Yeah, science and even math, in certain respects, seems to have come full circle. Both had origins in occult practices (grain of salt recommended), along the way, they discarded this filial association, and now, they're back into doing business in the gray zone between science as we know it and, for lack of a better word, religion. The child has returned home. — TheMadFool

I think we assume science and technology are the same thing. They are not. Human beings have always had technology but we did not always have science. Learning a technology does not improve our understanding of life and does not lead to wisdom as science greatly improves our understanding of life, moral judgment, and makes democracy as rule by reason possible. Technology does not lead to wisdom as science does. Education for technology has always been the education of slaves. It is not the education of men.

Why do people need crutches, dram and/or drugs? Same reason they need "religious beliefs and ideas": because thinking hurts a lot more than just making shit up. — 180 Proof

That thought does not lead to freedom and it does not support liberty and leads to authoritarianism. It leads to suffering, not happiness.

I think this describes one of the pitfalls of modern culture well - it caters to these lower needs in a cycle of neverending non-satisfaction. — Pantagruel

Absolutely and I do not believe this was so before changing education and then removing legal motives to be better human beings, such as divorce laws that discouraged divorce and censorship policies and speaking of the duties that go with rights.

Last night I listened to a show about prisoners and how unjust our justice system is. At one time I thought I would be a probation officer so I studied our prisons and visited prisoners and wrote those further away. I was impressed by the youth and the fact that they were not prepared for life. One clearer said he looked forward to the rehabilitation that he thought our criminal justice was. One of the Netherland countries has an excellent rehabilitation system, so it is possible. Some of our prisons do educate prisoners and this key. In one prison the prisoners have a class and access to the classics and learning the concepts in the classics has been transformational.

My favorite word is "concept". We can only be as good as we know how to be and we should not take that for granted! We used to use the Conceptual Method for education that teaches children progressively more complex concepts, and we used literature to help them understand life.

But the whole idea of stoicism is that one consciously trains oneself to learn to master and control exactly what constitutes satisfaction of these lower motivations. — Pantagruel

Yes and no. I love your explanation and with it, it is a yes! But you are speaking of complex concepts and we need to know the simpler concepts that go with the complex concept, as you did by explaining D and B.

When Jefferson wrote of the pursuit of happiness, he meant the pursuit of knowledge with the unquestioned concept that knowledge keeps us out of trouble and leads to fulfilling our higher-order desires. This goes with literacy in Greek and Roman classics and Cicero. And having self-control, as William James, explained, gives us freedom! Freedom! from being controlled by our lower urges that can make us as puppets on strings, and prevent us from actualizing ourselves as thinking human beings. Undeveloped people are not the masters of their lives that we become. Some may find happiness as you said, but many do not.

I've just been reading some Maslow and he presents a really nice theory of the need for the idea of God. Maslow distinguishes between D-motivations and B-motivations, that is, motivations that are powered by deficiencies (hunger, insecurity) and those that are higher and constructive, "being-motivations," growth, creativity, love. B-motivations in turn tie in with his theory of peak experiences, in which cognition of reality is achieved in its most fundamental sense. Everything is perceived "idiographically" as the most perfect exemplar of its own class. Maslow suggests that we have a fundamental desire to be perceived in this way, in our own inherent perfection. And that God is a projection of this need, the being which is able to perceive us as we most truly and perfectly are. — Pantagruel

I am not sure I completely agree with Maslow but I would like to read his explanation of the need for God. Is there a specific book title I should look for? For me, a concept of God helps us have a broader point of view than the lone individual, a much higher stand for humanity and what we can be, than if we have no concept of God. For me, God is also logos and the Tao, the way and our understanding of it.

Jack Cummins — Jack Cummins

I love agreement and I am glad you are accepting of Eastern philosophy. I have read, at one time Catholicism and Buddhism were so close they almost blended. I absolutely think knowing Eastern philosophy improves our understanding of Jesus. Jesus being a mythical character such as other mythical characters that carry Greek thought (logos). Bahia' is a blend of all religions. A high point in Catholicism is when it turned to Aristotle and other Greek philosophers to justify the power and authority of the Church, but this did not pull Europe away from the superstition that came talk of Satan and demons. Superstitious notions that got worse with translating the Bible into languages common to Europeans and Protestantism.

If Christianity saw the Bible as an important book of mythology and interpreted it abstractly instead of literally, I would find the religion much improved. I am quite sure Jews never intended for their stories to be taken literally. I am also quite sure at least 5 Bible stories are Sumerian. Abraham originating in Ur a former Sumerian city. And much of the New Testament seems to blend Sumerian, Persian, Egyptian, and Greek thought. Can we come to peace with a better understanding of this blending?

Thanks for replying to my thread. I went out for a walk in the park after writing the question and have spent the evening going through the replies, and worked upwards.

I do believe that the ideas of William James are essential to the understanding of why religion is important. I also believe that other writers' views are important too, including those of Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and all ot those who have explored the psychological and comparative aspects of religion.

When you speak of the possibility of destruction in relation to this, I do wonder how nihilism fits into the picture. Personally, I do have times when I feel that there is no objective meaning. I cannot always separate this from depression on a personal level. In other words, it is not always clear whether my own depression leads to lack of belief in any higher power being involved in the enrollment of life, or the opposite way round. Nevertheless, I am still inclined to the view that personal and collective survival matter still matter, but I can see that it is a dodgy area because once we get into the area of a godless world it is possible for all meaning to collapse. — Jack Cummins

Many of the US founding fathers were Deist. They thought religion was important but did not hold the Christian belief in a God intervening in our lives. They saw the God thing as a machine that was put into operation and then God lets it run without interfering. More Toa, that way, and we need to come in harmony with it. I think Eastern thought is very important to our understanding. And that Christian Mythology of our founding is a disaster!!! What a mess to have Christianity without education in the Greek and Roman classics and come to almost worshiping Neitzche. That is a terrible combination! That brings us to the "Power and Glory" that was the invasion of Iraq against the judgment of the rest of the world, as well as Trump and followers storming the Capitol.

Absolutely nihilism fits into the picture. When there is no agreement on truth and how we should be governed, there is only power and people are reactionary and that leads to rule by the most powerful! We defended democracy against this, but without liberal education, we do not understand that. And with evangelical Christianity without liberal education, personal power gets confused with God's power. Today no one knows, democracy is rule by reason, and because we do not know that, we can not defend it and stop voting for idiots that impress us with the look of power, instead of with good judgment and good character, and the ability to work with others.

This point is so much important. I totally agree with you that educational system is flawed since the day when states decided teaching us the "principles" to just work and pay our taxes. Probably yes we are more practical but we lost the path of wisdom and questioning everything.
When I say questioning I mean the key of not feeling "full" of what ever our teachers in the school/university teach. — javi2541997

Okay, we had liberal education starting with the day we entered school. Our school system strongly opposed government interference in education until 1958 when the US replaced liberal education with education for technology and began IQ testing, and educating everyone to be products for industry. That is the 1958 National Defense Education Act- education for the Military-Industrial Complex and adopting the German philosophy that goes with it. German philosophy has replaced Classic Greek and Roman thinking which was the cornerstone of liberal education. All that leads us to the storming of the Capitol and I would give anything, even my life, to have a voice like Bill Gates has. Do you know Neitzche's superman? That is Trump and his followers and what Germany had when Hitler was in power. I hate listening to the news and everyone questioning how such a thing could happen and being a nobody who no one with power listens to.

Complex and abstract terms like “God” “Heaven” “souls” are learned to us in our way of life when we are getting to the adulthood. — javi2541997

I have a very old book explaining logic and it clear states we can never know enough to be absolutely sure of what we think we know. When we get older we totally get the meaning of "the more you know the more you don't know". Maturity is being okay with that.

We have been awashed with the lying that technology is like a God and empiricism gives us that God's truth. Thanks to education for technology we are smart but we are no longer wise.

I hope my country realizes that education for technology has destroyed wisdom and that we return to education for wisdom. That is liberal education.

I was not aware that William James was interested in religion and psychology. I have his book about the psychology of education and only knew him as an authority on education and for advancing pragmaticism.

Allan Bloom argues the problem with nihilism in his book "Closing of the American Mind-How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy And Impoverished The Souls Of Today's Students". I find it depressing and therefore hard to read. To me, believing in nothing, not even the differences between males and females, and the importance of family is extremely depressing. Vive la France, at least leave us the pleasure of being man and woman and procreation.

Anyway reading your post, I immediately thought of Bloom's explanation of nihilism and my answer to your question is we must have something to believe in, something to live and die for because if there is nothing we want to live and die for, life is pretty miserable.

I know the US public schools attacked our national heroes and then dropped them and I see this as very destructive of our democracy. Democracy is based on a belief in humanity and education. It is about achieving human excellence and having liberty based on the highest morality. We need our role models and concepts of human dignity and honor and those have been under attack through education. Now we do not understand why we should not storm our Capitol building and take by force anything we think we should have control over. Our Capitol building is no longer sacred and may never again be an open experience for us to have because present conditions demand turning it into a fortress. I don't think a civilization can get any lower than this. The US may appear to survive, but this is not the democracy we inherited. It is more like the Germany we defeated in two world wars and education has brought us to this.

The bottom line, civilizations must have shared values or they self-destruct.

When this pandemic is over, I am going to make an effort to find a group I want to be with that is more creative. At the senior center, I participated in a group about political issues and I did not do well. Well, no one did well. This is frustrating. I think

— Cobra — Athena

is speaking of something I need to better understand. Or, perhaps the group needs to be artistic and not political? Wow, I am missing something here and I sure am glad Cobra step in. She has increased my appreciation of times when being impersonal might be preferred, but it can not be so impersonal that it destroys individual liberty and power.

:lol: This is looking a little more complex sense Cobra stepped it.

An ability to discuss personal things impersonally is a good skill to have; — Cobra

This was said when I was in a public speaking organization and I think I have just experienced why that is important. After reading your comment, I watched several TV shows with people of color discussing their issues. Most of them expressed anger towards White people and the problem of with White people pushing back. I thought of what you said and only one show was informative without making me feel threatened.

However, I don't think I understand what you are saying well enough to apply it to how I word myself.

and even eliminate idealism (and false-fact telling) for the sake of "identity protection" - even when discussing non-trivial identities, but trivial identities have completely polluted/distorted the benefits we can extract from it's use. — Cobra

I am not sure what that means. What is a trivial identity?

Well, you are certainly saying what I think needs to be said. And I think what

Ken Edwards — Ken Edwards

said is a good idea.

Of course, I developed my own community of people my age, but if it were not for the internet I would die from a lack of intellectual stimulation. In a way, having a sense of community may be easier for older people such as myself, because we have senior centers with activities that bring us together and people who attend these social functions are there to socialize. But when I lived in a small town, people kept their jobs and we at least recognized each other. In the city it seems people change their jobs often and there is always someone different at the store or at the bank. I am living with strangers and it is not the same as a small town. But the small towns are even less intellectually stimulating.

I think Ken Edwards, hit a nerve because neither the city nor the small town are Haight Asbury or Greenwich village. I don't think there are many places for artistic/intellectual types of people to actually have a community and we need each other to bounce ideas off of. We need a social life that is good with differences!

Thanks, Jack and Ken, I am enjoying imagining such a community and wondering where I might find just the right place for me.

Education in the US did tackle the power issue. It is popular to say education has always been preparing the young to be products for industry, but that does not agree with the old books I have read. William James (1842-1910) was an education authority and he strongly disapproved of the German purpose of education because it did not encourage original thinking.

If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery. The German universities are proud of the number of young specialist whom they turn out every year,- not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical or philosophical thesis to prepare, or a bit of laboratory work to do, with a general indication as to the best method, they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult sources in such a way as to grind out in the requisite number of months some little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added to the store of extant human information on that subject. Little else is recognized in Germany as a man's title to academic advancement than his ability thus to show himself an efficient instrument of research.

In England, it might seem at first sight as if the higher education of the universities aimed at the production of certain static types of character rather than at the development of what one may call this dynamic scientific efficiency. Professor Jowett, when asked what Oxford could do for its students, is said to have replied, "Oxford can teach an English gentleman how to be an English gentleman." But, if you ask what it means to "be' an English gentleman, the only reply is in terms of conduct and behavior. An English gentleman is a bundle of specific qualified reactions, a creature who for all the emergencies of life has his line of behavior distinctly marked out for him in advance. Here, as elsewhere, England expects every man to do his duty. — William James

He goes on to explain how to develop a child for original thinking. In the US vocational training became a strong part of education when we mobilized for war in 1917. The US used its schools to mobilize for war in the first and second world wars. That meant increasing the focus on American values. However, it was always the purpose of education in the US to Americanize the flood of immigrants who had no experience with democracy. Democracy demands knowledge of democracy and leadership. Liberty demands good moral judgment. The Greek and Roman classics and learning Latin and math were important. Math being a method of teaching logical thinking, along with diagramming sentences. William James thought it important for a child to verbalize the subject to be learned, and take action such as making a map or working in a garden plot.

Anyway, the answer to the question does education tackle the questioning of authority, depends on what country and its period in time. The major countries in the west have gone from liberal education to education for technology and use the German model. You know the model that lead to Hitler and Trump in the US, because the focus has shifted from independent thinking to reliance on authority. Right now there is a lot of fear of the US and growing demand for authority over the people. That change in education goes with the change in bureaucratic order. You know, being told you are to do the job exactly as the person before you did the job.

That takes us to the importance of being personal. When everything is run by policy everything becomes impersonal, then a government can do what the Nasis did because they are just following orders.

don't think that it is about privilege but about respecting individuality and difference. But I can see that this does involve debate. However, I will let Athena discuss further as she created the thread. — Jack Cummins

It is interesting to me how some people around the world come up with the same ideas, but we are kind of clustered in groups that do have different points of view. You and I seem to share the same notions and obviously, there are not a lot of people jumping in here agreeing with us.

I think Unenlightened also shares the same values, but not exactly the same, and that makes for good conversation.

The US based Social Security on age not need, to protect the dignity of older people. Much later the US created the Older Americans Act, which entitled older people to social benefits. Of course, we have free education for children, and the states vary in how much assistance children get. Unfortunately, and the reason for this thread, is the US stopped transmitting its culture and left moral training to the church, and now it is divided and at war with itself. The US adopted the German models of bureaucracy and education, and THIS LEADS TO EXCESSIVE OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY AND IMPERSONALNESS. We fought two world wars against what we have become. And Jack, I am alarmed that you have experienced the same impersonalness on the job. That means more of the world is under the spell of this authoritarian, impersonal social order than I thought.

Oh dear, I am sorry to disagree with but I do not see myself as an anarchist. However, I think I like the spirit of which you speak and we might call that the Spirit of America? The spirit of America is a mural in the US Capitol Building. She brandishes the Sword of Justice and so does the Lady of Justice who holds the sword and scales. They go with the Statue of Liberty who holds a book for literacy and a torch for enlightenment. Back in the day, one of the British philosophers argued in favor of our democracy and said those who have liberty have the most self-restraint. Only those who have high morals can have liberty and that is what makes education so important to a democracy.

Briefly, I am in favor of government. Why do you object to it? I like the idea that we debate things until there is agreement on the best reasoning, and from there, we have rule by reason. I think that group effort is very important to good governing. Without rules, how do we know how to play the game? :grin:

I also love what empowering women has done to our sciences and thinking and how that is being manifest in government. There is more and more talk of preventing the abuse of children. Living below the poverty level is abusive to children. Now we must be very careful here because too much government interference becomes a negative, but a civilized society would not be blind to abuse because that is a setup for future social problems. And just living in a society where people do not seem to care about the children, is abusive to the children. At least that is how things looked to me when I was a child living in constant insecurity.

I like your questions and your comment. And I almost worship Jack because he is well-read and we agree on what is really important yet he manages to turn just about everything into a pleasant discussion. His questions are sincere, not antagonistic.

My thought is humans are very limited. We are lucky if we can remember the names of 600 people and know a few facts about them, like who their parents are and who their children are. By the time our numbers reach 6000, we are alone with strangers. At this point, prejudice plays a strong role in whom we are attracted to and whom we avoid. For example, when I was young and attractive, my alarm went off if passing a male but not if passing a female, because males could be a threat to me and females were unlikely to be a threat. Our prejudices serve the purpose of protecting us when we have overwhelmed our ability to know each other.

That is where rules of good manners become very important! I love my grandmother's 3 rules.
1. We respect everyone because we are respectful people. It doesn't matter who the other person is because how we behave is about who we are, not who the other person is.
2. We protect the dignity of others. Now that can be hard to do when the other is antagonistic and insulting. I have a hard time not reacting in a shameful way, so I try to avoid people who bring out the worst in me.
3. We do everything with integrity. This is right next to being honorable.

So while a lot of responsibility falls on us for a moral society, taking that responsibility is about having liberty and favoring individuality. There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. Authority over the people, even if it is blind justice, destroys liberty, and that makes a moral culture very important. I think changes in public education have destroyed the culture we had in the US and this could end our liberty and democracy. We have put technology above the enlightenment goal of raising the human potential. I love technology, but I think loving people, and the variety of people, is more important. I wish we would give back to children their childhood, and as we did in the past, allow them to choose their own course after they have developed their unique identity, talents and skills, and judgment. Preparing them to be products for industry beginning with the first day they entire school, is horribly wrong!

I had science and technology confused, until I listened to a professor's explanation of the difference, and his explanation made perfect sense to me. It is like the difference between information and knowledge. Technology is information. The Egyptians had practical math and technology, but not science. The difference is knowing the triangle and how to use it for building and painting, but not the universal principle of triangles. Science is knowledge, understanding the universal laws, and Greek morality was built on concepts of universal truth, something that seems totally lacking for nihilistic people.

Technology leads to the Star Trek Borg, a spacecraft that gathers humanoids from all the different planets and plugs them into the spacecraft in such a way that they become part of the Borg and can not walk away and have a human life. The Star Trek caption was taken by the Borg and plugged in and the crew had to rescue him. Of course, that was a comment on what is happening to us. :lol: Being part of the Borg or having a job where every position is described in detail and everyone who does the job does it exactly the same as the person before. That is very impersonal and efficient.

Because of the other forum I do, I have concluded 'the idea that the good life depends on technology and nothing is better', is so pervasive, minds can't even question the human value versus the technological value. Replying to you, I am reminded of how Strek Trek addressed this theme over and over again.

Here is an explanation of the Borg and in the other forum there is no resistance to it because everyone is nihilistic and is choose technology instead of humanity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-01AQryzPs

:lol: That is hysterical :rofl: . Philosophical discussions are redundant because Wikipedia has all the answers. Requiring nothing of us right? Don't worry in another forum a gentleman refuses to accept the value of classical education or even to acknowledge a difference between New Math and practical math in learning reasoning. The difference being New Math is very abstract and we don't interact with it as we do with practical math.

I like your concept of the difference between knowledge and information being our relationship to it. Did you happen to watch a US show called Star Trek? People live on a spaceship and explore the universe. The show made it possible to consider many different human situations, including living in computer run societies. It was a TV series and also movies.

In one Star Trek movie, Spock dies and in a following one, he was brought back to life. Doc. asks Spock what it is like to be dead. Spock asks Doc if he was ever dead, and with shock that Spock would ask such a ridiculous question, Doc says "no", he has never experienced death. Then with a bit of irritation to Doc's ridiculous question, Spock says, then there is nothing for you to reference. In other words, without the experience it is not possible to understand the experience. This fact of life is quite irritating for people of color because White people do not experience life as they do and therefore lack motivation to change the reality. Or as a convict man once told me, "you may think shit tastes bad, but you don't know how bad until you eat it". The Quabala a Jewish tradition mentions God can know facts of lives but can not experience being human. I am sure that line of reasoning lead to edifying Jesus- a god experiencing human life.

There does not appear to be much interest in this discussion and I wonder why? We are turning our lives over to technology and creating a future very different from the past, and I thought people would want to discuss this? Knowing the difference between information and knowledge might play a role in how we create the future.

Interesting to contemplate the combination of technology and the pandemic. I think the effect of the pandemic will hit the young the worst because they are developing ideas of who they are and what life is all about and they coming into this and are growing up in isolation. Many of them have electronic devices and communicate with complete strangers and I suspect have very superficial relationships that are not like the school buddies children have had for 200 years. What if that is all a child knows for the early developmental years? Then add to this learning of life in a society that pushes the idea that computers and future robots are better than human beings? This is beginning to look like a science fiction on another planet.

Have you seen the TV series "Human's"?

Humans is a science fiction television series that debuted on Channel 4. Written by the British team Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley, based on the Swedish science fiction drama Real Humans, the series explores the themes of artificial intelligence and robotics, focusing on the social, cultural, and psychological impact of the invention of anthropomorphic robots called "synths". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) — Wikipedia

I know this is picky but I am not comfortable with the word "knowledge" being used the same as the word "information". Knowledge implies experience and information is factual but not experience. The Internet has a lot of information but the information is not equal to knowledge. It is only knowledge if it is experienced. What do you think? I think this is an important distinction if we are going to maintain the value of humans? What happens in our brains is unique to humans and it differs from computer information.
(last paragraph reworded for better clarity)

When I did my degree independent thought was considered as the mark of excellence. However, in courses I have done more recently independent thinking is not about independence at all, but just backing up arguments with published opinion. I had a tutor told me, 'You might as well suggest that people fold up pieces of paper all day, unless you back it up with empirical evidence to show that what you are saying works.'

I think this probably goes back to the whole idea of post truth, which I mentioned in the discussion on relativism. Even though I have found some of the postmodern authors, such as Lacan and Baudrillard useful for helping me think through ideas, I believe that postmodernism has contributed to the erosion of individual expression and the importance of uniqueness. — Jack Cummins

Oh, I can not say the word that is on my mind. :zip: Ah, how about this- just like human beings can not psychoanalysis nations can also need psychoanalysis. My grandmother's generation would be outraged by that opinion. I understand the importance of empirical information but it had nothing to do with being independent thinkers until recently.

Eisenhower's farewell address (sometimes referred to as "Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation"[1]) was the final public speech of Dwight D. Eisenhower as the 34th President of the United States, delivered in a television broadcast on January 17, 1961. Perhaps best known for advocating that the nation guards against the potential influence of the military–industrial complex, a term he is credited with coining, the speech also expressed concerns about planning for the future and the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending, the prospect of the domination of science through Federal funding and, conversely, the domination of science-based public policy by what he called a "scientific-technological elite". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address — wikipedia

What you have said destroys our individual liberty and power and that means we have fought two world wars for nothing. Millions of people died for nothing! Imagine the people of Athens or the founding fathers of the US, discrediting each other because they do not have empirical information. That is an insult to the speaker and the listener.

I studied public policy and administration at the University of Oregon. I know the research has flaws. By the time something is narrowed down enough to be the point of the research, the results of the research represent reality as well as a plastic-wrapped steak represents the animal it came from. There is a question of if the researcher should participate with the subjects being researched or be more like a computer collecting data and avoiding all interaction. When collecting that information it is important to have no facial and vocal reactions that may influence the person being questioned. But so many things can mess up the information gathering process and each method will get different information.

AND FACTS ARE NOT EQUAL TO MEANING. That is something that is much easier to understand in our later years. When we are young we are good at gathering facts. In our later years, our head is full of information and the neurons have grown and begin touching each other. That is to say we develop more complex thinking and a much better understanding of complex concepts. The experience is enlightenment, a much better understanding of meaning than we had in our younger years. Our reliance on technology instead of our elders is miss-placed faith. Biden will be a very different President than Bush Jr. was because as we age, if we have remained mentally active and intentionally pursued knowledge, we are as a fine wine and have much better judgment. Come on, a computer can not think like a human. Doesn't it make sense to turn to nature's best computer the well-programmed elder? In the not so distant past, children were taught to respect their elders, but society and education have turned the young against the elders, and we have some pretty serious social problems that technology can not fix.

"I believe that postmodernism has contributed to the erosion of individual expression and the importance of uniqueness." I so agree with you and that leads to the atrophy of civilizations and their death. Athens was aware of this problem. When it began expanding it became necessary to prepare people to govern the colonies. This flipped their education from developing human excellence to technological correctness, and soon, its problems became unmanageable and it became subject to Rome. Mythology warns us of the danger of the beast. Our reliance on technology is making the beast strong and I will repeat, we fought two world wars for nothing if this continues because if we destroy individual liberty and power, that leaves only the beast with power and authority and being a subject instead of a free man is a terrible thing.

I think that some people are better at trying to be robots than others. At work, I can remember how so many people just used to be able to be so alike. The more people expect me to act like a mould the more chaotic I become.

Perhaps it comes down to how we are treated as children. I don't think that I was forced to conform that much. Even at school, I was considered as 'arty' and left to my own devices a lot. My close friends are mainly arts orientated and seem to have difficulty conforming and being robotic.

So, I am really in favour of the right to be a creative bohemian outsider. It will be interesting to see what other people on the site think of your thread and whether they struggle if they are not given enough scope to be unique.

Extra: I just looked under discussion and saw all your previous one. I smiled at the one about toilet paper, and I think my mum hoards toilet rolls. — Jack Cummins

When my grandmother was a teacher, teachers thought it was their purpose to help children discover their own interests and talents. Learning math was about learning how to think logically, not learning how to have a high tech job. The focus was on independent thinking and that has been changed to "groupthink". The president the US had and his followers who wrongly thought they could stop the transfer of presidential power by use of force, are the result of a change in education and our social order. I am frantic as the changes have occurred without public awareness and knowledge of the ramifications of them. Our ignorance of what has happened makes us powerless.

This is more important than you may think. Taking responsibility for the goal of getting things done and being creative are essential for our sense of empowerment and satisfaction of doing a good job. The democratic model of management encourages this while obviously, the autocratic model does not. Under the autocratic model, we are to obey without questioning authority. Under autocracy having initiative can lead to being fired for being insubordinate. The autocratic model is efficient but not self-correcting and it can lead to very bad employee and management relationships that result in problems. The autocratic model becomes a family problem when employees treat their family as badly as they are treated at work. Autocratic workers are more apt to teach their children to obey than they are apt to teach them to lead, locking them into the lower class and abusive relationships.

Effectively we are like sea life that is trying to survive in a radically changing environment. The sea life has no way of knowing that things were not always this way. I expect more of humans but so far you are the only one on the planet who seems to be capable of knowing things were not always as they are and things are not as good as might want.

:lol: Bless you for the laugh about hoarding toilet paper! I wonder how many people will remember the horror of finding the shelves empty of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. When this last lockdown was announced, people panicked and bought up all the toilet paper again. :lol: I doubt that will go down in history books but for the people needing toilet paper it was a big deal.

I love you for saying that! That is exactly what I wish everyone would understand. In many years of trying to get people to understand that, you are the first person to do so.

Yes, everyone is supposed to do the job exactly as the person before and that mentally was not exceptional but in reality, Nazi Germany won the war because what you are talking about is Prussian military bureaucracy applied to citizens. Every aspect of a job is described in detail and the employee is to do no more nor less than the defined job description.

That policy goes with education for technology and merit hiring. The good side is education for technology and merit hiring, means the poor have a better chance of moving into the middle class. The downside is they can be totally unfit for the job because technological correctness does not mean having the character and personality fit for the job. And things get worse....

Children reared for such a technological society and prepared to follow not to lead. They are prepared to rely on authority, not to think for themselves. They are made to be amoral and impersonal because they are being prepared for a technological society that is impersonal and amoral.

That is what we defended our democracies against, but the system is extremely powerful as it crushes individual liberty and power and those in the seats of power have chosen for power, and we are shocked to have a president who is today's Hitler and has followers who follow his command to literally fight to the death of others and themselves, to keep him in office. We no longer have a sense of personal power, but we can believe we are very powerful when we follow a leader who is popular and powerful. Politics are now reactionary. We have what Germany had.

I don't know if others can find statistics for their local university but here are the statistics for my local university and I am rather alarmed by the huge shift to females. This is a whole lot different from my first college experience when I dropped out to be a wife and mother because that is what females were expected to do, and my father would not have it any other way. I got a C in one class that I stopped attending because the professor had said those of who got married would get a C and I was outraged by that and wanted to test his word.

Years later when I returned to college, I had to do a paper on middle-aged women, and the best research on that subject was done by women. However, the professor insisted we use the abstracts and extremely few males had done research on women, and the work done by women was not accepted in the peer-reviewed abstracts. The professor was aware of the problem, but would not change his requirement. It appears the world is different from what it was 40 years ago.

https://inclusion.uoregon.edu/facts-and-figures

The "University", or as the ancients called it, "the Academy", had never been a place of impartiality. The goal has always been to teach those fortunate, what went according to the intellectual absolute of the time - classical age: moral and tradition, medieval age: metaphysics, and dogma, modern age: reason and logic, contemporary age: knowledge gnosticism, and revisionism -.

And contrary to what many claim, Universities work much more easily and practically when they are homogeneous in thought and purpose.

Something that wants to defend and express to everyone, ends up defending and expressing nothing. — Gus Lamarch

I most know, why do you know something of the history of education? It is my favorite subject and it is so exciting to come across someone who knows something about it.

Thank you. In another forum, a political one, the reaction to what I said would be very different. Folks there would see me as weak and undeserving. I am very glad to have government assistance. The Older Americans Act speaks of older citizens as being entitled, and we had Senior Centers and we have senior housing and nutrition sites and the Senior Companion Program, and we can have free bus service and audit college classes for free, all as benefits of making our working years contribution to society.

The flip side of all those benefits is to enable us to remain participants in society and to continue to make a social contribution. Because of what I get, I am secure and can volunteer. Because I am struggling physically I am very thankful for Social Security and I think it is insane to consider ending it. If I had to work a 40 week, I would be on the streets until I figured out a way to end my suffering. As a volunteer, I can work as much or as little as I want.

I do college classes by buying them from the Great Courses company. I could ride the bus free and audit college classes for free, but I can't keep my mouth shut and I know I would be correcting professors. :rofl: I didn't do well in college many years ago, because I clashed with professors and I am so thankful for the Great Courses and self-education. I am so glad I don't need a degree and employment, to make a contribution to society. I wish everyone was into lifelong-learning and enjoying making a social contribution and evening all this out with assuring everyone decent housing and nutrition and those things that increase our value to be contributing human beings.

Oh my goodness. Check your other thread. While you were working on this post, I was working on a post in your other thread and that one addresses what you said here. :grin: :heart:

I love your example of not taking advantage of others or intentionally trying to get the advantage because I am such a looser. I could be a great salesperson because I know the tricks salespeople use because I have had the training, and by nature I was an attractive person physically and personality, but I am a lousy salesperson because I can not take advantage of someone. I always take "no" for an answer, because if I say "no", I want my "no" respected, and if a salesperson tries to push me beyond "no" I am offended.

I am not a good business person because I give away my service. I love to be needed but don't love taking money for what I do. :lol: I have a pile of money in my kitchen that I must give back to someone who paid me too much for a favor. She knew I would not accept what she gave me so she dropped it in my bag when I was not looking. Something inside me just says I should not accept money for doing a favor. :lol: This goes with my problem with Christianity. I am not Christian but I was strongly influenced by it and I wish I could go for all the money I know I could get but I can't.

Anyway, I am a looser and I can't change this and at the same time be right with me. I blame Bible school for that. :lol: No, in the past women took care of everyone because that is what a good woman did. Once, when I had to support my family I asked for more pay and the woman snapped at me that caregivers put caring for people first. It is terrible for women that people's lives and certainly how they feel, can depend on good givers and yet we pay them very little, not enough to support our families. Teachers and nurses had to get over this barrier when they fought for better working conditions and better pay and we resent them for taking our tax money or what we pay for medical care. But is it right for us to put money first? What does that do to our society?

I am a Democrat and Republicans have a very different point of view. :lol: Republics are best known for being Christians and there is a rumor that Democrats are not Christian. Who is right?

You are so right about throwing people out of institutions and leaving them to fend for themselves without being prepared to do so.

It is not natural for humans to live in huge populations where they are strangers to each other because there are too many people for us to know everyone. Now instead of having personal relationships with everyone, we are impersonal and sometimes dehumanizing. This can be a good or a bad thing.

In a small town where everyone knows Tom is limited in what he can do, people may go out of their way to create jobs for him or to buy what he is selling. However, if Sarah has a baby out of wedlock, she and her child may be shunned and they are much better off in a large city.

Even better than a large city is a large city that has a seaport and an influx of people from around the world because such cities will be cosmopolitan. The center of a large continent will not be cosmopolitan.

I think we might want to be aware of what our environment has to do with our values and behaviors. In a small town, people are more apt to help each other, but that includes protecting the community by ostracizing undesirable people. In a large city where people are strangers to each other, we may not get the help we need, without the government providing assistance, but we also can avoid the ostracizing of the small town. However, because we are strangers to each other, there is more reliance on background checks, before we rent a home or get a job or get a loan, and this can marginalize people which is as bad as being ostracized. Such marginalizing leads to poverty and other social problems.

The world never had so many people, and we never had as much opportunity as we have now. I am shocked by how we talk about child care as if we have always relied on paid child care providers, instead of mothers who were forced to stay home for social and economic reasons. In our news is how awful it is that mothers must give up their jobs to care for their children, and that child care providers don't have jobs because we are not leaving our children in child care centers. In my old books, I read how institutions can not do for a child what a parent does, because of the difference in the relationship with a paid person, or with the parent, and today this is not in our thoughts! :scream: But nothing is more important to our humanness than how we are raised. I am not sure institutionalizing our children is a good thing, any more than backgrounds are a good thing?

I think I got a little off-topic. Bottom line, our lives are about our relationships and the world is changing and we are learning as we go.

To me this subject seems the same as your thread about discrimination. :lol: You make me laugh as I think of how silly these discriminations are and it tickles me to see both forms of discrimination as a result of reading both your threads this morning.

Of course, the form of an argument is important for credibility. If you saw the political forum I am involved with, that statement would make more sense. Insulting someone is not at all like the debate of which you speak, and it screams some people are just reacting and not actually thinking through anything. However, we might be patient with these people and ask questions that might help them think something through. But some people just don't want to think things through and it is best to avoid them as we would avoid a dog that attacks people. The bottom line is not their technological skill, but their character and how they treat others.

As for those ideas we are passionate about, I don't like discussing religion with Christians and unless religion is being debated, I normally just smile at the Christian comments and keep my mouth shut, however, if people are debating religion, then I am compelled to argue against Christianity. I am compelled to do this because I am passionate about democracy and religion with a God who has favorite people because that religion is not compatible with democracy. This is difficult because historically Christians have promoted democracy, they have also discriminated against people who are different, and opposed science when it goes against what they believe. The sun shines equally on everyone and believing a God has favorite people can be a problem to democracy and world peace.

Thank you for expanding our awareness of prejudice and including people who are overweight. I think we could add cognitively challenged people to the list of people who we discriminated against. In my state, we even sterilized them without their consent, but that would now be illegal. I and have heard hard horror stories of terrible things people have said to someone with a disability or a Japanese and Caucasian mixed child. The people who said the terrible things seemed to assume they had the right to have the world to themselves, without people who offend them because they look different. A mindset I absolutely do not understand.

We have more people moving around the world than ever before. I wonder if we will get used to people looking different and overcome our prejudices? I think where I live we have become more accepting of differences but on TV the news of other places makes me think there are some places that are not accepting of people who are different.

↪Athena Athena, we were just talking about serfs and slaves yesterday after watching Simple History's video on "Life in Medieval Times"! We also got into a discussion about political power gradually accruing to the peasant class over centuries. We do a lot of drawing contests, and the one elective they go to every day (I have them all day except for one period is more exact) is computerized automated design (CAD). I highlight classical music with Doodelchaos's awesome Linerider videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIz3klPET3o&ab_channel=DoodleChaos
and similar stuff. I try and give them a rounded education. — RogueAI

Can I access the "Life in Medieval Times" that you used in class? What was said of feudalism? According to the information I have, the Catholic church attempted to maintain a human morality that was not maintained towards the end of feudalism and not at all maintained during industrialization.

What was said of serfdom and the struggle to stay out of serfdom towards the end of the Hundred's Year War and end of the plagues that wiped out the population, resulting in not enough people to farm, kind of the same reasons Rome became Feudal forcing people to stay on the land and farm. The story is complex and I don't think 6th graders are ready for all the complexity, but as we deal with racism today, that piece of history seems very important.

My favorite teacher was my 6th-grade teacher. He had lived on an Indian reservation and attempted to bring that influence into the classroom. After teaching of the native American organization of chiefs and families, he had us spend the day outside creating a native American village. I think it would be really cool to do the same with a middle-age feudal system manor.

The art/musical is exciting. I can see the introduction of math concepts but they flicked past so fast it was somewhat interesting but lacked meaning. I hope it is complimented with lessons that fill in the meaning. Have you seen the Flatland movies? My great-grandson very much enjoyed them and he also was fascinated by the videos about origami "Between the Lines". It is sad so many children avoid math because it is so fascinating! It really needs to be taught with art and music.

The book "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe" is beyond 6th grade interest but a teacher familiar with this book can tie math to science in very interesting ways. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3JwMAwAAQBAJ&gl=us&hl=en-US&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKT-FDR-na-us-1000189-Med-pla-bk-Evergreen-Jul1520-PLA-eBooks_Science&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwsf4wfvG7gIVMQV9Ch0ifQ45EAQYASABEgJeHvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Thanks, Athena. I teach 6th grade, which is all subjects. I have the same group of kids all day (virtually, now). — RogueAI

What do you mean by all subjects? How much time do you spend on art and music? What history are you teaching? I don't mean to be mean, but I strongly favor all grade school education being liberal education and that is not what is happening anywhere I know if except maybe some private schools.

Nothing is more important to me than education. If your class addresses the issue of slavery, please, please explain serfs. (subject of thread) Feudalism is the enslavement of White people and we are lying to ourselves to believe it was any better than the slavery of people of color. Even people of color had slaves because back in the day that is what people did and discipline was kept by whipping people. Captains of ships kept order by whipping people. That was just the way it was and I don't think we are too far from that today because we maintain autocratic industry, authority over disposable people, and education for technology has always been for slaves. Liberal education is for free men.

I watch shows about children through history and around the world today, fighting to get an education, while our own children do not desire education and I am sure many have not followed through with homeschooling. Have you seen a copy of the 1917 National Education Association Conference in Portland, Oregon? To me, that was one of the most important books ever written. We taught every child a set of American values, knowing they would help their immigrant parents become Americanized and this was particularly important as we mobilized for war. That was the first time we added vocational training to education and our middle class is the result of that education. I wish every school had a statue of liberty, holding a book for knowledge and a torch that is the enlightenment of knowledge.

I think that the difference between scorn against an idea and a person is complex. I once was in a situation in which a white woman commented to a black woman, who was dressed in white trousers, 'I have never seen you looking so clean before.' The black woman spoke of being so hurtful, and it incorporate ideas about dirt and cleanliness, which are often projected onto others. I think this is getting into the social anthropology of prejudice, which involves cultural ideas. — Jack Cummins

Israel and Palestine have this problem. The Jews comment about how the Palestinians stink and believing the Palestinians to be inferior justifies treating them very badly which of course leads to Palestinians hating those who treat them so badly.

Yes, it is horrible when teachers and other people just seem hostile and sometimes we don't always know why, and are left wondering. We can try to put it down to certain characteristics, everything from race, gender, dislike of short or tall people, or hair colour etc. It is sometimes not clear.

That is where it gets complicated because if, for example, a black person gets treated badly it can be say the other person is racist. But, it would be hard to prove in a court of law, unless it is overt. — Jack Cummins

The greatest discrimination is against poor people and conversely against rich people. We are perversely waging war on each other, rich against poor. And teachers in inner-city low-income neighborhoods are in hell. I attended one of the worst schools and I feel just terrible for the teachers who tried so hard to give us a good education, in such a terrible economic and social situation. Teachers in one of the schools I attended actually suffered post-trauma syndrome. Today in it is our representatives living in fear of their lives because of Trump's leadership, but back in the day, it was the teachers living in fear. In such bad circumstances, the relationship between students and teachers is not going to be good.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ( John 1:1 )

The implication of these two passages together, seems to be that the Word, the Creator and the Creation are inseparable - and consequently, it would have been open to the Church to accept Galileo's "hypo-deductive methodology" (scientific method) as the means to discern the word of God made manifest in Creation.

Had they done so, a scientific understanding of reality would have been pursued, and had the moral authority of God's word. Technology would have been applied in accord with a scientifically valid understanding of reality, and we would have made a paradise of the world.

Instead, science was decried as a heresy, even while technology was used to drive the industrial revolution. So science and technology was applied for military and industrial power and profit - with no regard to a scientific understanding of reality. We applied the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons, and are now barrelling toward extinction. — counterpunch

I love what you said. :clap:

Here is the crux to the problem. Maybe if in Galileo's day the Church had embraced his vision of reality history would have been dramatically different, but it is the protestants who developed technology and industry and they embrace science, as you said the church should have embraced science, until everyone realized the conflicts between science and religious mythology and then it was science that had to be closed out of our consciousness and this continues to this day. There was also a huge moral conflict with Prostestism. Peasants supported the great wealth of industry and they died very young, making Protestantism less moral than Catholicism which prevented economic growth.

While Catholicism was economically bust and crushed the development of capitalism and independent entrepreneurship. The problem is with the beginning of the God of Abraham religions and the notion that God is in control and our birth determines our destiny. The Church supported the feudal system which is slavery because serfs are owned and we are lying to ourselves to believe it was not as bad as the slavery of people of color. We can not judge the past with today's consciousness because we can not not think of what we know today, but back in the day there was no concept of industry and capitalism, and Christianity did not lead us to science, but the pagan temples the Christians destroyed were places of math and science. The crusades slowly brought that ancient knowledge into the present, and the middle ages gave way to modernization.

Some argue the middle ages were not dark but they were very dark. Yes, there was technological progress but that is not science!! Scientific thinking had to wait for rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman documents.

.

If Christians want me to change my mind about them, they're going to have to do better than pass the buck for the witch hunts. — baker

Who do you think is a Christian? :rofl:

On some courses I have been on, work is labeled with a candidate number instead of names to make marking so much fairer. — Jack Cummins

I love that solution. :clap:

I had a teacher write a huge red F covering my work because she was angry with me. :lol: I got her back. I refused to cooperate with her and of course, I didn't pass, but she didn't win either.

When I'm grading students, and it's a tough call on the grade, I often find myself giving the black students a lower grade. I catch myself doing this all the time. — RogueAI

Good for you being so self-aware. I feel a desire to give you defense. Like if I were a teacher and had Christians in my classroom, I would also assume there is a lot they do not know and their parents do not want them to think about. This so evident in college when Christian belief made some of science a difficult subject.

In the past, we did more to transmit a culture to our young, and this was pretty limited to the culture of White people. People of color were likely to score lower on IQ test because they had less exposure to that culture. It appears we have been dealing with this problem with education for technology that does not transmit culture to anyone, but just because public education isn't transmitting culture, it does not mean parents are not transmitting culture. What subject are you teaching?

Oh, that's cute! I haven't heard this one yet. — baker

I am quite sure there are many things you have not heard yet. What concerns me is I don't think you have a desire to learn of things you do not already know.

Well, you can make up your own religion; or, if you're going to discuss religion, work with the claims that a particular religion actually makes. — baker

:rofl: Thank you for a good laugh. I am doing my best to work with the God of Abraham mythology. Perhaps the question of what a god can do should not be asked if a person can not argue that a god can not violate universal laws nor the will of man. Considering we are dealing with a pandemic and global climate change that is leading to extinctions, we might be interested in how things work. Sacrificing animals, saying prayers, and burning candles will not make things better. A god is not going to save our sorry asses and give us another planet like earth so we can destroy that one too. We need science to do better.

↪Athena I prefer the words reality and science. Any implication to God is pure speculation. But if reality is Created, it follows that science is the word of God. Or logos! — counterpunch

Almost but I am not comfortable with the notion that humans can know the word of God. We discover universal laws but the words we use to explain those laws are our own and our understanding will remain incomplete.

I think it is so important that in the beginning of the God of Abraham was a concept of an unknown god, beyond our comprehension. But in our humanness, we wanted a knowable, personal god. The result was deifying Jesus. Jesus was tailor-made for us and the jealous, revengeful war god became a personal, forgiving, and loving god. :heart:

But I lived in the sierra mountain range where heavy snow makes survival a challenge, and I know mother nature does not care if we live or die. She is not personal. She is just busy doing her own thing and what we do with our free will is up to us. Fortunately, we come with pretty good survival instincts but that is not always enough. Figuring out how to survive and evolving this into scientific knowledge is something only humans can do, giving them godlike powers. :wink: