So, If you had the power to change the current path the human race is on.
What is the first and most needed change you would make? Just one.
Describe it, and explain the benefits you think it would bring and the consequences it might cause.
Would it disadvantage anyone?
Who do you think would try to prevent it and why?
How would you start to bring it in? Locally, nationally, internationally, globally.

"After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world." ~Pres. Calvin Coolidge, 1925

it is destroying our liberty and some people want to take this even further by making us dependent on AI. — Athena

Too late! In America, our "liberty" has been "dependent" on algorithms aka "AI" (i.e. corporations (i.e. "artificial persons")) for over a century already. If we're lucky, AGI will emerge sooner rather than ... before it's too late.

... we are at each other's throats politically pushing and shoving in power struggles that have nothing to do with reasoning, human dignity, respect, or being a democracy.

And yet, Athena, these 'moral defects' have everything to do with being human – gregarious bald primates – while barely surviving under social conditions of (self-reproducing) scarcity.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/770469

They were so disrespected and taken for granted. Today women are no longer tolerating that painful reality as I have until today. This is a serious economic, social, and political problem. We all see that this is going to destroy our nations — Athena

Are you saying this "problem" is due to women being paid a reasonable wage?

Yeah, I was puzzled.

Well, if there is a problem with paying women more, we need a mathematician. But my concern is not a material one as much as a value one. This is not just about women getting paid more, but the reason for them working has changed. I think women have always played a vital part of all communities and if they stop doing that because they feel valued for fulfilling their traditional role, how will that change how we value ourselves and others?

I want to see economic considerations, social considerations, and political considerations.

For example, government is doing much for children than it did before women were allowed to represent us in state and federal legislatures and the stronger the push for welfare programs gets, the stronger the conservative resistance gets. The stronger the push for accepting our differences gets, the stronger the push back gets and that culture war is flaring up as a battle to control education.

Okay, now how much government control do we want? Social programs are not free so how much more do we want to pay in taxes?

I have heard children with only one parent are at risk. How can government resolve that problem?

Free high quality education for all from cradle to grave. Is it only the human invention of money that is stopping that from happening? Is it not possible to explain to billionaires and multi-millionaires that we are going to take some of their ridiculous surplus and use it to providing free education for everyone in your country of the USA and if they don't like it, they can f*** off and live somewhere else but they must leave their ill-gotten gains in the country? Am I being too 'radical?'

Free high quality education for all from cradle to grave. Is it only the human invention of money that is stopping that from happening? — universeness

Quite the opposite. It's the 'human invention of money' which promotes free education for all. From where else are they going to get their ready-to-go workers? Where else are they going to put the kids whilst they expand production employing both parents? How else are they going to make sure everyone is so beaten down and indoctrinated all day, every day, that they'll buy any old shite just to numb the pain?

The last thing 'money' wants is kids who are free to play, get muddy, make up their own day, think for themselves... They make crap consumers.

Free high quality education for all from cradle to grave. Is it only the human invention of money that is stopping that from happening? Is it not possible to explain to billionaires and multi-millionaires that we are going to take some of their ridiculous surplus and use it to providing free education for everyone in your country of the USA and if they don't like it, they can f*** off and live somewhere else but they must leave their ill-gotten gains in the country? Am I being too 'radical?' — universeness

Okay love, I started this thread because I was a traditional woman as my father and husband wanted me to be. I was the perfect 1950 woman as she was portrayed in Dick and Jane readers and TV shows. The down side of that is it left me in poverty to raise two teenagers by myself. Then as a result of low wages, when I was disabled, My Social Security was so low it is supplemented with SSI. People with SSI loose their payment if they have over 2 thousand dollars in the bank. It cost more than $2000 to move, and car repairs can be thousands of dollars. The limit on how much money we can have in a savings account, keeps us in constant insecurity. When I complained about that in another forum, a gentleman said SSI is welfare and I am getting more than I earned. Excuse me, I did everything society asked of me and more. I have volunteered most my life because it is important to me to be a valuable citizens.

Like many women in my cohort, I wanted to raise my children, then complete my college education when they were old enough to leave alone, then have a career , pay off our home and help our children go to college. Unfortunately, I did not marry as well as my family thought, and I could not fulfill my life plan. To add to that was a very long recession that hit at a critical time. Recessions can destroy people's lives and if we follow Aristotle, we think when a force of life prevents a person from doing the right thing, it is not that person's fault. Hey, I didn't get the career I wanted but I do volunteer 5 days a week. Telling me I have earned my social benefits really pisses me off.

It is a human value issue.

I like your style!

The story you tell is sooooooo similar to my own mother (now 85) and lives with me.
She get's her state pension only. She worked hard all her life as a hospital cleaner.
When I took early retirement from teaching, I had earned enough, so that she has been able to live with me for free.
I chose to remain single and childless. My mother has lived with me for almost 20 years now and in that time, she has enjoyed a respectable level of financial freedom and freedom from the stress that money struggles brought her in her years of marriage to my father (until his death at 67) and trying to bring up three kids. I know what you are talking about. My own early life experience is one of the foundational reasons that I am a socialist and secular humanist. The dickhead that basically told you you should be grateful for the pittance you got from welfare, was just that, a dickhead.
You did not create a system that supports a nefarious and privileged few, who live off the sweat and toil of the majority, you like most people were simply a victim of it.

You have my admiration, Athena. I'm probably a bit older than you, but I witnessed and became involved in that transition from housewife (perhaps with a degree in home economics) to professional (perhaps with a degree in CS). My first wife grew into that transition while we were married, and left and made a career for herself. At first, painful for me, but, nevertheless, the right move for us both.

It dawned on me this morning what a mess we are in because of failing to use the democratic model for industry and failing to prepare our young for good citizenship. — Athena

"Oh, look, Dick," Jane said. "Athena just had a major theoretical breakthrough."

"No, Jane," Dick said. "Athena had that breakthrough before she found this joint 4 years ago. She woke up and smelled the coffee some time back."

"Oh, oh, oh Dick," Jane said. "Let's not be unkind. Athena is quite right, after all."

"Yes, Jane," Dick said. "It is not nice to be unkind. And for god's sake, Jane, stop twisting Puff's tail. Puff already hates you forever."

Dick said, "Athena is quite right; I was only commenting on her statement that she woke up this morning and noticed that we are in a big mess. She did not."

"Oh, oh, oh. Here comes Sally," Jane said. "Sally and Spot On are both big socialists. Let's ask them what Athena should do."

Dick and Jane told Sally and Spot On what Athena had written.

"Oh, dear," Sally said, "Athena is recognizing class and gender oppression at a most inopportune time, given that the Tea Party is going to wreck the US Government."

"Yes, Sally," Spot On said. "But unfortunately, Sally, oppressed workers develop class consciousness when they do, convenient or not.

"Spot On said, "What we need to do is organize a demonstration against the capitalists planning on oppressing us with Artificial Intelligence agents. Do we have any of the 10,000 blank protest signs left that we bought 3 years ago?"

"Yes, Spot On, you do," Dick said. "You have been storing them in my garage, and I'd like to park our three cars in there. It's about time you put them to use by starting the revolution. Otherwise, I'll sell them to anti-democratic forces on eBay and keep the proceeds."

"Right On, Sally, Dick, Jane, and Puff. GO REDS SMASH STATE Soon we will hang the last capitalist with the intestines of the last Neoliberal!" Spot On screamed in a frenzy of revolutionary zeal.

Dick and Jane went into their house, the one with the big garage full of blank protest signs. Jane mixed a pitcher of martinis and Dick rolled a couple of joints. Puff retired to her safe place under the porch. Sally and Spot On went back to their damp basement rooms and started thinking up stirring slogans.

Hang on, Athena! Help is on the way.

The above post counts as a short story (prompted by Athena's mention of the dick and Jane readers published by Scott Foresman) and the use of Spot On is designed to annoy @T Clark.

I was subjected to Dick and Jane's Weltanschauung which bore scant resemblance to my reality.

Your story has been the experience of millions of Americans whose lives have been made miserable by capitalism and the policies of both conservatives and neoliberals. These ill effects cut across the working class, gender, geography, and race. That's it in a nutshell.

Our (working class) experience isn't universal. Another class called the ruling class, or upper class, has a much different experience. The functioning of the economy was designed to deliver, cradle to grave, a steady stream of substantial benefits for the top class, through the labor and at the expense of the working class.

Our loss has been their gain.

:lol: :clap: :100:

I was subjected to Dick and Jane's Weltanschauung which bore scant resemblance to my reality. — BC

You see where little Sally is really pointing when she says "see dick." I think Moms for Liberty should get it banned from school libraries.

Moms for Liberty — T Clark

Oh yes, they will be picketing outside the elementary school. But so will Feminist Fascists For Matriarchy, because Dick and Jane teaches frankly patriarchal dogma, oppresses women and disabled people, and erases lesbians and racial minorities.

I mean, Look: See Mother and Father. Perfectly patriarchal!



Father, Alpha male that he is, has time to play with the dog but mother doesn't have time to sit and pet puff. Dick, helmet on and balls in hand, is playing too. Little Sally is being trained to be a household drudge just like her mother.

Where is Jane? Mothers for Liberty might well ask where Jane is--certainly not being supervised by here mother and father. She's probably out on the street being tricked into prostitution. She'll be seeing a lot of dick.

She worked hard all her life as a hospital cleaner. — universeness

Bingo! However, it is the whole human value system as you keep saying. My understanding of welfare is the result of exploiting the poor for wealth. When England had to go to war, too few of its military-aged males were fit for service. Industry was asked to increase its wages and Industry argued they could not increase wages and remain competitive in world markets. So the government began supplementing Industry with welfare for the poor.

I do not want to blame anyone for this economic disparity because I can not think of how things could have been done better. I want to focus on the human value factor.

The Bible was used to get workers to work hard and accept low wages. This is so easy to do with all its talk of the poor always being with us, and the rich not getting into heaven. The Bible also makes some comments about women that justify male authority over them and this is not conducive to justice and living happily ever after. The Greeks were very patriarchal. I think are better models of civilization but I can not remember their names. I think Aristotle had a strong influence on our social organization with men as heads of the house and justifying slavery.

The Iroquois social organization and ancient civilizations I can not remember appear to have had more equal relationships with women, and it seems where there is more equality between men and women there is more equality in general. The burr that is in my side is valuing money and not humans. And if we were to value our good citizens, what benefits of society should they expect?

Social Security is based on a notion of human dignity. It came about during the Great Depression and it was based on age, not need, to protect the dignity of older Americans, when people would rather die than accept welfare. At that time, the idea was if older people would retire, the young could have their jobs. But this covered primarily male jobs, not domestic workers and farm laborers.

... a system that supports a nefarious and privileged few, who live off the sweat and toil of the majority ...

My own early life experience is one of the foundational reasons that I am a socialist and secular humanist. — universeness

I do not want to blame anyone for this economic disparity because I can not think of how things could have been done better. — Athena

So you believe DINO is the best we – humanity – can do? :chin:

↪Athena You have my admiration, Athena. Thank I am probably a bit older than you, but I witnessed and became involved in that transition from housewife (perhaps with a degree in home economics) to professional (perhaps with a degree in CS). My first wife grew into that transition while we were married, and left and made a career for herself. At first, painful for me, but, nevertheless, the right move for us both. — jgill

I think we are the same cohort. I think I got whiplash looking back on all the very rapid transitions we have been through. I was already into the 1950 Dick and Jane social order when Hippies came on the scene and I was glad to join them. I lived in a rural area so this was not the San Francisco or LA hippie thing, but home-baked bread, chopping firewood, and making clothes, gardening and canning. For me, this morphed into a connection with Mother Nature and Goddess. Then bam! We were "just housewives". Things got pretty insane. From Goddess to "just a housewife" was quite a fall.

Next thing we knew, we were in a recession, our husbands left us with teenagers to support and we had no work history to compete for jobs when it took at least 5 years "professional experience" to get a referral to a shoe shining job. We had to hide our educations and use our domestic experience to get jobs and then our resumes labeled us with jobs that had nothing to do with our educations. :lol: Thank goodness I can laugh at the comedy of errs. But I am not going to be passive about the opinion that we did not earn a decent life.

Neither I am going to accept our changed values, as though the traditional woman did have great social value. The USSR "liberated" women before the US. Immediately their economy benefitted from the surge of women workers, but then women and children began sliding into poverty. The divorce and abortion rates began to increase. In the US we can add to that, women and children have increasingly been involved in crime, both as victims and perpetrators. In the 1970's we announced a national youth crisis and now we have a 6-year-old taking a gun to school and shooting a teacher. It seems every week we learn of a new mass shooting. DOES ANYONE WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANT ROLE TRADITIONAL WOMEN SERVED IN SOCIETY?

Your story has been the experience of millions of Americans whose lives have been made miserable by capitalism and the policies of both conservatives and neoliberals. These ill effects cut across the working class, gender, geography, and race. That's it in a nutshell.

Our (working class) experience isn't universal. Another class called the ruling class, or upper class, has a much different experience. The functioning of the economy was designed to deliver, cradle to grave, a steady stream of substantial benefits for the top class, through the labor and at the expense of the working class.

Our loss has been their gain. — BC

I like what you said because it includes both sexes. Our labor history is terrible and at least most women had the protection of home, while men risked their lives for very little money and union people got their heads bashed in by the police and security people paid to suppress the people and protect property rights. The Roosevelts stood against that exploitation but Franklin's New Deal gave government powers it never had before and this is not all good! I wish we understood fascism as an economic order that began in Italy, instead of the horror that it became under Hitler.

:sad: Too many ideas in my head at one time. I am not into bashing men because we have a history of them being treated very badly. We need to work for peace between the sexes and I would love to be free to enjoy being a woman again and not having to compete like men. My knight in shining armor would think I did earn my SS and SSI and that civilizations protect women and children, and protect men with safe working conditions and social justice.

Back to politics, Hoover and Franklin worked together to give us Big Government with more power than it ever had before and that is economic fascism. At the time, before the horrors of WWII, fascism was thought to be the answer to devastating economic swings and economic injustice.

I think it would be helpful to use the terms autocratic and democratic. The US modeled its industry after Britain's autocratic model. What Franklin did was make the government a stronger autocratic force to have power over autocratic industry. At the same time, Deming was trying to get industry to accept his democratic model. The US refused the democratic model for industry, so following WWII when the US was Americanizing Japan, Deming went to Japan and taught them the democratic model. Japan raised to out-compete us for world markets. We say we defend democracy but I don't think we know what it is and why it is a good idea to defend it. Shouldn't we use the democratic model of Industry instead of the autocratic one? For darn sure, workers would not have approved of their jobs being sent overseas, ruining not only their lives but the economies of their communities. Everyone here has mentioned bad values, but what we must understand is what organization has to do with our social, economic, and political order.

That said, what does everyone think will happen to education and our medical care with teachers and nurses demanding more pay? Would the democratic model improve the situation? The fight is not just about wages, it is also about working conditions, and that leads straight to concern about how much a worker is valued, verses exploited. Is medical care for profit a good idea? How is that democratic?

So you believe DINO is the best we can do? :chin: — 180 Proof

Hum, you must not read my post.

I even quoted from it. Have you read mine?

Father, Alpha male that he is, has time to play with the dog but mother doesn't have time to sit and pet puff. Dick, helmet on and balls in hand, is playing too. Little Sally is being trained to be a household drudge just like her mother.

Where is Jane? Mothers for Liberty might well ask where Jane is--certainly not being supervised by here mother and father. She's probably out on the street being tricked into prostitution. She'll be seeing a lot of dick. — BC

I never saw Dick and Jane as you see it, and that may be my err? I can see what you see, but that is not the only way to perceive those pictures. Childhood is preparation for adulthood and I see nothing wrong with Sally imitating her mother. I also see a father playing with his son and I think it is wonderful that a father is engaging his son. Many people believe sports are a very important preparation for life. For sure a father playing with his children is important to their lives. The difference in our perception may be no different from seeing the glass half full or half empty.

My school teacher grandmother preferred Alice and Jerry books. Dick and Jane books were built on the sight reading method and the Alice and Jerry books were based on phonics and independent thinking skills. I have a strong preference for phonics and independent thinking skills, over reliance on memorization that is sight reading. Reliance on memorization and "group think" is a threat to democracy. Defending democracy begins with how we prepare children to read and think.

My err maybe, I am happy with our male and female differences and having different roles in society. I think really good things come out of wanting to be a homemaker and community volunteer. Not just personally but to the whole of society. Democracy is strongest if it is ordered by family order.

A wonderful thing is we live longer and can have both the traditional family that focuses on the benefit to children and society as a whole, and we can have careers if our husbands want us to succeed as much as we want them to succeed. My son is that kind of husband. His father was not so I got the worst consequences of being the traditional woman instead of the happy family I always wanted and then a career. Knowing how my son is different from his father proves my dream of family can be a reality.

Good people often argue amongst themselves constantly, but eventually, they do agree enough, to find common cause and fight for the type of change that really would make a significant difference to the human experience and make it a fairer and more benevolent one. Right now, for me, I think pushing for and supporting UBI in anyway you can could become a current common cause that does offer the kind of significant change I am referring to. Do you have any other suggestion that would do more to improve the human experience, than vastly improved economic parity?

No people in human history have enjoyed the abundance we enjoy.
There has never been less violence, less poverty, or less misery. Technology offers the poorest child from the least developed corner of the world instant access to the entire corpus of human knowledge.

And yet no people have ever bitched and moaned as much as we do today. Increases in abundance may well have created a cyclical loop of rising expectations, Only, there is something in the nature and content of our dissatisfaction that doesn't match an elevated demand for just further abundance. Rather, what is increasingly manifest is a kind of war against reality itself.

Our economic and political institutions - however flawed they may be - have proven themselves to be sufficiently functional to satisfy our physical needs but in so doing appear to have created some sort of psychological, existential crisis.

Our economic and political systems evolved to find solutions to scarcity. Overcoming scarcity is the singular narrative theme that cuts thru human history. Super abundance is hereto an entirely absent political, economic, philosophical or cultural consideration.

Our problem is something akin to that of super lottery winner. Suddenly, acquiring the resources to do anything at all requires an altogether different wisdom.

When the only value we share in common is the value of the dollar, and the bottom line is "how much something cost", it is as deadly for a nation as brain cancer is deadly to humans. — Athena

Yes. Thankfully not everyone is swayed by the belief in monetary value above all else. When it comes to the US (looking in from the outside) it does appear to hold more sway over there than in Europe. There are other differences too, and I believe it is mostly connected to a stronger sense of patriotism (which I personally dislike).

Women, blacks, the seas, the forests, the soil, fossil fuel, fossil fertiliser. Looks like we have run out of things to exploit. There is one thing left, disaster.

https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html

You are not alone; but you are relatively alone here because philosophy is still male dominated. What you need is "feminism". A deal of folk think that to take women seriously means to treat them just like men. That has led, not to the valuing of child-care and caring in general, but to its industrialisation, so as to free women to become wage slaves. That this "liberation" has proven unsatisfactory is unsurprising.

I, nor I fear any here, can direct you competently to the wealth of material available, but assuredly, the analysis and deconstruction of Dick and Jane has already been done for you, Women's Studies is a thing, and Feminist Philosophy, though it lacks any representation here is quite well developed. You need to go talk to your peeresses first, and then come back and educate us neanderthals.

Women, blacks, the seas, the forests, the soil, fossil fuel, fossil fertiliser. Looks like we have run out of things to exploit. There is one thing left, disaster.

https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html

↪Athena You are not alone; but you are relatively alone here because philosophy is still male dominated. What you need is "feminism". A deal of folk think that to take women seriously means to treat them just like men. That has led, not to the valuing of child-care and caring in general, but to its industrialisation, so as to free women to become wage slaves. That this "liberation" has proven unsatisfactory is unsurprising.

I, nor I fear any here, can direct you competently to the wealth of material available, but assuredly, the analysis and deconstruction of Dick and Jane has already been done for you, Women's Studies is a thing, and Feminist Philosophy, though it lacks any representation here is quite well developed. You need to go talk to your peeresses first, and then come back and educate us neanderthals. — unenlightened

This morning I am freaking out about the failure of all our institutions and the failure of education to prepare us for a democracy that is rule by reason, not rule by authority over the people. That includes the harmful domination of men over women. As long as we rely on the church for moral education, we will continue the destruction of our democracy and continue to manifest wars and social problems.

Rather than turn to my peers who only know our Christian-dominated culture, I want to turn to the women who have cultures that respect and empower women and their difference from men. The tribes of the Iroquois nation might be more helpful to us. They have a culture that is better than the one that patriarchal religion gives us. We need to look to matriarchal cultures to know a better way.

We need to look to matriarchal cultures to know a better way. — Athena

Certainly! And matrilineal, more importantly. The need for patrilineal patriarchy to control female sexuality is fairly obvious, but it certainly predates Christianity, and is extant in the classical world of Greece and Rome. I commend to you The White Goddess, by Robert Graves, a man, as I am a man, but a poet, and servant of the muses. It is a long book with lots of words, but looking back to a time hidden from us before the takeover of Zeus, and JHWH, and all the wretched gods. It may seem a bit peripheral, but to find the negated history of Western matriarchy seems like an important step towards understanding those few cultures in which it still survives to an extent. But perhaps it is only men who need such searchings...

All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean—

In scorn ofwhich I sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom I desired above all things to know,

Sister ofthe mirage and echo.

It was a virtue not to stay,

To go my headstrong and heroic way
Seeking her out at the volcano's head.

Among pack ice, or where the track had faded
Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:

Whose broad high brow was white as any leper'
Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips.
With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.

Green sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir
Will celebrate the Mountain Mother,

And every song-bird shout awhile for her;

But I am gifted, even in November
Rawest ofseasons, with so huge a sense
Of her nakedly worn magnificence
I forget cruelty and past betrayal.

Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall. — Graves