I’m not sure what you mean by this. The culture that you believe we stopped transmitting from 1958 was what, I presume, created the culture you valued up to that point. From then on it was corrupted by the church and it’s morals. Are you referring to the United States or countries in general? — Brett

Sorry I did not specify I was speaking specifically of the US 1958 National Defense Education Act. I was in school when it was enacted and I remember that day because it was so frightening. All the teachers in the school were acting weird and at that time we were doing diving under our desks and covering our heads, as though that would help us survive and nuclear attack. :rofl: It was a tense time and especially that day got my attention. Then a teacher finally explained the purpose of education had been changed. They were now preparing the young for a technological society with unknown values. This day set the course of life. I have collected old books about education and old grade school text for many years. My grandmother was a teacher and her generation of teachers thought they were defending democracy in the classroom.

Imagine if churches stopped focusing people on the Bible and began teaching math and science. How long would the Christianity we have today, be as it is today? We took our culture for granted and that was a huge mistake! If you are a US citizen, how many principles of democracy can you list? How would you tell the story of the transition to democracy?

The US adopted the German model of bureaucracy and the education that goes with it and is now what it defended its democracy against. I am really curious to know what the outcome of the present culture wars in the US will be. You might notice we throw the word "fascist" around, but it is our grown-up boogeyman that we really don't know much about. We have no idea what it has to do with bureaucratic order and education. To relate this to philosophy, Socrates fought the war against Sparta and Athens lost and Sparta controlled Athens for 30 years. Plato was a student of Socrates who was pretty soured by loosing the war, and Plato was Aristotle's teacher. Aristotle admired the Spartans and much later the church used the teachings of Aristotle to justify its authority. The US was a modern-day Athens with an education system based on Athens education. Germany was the modern-day Sparta when the Prussians took over the rule of Germany.

Although the US won the war with the modern-day Sparta, it imitated Germany in the most significant ways. With the institutions of Germany, the democracy we had is becoming a dying memory. Now please show me your ID and present government-approved documents before we go any further with this discussion. We can not use public transportation without government-approved ID, and the responsibility for that is shifting to the federal government. To get a passport to go to countries we entered and left with no passports, you now must have a federal ID. My grandmother's generation must be wondering if fought the world wars for nothing? Replacing the Greek and Roman philosophers with German one's has had consequences.

The reason why they occurred was because they were in the office reading their Bibles and I was reading my philosophical books. — Jack Cummins

I don't think I would like that job because I do not like to be around people who prefer the Bible to philosophy. However, there have been some discussions in this forum that make me wonder why anyone would be interested in philosophy. :brow: Some people are just so technologically correct and their arguments seem to have nothing to do with living.

I think I was clinically depressed for many years? That was a long time spent in Hades and of course, I contemplated suicide. I thought I could not leave behind any who would be hurt by my suicide, so I began going through the list of people who I would have to kill and then realized if I killed these people, I would have to kill everyone who would be hurt by their deaths. And it hit me, I could not undo my life. The circle of people just got bigger and bigger. Then I decided if I could not kill myself, I would just have to do my best to make life better. However, it was not until the divorce and then children grew up and left home, that I fully broke through the depression. I was so reminded of Socrates' explanation of coming out of the cave. It seemed I rediscovered happiness, and instead of living in the shadows, I was in the sunshine and life was colorful. It was an amazing experience.

When I was depressed I saw a cartoon that was very helpful. A man was standing at a customer service booth and said, "I don't like life. Do anything better to offer?" That got me to thinking. What could be better than life? Here is where philosophy comes in right?

I believe that all religions attempt to culture an attitude of self-honesty. Whether they have an efficient method, or are successful, is another thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Good morning love. :heart: You get my day off to a good start. :grin: I love your question about the efficiency of different religions. I think the God of Abraham religions are the most threatening because of the notion of a god having favorite people, which is connected to a notion that this god wants us to engage in wars that include us in His "power and glory". But it is not just the religion that matters. It is also how we are indoctrinated to that religion. Christians disagree with each other more than Christians and Muslims disagree. :lol: Protestants and Catholics killed each other. Sunni and Shia kill each other.
Christians and Muslims kill each other. And God's chosen people do not know God's truth and have been persecuted by both Christians and Muslims. :lol: That is not very efficient but could make a great comedy. :lol: It was not religion that brought us to peace, but democracy.

"Good moral judgement" is insufficient for good moral actions. We all know that an individual might judge an action as wrong, yet still go through with it. This is why we need more than just to be educated in good moral principles, because such education does not necessitate good behaviour. That's what Socrates and Plato demonstrated in their refutation of the sophists who claimed to teach virtue for large sums of money. — Metaphysician Undercover

Being virtuous requires knowledge of virtues so I would not agree with Socrates and his student, Plato, on this point. Confucius explains the need to practice those virtues until they become a habit. I do not know if the sophists explained that? I facilitated workshops for healthy living, so I know the frustration of giving people good information only for them to make excuses themselves or just ignore the information and maintain their cries of sorrows. "Logically" we can not know the right thing and do the wrong thing. It is illogical to do what will bring harm to ourselves and others.

[quote="Metaphysician
Undercover;480906"]I think the fantasy is the idea that science can give us morality. Sure, science might show us a lot of things which are wrong, and in many cases, it can even tell us what we ought to do, but it doesn't actually inspire us to do it.[/quote]

:sweat: You are really making me work at finding the right words. :heart: I love that.

Your argument is like ordering a glass of water and then complaining that it is not what you want when it is served warm. In 1958 we stopped transmitting the culture that we had put in place for a highly moral society that can enjoy liberty without authority above the people and without social problems, and we left moral training to the church. This was a huge mistake!

We have not exactly had education for science. We have had education for technology for military and industrial purposes, and that is an amoral education.

Science can just as easily be tied to morality. Research on poverty and human problems such as schizophrenia, or prejudice, etc. is tying science and morality together. A moral is a matter of cause and effect and that is why science is very important!

It really matters how we understand democracy, liberty, and what morality has to do with both, and then what science has to do with good moral judgment and taking power away from men like Mao, Hitler, and a recent national leader who has ignored science. I wish I could think of better words to explain what science has to do with our liberty. It is a matter of how we come to know truth and what we choose to do with our knowledge. Making the wrong decisions will destroy the good and we do not get away with that.

↪Brett
You said,
'I imagine it's possible with someone with schizophrenia to apply their reason to their problems, and it would make sense to them, one step leading logically to the next, but it's based on irrationality, so it could no longer be called reason.'

From my understanding, even though you say that a person 'with schizophrenia' can use reason you are suggesting it is still based on irrationality. Actually, I think that all human beings have some contradictions between reason and lack of it, so schizophrenia has no bearing on the matter and did not need to be mentioned at all. — Jack Cummins

Bert, you are not understanding schizophrenia. If you are taking a shower and see a violent threatening person, what is the rational response? How do you reason threw your boss having an elephant's trunk?
How do you deal with your daughter wanting to avoid you because she can not cope with your behavior resulting from schizophrenia? There are different degrees of the schizophrenic experience. It may be mild and harmless such as seeing the elephant trunk on someone's face and knowing this isn't right, or it can be like a bad drug trip. Sometimes medication is enough to make it manageable and sometimes it is not but there is a cost to being medicated and for some that may be worse than hallucinating.

Jack, you are right. We should not assume the schizophrenic is working with good information. I argue with myself all the time and I think that is normal, especially when we receive conflicting information or we have one day off and a list of things we want to do and a list of things we should do, or we see that yummy chocolate cake and know we shouldn't eat it. But for a schizophrenic, the information they are working with can not always be tied to reality and their condition may isolate them adding social rejection to their problems. What if we are dealing with social rejection and can not change something about ourselves that is causing the social rejection? What is the rational way of coping with that?

Obviously, it is an extremely sensitive area and I would not recommend staff self disclosing personal beliefs but I do think that mental health professionals need to listen to patients' struggles, rather than dismiss them. It is not very helpful if nurses and psychiatrists simply ignore the struggles over beliefs and philosophical questions and simply offer medication. — Jack Cummins

Would you say Joseph Campbell is very helpful here? When we have a shared mythology and group identity, we have a comfortable notion of who we are and what is expected of us. But when we live in overwhelmingly large populations and do not have a shared mythology, how can we be certain of anything?

Children are often hurt in ways they do not understand when they are too young to defend against painful things that happen to them, so when a young person comes of age, the child may have self-doubts and negative feelings about him/her self and no coping skills for dealing with this. The gods and all religions give us coping skills and something to hold onto but there are two sides to everything, and stories of sin, demons, and Satan are dangerous. When I questioned if I was possessed, not only did this notion come out of religious ideas, and a well meaning Christian telling me Satan was testing me, but at the time, Satanism was popular and that hooked my imagination. What if there is truth in witchcraft and Satan and demons and ghosts and other strange things? It kind of irritates me that Christians today have a fantasy that does not include the dark side of their religion, but when it did, we had witch hurts. I would say without doubt Christianity is a key factor in mental illness. And I find the Greek mythology and their theater that presented the gods and heroes time and again, much better. Greek gods are concepts, not supernatural beings.

We need rites of passage

Wikipedia – A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person’s transition from one status to another. Rites of passage explore and describe various notable milestones in an individual’s life, for any marked transitional stage, when one’s social status is altered. (This link comes with a video of Joseph Campbell's explanation). https://mensfellowship.net/rites-passage3/ — Joseph Campbell

Your friends needed someone to help them through their rite of passage and thinking individuals who struggle need personal, private counseling, maybe a mistake. We might need a cultural awareness of what is true for all of us?

As for the effect of Covid and mass psychosis, I think you are right, but us old folks have more immunity against that psychosis. We came of age in a different time, more connected with WWII and pulling together to overcome an evil and willing to sacrifice for the good of all. And in the US thinking that group effort in wearing masks and distancing, is fascists, is for sure insanity and I hope in history Trump goes down as the worst president our nation has ever had. Sorry but he sure has not united us and we are living in fear of violence and fear of each other. Notions of science and religion are very tied into this! The US has many serious problems and people are reactionary, rather than thoughtful.

"In the mess we are in I am not sure if the religious or the scientists can help us." :heart: You are right my love, they can not. But Greek philosophy can. I stress it must be Greek philosophy because that is the philosophy essential to democracy. Replacing education for Greek philosophy with German philosophy brings us to the brink of disaster.

I think the relationship the US had with religion is not so removed from philosophy as Athena might think. It seems to me that religion was a way of contemplating the world and consequently the idea of reality. It as the truth.

I don’t think myth and religion was used, as suggested by Athena, to process the justification for what people believed, I think it was what they believed, what else did they have? But somehow I don’t think religion can go back to what it was and by that I means particular attitude. Of course people will claim that religion was always a lie. But in time philosophical and scientific ideas are proven wrong, which doesn’t necessarily mean they were a lie. — Brett

Oh, we do have an argument going. :lol: I have to be careful. Are others having an emotional reaction to what is being said? I am having strong feelings and thinking of such stupid things to say, that really have to pay attention and be self-aware. Thank you to all of you for sticking with a higher standard of argument and being so well mannered! In this crowd, I know being reactionary and sassy is not going to score me good points. That social pressure, like the culture of Athens, pushes me to think carefully, instead of being a jerk.

We can see historically and without question that in the US there has been little interest in philosophy except for a handful of elite youths who could go to college. We know many founding fathers were deists who did not deify Jesus. We one of them, Thomas Jefferson, edited the Bible so it is compatible with science. And studying old textbooks, reveals a reliance on Christianity as God is often mentioned, but because the US has so many different understandings of the Bible, education avoid religion other than mentioning God, and preventing education of evolution or anything that might offend a Christian, and this includes preventing doctors from telling women about birth control.

We do not think of Dick and Jane readers as religious books, They exemplify the White heaven of the single-unit family order, where Dad works and Mom stays home to raise the children and do not object to this, except for racism, a fantasy the excludes others, taking women for granted and denying that economic freedom. The man is the head of the household and until recently we did not question that, nor did we question restricting what women could do. And the book 1984 book by Sally D. Reed "NEA: Progranda Front of the Radical Left", and the 2012 Texas Republic agenda demonstrate the slipping Christian control of education. Like when Christians had unquestioned control of education, that never got our attention, but their fight for control now gets our attention, and notice how political that is! Notice how bad our political situation is. Our democracy may not survive this Christian Right president and the Christian left one who was elected.

The problem is that science doesn't really give us truth, as per my discussion with Jack above. What gives us truth is a particular attitude of honesty, and it is probably the case that religion would be better suited toward culturing this attitude. Science gives us useful principles, hypotheses, but truth being associated with correspondence, involves how we employ those principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which religion would that be? What are the important truths?

On the other hand, there is a liberal education and learning the higher-order thinking skills. That education leads to science AND good moral judgment.

Personally, I think we have two extremely important truths right now and that religion is a very serious problem right now because too many people are living a fantasy, and their fantasy could destroy life on the only planet we have. Even if there were a god ready to give us a new planet, why would give it to human beings who would destroy that one too because they refuse science?

Truth, wear a mask to save lives. Truth, stop filling the air with carbon and destroying the planet. Truth, if you have more children than you can feed, some will die. Truth, someone needs to care for the children and if you don't think that person is you, don't have children.

The reason I do believe that it was education that gave me a whole load of clashing is that I know that many people I went to school with have struggled with the contradictions too. In fact, two of the friends I am in touch with from school have had psychotic breakdowns, in which the context is of a religious nature, involving ideas such as the devil and the fallen angels. — Jack Cummins

Been there done that. I thought I was possessed and was on the verge of killing people. I had to make a decision- is all that demon, devil stuff for real or not? I am very glad I decided it is not. Later a came across information about post-trauma syndrome and then I found a book about traumatized children and found a counselor to help me deal with my experience of being put in a body cast with I was 1 year of age. I will stick with science okay? But it is also why I constantly relate science with morality and democracy. It seems so simple to me to understand morals as a matter of cause and effect, that I can't understand why everyone does not instantly embrace that. We must have morality and principles. A civilization can not exist without some basic agreements.

I do think that if I had not read like I do, ideas in the social sciences, as well as philosophy, I think that rather than just spending time contemplating ideas, I could have become psychotic. — Jack Cummins

Good choice. I also turned to philosophy. It was years before I learned of pts and my life was not good at the time. I managed with philosophy. I was really lost because I lived in a rural area without resources, nor educated people, but could find explanations of Greek gods and heroes and that was my starting place. I am so thankful I found my way out of Hades. A place we must all go to to sort out our values and meaning of life. But we should never go to Hades without the help of the gods because it is so easy to get lost in Hades. To be lost in Hades is to experience depression or even psychosis.

You know Joseph Campbell. Without shared mythology, we create our own story using our family and people familiar to us as the gods and monsters in our personal story. What a bloody mess, because then we need counseling to figure our personal myth and journey. If the counselor can't teach us coping skills and how to write better life stories, we can remain trapped in Hades and still blaming our mothers for our infantile efforts to manage our lives.

It is the cultural process whereby we demonstrate or prove to each other our reasons for believing what we believe. — Metaphysician Undercover

That process seems to be broken.

In the past, we had myth and religion to process the justification for what we believe. While knowing the truth has always been important, only in modern times has that meant science. The US never did develop a strong relationship with philosophy because of reliance on religion, and perhaps today that is a problem?

We seem to have a cultural divide between those who rely on religion and those who rely on science, and science lacks the qualities of cultivating culture, right? Without history and philosophy, I fear we are in deep trouble.

I think that is another book I should add to my collection.

The Greeks knew people around the world were different. They also had a notion of what it means to be civilized or pagan or barbarian. It seemed obvious to them those who refused to accept the Greek stand of living were pagans or barbarians.

Could relativism have a negative effect on culture and civilization?

Whoops, deleted

There are other options and zero need to change human nature.

I think knowledge of history would be helpful. The middle ages and feudalism is a very boring period of history. A leader takes his followers to beat up their neighbors and take everything they can, and this is the way of life. Not good conditions for building up an economy at all but people didn't know any better.

Eventually, technology lead to better trade routes and people began making money trading, manufacturing, and selling goods. It was expensive to supply a ship and travel to far away places so those who wanted to do this had to find someone to invest in the adventure and the investors wanted to protect their investment, so we get laws and law enforces and banks and a world without money becomes a world dependent on money. Ever since then, we have been struggling with better ways to manage money, and as more people have been empowered with money, they start getting politically active and politically powerful and they start demanded laws that favor their interest.

Economic growth was held back by insisting paper money be backed by gold, so we invent the silver dollar. All our coins had value because of the mineral content, Now it is no longer gold or silver, nickel, and copper that give our money value, but the gross national product and credit. The point is things have changed a lot and they need to keep changing.

Politically I strongly favor democracy and I wish we would replace autocratic control of industry with democratic control of industry, and that we add things to the list of utilities we hold publically. It is not that hard to improve our organization and raise the standard of living while empowering the people at the same time. This goes with a major investment in education, especially education for democracy that assures individuals have political and economic power.

I most certainly don't find maths would help my thinking. What I find helps most is lying on my bed for a couple of hours, and listening to a couple of albums, ranging from alternative rock etc to dance music. — Jack Cummins

I love it. :heart: The ancient philosophers were adamant on the importance of good music.
Plato..."Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

"

So many have been thrown into complete poverty and having to go to food banks and mental health problems have escalated, with the suicide rate rising, due to social restrictions. — Jack Cummins

God works in strange ways. We can not enter a New Age without realizing the wrongs of our past and stop repeating those wrongs. Especially in the US, some people believe they are superior to others and therefore more deserving. They do not realize what their advantages have to do with being superior, nor what luck has to do with their opportunity and getting ahead. God taught me the lessons in the 1970 recession when OPEC embargo oil to the US. Until then I thought poverty was a meaningful experience that those of us born white and middle class could not have. We could only play at poverty because at any time we could get a good job, or call our parents for help. It is not the experience of poverty until the economy collapses and there is no opportunity and no one to call for help.

With the mentality of abundance, we have created a worsening reality and this had to be rebalanced. That makes the terrible things of which you speak, good. Let us experience the terrible things and then come to the meeting table and talk about the importance of equality and how we might improve it. Is democracy about corporate wealth and ignoring the homeless? Is it a better education for your children, and just unfortunate that some children have nothing like the education in better schools, nor do they have lives that mean security and met needs so they can focus on their studies? Nothing is going to make people care enough about the issues than knowing "There but for the grace of God go I".

I am imagining that Christmas is going to be the biggest disaster of the year for England because the rules are going to be relaxed so much for 5 days, — Jack Cummins

I am so sorry.

I have just seen in the news that many people working in healthcare are refusing to have the vaccine. — Jack Cummins

I would not trust the new vaccines either, but I heard a report that we were ahead of the game because of previous work done on similar viruses/vaccines and how computers speed up the research process. I think a greater effort to inform the public could make a difference. :rage: We have to stop the people at the top from thinking of themselves as superior when the truth is they are better informed and hold more power. President Trump not only received better information in the very beginning, but he withheld it from the public. I think England puts more effort into informing the public than the US, which has stopped supporting public broadcasting, therefore, it does not have the funds to do necessary programs, and public broadcasting stations struggle to survive. Democracy and liberty demand a well-informed public who are then empowered to act on what they know. We need to work on this instead of expecting the masses to just obey and thinking the best way to get them to behave well is to punish them.

The bottom line may be what we believe is true of humans? Do we believe they are capable of self-government, or should they obey their superiors? If they are capable of self-government, then how do we enable them to be self-governing? What happens when we think democracy is rule by reason?

I do think that we are inclined to act like we are the end of history. I think that it is a problem and leads us to lack responsibility towards future generations and the environment. — Jack Cummins

I am so hoping the change in leadership in the US changes the whole ball game for everyone, but we are so divided things could get worse instead of better.

I want to stress the importance of "morale" and the American Spirit portrayed in the mural at the US Capitol Building. We have a high morale when we believe we are doing the right thing. Philosophy/Science, since Athens, has been the method to determine what the right thing is. Christianity did oppose that and closed all the pagan temples which were places of learning, and for a few hundred years Europe was in the grip of the dark ages. People who argue against that are not understanding the difference between technology and science. People without science can develop technology. But technology alone does not lead to moral thinking, and therefore, does not lead to a high morale.

We have the technology but our morale is so low we are not strongly behind going with science and technology. With the opposition to the change in US leadership, the new leadership may not be able to get our morale up, but if that opposition is not too strong and the new leadership can boost morale, we might realize a New Age, a time of high tech and peace and the end of tyranny. But perhaps this is like trying to put the spark of romance in an old marriage? Our marriage to religion has us going in the wrong direction. We live in the best time in history and are so negative, few can imagine a good outcome and if we can't imagine it, we can not manifest it.

So you find it difficult to read books which are opposing views to your own. To some extent, I think that we gravitate to these but sometimes I really enjoy reading opposing views. Yes, it is a good question how our bodies react to the books we read. Unless I am really immersed I usually have to get up and have a walk around every so often while I am reading.

You ask whether we are living in a more in your face culture, which is likely to become violent. Obviously everywhere is different but I think that I have noticed a bit of an improvement since the pandemic. In places where I go, like the cafes where I go to read, people seem more civil and this may be because all the lockdowns etc. have shaken up the day to day reality, often taken for granted. — Jack Cummins

I have found doing simple math when I am over-excited by something I am reading, will get me back into left-brain thinking, but until now, I have never tried that when the problem is reading an opposing point of view and having very negative feelings. You and everyone else here, push me to be a better human being. This is the total opposite of the political forum! The political forum can pull out the worst in a human being and right now the US is having a serious political problem so things probably do look worse to me than others. A vacation to a more peaceful country would be welcomed.

On the other hand, the fires we had this year, and the epidemic, have triggered the best in people. At least Christmas drives for food and gifts have been very successful this year. But some of us are being downright hostile about wearing masks and shutting down businesses. It is crazy as people want both the freedom to run around without masks and to sit in bars and restaurants. They don't get those two things don't go well together and often these people do not watch the news because it is so unpleasant so they don't know the science and that hospitals are struggling. I don't think other countries are having so much trouble getting people to comply with protecting everyone's health? We seem to be very polarized between those who favor religion and those who favor science.

Yes, I am definitely interested in listening to others, with critical but not an attacking stance. In that respect, I wait and see what happens next in the enfoldment of ideas. Really, I try to keep as an open mind as possible and, perhaps, my open mindedness will be be my downfall, but I hope that it will be something more, in terms of creativity and synthesis amidst the deluge of broken down philosophies in an increasingly chaotic world. — Jack Cummins

I just wrote of my intolerance of opposing thoughts and you remind me I see myself as a rather open-minded person. :chin: I think both are true of me. There are some things I am passionate about and many things I am just curious about. I wish so much I could travel around the world because that expands a person's consciousness and I think the more we expand our consciousness, the less judgmental we are.

In this forum the way people react to each other is awesome! At the moment I can not tolerate the political forum because those clowns are only interested in bashing each other and they totally miss discussing issues.

Our culture is missing the importance of good manners and I don't think this was always so. I collect old grade school textbooks because I wanted to know how teachers, such as my grandmother, defended democracy in the classroom. We transmitted a culture and stressed good manners. "Dick and Jane" readers were not just about learning how to read, but also learning how to live with consideration for others and good manners. These books were not perfect and contributed to sexism and racism but they are better than enticing children to read socially inappropriate books that encourage an amoral society. Over 6 thousand years of civilized development dropped from education in favor of education for a technological society with unknown values may not be a good idea?

"Relativism" brings in the cultural factor and we were not always an amoral society. In the past scientific discoveries such as pasteurizing milk and saving the lives of thousands of children, had people thrilled about science and filled them with hope for our future. Right now, that seems to be turned upside down! We believe we are at the end of times, not at the beginning of a wonderful new future. Technology and education for an amoral society may give us more freedom but it also gives us social chaos and violence and we think we are at the end of times. Something has gone dreadfully wrong.

Yes, it's called "deliberative democracy". It is a tough read though. Personally, I think that is important. We should challenge ourselves. Sometimes even with opposing viewpoints. :) — Pantagruel

I totally agree with you but I know it is almost impossible for me to read or listen to an opposing idea. I quickly have such an irritable feeling I have to stop reading or listening. Short posts are not a problem but a whole book! That would be a long time of feeling uncomfortable. I think we might underestimate how much our bodies play into our reaction to thoughts?

Now if the culture is less intense than the culture in the US, differences may not impact the population so intensely but right now the US has a very in-your-face culture. When I was young I was taught it is rude to discuss religion or politics, and sexual lives were certainly private, but today people are very blunt about their beliefs and they want to be sure everyone knows where they stand. Our news is now biased and the young don't even know the unbiased journalism we had in the past.

Is my point of view the result of my own thinking in my later years or do others think our culture has changed to a more in-your-face culture that is more likely to become violent?

Yes, I think that this whole area of discussion has so many aspects and that is why I am becoming rather overwhelmed. There are so many facets of discussion to explore, arising from each person's comments.

My feeling is that this thread should not be a rushed one but one that grows slowly. It is not one for rushed answers or ones which avoid 'mistakes' as today's new debate. It allows for experimental possibilities and reflection. It is not as if we have a deadline for acquiring wisdom in these areas of intricate thought. — Jack Cummins

Wise words. You speak of the difference between reacting and thinking. Sleeping on a thought is a wonderful idea as our right brain can chew on the thought while we sleep and create new insight that our left-brain can not do.

This is really about culture and why we have cultural conflict today. We have been electing presidents who boast about not thinking too much before making a decision. While many of us think that is being reactionary and not good thinking. While the tribe who sees being reactionary as a sign of strength rather than weakness insults the presidents who listen to many people and do a lot of thinking before making a decision. Can others see this cultural conflict? If I am correct, and not just biased, being reactionary tends to go with being religious, while the slow thinkers seem more reliant on science. Those who want to stand with the power and glory of God, seem to like power, but not the uncertainty that goes with thinking things through and listening to what others say, and accepting the scientific method as a better way to know truth.

Oh great another book I must buy and read. I am a painfully slow reader and I will never complete the book I believe I must write because I am forever learning and changing my understanding. But a book that is agreeable with my basic understanding of democracy is a must-read. Perhaps I will figure out a better way of saying what must be said if I read the book.

As I understand it, science is to democracy what religion is to autocracy. The miracle of democracy is group thinking. When we question what is right and what is wrong, and share our different points of view, our understanding is much greater than when we do not discuss right and wrong. Learning what the Bible has to say about right and wrong, is not equal to thinking through right and wrong.

That might make one think replacing education for independent thinking with groupthink is a good thing, but it is not because groupthink leads to conformity and reliance on authority, not independent thinking.
Education for groupthink has brought us to reactionary politics and tribalism, not actually thinking and working for a consensus on the best reasoning.

↪Gnomon I have just read your post and find it very interesting. I still had not responded to your second comment on the post because there have been a lot and I got a bit overwhelmed. — Jack Cummins

I am glad I am not the only one who gets overwhelmed. This forum really requires thinking, unlike a political forum I am in where no one is thinking, they are just reacting to each other, mostly with insults. They make verb war and this pulls everyone down to that level. While here we put in effort and climb higher. I don't think people who won't put in the effort are here for long.

:lol: It was my intention to sign out an hour ago, and I worry that I post things that others may not approve of, or I say too much. I think it is very important to respect you and that you started this thread so the thread should be as you want it. But the responses to this thread have been so stimulating and enlightening and I spin out of control.

Every day I come to this forum, I leave feeling like my brain is overloaded and about to shut down. If I have time, I take a nap when I leave because the mental work consumes so much of my energy, and I am very thankful I am not distracted by child care or a job. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning and puts a smile on my face and love in my heart. The people who post here are special people and you all give me hope. :heart: :flower:

That may be true. But what qualifies one persons' actions as "an effort to discover truth" and another persons' actions as something other than that? Just saying "this is an effort to discover truth" isn't sufficient. If it is a genuine effort to discover truth, then if fulfills some standards of rational discourse or deliberation. Habermas cites the condition of being open to persuasion by good arguments, for example. — Pantagruel

Excellent, the condition of being open to persuasion! This begins with knowing how much we do not know and never being absolutely sure of ourselves. Wisdom begins with "I don't know". Because of education for technology, as Zeus feared, we have become technologically smart, but we no longer turn to the gods and we have lost our wisdom.

My biggest problem with religion is people believing they can know God's truth and will. This problem is made worse by replacing liberal education with education for technology and that brings us to a president like Hitler and reactionary politics that have destroyed "being open to persuasion". This will destroy our democracy if the problem is not corrected before those of us who remember our democracy in a different time, have all died, and no one is left with the memory of our past democracy manifested through liberal education and when congress was much more open to persuasion.

Love :heart: , it is not my truth versus your truth. Democracy is an imitation of the gods who argued until they had a consensus on the best reasoning. Democracy is rule by reason, not authority over the people. Democracy is not control by the people who know God's truth and will. :grimace: Like the gods it is for us to reason until we have a consensus on the best reasoning, and it is our duty to speak up when we disagree with that reasoning and try to persuade others to accept our better reasoning. That is why democracy is an ongoing process, not a set of laws written by a God, and then rule by the leaders God gives us with all that there is for us to do, is to obey.

:grimace: Christianity and the Military Industrial Complex go well together, and we defended our democracy against that in two world wars, and then imitated our enemy if every significant way. Sorry for ranting but we are should not be competing against each other like Jews, Muslims, and Christians, Catholics or Protestants, atheists and Christians in a war against each other to determine truth. We discover truth by working together. :heart: :flower:

Our environment is fundamental to what we think. I am working with Joseph Campbell here. Around the world, snakes are part of people's myths. However, there is an island without snakes and the eel has to take the place of snakes.

The notion of demons comes from the east where mirages are common and around the time of Jesus this eastern understanding of demons and good and evil is popular in Rome and becomes part of Christian consciousness.

From the home of Mongols, the Mongolian Plateau, life is harsh and it is not a good place for gardening so life is wrapped around hunting and when Genghis Khan leaves the Mongolian Plateau he does not have a consciousness of agriculture. He destroys cities and kills everyone, so the land returns to nature and is good for gracing horses. Then a man in China who writes joins Genghis Khan and writes his history. The man from China has an agrarian consciousness and teaches Genghis Khan to harvest the cities instead of destroying them.

As Genghis Khan dominated wherever he went, he thought the notion of a god who cares about people was ridiculous. He had a notion of a sky god but as he saw the sky god it just assume kill pathetic humans as to tolerate their existence. Clearly, if we survived or not it was a matter of our will and skill, not the will of a god who didn't care about humans any more than the gods of Olympus did. It was the goddess of grain who the Greeks depended on because she made the grains grow. It took a while to invent a story of a male god creating humans, and that story seems to have begun with Sumerians and a story of a goddess creating humans of mud to help the river stay in its banks, and not flood and kill the goddess's plants.

Joseph would say we think the same when our environment is the same and it is interesting to me how the fearsome god of the Bible who ruled during the middle ages, became the loving and forgiving God we have today. Modern man, with a full belly, are so sure they have the right Christian thinking and they seem to think the way they understand God is the way Christians have always understood God.

The effort to discover truth can never be silly and pointless. It is the purpose of birds to fly, horses to run, and man to think.

God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man. "The Phenomenon of Man" Teilhard de Chardin

:grin:

Are we sure of what we think we know?

"Let us, for a moment, consider a scenario. Let us assume the galaxy to be an immense organism possessing order and consciousness of a magnitude transcending the threshold of the human imagination. Like a faint body, it consists of a complex of member star systems each coordinated by the galactic core, Hunab Ku. Cycling energy/information in clockwise and counter-clockwise directions simultaneously, the dense pulsing galactic heart emits a continuous series of signals, called by ourselves radio emissions. In actuality these radio emissions correspond to a matrix of resonance- a vast galactic field of intelligent energy whose primary on-off pulsation provides the basis for four universal wave functions; a transmitting or informational function; a radiative, or electromagnetic function; an attractive or gravitational function, and a receptive or psychoactive function." "The Mayan Factor"

Now, what if the Bible described God in those terms?

Thought affects matter and matter affects thought every moment. The event is undeniable. Just because we can't explain is itself no reason to doubt. Since every known force exhibits some form of conservation and reciprocality, thought can only be affected by matter to the exact extent that it affects matter. You get nothing for free. Not even freedom. — Pantagruel

Still chewing on what you said and our notion of reality. :grin: A trinity? Mind, body, life?

When Aristotle broached the question of whether intuitive knowledge was innate or learned, he decided that it must be a combination of both. Relative to my description above, this allows that the conscious thinking mind, still has some sway over the power coming from the unconscious base, so that the conscious mind might influence one's intuitions. I believe it is necessary to maintain this aspect in the model of intuitive knowledge to account for the means by which the cultural consciousness gains control over the intuitive. That is where we find ourselves within society, our cultural training is in fact an exercise of conscious control over our innate and instinctual tendency, the intuitions. That is how relativism takes hold, and it is why the Kantian model cannot be accurate. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think genetically transferred knowledge plays a role in intuition.

Memory: How We Know Things We Never Learned ...blogs.scientificamerican.com › guest-blog › genetic-me...
Jan 28, 2015 — Genetic memory, simply put, is complex abilities and actual sophisticated knowledge inherited along with other more typical and commonly ...

The PBS show "Finding Your Roots" does genetic studies and sometimes finds the person who is the subject of the show is like a previous relative. The inclination to write or to be a social reformer or play the piano seems to be passed on genetically.

I believe years of study or contemplation can also lead to intuition. We are not going to think like Einstein without doing the homework, but if we do the homework and the contemplation, one day, the answer to our question will pop into our consciousness. This is likely to happen in a dream when our conscious, controlling mind is not in control.

I especially like your explanation of culture and conscious and unconscious thinking and nurturing our ability to think outside of the box. I love Jose Arguelles's explanation of "The Mayan Factor" but also find it incomprehensible because that culture is totally foreign to me. I can not really think the thoughts of which he speaks. I am aware that my present cultural notions prevent me from thinking differently. But I am open-minded enough to do better the folks in science forms who are so rigidly culturally controlled they can not think outside the box and can be hostile in defending what they think they know.

That moves me to what you said and our present cultural problems with change and political fighting and racism that leads to killing or religious fanaticism that can also lead to killing. We can be so trapped in our beliefs that we slaves to them. This can be a good thing or a really awful thing.

Human beings are thought wrapped up in a meat blanket.
— Pantagruel

If this were me, I'd eat myself. Then where would I be? — Metaphysician Undercover

We are spiritual beings having a human experience?

We are what we eat. This morning a listened to a lecture about ancient Greeks and the importance of sacrificing bulls. It seems back in the day everyone sacrificed bulls and the rationale was the meat of the animal carried its characteristics and we can gain those characteristics by eating the meat. We all want to be strong as a bull right? However, we can carry this thinking through to cannibalism and eat our dead relatives or our enemies depending on how we think this through.

However, in modern societies, you should not be thinking of this at all. :lol: I was once in a less sophisticated forum for a very short time because I mentioned cannibalism and there was an instant
and unquestioned rejection of the person who would do such an awful thing. That was kind of like hitting a hornets' nest with a stick. But we can see here a philosophical question of what substance carries the essence of our being? Is it carried in our meat? In our brain? In something else?

thought can only be affected by matter to the exact extent that it affects matter. — Pantagruel

That does not make sense to me. :chin: It seems to me thought is affected by thought?

I have been thinking about this thread and the notion of nonmaterial reality. Thoughts are not material reality. Feelings are not material reality. Our spirit is a matter of how we feel and it is not material reality but strongly affects us.

Approaching this supposed collective unconscious is a difficult task, because it is conceptual, and we can flip it around to approach from one side or the inverse, finding its weakness which allows one to penetrate, annihilate and reject. — Metaphysician Undercover

An anthropologist Edward T. Hall wrote of cultural consciousness and unconsciousness. He said, in our culture thinking about cannibalism is taboo and such thoughts are relegated to our subconscious. Some forums do not tolerate mysticism and I think we know there is more but we can not talk about it in some groups.

Absolutely. We need to be working towards an "inclusive materialism" if anything. Our science should aspire to expand its horizons. Popper's ideas about "metaphysical research programs" would be an example — Pantagruel

Do you mean research like this?

So any chunk of matter can also occupy two places at once. Physicists call this phenomenon "quantum superposition," and for decades, they have demonstrated it using small particles. But in recent years, physicists have scaled up their experiments, demonstrating quantum superposition using larger and larger particles.Oct 6, 2019

2,000 Atoms Exist in Two Places at Once in Unprecedented ... — Rafi Letzter

and this...

Can thoughts affect matter? - Quorawww.quora.com › Can-thoughts-affect-matter
Oct 3, 2015 — Can the pattern of matter we call thoughts affect matter? Yes. This is the difference of walking the walk and not just talking the talk, or more precise thinking the ... — Connor Duke

I agree. And the "truth" of scientific materialism propaganda is a prime example. Humans are no more than machines and are expendable. Thankfully, there is resistance to this way of viewing life, mostly coming from religious quarters since both are fighting for the same turf. — MondoR

I perfer philosophy to religion. I like the Greek approach to achieving human excellence and I think what Confucius says about achieving human excellence has value. I have also enjoyed the Hindu explanation. But I do not like the Biblical focus on sin and evil, demons, and Satan. With Christianity, one can never know if it is Satan causing a problem or God punishing us that is the problem, rather than it all being a matter of cause and effect and the consequence of what we think, say, and do.

That said, the Bible does have wisdom and analogies that explain things in a poetic way, better than can be explained in factual statements. I want to stress the important difference between interpreting the Bible literally or abstractly. A literal interpretation of the Bible is problematic.

Unfortunately, education can also be co-opted and then it becomes propaganda. Are you confident that the education to received has not been coopted? Is this the place to find truths? — MondoR

:scream: That is what happened! The 1958 National Defense Education Act, changed the purpose of education and those who are in control of it. Now our republic is as perverted as the republic of Germany that lead to Hitler and this is so because the US adopted the German model of bureaucracy that shifts power and authority away from the individual to the state, and we adopted the German model of education that goes with the bureaucratic change. If the population were aware of what happened and why it happened and how it happened, there is a chance we could save our democracy and make it even better than it was. Only when our democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended, and that is NOT education for a technology society with unknown values!

PS to clarify, the Act replaced our liberal education (starting with the first day of school) with education for technology for industrial and military purpose. As military leaders took over Rome, so have they taken over the US, and even if we threw every weapon in the ocean we would still be an industrial-military complex, not the democracy with liberty we defended in two world wars.


t.

I don't think so. Storytelling is extremely better suited to refining our moral truths than any future Grand Theory of Everything. One must choose the right tool for the job. Also, it's all mythos really. We construct narratives to make sense of the world. Science is just a lot more constrained insofar as it has to fit data and make predictions. — Kenosha Kid

I love Jack's threads! Not only does he inspire thinking, but the forum members participate so well. And Kenosha, your explanation of the need for different tools is perfect.

Yes, storytelling is essential to civilizations! Joseph Campbell explained the importance of mythology is to transition the young into the kind of adults favored by the social group.

For nearly two hundred years the US used education to transmit a culture essential to liberty and democracy, but stopped doing that in 1958 and now we are in a serious mess! We are at each other's throats and I am not sure our democracy is going to survive this.

Why did we stop transmitting a culture essential to liberty? Well, like Homer's stories of gods, the Greek and US cultures depended on mythology. For national defense reasons we stopped transmitting our culture and began preparing the young for a technological society with unknown values. The mythology had to go because, well, really did Washington really cut down the cherry tree, and did Lincoln walk a mile to return to a penny to someone? Technology is about the right or wrong way to do something, the right or wrong answers and it can not tolerate those silly stories. A technological society is a military-industrial complex, not exactly a liberal democracy that can tolerate what someone else believes. Oh if someone wants to be a complete flake, that is the person's choice. Marginalize that person, let him/her have freedom, but keep him/her out of the regime.

When the US destroyed its national heroes, it destroyed its culture. This is not just a change in education and how people learn to think, but it is an important change in bureaucratic power over the people as well. Instead of prepared our young for independent thinking, and transitioning them to adults, the young have been prepared for groupthink, and instead of being independent thinkers trusting in their own maturing authority, they seek leaders and find them in social media, and boy or boy are we in a mess!

It is a myth that our democracy comes out of Christianity. It does not! The thinking essential to our liberty and democracy came out of Athens and was further developed in Roman, but Athens and Roman both became ensnared in military might and their cultures died. The old books that no one reads, can hold the memory but they can not manifest liberty and democracy. God's love might be nice, but what we need is an appreciation of scientific truth and tolerance of each other. We need the Spirit of America. We need our mythology. Christianity is no better for democracy than Islam is and we should not be going to town with our rifles ready to shoot down those who oppose us because this is not God's battle, it is a human disaster that needs to be corrected with education that transmits the culture essential to liberty and democracy.

Science may have the strongest claim to truth...but, the scientific worldview also has to integrate into the overall project of humanity, viz, supply stable normative values around which social and cultural projects can be successfully co-ordinated and operationalized. And it is here that the scientific worldview is failing miserably.

We need to keep scientific validity but somehow also restore normative justifications and legitimations. — Pantagruel

Here is where the wisdom Jack Cummins demonstrates, comes in to play.

Education for technology is not education for science! The ancients developed a lot of technology but they had no idea why what they knew worked. For whatever reason, the Greeks got a bee in their bonnet and they had to know exactly why is something so. The Greeks were exploring universal truths and developing linear logic and theories. Eastern logic is cyclical, not linear, and leads to mysticism instead of technology. :joke: I think this train of thought leads to insanity but I will attempt to make sense of it.

The eastern ancient civilizations had the technology and perhaps it was the development of mystical thinking that pulled them off course? Like Zorcasterism began as a religion leading to wisdom but got all tangled up with superstition and became self-destructive. I think this is common when the thoughts of great thinkers become familiar to the masses because the masses become believers rather than thinkers. The Greeks for undetermined reasons took a different path. They rejected superstition and looked for natural causes. That is the path to science.

The important thing to understand is morality is a matter of cause and effect. If something is destructive it is immoral. We can use science to know cause and effect but it is philosophy and democracy that gives us a path to a consensus on the best reasoning. The miracle of democracy should not be overlooked!!! Democracy and liberty are dependent on education- everyone thinking things through and therefore rule by reason, rather than mysticism and authority over the people. :joke: :love: :chin: Yeap, I have gone over the edge. I hope someone can make sense of what I have said. :worry:

I am sorry but I do believe determining creation stories are not factually true is as simple as that. Not only is it simple but ignorance is a terrible thing leading to serious problems such as wars and people spreading a deadly disease because they base their decisions on their religion instead of science. Not since the civil war in the US has the population been so divided by their understanding of God's truth.

The saving grace for religion is abstract thinking but we stopped educating for that. I don't think Hebrews understood their stories concretely as Christians do today. Those stories are just stories carried on to get a point across but not to be understood literally. :gasp: An abstract understanding of demons is worries and fears and resentments that trouble us. A literal understanding of demons is superstition and comes into the God of Abraham religion a little late and from the east. Education for technology has favored literal interpretations resulting in Christianity becoming quite a serious problem.

↪Athena What IS energy. Math and physics only deals with equivalencies (=). They can never say what it IS. Only WE can say who we ARE. — MondoR

The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need. Consciousness is full of qualitative properties, from the redness of red and the discomfort of hunger to the phenomenology of thought. Such experiences, or “qualia,” may have internal structure, but there is more to them than structure. We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties.
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious — Nautilus

E=mc^2 ... Anyway, the question is incoherent, or is begged, since any "where" (or when) - spacetime - is inseparable from "matter ... energy". To be is to "vibrate, move, change" à la dao. — 180 Proof

:rofl: excuse, please. Youtube has many more interesting explanations and I like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn4J8RcMGrM

And "energy" - vibration, motion, transformation - is not "materialistic"? — 180 Proof

Matter vibrates, moves, changes, but what is energy and where does it come from?

Doesn't light carry the memory of the stars as they were millions of years ago. Who's to say that memory dies when the body can no longer function.

Yes. Death and rebirth is a manner to start afresh, like a new game of chess. We do not forget what were have learned, but we can start again to see how well we learned and how much more we can learn. The Universe is constantly playing the game of creating and learning, just like a game of chess. — MondoR

I love the way you said that.

Has anyone here read Jose Arguelles's "The Mayan Factor"? Does anyone know of the Great Cycle as 13 Baktun Synchronation Beam and the Harmonic Convergence? The Mayans may have had a better understanding reality than we do?