The role of education was to make our democratic republic strong and united and to manifest the hopes of the Enlightenment of improving life on earth. Without that education, it all falls apart, and the good intentions of those who believe a military-industrial complex and leaving moral training to the church is best, have destroyed the education and culture we did have. Without that education, we do not have the culture and we are not united and we are not strong. Is that a truthful statement or conspiracy theory?

So, do you think that the idea of renunciation is not about following a set pathway, but more of a mindset, in which one feels free from the binding of the concerns of day to day existence?
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Options — Jack Cummins

I don't know what I think until I participate in one of your threads. This time I mentioned being happy now that I am past my years as wife and mother and having to work for a living. Had I never been a mother and never held a job, would my life have been more joyful? I think that is highly possible. My marriage was terrible and a lot of heartache has come out of that. I am not sure I would repeat it.

There are wonderful benefits to working, but I found low-income employment miserable because with autocratic industry the conditions of jobs can be intolerable! My life could have had been better had I been better prepared and made better decisions. That is not equal to renunciation. It is knowing what we want and how to get it. I knew what I wanted but not how to get it and made bad choices, the failures of my marriage are now impacting my great-grandchildren and I have deep regrets. To be happy I avoid thinking about my family and engaging with most of them. I guess I would do it all over again, but I would do it differently. Today women have more opportunities, and I hope we work through some human problems and that everyone will do better.

↪Janus

According to Buddhist thinking it is fine to be attached ("find refuge") in the Sangha (the community of the faithful), the Four Noble Truths and the Dharma ("Way") because they are believed to lead away from attachment to transient, earthly things and lead towards the changeless. — Janus


Khaled....Really? When was this said. I don’t read much about Buddhism in particular but more about Zen and other offshoots. I doubt the words used were “attached” though — khaled

What Janus said makes perfect sense to me. It is also very Christian to be devoted to God and heaven and renounce this mortal world. If we cling to a heavenly fantasy we are saved and immortal. I am pagan. I love life in this three-dimensional reality. However, I have to admit this is easier now that I am adjusted to being divorced and my children are grown, and I don't need to work for a living. That is I am past many worldly concerns and live in peace in my own imagined reality of mother earth and what humans can do to make life better.

Yes, what kind of thread have I created? Your post is very interesting. Perhaps it is my 'monster,' and it arose from my subconscious on Christmas eve, and was unleashed on the forum for everyone to consider. I think it probably stems from the conflicts which I have going around in my subconscious, encompassing Catholic guilt and disillusionment.

I am really interested in paganism and I would imagine that that it is certainly about celebrating of pleasure rather than repression. I have read a bit but not much but know that the early albums by The Waterboys, who are one of my favourite artists embrace it in their music.

But I would imagine that the pagan solstice celebrations are extremely different from the ones in Christian based consumer culture. When I was at school and in my original church background I always found a clash between the supposed Christian basis of it in the birth of Christ and the commercial celebration. I do believe Chistmas was originally a pagan custom, which the Christians redesigned to fit into their perspective and system of rituals. — Jack Cummins

:grin: From time to time your childhood brainwashing seems to come to your consciousness as unquestioned truth but in general you have done a heroic job of getting past that problem. :clap:

I would not give too much honor to pagans either. But I have a love for our mother earth. That of course is an emotional thing, not exactly a thinking thing, but it can include knowing we can destroy environments, and when we do that can damage our own survival, but we can also create healthy environments. A lack of technology is not the answer. Low tech people are very destructive and deforesting their area is a huge problem. So is polluting the available water a huge problem! Often people had to move because their way of life was not sustainable, so after consuming resources in one area they moved to the next. When only a few people do this, there is a chance of the environment recovering. When there is a large population, we have to make better decisions.

With technology, we have done amazing things! A huge area in China has been restored after it had been destroyed hundreds of years ago. Everyone had just assumed the destroyed area was always like that, but science discovered it was fertile and had once been abundant with life, and with that knowledge they restored this Garden of Eden. We have brought rivers and areas of the ocean back to life. We have good reason for being hopeful of making most of our planet a Garden of Eden, but to do this we need to get past the notion that a god controls things. We need to spread technology not religion!

Do you know of the Peace Core? It was created during past President Kenndy's administration and is about sending US volunteers around the world to teach better farming and better sanitation and better health. Better birth control must go with this because we must be real about living on a finite planet. Just feeding people without population control, makes the problems much worse, leading to the wars and refugees we have today. We need secular thinking for peace because it is wrong to feed people and give them religion and think a god will take care of them. God did not build Noah's ark nor does He save people from terrible things. A moral is a matter of cause and effect. What happens is a consequence of what we do and we need truth to do the right thing.

Back to your question, I love our mother earth, and I love our technology, and I love education for liberty and democracy and while Buddism has wisdom I could not be one because I want to be part of life and I want to be part of making life better for everyone in a very pragmatic way. The Peace Core is a pragmatic way to make life better.

I claim morality is essential to our liberty and democracy. If this is true, why do we need a false god and a false belief that is divisive? You have stated there are other ways to seek truth besides relying on the Bible.

Getting lost in the maze is going to Hades to seek meaning. Facts without meaning have little value. We should not go to Hades without the help of the gods and that would make your first statement correct. However, for me those gods are concepts, and learning of them is like learning of virtues.

I believe cultures must prepare the young for adulthood and this is done with education. Right now we have amoral education for technology and left moral training to the church. That is very problematic! That justifies your fear that things can go very wrong and they are going very wrong, but this does not mean we need religion. We need a culture that raises moral awareness and prepares the young to be adults, not leaving them immature and lost as education for technology is doing. We had education for good moral judgment, until the 1958 Nation Defense Education Act and leaving moral training to the church.

Christianity is not going to away that easily. Look at what the Jews endured during the holocaust and they became even stronger in the defense of their religion and their identity as Jews, an identity that would be unknown if they did not make a issue of it. These religions would not exist if the humans didn't make them exist. No god has spoken to us lately. Although humans think they can know the word of God and His will and believe they are God's favorite people and that what they want is what God wants them to have, even if they must kill for it, which is totally contrary to commandment to not kill.

God's truth is true for everyone, no matter what religion they are. That is science and the democratic way of determining the best reasoning.

I do believe in the importance of enjoying ourselves and being one's best. I don't believe that life is meant to be miserable.

Hope you are have a good Christmas. I am busy reading and writing but having an enjoyable time. I am also being DJ with my mum, giving her an assortment of music.

Let's hope that 2021 brings more enjoyable times for everyone! — Jack Cummins

I would be happier at the moment if we were celebrating the winter solstice that pagans everywhere once celebrated. Calling the winter solstice "Christmas" is like pouring lemon juice into a wound, as it screams a terrible history of extermination that continues to plague us as a terrible prejudice against "those people" and denies the value of other human beings or that they even existed.

Hard times? In the past people starved to death, especially in the winter and a God didn't send birds to feed them. I live in a country where few children starve to death because of what science has done for us. whoops, I am ranting aren't I. What a topic "Is attachment a problem and should it be seen as one"? lf I knew how to use social media I would use it to call a demonstration at our public broadcasting station demanding they use a warning when broadcasting a biased religious program, announcing it is prejudice and may be offensive. The God of Abraham religions are an attachment I wish we would give up. I celebrate with the pagan tree and the pagan understanding of the solstice and so thankful our children are not starving and dying in winter as they once did when the church was the only source of knowledge.

noun: relativism

the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. — Oxford Languages

Thous shall not eat thy neighbor is a culturally taboo demonstrating relativism. There are cultures that embrace cannibalism. However, when we drink the wine and eat the wafer blessed by a priest we are drinking the blood and eating the body of Jesus Christ. I know in our culture today that is totally repugnant, but in the beginning of Christianity when it was a secret organization, there was concern about them having cannibalistic rituals and what else could drinking the wine and eating the bread be, but symbolically eating Jesus's body and drinking his blood? And it makes sense to do this to become one with Jesus by consuming him.

Of course we have lost the history of this ritual and the reasoning for it, but how could that reasoning be missed. Jesus became the bread and wine, following the Egyptian tradition of Isis being the bread and water. I love etymology, the study of the origin of words and meaning.

At least 5 Biblical stories are translations of Sumerian stories and I feel confident that the Sumerian stories are records of fact, but when the stories are told and retold for many generations, the facts get forgotten. The original story of Adam and Eve, tells of an Eden and a flood that destroyed a goddesses plants and she got so mad so cursed the river to die, and in reality a great and long drought followed the flood, and the river almost died- dried up. The the climate returned to normal and people returned to the valley (meaning of Adam) and the lady who makes live, was one of the goddesses in the story whose name means healing the rib. We can see how our understanding of this story could be based in fact and how much its meaning changed over many generations. The goddess decided to let the river live and man the first man and woman to help the river stay in its banks. Perhaps we would have a better relationship with our planet if we believed we were created to take care of the planet.

Your thread includes an interest in science and religion. Geologist believe they have found the 4 rivers of Eden and they found evidence of a flood in the region of these rivers, in a region that is Iran today. And etymology gives us more clues about stories that appear to be changed by the Hebrews, rewriting them to fit their notion of one God. These people may have come been followers of Amenhotep who fled when their holy city was destroyed and we know, under the leadership of Abraham they returned to their home land, but not before searching the Sumerian archives. Ur being a Sumerian city that had died but left left archives and other remains. So what are we to believe? I think we differ on what is the most believable to us. Religious folks like those who want to believe in Atlantis or that aliens are responsible for our progress, all see the facts differently, each thrilled to have proof of what they want to believe.

Right on our public broadcasting channel is presenting Christianity as one and only true religion and announces the Bible is the greatest book ever written. :rage: I wonder how many ancient books have these people made to make such a claim? I think such shows should come with a warning that they are religiously prejudiced and could be offensive to some viewers.

There was a time when I thought it good to have no attachments and to let go of my ego, and I like what Chattering Monkey said "almost every top player cares very much about their performance".

I will stick with Greek philosophy and the good of being the very best we can be. I think it is wrong to not enjoy the game of life for as long as we can. Sure it hurts when we loose something we value but so what, we can grieve and move on. Perhaps if we live in a very poor country it makes sense be happy with nothing but in a country with plenty it doesn't make as much sense. If we learn to enjoy life, there is a good chance we will enjoy the next one, if our attachments do cause us to reincarnate, and really what is so bad with that?

I live as though reincarnation is a possibility and like the idea that this might pay off in the future. But having life and not using it? Really isn't that a bit pointless?

I rarely join a thread that is more than 3 pages, and unless I am having a one on one discussion as you and I, and Metaphysician Undercover and myself have had, I do not continue with a thread. Like if I am posting and no one is replying, I am gone because it seems pointless to post if I don't get feedback.

There are different things going on here. If there are already many post, I am not going to read through all of them. The discussions move far from their original topic or maybe someone already said what I think is important or made an argument that proves my thought wrong. It is like coming into the classroom at the end of the period.

There is the fast and slow thinking, and also, our minds are fickle! We can tire of a subject quickly or get distracted by another one. Most people would rather have a fresh piece of bread than a stale one.

Then there is, do we feel ignored or valued? I am gone if I am ignored.

I think many new starts may be better than one long thread. So many topics come up and I would make different threads for each one, to keep things organized, but I get overwhelmed when I attempt too much thinking, so I have not started new ones. Slow thinking demands so much of us and it is the most rewarding. I live for those moments when what someone said seems to turn a light on in my head, causing a whole new understanding and this happens for me in your threads, many times. That can be the value of being in a long thread, but people will drop out and many will not join a long and established thread and there is that concern for organization. When thoughts wonder all over the place it is kind of like Frosty Snowman melting and time to build a new one.

An on topic comment would be, not all cultures lead to scientific and technological advancement. I think the gods of Athens were essential to their reputation of being a race of geniuses. Democracy is an imitation of the gods. Having one God is an intellectual dead end. Learning what to think, rather than how to think, is a dead end.

We would have to assume that I am real so is my experience in flowing continuous time. But I am not so sure about other people whose experience is obviously different from mine and from one another therefore cannot be absolute or even just objective. — magritte

It depends on which side of the bathroom door are you? Inside or outside. :lol:

All cultures do not experience time the same. We can have serious communications with indigenous people when we assume their sense of time is the same as ours. This is explained by Hall in his book "Beyond Culture".

I found a link that gives an example of the culture/time problem that in effect does make time stand still.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1046/j.1038-5282.2003.02009.x

In India some may think it is rude to set a specific time for a meeting because that sets ourselves above all else, making gods of ourselves instead of seeing ourselves in the flow of something much greater than ourselves. We could agree to meet at 3:00 p.m. but we better add to that "God willing".

Time as we have created it with our 12 hour clocks is an abstract concept that we treat as tangible reality. It is now 7:50 a.m. where I sit but this moment in time may be different for you.

I think your explanation of the way I Ching works is reasonable. And now that you mention it, I don't think my copies of I Ching made it through the move? I may have to buy another. I also use virtue cards made a Bahia' woman and your explanation of why I Ching works, is perfect for why the virtue cards work. I have had many synchronicity experiences with both.

As for synchronicity being a part of our lives, my most memorable moment is when I walked into a secondhand book store looking for an old grade school textbook thinking it would immediately explain the set of American values every child was taught. :rofl: I found them but not that day and it was not as easy to find them as I expected. Instead, I found two books that set the course of my life. One is the "Anglo-German Problem" by Sarolea and the other was a copy of the 1917 "National Education Association Conference". The National Education Association was the result of needing to mobilize for the for the first world war and it explained the purpose of education and the need to adjust the purpose of education for war. there are many different explanations through many different speakers.

Since then I have added many more books to my collection. My books on the history of education are a fascinating way to study history. And as for me starting threads, yes, I started a few but they don't get attention. No one is prepared to discuss education and what it has to do with democracy. I bring up what I want to talk about in other threads, including yours. Everything I have said about morals and democracy in your threads is an expression of my sense of life purpose. When we have powerful synchronicity experiences seems as though our lives have divine purpose.

It is ,of course, difficult for thinkers to go beyond the head. Perhaps there are many energy centres for perception, including chakras, and the Chinese idea of meridian points. — Jack Cummins

I think you want to read "The Mayan Factor". It says things that are totally weird to our western thinking and it can be hard to get past that, especially when we are the only one we know who is interested in what Jose Arguelles is saying. But get this, the I Ching matrix fits perfectly in the center of the Mayan matrix and the meridian points are within the matrix.

Matrix | mathematics | Britannicawww.britannica.com › Science › Mathematics
Oct 29, 2020 — Matrix, a set of numbers arranged in rows and columns so as to form a rectangular array. The numbers are called the elements, or entries, of the matrix. Matrices have wide applications in engineering, physics, economics, and statistics as well as in various branches of mathematics. — Britannica

"The Mayan Factor" has both scientific and cultural significance. It can not be read and simply believed or not because it is culturally different and requires a person to be very open-minded. If a person is not open-minded, the book gets tossed in the fireplace and used for heat. Over the years I have read little parts of it again and again, and then I ignore it because the information is just too weird, but I have to keep returning to it and also the book "A Beginners Guild to Constructing the Universe" by Michael S. Schneider.

When I find people who might be interested in these books, I think we should avoid the distraction of politics and the craziness of what is going on now to see if we can have an understanding of cosmic forces which begins with math. The mystery of pi is mind-blowing. I don't know, are any of you on board with this? :rofl: So much of what we talk about seems relatively unimportant. I Ching includes a notion of heaven and earth blending and so does "The Mayan Factor".

Image result for heaven and earth blending I Ching
We speak of “moving heaven and Earth” as a metaphor in English for great effort towards a goal. According to Fu Xi's I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination method, we can metaphorically move heaven and Earth simply by changing our attitude, and in the process, pave the way for peace, success, and happiness. https://medium.com/@rascalvoyages/fu-xis-i-ching-on-how-to-move-heaven-and-earth-730848d14316#:~:text=We%20speak%20of%20%E2%80%9Cmoving%20heaven,peace%2C%20success%2C%20and%20happiness. — Rascal Voyages

I totally agree with you about labeling and the book "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. made the point by storytelling. This book is shocking to me because it makes us aware of how little we knew in 1980 about mental conditions and we were treating people with treatments that sometimes made things worse. That doesn't give me a lot of faith in what we think we know today, but I have faith that research will lead to better understanding and better treatments, and hopefully much better situations in our schools.

My great-grandson was put on mediation that turned him into a zombie and killed his interest in anything. Fortunately, that did not last too long. What we are doing in schools is insane! Does this fit in this thread? Men like Bill Gates are very influential in education and their expertise is not about being human or about culture and society. Their expertise is technology. We are preparing the young for a technological society, not a human society and this has encouraged dehumanizing education. Nature loves variety and perhaps we should too and for goodness sake encourage children to be active and physical because they will learn better if they are.

I think you totally get morals are about knowing the consequence of actions so I do not understand your argument? What you said is exactly why we should be aware that a moral is a matter of cause of effect, and no amount of prayers will change the consequence of a bad action. Going to war will have bad consequences and believing a god wants us to do that unless we have no alternative to fighting for our lives, is just wrong. It most certainly is wrong to invade and destroy a country and not feel responsible for the human suffering and destruction. Today we are becoming aware of the cost of our action in the US of slavery and destroying the Native American tribes and taking their land. We are gaining awareness of the need to care for our plant, but we are so far behind because of relying on the Bible for an understanding of morals, instead of accepting a moral is a matter of cause and effect.

The god of the Old Testament is definitely described as jealous on a number of occasions. That's why we wants Abraham's people, the Hebrews, to worship no other god than him. The point though, was the question of why they would portray God as having human characteristics like anger and jealousy which are not seen as really good traits. Is it the case that these were seen as good traits back then? More likely it is the case that they wanted to portray God in a way that would make people fear and obey Him.

But then with the New Testament and Christianity, God is portrayed as loving and caring, supremely good. I think that this demonstrates an evolution in the way that human beings view morality and ethics. At first it was thought that the way to make people behave is to threaten them with punishment, and strike fear into their hearts. Then it was learned that the better way is to forgive, love, and care for people. And we can see that they went from the ten commandments of "thou shalt not..." to the single golden rule of what to do, love your neighbour. I think it's far more effective to encourage cooperation and morality through kindness than it is to try and force morality through threats of punishment.

i really cannot see what you mean when you say morality is a matter of cause and effect.

This is an example of fate, determinism, which is not an example of believing in God, rather it's the contrary. A religious person cannot look at the effects of the actions of atheists as God's plan.

I really like your last sentence! :cheer: what a yummy thing to contemplate! What is the spirit of the Christian who ignores knowledge, and the spirit of the pagan who thinks that knowledge is vitally important? Also, what is the source of spirit? When I felt my mother had betrayed me by lying to me about Santa Claus, she lovingly explained Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is clearly manifested by thoughts and actions.

Really, I think spirit is inherent within all living things as the source of living action, vitality. But it needs to be cultured, directed, otherwise it will go in any random way. I believe there are two features to guidance. One is to stop the inclination toward action, and this is will power. In conscious human actions It goes against the spirit, preventing rashness and ill-tempered actions, encouraging prudence. The other is knowledge and this allows that the spirit which has been brought under control through will power might be pointed in the right direction. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can not handle discussing too many different things at the same time. This thread is great, and another one for discussing the gods is very desirable but should perhaps wait. And what you said of spirit is very interesting as the book "Mayan Factor" jumps to mind. I would love to participate in a thread about spirit, and perhaps that needs to wait too? I want to do it all now, but maybe that is too much?

I am so bored with discussing the God of Abraham! And your account of Him switching from a fearsome, war god to a loving and forgiving god, is missing some very important information. That transition did not happen with the writing of the new testament. It happened with the improved ability to fill our stomachs. Never has this god been so good to us as He has been since the 20th century. Advancement in farming that has ended famine in most places and advances in medicine that means most children live to adulthood and our life expectancy has doubled, has nurtured the idea that God is more loving than jealous, fearsome, and punishing. Not that long ago, people were beating the devil out of their children. In my lifetime Satanism became very popular and witchcraft is still very popular. In adolescence, we are more attracted to these superstitions than when are more mature and have a better sense of personal power. That makes the increase in our life expectancy very much a part of focusing on a loving God instead of a fearsome one and Satan. Please, we must not forget history. The history of Christianity is a history of wars, superstition, and abuse.

It is amusing that you cannot see what you mean when you say morality is a matter of cause and effect when for me it is as obvious as night and day. How can that be? How can we both be so sure of what we know and disagree?

Everything must be pleasing to mother nature because when we go against her, things go wrong. This does not make the earth quake or volcanos spew smoke and lava, but if we pollute and land and water we harm life. If we cause the extermination of animal, insect, and plant species, we unset the balance of nature. We may be destroying our planet. Moral, this behavior needs to change.

We used to read moral stories to our children and then ask, what is the moral of that story. The moral of "The Little Red Hen" is if you want to share the bread, you should share the effort of growing, harvesting, milling, and then baking the bread. The moral of "The Little Engine that Could" is he made it over the mountain because he didn't give up. The moral of "The Fox and the Grapes" is he didn't get the grapes because he gave up. You that young woman down the street who has a baby and no one to support her is you need to take steps so this does not happen to you and the child. Can you think of one moral that does not have consequences?

Well, "plan" may not be the best word to use for armageddon but the Bible does tell us that terrible things will happen and Christians accept this without taking the responsibility for it. If this is not God's plan then what is a better word we can use? We are speaking of a god who could provide us a garden of Eden and who knows what we would be like if we felt safe and secure and loved along with everyone around us? We have a God who can make miracles happen and people who passionately pray for miracles while this God may or may not answer their prayers, a God who allowed the holocaust and famines and pestilence. How loving is that? We punish abusive parents and give this god a free pass to do or not do as He pleases. That is nuts. If God is not going to resolve problems for us, perhaps we should take that responsibility and question why would a god punish us for wanting the knowledge to do that?

What gods other than the God of Abraham got personally involved with our lives?

I probably summarised Hillman's argument very badly, especially as I don't have a copy of it to quote or refer to. What I probably failed to show was that he is talking about transformation on an inner level, not in terms of outer goals. James Hillman is influenced by Jung and wrote his books on archetypal psychology and is concerned more with the inner journey.

This is in contrast to the whole way in which I have seen recovery based mental health care which is structured around clear objective goals.
That is one of the difficulties I found with cognitive behavioral therapy, which is all about achieving clear goals and misses out the on what is going on with the unconscious.

When I was writing a paper on art therapy with suicidal clients my tutor spoke of enabling people to live without hope. Both the idea of setting clear objective goals or trying to live without hope both seem extremes. Probably the process of trying to sort out our lives is the most we can do. It is good that you found happiness even though you were grieving.

I liked your reference, about a week ago, to your real snakes, because sometimes there seem to be more snakes than ladders, but I do try to hold on to a sense of humour. That was especially important when working in mental health care. — Jack Cummins

I am so excited by what you have said and a book I was told about, that I don't know where to begin. The title of the book is "The Body Keeps the Score" ( subtitle, Brain mind and body in the healing of trauma). I think we have it all wrong to believe all our thinking goes on in our heads. We should understand our bodies as part of our brains, not separate from them.

Education in Athens was more physical and atoned to how what we see and hear affects us. It was also about building character. Technology and a trade is what slaves and the landless learned, and they were not exactly freemen because they had to toil for their survival. Education for the aristocrats was about our physical experience of life. Sort of like in French schools where lunch time is considered a class in how to live, with gourmet meals, served the children as they would be served in a fine restaurant and the teacher sitting with them to guide their social experience. Get the body in the right feeling and that will manifest in a good life. What we have been doing undermines a higher society and turns it into a grimy working-class society, where abuses of the working class taken for granted.

You are young and you are thinking and learning. I am rather excited by what you might achieve.

Oh yes, a sense of humor is essential! When we stop laughing we are in serious trouble. Perhaps a lack of laughter and being too serious is an indicator of being in Hades? How does the body feel in Hades? Is there a way to change how the body feels? If the body feels secure and hopeful, will the person's mind receive this information and feed back acknowledgment of well being?

I once read a fantastic book on the subject of suicide by James Hillman, called, Suicide and the Soul. Hillman speaks of the suicidal search as being one a wish to end the life one is living, and have a transformed life. He stresses that the art is for this not have to be in the concrete act of suicide itself, but the suicidal urge in itself as making way for transformation on some level in one's life. — Jack Cummins

Years ago I called professionals to ask if they were hiring. It was a requirement of getting an unemployment check to inquire about jobs. One of the professionals counseled people who are suicidal and I recoiled. I asked if that is not terribly depressing? In a very enthusiastic way, he said it was not.
He explained it was his job to help people discover what they wanted so much they were willing to die for it and then help them realize a better way to get what they want.

I never got what I wanted, but I learned to live without it, and after many years of grieving, I learn how to create a new life as Athena and how to be happy. :heart:

That ancient God is a bit weird, "jealous" for example, and angry such that He might smite you. In those times I think they were assigning to God human emotions, which it was later realized that a well-tempered person ought to control. This might be an indication of how human attitude toward different emotions evolves. Jealousy seemed like it might be considered a good trait back then, but now it is not considered to be a good emotion. In any case, human emotions were attributed to God. You might notice that Jesus rebelled against the misrepresentation of the relationship between people and God. In Christianity most the human characteristics of God are removed, except love, but we're still left with a weird relationship between Jesus and God. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it was common for humanity to fear an angry god. It is not always the fault of humans if a god/goddess is angry but just the same we better do what we can to make the god/goddess happy because bad things happen when a god/goddess is upset. But I don't think jealousy was a common trait of gods and goddesses. Oh my goodness, the more I think on this the more interesting the subject becomes! I don't think Zeus was a jealous god but his wife Hera sure was! Another point of interest here is Hera did terrible things to female humans who Zeus was interested in, but she did not punish the whole of humanity.

Would you be interested in a more focused discussion of the gods and the evolution of this kind of thinking?

Being virtuous does require knowledge, this is not what is disputed by Plato. What is disputed is the idea that knowledge is sufficient for virtue. Knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. We will sometimes go ahead and engage in activity which we know is wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

Totally agree. I very much like Confucius' explanation of this. A woman of the Bahia faith made virtue cards that explain each virtue and then the practice of the virtue. It is clear unless we practice a virtue until it is a habit, an automatic response, we do not have the advantage of that virtue.

However, knowing a virtue and having good moral judgment are two separate things. Socrates focused
on the expansion of our consciousness and here I can see where he may have a bone to pick with the sophist. Conscience meaning coming out of knowledge. If all we know is our own experience of life, we will be too narrow-minded to have good moral judgment. Our modern education is falling way short because education for technology dropped literacy. Just knowing how to read does not make a person literate. To be literate one must read the classics and learn about life through books, developing a broader consciousness. In short, a technological education is not enough for good moral judgment. And Athens shifted its education focus on being technologically correct, just as the US did and both did so a little less than 200 years after their beginning.

Since we very clearly can go ahead and act in ways that are illogical, doing something which we know is illogical (maybe buying a lottery ticket as a simple example), I think we might find that virtue is not based in logic. Plato introduced a tripartite person. To the body/mind division he added spirit or passion as a medium between the two. Spirit, or passion, is responsible for action, later becoming known as will, and in Plato's theory the spirit can ally with the mind, to ensure that we act rationally, but also the spirit might ally with the body which would influence us to act irrationally. So in the instances when we know the right thing but do the wrong thing, the spirit, which is the cause of action, is aligned with the body rather than the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I claim a moral is a matter of cause and effect and that makes good moral judgment a matter of logic. Here I will stress this is different from being virtuous. I know I should not eat the two cookies I just ate, but I do not have the strength of character to resist. So we have two things going. One is we must know burning fuels that put carbon in the air is causing a serious problem, before we have the logic to resolve the problem. Two, we must have the strength of character to make the sacrifice that must be made, or we will not do the logical thing and stop destroying our planet. However, as we gain more knowledge and suffer the consequences of our actions, that may strengthen our will to change our behavior. But if we think God is in control and what is happening is His plan, then this planet will loose most of the life on it. This is a decision to rely on the Bible, not science and it can be very pleasing because it means doing as one pleases until the very end. There is logic to relying on the Bible but some of us may think that is bad logic because it is based on ignorance- intentionally ignoring knowledge. But hey, the Bible sets us for this with the story of Adam and Eve being punished because they chose to have knowledge. As my X Christian friend warns, that knowledge might be from Satan.

I really like your last sentence! :cheer: what a yummy thing to contemplate! What is the spirit of the Christian who ignores knowledge, and the spirit of the pagan who thinks that knowledge is vitally important? Also, what is the source of spirit? When I felt my mother had betrayed me by lying to me about Santa Claus, she lovingly explained Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is clearly manifested by thoughts and actions.

Morale is that high spirited feeling we have when we believe we are doing the right thing. The American spirit is that high morale, and a high mortality is essential to our liberty and democracy. So what would you say is the source of spirit?

I must have been rushing because I did not interpret you correctly. :yikes: My sincere apology. I know better than to post when I am rushed or when I am tired. But you know, sometimes we just want to leave the game when our Mom says it is time to come in. Then we get in trouble. It was my bad.

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.