We could propose possible ‘requirements’ for such licensing. It wouldn’t be long before we begin to open up a whole load of problems and unexpected problems merely in a theoretical realm. If put into action there would be unforeseen problems too.

Such blueprints for eugenics have been applied in the past. I believe poor, mostly ethnic minorities, were paid to become sterilized.

What possible requirements would need to be met, how would they be monitored, and what loopholes could be exploited that go against the basic idea of ‘betterment’ for all?

Also, why is this a concern? We know that less developed countries are have higher population rates to mitigate child mortality. As mortality rates in infants fall so do birth rates - all of this goes hand in hand with the lessening of inequality. It is sensible to guard against lessening ‘inequalities’ by inhibiting human choices (for ‘better’ or ‘worse’). There is certainly difficulty in finding a balance and often we fall into the stupidity of believing what works now works forever - balancing is a continuous act not something we can approach in a formulaic way and then leave unattended.

There is a serious issue regarding inequality due to the cost of education. Undoubtedly recent advances in our understanding of pedagogy has widened gaps in society regarding opportunity. This could have extremely bad results in the near future. Correcting/Giving better all round education is a far better way to tackle the gap as it is the route cause - selective breeding is merely a way of covering up the problem by removing some people’s rights (selective inequality based mainly on wealth/status).

I was merely painting the ‘IF’ picture. I am not attacking YOU.

I am in favour of preventing irresponsible breeding - that does not mean that I am in favour of killing those who have already been brought into existence. After all, in addition to having a right to a decent upbringing, kids also have a right not to be killed. — Bartricks

You are effectively dictating who has a right to exist.

Perhaps if you say how you’d go about ‘preventing irresponsible breeding’ I can point out clearly why it is wrong.

Attempts at goading me into anger won’t work either. If I say ‘facile’ it is because the term suits, and if i repeat it it is because I believe that you didn’t pay heed to it the first time around. If it upsets you I’m not particularly sorry because I’m not here to tread on egg shells and second guess every word I write as ‘possibly offensive’. The definition suits the situation perfectly from my perspective.

No. I stated clearly.

Eugenics is about selective breeding. I am against eugenics and for the protection of children born to psychopaths or other maladapted individuals - the best form of protection being to prevent them from having children (of course this is merely hypothetical because we’ve no way of knowing who is likely to become such a person - once known it would make sense that they are either locked up, made infertile, and/or have any offspring taken away from them.

This is already the case where adults with Down syndrome - depending on their mental faculties - are not allowed to raise infants just like children are not allowed to raise infants (unassisted).

It doesn’t matter how many times you try to snare me I haven’t said I am for eugenics. You can accept this or you can continue to bang your head against a wall. Which is it? Frankly I see it as a distraction from you having to defend the position you’ve set out - it’s wrong as far as I can tell so you’ll have to do more to convince me to shift.

Undoubtedly there will be a line where things are blurry, but that will be in extreme circumstances. Selective abortions is more or less where such items become socially relevant in today’s climate and what is likely to become an issue more and more this century.

Regarding items like stress, anxiety and IQ, there is something called the ‘grandmother’ effect. This means that if a woman is living in high-stress circumstances when pregnant then this effects the baby. Once that baby grows and has children (regardless of upbringing) there will still be a preset inclination toward stress for their children.

Think about this. Basically this shows genetic adaptation takes places over multiple generations so to suggest IQ is a given based on parents is utterly ridiculous as there is no evidence for this because both the prenatal environment and the postnatal environment are contingent to both that child AND their grandchildren to some degree. It’s very complex and we’ve barely scratched the surface of these mechanisms - ‘mapping the genome’ didn’t help anywhere near as much as people had anticipated.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the premise of ‘bettering’ the human race is a noble enough idea ... often the issue is simplified with extremely detrimental effects.

It is a topic that will no doubt become more and more apparent in political circles as the sciences advance our understanding. I’ve done a fair amount of research into this subject matter and the very idea of genetics determining human productivity is grossly overestimated. More support for poor families - such as governments paying parents to spend time with their children rather than punishing them financially and driving them away from infants - would be an extremely good idea. In terms of family planning that can be combated by educating young women in poorer nations.

When I said it would be better to make certain crazies in society ‘infertile’ I meant this for highly unstable individuals as they could effectively have children in secret and then lock them up. It wasn’t anything to do with some deluded idea that their children would grow up to be the same as them - there is no conclusive evidence to show this (in fact the opposite is generally more true when it comes to abuse).

No, but it would be hard to be a good parent if you're starving and have no resources, and those with IQs below a certain level are pretty much fated to a hard life of exploitation. A responsible prospective parent does not procreate if they know they're not in a financial position to be able to look after any offspring; and I think a couple who know that any child they have would have a very low IQ would also, if responsible, not procreate.

We may disagree about that, but in each case my defence of caring about those kinds of thing is fundamentally the same: protecting the welfare of others. — Bartricks

If your sole valuation of human life is based on IQ. Your facile reasoning is irresponsible so maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to have children? What do you say to that? Further still, given that you may already have children perhaps they should be ‘culled’?

Remind you of anything that happened last century?

I only suggested such action for complete psychopathic, vicious and/or murderous types. I am certainly not talking about selective breeding based on the whims of what I or anyone else considers a ‘genetic’ advantage.

If I child is abused I don’t think killing the child is an answer. If a family is poor I don’t think killing their children is the answer. If a family to raise a child then social services will come in and take the child away - protecting the life of the child is nothing like suggesting the child should never exist because they are from inferior genetic stock. There is a HUGE difference and what you’re saying appears to be purposefully clouding the lines between ‘eugenics’ and ‘protection’. True, you don’t need to protect children that don’t exist.

I can’t make head nor tail of this. If you cannot offer your own response, as example, to the ‘questions’ (whatever they are?) then I’ve nothing more to offer.

This is more about the proselytizers/indoctrinators out there. — jorndoe

Out there, not on this forum. No preaching allowed here. So this is kind of a one-sided argument and will remain so. I’d also say ‘Yahwah thumpers’ is a less than respectful manner to address anyone. There are levels of belief and many religious types don’t take a dogmatic approach - those that do take a dogmatic approach are usually beyond the limits of this forum and its rules of exchange.

I can only suggest you offer up your own view on this matter (the opening post) and then see if thre is anything to discuss. Otherwise I fear this will stop before it gets started.

To add, as I’m reading Marx, I imagine a great part of this thought is wholly absent of personal choice and tailoring goods to suit individual needs/wants/tastes. Can AI give us something we didn’t know we wanted? Can AI supplant human creativity? That would likely usher in the slow end of humanity, or our evolutionary progression where we’ll become entwined within AI.

Humanity with a necessary reason to strive would likely destroy in order to shake things up and stave of suicidal madness in what would be a ‘pointless’ existence. I guess we could end up revering AI as God and then find ourselves merely trying to ‘copy’ what AI can do ... it would be that complete rejection of AI.

We’re essentially imagining a scenario where humans would have no need to ‘labour’ away at all. We’d all be brought up with a silver spoon in our mouths. I’m not sure that would pan out very well at all.

As far as I’m concerned you may as well ask the same question about Winnie The Pooh. That is not to belittle the message only to make the content accessible rather than taken as a literal interpretation of some ‘other’ figure. Winnie The Pooh has a relevant message and The Bible contains many relevant messages.

Personally I find many arguments from atheists about literal interpretations to be just as ridiculous as believers who claim the existence of this undoubtedly abstract idea which is ‘felt’ in human existence to some degree or another.

Mythological stories are powerful because they rely on the listener for their interpretation. The art of interpretation is something people should attempt to hone when listening knowing they are prone to misrepresenting and misunderstanding in equal measure.

That is Eugenics. It seems like a decent idea on the surface, but once you scratch away the shiny leaf all you’ll find is cold hard lead.

I don’t regard ‘intelligence’ or ‘money’ as indicative of ‘good parenting’. Besides I’m talking about preventing severe abuse NOT preventing reproduction. The child of abusive parents who go to prison will go to a new home. Besides, reproduction cannot be managed.

Nope. Eugenics is about selecting for breeding whilst my position is simply about preventing severe abuse of children by vicious people.

Well, that's exactly the basis upon which I am arguing for licensing procreation. I just don't see why you stop at child abuse. Surely children do not just have a right to be free from 'severe' child abuse, but all manner of other abuses, including being brought up very badly? — Bartricks

Maybe you assume I meant sexual abuse only? Being brought up ‘badly’ means what, and exactly what is it social services do that doesn’t cover this already?

I stop at child abuse because non-child abuse is ... not abusive. You just want to decide who you deem worthy of living. Denying someone the joy of children because you happen to think IQ matters or some other daft criteria is utterly facile.

Support is generally the way to go. Like I said, it is possible for people to change so even those who’ve abused children should be allowed a second chance - exceptions would be for severe abusers (in the real world such people would have their children taken away, so the system is working as best it can).

I think moral values inform action and actions are problematic if there is a failure to justify them. — Andrew4Handel

I see the public justification of actions as inherently problematic (see my first post on first page).

The manner in which you’ve presented this looks pretty much like eugenics. I’m not for eugenics at all.

The only version of this I could get onboard with would be to sterilize people who partake in severe child abuse. The system is already set up for removing children from hostile parents so those parents should effectively have to apply for a license to show they’ve changed their ways or they should be banned outright (depending on extent of ‘abuse’/‘maltreatment’ (I’m thinking forming drug addicts who’ve managed to turn their lives around being unfairly held to account for their youthful mistakes).

With this in mind, many people are wondering just what happens next.

What are your ideas about this, rather pleasant future full of leisure and comfort? — Wallows

That it will be neither ‘pleasant’ nor ‘comfortable’. I don’t see that ti could happen without a transition in attitudes towards ‘economics’ - precisely what I was trying to outline in regards to Marx.

It is probably of use to distinguish between two terms here

(1) Labour: A means of productivity for basic material needs - be this ‘money’ or resources for living (food, medicine, etc.,.)

(2) Work: A means of productivity for personal needs - personal expression and ‘work’ order to nurture a sense of ‘purpose’ (beneficial to self and/or others).

Automaton can, and certainly has, taken labour away from people. The problem is that in society today a great many people have come to confuse ‘labour’ with ‘work’ to the point that once labour is removed they’re unsure what work means minus ‘wage’. The sense of ‘worth’ has been removed from more personal action and covered over with ‘labour’ within which a false sense of ‘value’/‘worth’ has been reinforced.

I believe that if all productive activities (in terms of ‘labour’) were taken away from everyone tomorrow you’d see suicide rates begin to rocket after a small drop. Eventually those unnerved by this limitless freedom would either rediscover purpose through violence or cooperation. In all honesty I think this has been pretty much what has been happening in the post industrial age (just at a creeping rate).

In this regard I think the middling sections of society would suffer the most. Those in abject poverty would appreciate relief from simple burdens and be happy to take on and create new burdens, whilst those of extreme wealth will already have been living their lives as if ‘labour’ had disappeared (their challenge, if they had one, would be adjusting to others attitudes toward them altering). The middling bunch would be the suicidal bunch. Those long robbed of any serious challenges who just go with the crowd and jump through hoops. ‘Followers’ without something to follow - ‘worth’ being stripped away - would have a hard time of it.

All that said I am painting this hypothetical scenario with a broad brush. No matter your circumstances if you were to have a sense of artistry that is developed, a studious mind and/or a thirst for exploration, then you’d be fine whether poor, middling or rich. The real question would whether or not AI’s would make good psychologists and provide better therapy than a human.

You’ll have to do more than outline what you mean. More details perhaps?

No probs. I am throwing fragments of several different ideas at you at once. I do find it incredibly hard to condense what I’m referring to and where these thoughts have risen from in anything shorter than a lecture ... anyway, I do see many fruitful opportunities for exploration within ‘feminist’ ideologies.

I’d love to hear more about what you see as important regarding ‘feminist ethics’ in greater detail if you’d care share.

Thanks

I don’t understand. I thought ‘feminist ethics’ was an investigation into psychology and society not an economic model. I’m not focusing at all on who has what job or who earns what - not interested because I find that to be extraneous to developing psychological maturity. One point was that today women are freed up by extended juvenile periods and able to develop more than men in similar circumstances - I think men need risk more.

I don’t agree that women are better leaders than men or men necessarily make better leaders than women. It also depends on what you mean by ‘leader’ too - my own view on what ‘leader’ means is likely more fluid than what you meant.

It’s interesting that you see what I’ve put across in terms of financial profit and hiring. I was talking about this in terms of basic human development.

Something along the lines of what I’ve brought up previously. The ‘emotional’ desires and how these are used to sell us what we don’t need dressed in a mirage of what we truly desire - our need for companionship, love, learning and meaning.

He seems to bring up points I make myself. I’m not massively familiar with him myself, but I assumed you would be as he seems to express questions I think you’d find extremely appealing.

It bothers me because I see the ‘ideal’ as being more or less a situation where both men and women are ‘advancing’ alongside each other rather than some kind of handing the baton on state of affairs and then skulking in the shadows.

Essentially what is ‘feminine’ cannot survive without what is ‘masculine’. Men cannot live without women and women cannot live without men - if they could then humanity is no longer ‘humanity’. I see the psychological ‘division’ between men and women to be manifest in society yet the real psychological ‘division’ is merely a convenient way to express a vibrant cauldron of humanity. I think that analogy works well enough expressing what I am looking at here?

@Wallows Are you very familiar with de Botton’s ideas? If so what do you think of his thoughts on economics and human ‘needs’ and ‘meaning’?

I mean there are fewer and fewer ‘passage of rites’ in modern western societies - other than religious remnants. These generally used to coincide with immature people being given a sense of responsibility alongside physiological changes.

For girls their bodies tell them when they’re ‘women’, and for men this is less obvious. Even so. I’d say for both sexes such transitions have become more and more severed from the public eye. Today there is graduation and such events, but there doesn’t seem to be an institutional force behind them that emphasizes these changes.

The ‘rituals’ today (leaving home or finishing school) are either actively avoided or given no psychological significance in communities at large. Graduation is ‘celebrated’ but there doesn’t appear to be any thought about this ceremony as ‘preparation’ for struggles to come. It is almost treated as an ‘achievement’ above all else with no regard for sacrifice.

It is as if society has instilled the idea that fighting with foam swords is some kind of passage into psychological maturity. I think women are certainly playing with breaking open their potential right now - it’s a great thing. There are dangers and their should be. What bothers me is men have fallen back and resisted danger due to this to some extent. The juvenile period has been extended a huge amount which certainly plays into women's hands more than men’s because men lack urgency and did to be driven by a sense of urgency, whilst women are naturally inclined to a sense of urgency so extended juvenile periods leads to women being in a situation where they can mature more thoroughly.

By the social extension of juvenile periods - a recent occurrence in terms of human history - older rites have fallen away and nothing new has been developed to replace this yet. My thinking is that due to huge shifts in human society hidden ‘transitions’ (buried by necessity of survival) have been given light to flourish in. We’re still trying to figure out what aesthetic appeals to this ‘passage of rites’ as it’s immature itself.

I don’t know much at all about ‘feminist ethics’. At a glance there is certainly something to be said for ritual regarding the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ that may be being mistaken - over rather given too much import - for ‘female’ and ‘male’.

The modern ‘peacocking’ world - instagram and twitter - is a reflection of this search for psychological meaning in the absence of societal rites of passage. Cultural admixtures have probably been problematic/beneficial too in some ways.

I think at its essence this is a ‘meaning’/‘value’ problem. The lines appear muddled and lack of direction has freed upon women to impose themselves more in society, yet this is being done blindly. Men on the other hand are do the same inwardly, equally as blinded.

In the past I’ve seen so-called ‘strong’ female role models come through, but they are merely mimicking ‘masculine’ tropes more than ‘feminine’ tropes. More recently, in the arts, I’ve seen powerful ‘feminine’ expression from women - recently noted something of this to a friend if mine in terms of women expressing in a more dominant manner what Jung referred to as ‘Kore’; which can either be a desire to cling to innocence or to move beyond it. I think we’re just about seeing the beginning of women ‘moving beyond’ in a manner that is ‘feminine’ rather than a mock shoulder-padded ‘masculine’ pantomime of feminine psychological maturity.

Maybe my current questions and thoughts are more telling if the transition I’n going through? I just say it as I see it as best I can, and keep trying.

A thought to consider is today people are growing up attached to their past - photos, videos and multi media allow us to have a more accurate window into the past (personally and on global scale). I do think this will affect people’s attitudes to both past and future (especially younger generations whose lives are recorded for them to play back and observe).

Sometimes it’s better to keep commonsense to yourself ;)

You’re correct. Some people prefer to see denial when facts are laid at their feet. The first post is badly worded - there is no doubt that the Earth’s climate goes through changes.

In that sense ‘halting climate change’ is completely beyond humanities current capabilities. In term of reducing the impact of humanities effect on the climate, obviously we have the capacity to lessen our impact in some ways.

I imagine the OP is looking to explore ways of either changing current attitudes, educating and/or exploring hypotheticals that could tackle future problems. Under these criteria I’d say the thread has largely failed to economics and education.

The quicker we get to 11 billion the better our chances of cutting to the quick of human societies and tackling ‘destabilizing’ factors.

The future is hazy and growing more hazy by the day. Humanity is just learning to walk.

I do think it is interesting to see how women are expressing themselves in society in various areas.

I think the most noted point for me is in the arts and how this seems to reflect the exploration of ‘coming of age’ - the same thing interests me in regards to men too (whose ‘passage of rites’ into maturity is also being re-realised in some ways).

Given past reproductive trends it seems to me greater freedoms across the board (for men and women) have revealed men’s loss of ‘coming of age’ alongside extended juvenile periods - for both sexes - and new, or more intricate, stages in overall maturity (psychological maturity). Women’s changes are quite explicit in biological terms and the ‘arrival’ of aging makes itself felt more readily than for men. That said one loss or gain (or, as I’m suggesting, extension) may show us what has remained hidden.

Anyway, just riffing. Interested to hear your thoughts on these loose ideas.

Thanks

When someone shuffles a deck of cards and deals you the first twenty cards, the probability of getting those specific cards is extremely unlikely. Yet we have no problem accepting that you will get an extremely unlikely hand. — Wheatley

I think we’d call that statistically ‘impossible’ rather than ‘extremely unlikely’. The definition is where it’s not worth a mention.

Where that line is is pretty much a subjective judgement clouded by hopes and fears.

The quote was in a given context. I simply meant that the ‘meaning’ is present in any utterance - nonsensical items are recognised as ‘nonsensical’. This is comparable to Kantian Noumenon only being possible in a ‘negative’ sense.

It’s basically a trick of language. Everything is necessarily ‘meaningful’ to us if it is within our scope of attention. That is to say anything outside our scope of attention is ‘not meaningful’ in one particular way - potential. What can never have meaning to us is not something we can ‘attend to’.

As a further example just try and bring up a topic that has no meaning. Even something nonsensical or gibberish has ‘meaning’ surrounding it.

Note: I understand you probably meant ‘meaning’ in a more confined way. I’m not encouraging rhetoric here just presenting the limitation of worded thought in terms of what is ‘real’ or ‘existent’. We must necessarily limit our thought and scope to possessing ‘meaning’ - no talk is ‘free floating’, but we can still offer up analogies and metaphors like ‘free floating’ to explore ‘gist’ ideas.

I’ve no idea what you’re thinking. The ‘block chain’ idea sounds vaguely interesting though, just wish you’d started there.

This thread probably had legs on it if you explore that idea and flesh out exactly what you propose.

Now you sound in favour of anarchist ideology? Were you purposefully setting up a poor argumentative position to allow yourself to flip the argument on its head or are you just exploring this concept as you type? (Not having a pop because I think it is good to allow your ideas feel their way around without fear of making a few wrong turns along the way).

There are basically two nonexistent poles (ideological axioms around which we orientate ourselves). There is ‘Centralised’ and ‘Decentralised’ positions in regards to ‘institutions’. I use parenthesis to guard against taking any position as some illusionary ‘absolute’ form. People managed prior to writ Laws, so we know from ‘anarchical’ societal groups we developed and refined rules creating centralised powers/laws in institutions (civilization). We mist keep checking the balance yet the obvious conundrum is knowing which way to push and when. It is no huge surprise that today people are becoming more and more aware of each other due to technological advances in global communications, this has presented ‘institutions’ and ‘public opinion’ to clash on a scale never seen before in human history - the stronger ‘conservative’ tilt is now fighting the side of what used to be the ‘liberal’ position and the ‘liberal’ position is now fighting for what used to be the ‘conservative’ position. The landscape has become so confused you have people on the left demanding more centralised power/law whilst on the right they’re demanding decentralised power. The bizarre thing is they are also under the impression that what they are saying is in line with what is happening.

In short the world isn’t black and white. People don’t really want ‘freedom’ - because people are lazy cowards who would rather someone else deal with shit jobs. No one wants ‘peace’ when ‘peace’ means destroying any sense of useful conflict which enables discovery and exploration. We’re in a hedonist phase which, hopefully, will be consumed by an age of aesthetic sensibility and allow us to navigate the flat featureless political landscape we have at the moment. All there is today is a choice of blandness, a broken compass and a huge divide between cultural generations across the globe. It’s not likely to level out until the end of the century and in the meantime anything could happen.

Anarchy is the natural state of humanity. Look out your window. No one knows what they are doing or why beyond their immediate impressions which are often willfully short-sighted and actively avoiding any claim of agency unless it comes under the guise of ‘groups’ they perceive to have ‘power’ - I don’t think anyone really bothers to ask what ‘power’ means they just attach it to friend and foe to suit their homegrown myopia.

All that said, I think things are peachy :)

‘Do what thou wilt’ is good enough because generally speaking only a few have the nerve to act on this principle so encouraging a few more along the way is beneficial EVEN if this happens to foster some ‘moral’ glitches along the way. How we regard time will dictate the future of politics. Somehow we’ve gotten into the habit of trying to learn form the past unlearning the past - it’s just a game of narratives now and you can be sure the ‘best’ narrative always wins out in the end.

I think your use of terms is a little muddled. There is no such thing as ‘non-mental phenomenon’.

I leave it to someone else because I don’t think I should offer anything else until I understand what you wish to talk about better.

Give that you’ve edited the first two posts I’d say I‘ve done you favour. I’ll leave you to it.

For starters gravity isn’t a force. The rest is an area of mysticism.

I believe buddhism isn’t really concerned with material/physical items?

The reverse argument works just as well. Again, what is your point? Is it that you believe everyone thinks everything is black and white or that you just happen to prefer your own position as the ‘middle ground’?

All I can see here is a rather superficial analysis of two political poles with a strange need to cling to one and dismiss the other.

Don’t you see that you’re setting out the ‘anarchist’ stall as ‘completely lawless’ and the ‘statist’ stall as ‘libertarian’ rather than ‘authoritarian’? There are ‘anarchic’ political models that are more than happy to accept state laws, the issue being with the decentralisation of power not the complete obliteration of law/rules.

Basically you’re setting up a strawman argument here against imaginary opponents - that said maybe there is someone on this forum who likes the idea of a ‘lawless’ society where murder, rape and theft are not considered ‘immoral’ due to there being no ‘law’. See the problem?

So you prefer to have others tell you what is and isn’t ‘moral’. The reverse problem is, well, a problem too. What is your point?

You’re against an imaginary world or exploring the limits of anarchism? I don’t really understand what your post is about but it seems to hold to a rigid definition that you’re syruggling to make explicit.

Maybe a comparative analysis between other -isms and anarchism would help outline the benefits and deficits regarding what your view is?

There are many different layers and flavours of what ‘anarchy’ means. You seem to be presenting a combination of nihilism and anarchism?

Straight from wiki:

Anarchism is an anti-authoritarian political and social philosophy that rejects hierarchies deemed unjust and advocates their replacement with self-managed, self-governed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions.

As anarchism does not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular worldview, many anarchist types and traditions exist and varieties of anarchy diverge widely.

Of course, implementing such ideas in society is another thing. It is certainly a worthy perspective to consider. I would suggest you present a better outline of what you mean rather than some strange hypothetical about someone destroying a car and running away - in many anarchic societies the perpetrator would be caught and then made to pay (which would inevitably lead to ‘kangaroo courts’ and is certainly a flaw if we view this political idea superficially - there are positives though).

The basic philosophical notion of anarchy doesn’t mean anyone can do anything without repercussions. At an extreme level it would end in witch hunts and vigilante activity (obviously that isn’t a great outcome). Either way it is a counter position to centralised power where complete strangers dictate what you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do and punish/reward accordingly to those views.

I’m more for a ‘happy’ medium with more inclination to being ‘anarchical’ when it comes to questioning authority rather than blindly accepting rules and regulations because it’s ‘easier’ to just go along with pointless, impractical, and possibly dangerous rules/laws. The problem embedded here to is whether you are in a position to question authority without worrying about possible kickback simply from voicing concerns.

I agree with fresco concerning the ‘word salad’. Often it is easy to take this as an insult, but please don’t. Just condense it down a little, leave it alone to fester, and then come back afresh and rewrite.

The best thing about letting such ideas loose is being able to see what you think more clearly and where your thoughts don’t aline with your words properly.