarly related to language in that both represent specific uses of the language.

I see formal logic as the semantical component of language, which does not represent a structure , but a meaning, whereas Fortran is a specific syntactical language form used to convey a semantical meaning. Under any language (Fortran, French, English), you will need to adhere to a logical based semantics for coherence, but the form can vary among types of languages. That is, logic is not a language, but a component of language, whereas Fortran is a type of language.

Language is a human extension of perceptual interaction with the world, and is continuous with perception , which is already conceptual and cognitive prior to the learning of a language. Our embodied perceptual-motor interaction with the world plays a large role in the origin of the structure of linguistic grammar. Animal cognition already implies a spatial-temporal ‘grammar’.
— Joshs

This references a specific type of non-linguistic thought, specifically "how to" thought. That is, a chicken knows how to jump on the perch and likely engages in some form of non-linguistic reasoning when plotting her course from the ground, into the coop, up the ramp, and onto the perch. That is akin to much higher human non-linguistic "how to" knowledge, as when we can disassemble, repair, and reassemble an automobile transmission without putting a single action into language before acting.

Living my life with dogs, cats, goats, and chickens, I am very sympathetic to the view that animals have much higher levels of thought than people wish to give them credit for, but I don't think your reference to "perceptual-motor interaction" touches on those higher levels of animal intelligence. That is to say, I agree with you to the extent you suggest that there are all types of thought without language, but I believe your example of "how to" language points to the least controversial one that is generally conceded by the staunchest of deniers of meaningful thought without language. — Hanover

This thread needs more arguments about what language has to do with logic. What is beautiful about math is it crosses all language barriers. 2+2=4 is a universal truth, regardless of what language is spoken. Science is also about universal truths and this path of thinking appears to have begone with some Greeks and leads to the notion that humans can know truth and live by reason, instead of being ignorant and living by authority over the people.

Our understanding of logic includes our understanding of morality and the human potential. Arguing animals are logical degrades democracy and justifies autocracy. I really think equating human logic with animal logic is harmful to democracy as that throws us back to living like animals and power struggles instead of having education for the higher order thinking skills.

No processing, thus no logical processing — ucarr

Let me begin by saying I am not sure of my arguement but like you, I am trying to figure this out.

You may be on to something. Let us test it. When I was a child I wanted to fly and I had no idea why that was not possible so I kept jumping off high things hoping to fly. Is that logical thinking? Or how about if we are dying of a terrible plague? We know God is punishing us, so we appease this god by 1. sacrificing a human being. 2. Appease the god by going from town to town whipping ourselves. 3. Appease the god by killing the Jews who are an offense to Him or attack the Muslims and take back Rome, or Isreal. Is that logical thinking? Is believing in angels and demons logical thinking? Where do we draw the line between logical thinking and illogical thinking? Now if an animal runs from a fire is that logical thinking because it hopefully gets a good result? Where would be if we had always run from fire?

All logic is action/reaction; in parallel, all cognitive processing is, likewise, action/reaction. — ucarr

:chin: What is the action and reaction to a mathematical possibility that reality is multidimensional? We work with numbers and grasp quantum physics why? We understand photons and the center of the universe because we are reacting to our experiences? Right now we have a mass of people who believe the Bible is God's truth and science is not about truth so we can ignore it even when a virus is killing people. That is logical thinking? Covid and Trump has made the argument about logic a very serious one and I am so glad you are continuing this debate about logic.

Our reflexes aren't always correct? Are they ever irrational? — ucarr

:chin: What did you think when I offered ways of appeasing a god? Are those ideas rational or irrational? The video explains why they are irrational. How about Trump and how we handled a virus? Do you think everyone is behaving rationally? Or do you think the government is trying to control us and God sent Trump and is now giving us angels of death who are killing the evil politicians? Is it logical to jump off high things with the hope of flying? I think giving up on flying might be a logical choice, but those did not give up the idea, figued how to fly.

I, RusselA, Janus, Alkis Piskas and others don't disagree with you. We never have. None of us claims animal reasoning is equal to human reasoning. We're just saying the divide between animal/human isn't no-reason versus reason. Instead, we're saying the divide is between low-res reason versus high- res reason. — ucarr

I wish all those folks were still here arguing. How about, reasoning and logic are two different things? Of course the Bible is God's truth and God gave us Trump as he promises in the Bible to send us kings. And does that reasoning support democracy and rule by reason, instead of rule by authority above us? You started with learning grammar is learning logic. Is studying the Bible learning logic?

nteresting question. What I've worked out for myself, so far, is that logic, basically, is continuity parsed. Whole into parts via analysis and, in reverse, parts reconnected according to strict rules of valid continuity back to whole.

Are the instincts of humans and animals logical? I hope so. If I have survival instincts (and I do) I certainly hope they're viable and thus logical. The difference, as I say, lies between low res(olution) cognition i.e., instinct and high res(olution) cognition i.e., rationation.

We humans want to learn logic to better plan for the achievement of our sincere goals, and thus for our happiness and fulfillment. — ucarr

Do you think animalslearn logic? What does it mean to learn logic?

I so wish everyone would watch this videoIt explains why most of our thinking is not logical but reactionary like an animal perceiving and reacting.

Our understanding of animals was incorrect. The notion that animals communicate is new. The notion of animals having feelings and feelings involving hormones was non-existant. We held the belief that humans were a special creation of a god, and not like animals. As we learn more we have to resolve a lot of conflicts between old and new thinking. But I don't think we should take this so far as thinking animals are as logical as humans, in complete deinial about how the cortex makes human thinking different.

On the other hand, dogs have a sense of smell far superior to the human sense of smell, and through smell, they access a lot of information that is outside of our awareness. Insects can be superior to humans in specific ways and different animals can be superior to humans in their way. But none of them will use math and science to learn more about reality. They will not concern themselves with learning the rules of grammar.

— RussellA

That cartoon is excellent!

Even if a school caters to low-income students, it can empower such students to success with rigorous grammar lessons because logically thinking students of low income, no less than logically thinking students of high income, can successfully compete in the job market. — ucarr

I think our problem is our definition of logic and I wish others were here to discuss what is logic and do animals have logical thinking? I think you and I have agreement that humans need to learn logic. That means logic is something that is different from instinct, right? To perceive danger and react is instinctive.
Mammals instinctively care for their young. Instincts are hard-wired into the brain and this is passed on from generation to generation. Some birds learn to speak, but is it logic? I think not. Imitating another is not using logic. Exactly what is logic?

log·ic
/ˈläjik/
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noun
1.
reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity.
"experience is a better guide to this than deductive logic"
Similar:
science of reasoning
science of deduction
science of thought
dialectics
argumentation
ratiocination
2.
a system or set of principles underlying the arrangements of elements in a computer or electronic device so as to perform a specified task. — Oxford Dictionary

It might be beneficial to follow all those similar subjects. When we get to the computer explanation we are talking about programming. When we say an animal behaves in a certain way because it is hard-wired to do so, we are speaking of programming. Now we might consider is programming equal to logical thinking? I think not, AI can not think as a human thinks. And when it comes to humans, memorizing a lot of facts is not equal to logical thinking. Memorizing facts is perceiving and reacting, like a computer. If this, then that. What makes a human different is the ability to question if this and that is the only possibility. Now we have logic. There is a degree of imagination in logic.

The human difference- why is experience a better guide to this than deductive logic? What makes the human experience different from other animals and computers?

By the way, humans are not programmed for logical thinking. They only have the potential and might I say the dark ages were dark because the pagan temples that taught the rules of logic were destroyed and religion replaced logical thinking, leaving humans with instincts but not reason. At least the US is slipping into a dark age and perhaps the rest of the world as well.

Before Christianity there was Zoroastrianism. The Jews were not dualistic but saw good and evil as a continuum, more or less good or evil. Cyrus the Great was a Zoroastrian and his troops rescued the Jews from Babylon and returned them to Isreal. Then he ordered that Persia would pay to have the Jewish temple rebuilt. He saw enough sameness between Judaism and Zoroastrianism for the religions to be compatible.

A problem with Zoroastrianism is the mass filled it full of superstitious notions that ruined the original wisdom of the religion and the same happens to Christianity. The religion is all broken up with different interpretations. It is a problem that caused Constantnoble to fall because they weakened themselves by dividing and making war on each other. One side promoting superstition and the other side taking a stand against religious icons that promote superstition.

Personally, I think the best way to understand Christianity is to study all religions and mythologies that influenced Christianity. Here is a link to Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism was a dualist faith that originated in Persia, and over the years it has influenced a number of other faiths. Even though we may not recognize it today, it has been an influence on a number of world religions, especially on Christianity and Islam. Zoroastrianism is a belief system that stresses how we as human beings were meant to strive for our full potential. A primary tenet of the faith is that righteous and upstanding people will participate in the rewards of paradise, while the evil-doers will undergo punishments in hell. — Jezel Luna

Is life a continuum of good and evil or is it dualistic? I don't know if we should use the word "bad" or "evil" because the word evil implies a supernatural force. The idea that Christianity is opposed to superstitions is nuts! In the past, people feared Satan and demons as well as the jealous, revengeful, and punishing God. Today most Christians seem to be in complete denial of the evil forces, other than a quilt trip for being less than perfect and believing we need to be saved by a supernatural force.

In measurements of IQ, Asians are scoring higher than the US. Not only are they scoring higher but China's population is much larger than the US so around 2050 China will have 8 high IQ people to every 1 in the US. I think I will bet on China surpassing the US.

But what are the goals? What should we measure when we are considering success?

Here are IQ statistics https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

In summary, both non-human animals and humans communicate using language. Non-human animal language is non-verbal, human language is both non-verbal and verbal. — RussellA

And what does that have to do with learning grammar as a path to learning higher-order logic thinking skills? I could be wrong but I think the discussion has confused language with logical thinking. Our disagreement is not about the communication skills of animals, including the human species. Our disagreement seems to be about what logic has to do with thinking foolishly or logically. Man, oh man, humans can do some really stupid things because they hold false beliefs and tend to be more emotional than logical.

I am stressing this because it has such important educational and cultural consequences. The US democracy could fall if we do not get this right.

Out of interest who says crows don't have language? Firstly they're very vocal birds and we don't understand what the purpose of such crowing and cawking means as we don't speak "crow." secondly there's non-verbal communication which interspecially is even harder to discern.

But we know ourselves that we have non verbal communication in abundance as humans:. Smiling, crying, dancing, thumbs up, high fives and the middle finger. We use our body to communicate as we do our voice.

Simply walking with an upright straight posture and chin up suggested confidence and authority while being stooped over, small with shoulders shrugged in and chin down suggests submission and lack of confidence.

I think it's prudent to assume other animals communicate in similar formats — Benj96

Excellent addition to the discussion. We can push what you said further by discussing the democratic behavior of animals. Making group decisions involves communication. However, they are not making logical arguments to persuade others to vote but physically influence the decision. I enjoyed this link

Queen bees and alpha chimps aren't voted into office, but that doesn't mean they're despots. Scientists have begun to view many animal species as de facto democracies, where majority rule ensures survival more than tyranny can. Our own species's democratic tendencies date back at least to our prehuman ancestors.

Group decision-making is a hallmark of evolutionary survival that helps maintain stable social bonds among animals. Like with humans, smaller groups of animals can often better achieve a decision-making consensus. While most species don't belabor politics like humans do, our democratic roots can be seen across the animal kingdom — which, in many cases, is more like an animal republic. — Russell McLendon

We can imagine two Tyrannosaurus rex competing for a kill and physically telling each other they are the biggest and meanest and the other one better back away. We hardly think of this creature as being logical. The OP is about grammar and its role in logic. I am not sure the communication skills of animals are the same subject as what learning the rules of grammar has to do with learning to be logical thinkers. This matters because our schools are not preparing our young to be logical thinkers. We are assuming all humans are working with logic and that just is not true. Most of the time we are reacting with as little thought to our behavior as a horse gives to his behavior. We need to be real about this and not confuse animal communication with human logical thinking.