A robot will not motivate you to grow and become the perfect you. With a robot, you can be a complete jerk and there would be no repercussion that prompts you to improve your ability to relate with others. Maybe the robot would correct you, as a teacher may correct us, but that does not motivate our desire to be better people. Here is what is wrong with education for technology replacing liberal education. Learning to be technologically correct, like a robot, does not help us become better humans. We are destroying our democracy with our focus on technological correctness instead of a focus on being human. It is sad that today so many think robots could be superior to humans and appear to willing to submit to rule by computers. Star Trek addressed this many times. Giving up our liberty to have the perfection we believe computers can give us, is desirable why?

I very strongly doubt humans will ever be happy without each other. Here is a movie that explores the possibility of being alone with only robots to interact with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU

This TV series explores living with robots who cannot be detected as robots but appear to be real humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smBXniHhrrY

We all want the perfect mate and that can lead one to fantasize about that perfect mate, Of course, that would have to be a robot. Go ahead, give it a try. Give the fantasy a few days maybe a few weeks. Does your long-term relationship with the perfect mate still please you? An episode of Humans deals with this possibility of having the perfect mate, but only having your own experience will answer the question of if this really what you want?

Your words demand a reply! :grin:

The problem is hormonal. Some of us avoid men because like you, we are perfectly happy with our independent, private lives. However, we may need help with something, or we may want a male companion, an escort to dinner, travel partner, etc. Problem is, once we start speaking with a man, our hormones can start messing things up. We may want to be intimate and that can lead to a worse hormonal problem called bonding. Then we end up fighting with ourselves with our heads screaming at us to be reasonable and the feeling self screaming at the intellectual self because the feeling self does not want to be denied and the intellectual self does not want to give up her freedom and independence and be stuck with a man.

Obviously, as we age the idea of living with a man seems even worse because our hormones are not at the level where we think if we don't have a man in our lives we will die. We have had our children and know we don't want to go through that again. But when we are young, OMG. Like hunger forces us to stop our lives until we have eaten, our hormones can drive us to sex and bonding and having children. We don't always want to stop and eat but hunger won't leave us alone. We can know we want a career and don't want a husband and children but our feeling self, the hormonal self is driven!

:lol: It is not just The Contradictions in Dealing with Other People but also the contradictions of dealing with ourselves. Now I have to close because I have an agreement to meet with a man I have been avoiding. I hope when I tell him I am not Christian he will stop pursuing me, but I hope he will also be agreeable to me a renting a room from him so I can transition from one apartment complex to another, without having to sleep in my car. I hope he will take me to the Annual Steam Engine Fair this summer. :joke: It is crazy! the worst contradiction is within myself!

Very important. If you know you don't want to be a father, make that very clear. Women can be totally unrealistic about this because their hormones are driving them, so talk about how awful it is to have a child with a man who doesn't one and who will not be a good father. Of course, she will think you are the perfect man because you care about such things, but you must do the impossible. You must active her reasoning. I hate it, we like to think we can have the perfect family even when we know this is unlikely. Stupid hormones! :rofl:

Only when our democracy is protected by the citizens is it protected and only when education prepares them to do this, do the citizens have the mentality to protect our liberties. We stopped that education in 1958.

Our freedom of speech is about spirit not law and because we are not understanding of this we are destroying it. Our spirit has turned very ugly and destructive. Citizens, through laws protecting private property, are destroying our liberties and freedom of speech.

I have a problem with Christianity because of what it has done to our understanding of spirit and morals since we replaced liberal education with education for technology and left moral training to the church. :groan:

We need to understand we protect our liberty by following the social rules, so a mod doesn't have to step in and ban us. Or if we were a cooperation, management doesn't give us a pink slip. Private property rights trump our protected right to freedom of speech, so we have as much freedom of speech as the owners wish to give us. It is their spirit that matters, not exactly laws. The way they interpret the law and how they should use it, depends on their spirit. The spirit of America is dying and the spirit of tyranny is rising. When the bottom line is the dollar, reality gets ugly.

You have to read SUICIDE OF THE WEST by Goldberg. It speaks of tribalism, populism and all that.

When it comes to gay pride and all the other prejudices, I cling to my grandmother's three rules.

1. We respect everyone. It doesn't matter at all who the other person is because this about who we are. Either we are civil and respectful people or we are not and other people's private choices are none of our business! Public choices we share. Private ones are private.

2. We protect the dignity of others. OMG that rule can prevent so many social problems.

3. We do everything with integrity and this goes with being honorable and being honorable goes with having a sense of purpose in life and believing in human dignity, liberty, and democracy.

I was attempting to write a book like SUICIDE IN THE WEST, but more focused on education and the Military Industrial Complex. That is not as fun to think about as the book Goldberg wrote is entertaining and informative. However, I could perhaps write a complimentary book using my knowledge of education and what liberal education had to do with protecting the democracy we had.

You might appreciate all this about liberty and democracy. Gay rights are human rights. And if you want to blame someone for the destruction of marriages and family order, then blame the Military Industrial Complex. Through industry and education, we have destroyed the family order that used to order the whole United States. Since Athens, democracy is family order, and Sparta was military order, but we have replaced our family order that with Prussian military order applied to citizens. This is destroying our liberty and democracy. But OMG is this paradoxical! Family order goes with tribalism so how is destroying family order contributing to tribalism? :grimace: I think I will go blow my brains out. This realization of yet another paradox is another stumbling block in explaining reality. But men's loyalties tend not to be with women and children. They compare their worth by the size of their cocks, and ability to compete against each other, not with how well they match up with women and father their children. Men's loyalties tend to be with men, industrial and military order. :groan: I think I have a headache.

Well, I totally agree with the desire for intellectual discussions and how important the internet is to that! It isn't just that it is easier to find and engage with such people on the internet, but I find my thinking is very different when I am writing than when I am speaking. Also, I like this form of communication because I am alone but not alone. That is I am not concerned with how I look or how close to someone I sitting, or all the other concerns that come up when we meet face to face. For sure avoiding a man's sexual agenda is a huge plus to internet discussion.

When it comes to sex and romance and the desire to bond, yes, women are more hormonally geared towards bonding. They can override that, and there is a lot of pressure to that today, but even your overweight, older women are desiring that romance and bonding. They just know being obvious about that will chase the male away, while the more attractive woman works on the premise that she can have what she wants if she doesn't hang with the wrong guy, and keeps kissing frogs until she finds her prince. So for the attractive woman, it is the male who is most likely to be rejected unless he appears to want the same bonding she wants. It is hormonal.

I like the movie Pretty Woman and the prostitutes' rule, never kiss the guy! We are capable of sex without bonding, and money helps get our mind in the right frame for that. But it must be clear that money is pay for services and not gifts.

You might like the book "SUICIDE OF THE WEST" how the rebirth of tribalism, populism, nationalism, and identity politics is destroying American democracy - by Jonah Goldberg. I found it at the library yesterday and I am skimming through it. In the US public education was about having a strong and united democracy until 1958. While a lot is being said about the disintegration of the US none of the authors are addressing the change in education and Military Industrial Complex as part of the problem.

Wow is that one nostalgic for me!

Reminds me of when I was a child in Hollywood, California and my mother would take my sister and me to the Woolworth store for shopping and lunch, the lunch counter looked about the picture. Growing up I switched from Coca-Cola to coffee and a cigarette. That is just the way life was. And we were pretty girls not bothered with a need to be smart and have careers. We got married and stayed home to care for our families. Then we sat around the kitchen table with our coffee and cigarettes and chatted until the kids got fussy and it was time to take them home for a nap.

Someone has created a place for people with Alzheimer's to reminisce. It is kind of like a small town in a huge building. Many find comfort in the past and a strengthening of a sense of identity.

:lol: funny boy. I never heard of that humor before. Isn't the internet wonderful? It makes our world bigger and expands our understanding of others.

Yes, human relationships have ethical values. Why, because humanity would have not survived without the value of our relationships. We need each other, even if we can be annoying.

A study was done of Italian families because they had an exceptional survival rate living into their later years despite breaking all the health rules about smoking, diet, and exercise. It was discovered their exceptional life spans decreased when they got sophisticated and stopped living together, and separated into single unit families. But of course a hundred, and thousand, and a million years, we all had more risky lives and we were dependent on each other for survival in other ways. All social animals are programmed for the survival of the species, and individuals are must sacrifice for the group while at the same time taking care of their own survival.

On the other hand, we are very limited by the number of people we can deal with in a day, and overpopulation is very stressful for us. We dehumanize each other to cope with there being more of us than we can deal with. We create boundaries to protect ourselves from being overwhelmed. In a small town women can take turns caring for the children, the aged, and the sick, but in a city, this totally breaks down.

What is your goal?

A mother is not someone who lives alone. At least the traditional wife and mother cannot be fulfilled without human relationships with family and the community. I think we have greatly overlooked the importance and value of traditional women.

You already did what? The world is watching what?

I am not good at interpreting poetry. I need better explanations than you are given.

what is nvm?

You are killing me with curiosity.

For sure those who have fame today are unlikely to go down in history like Socrates, Pericles, Cicero, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Hamilton. It is our works that give us immortality. That is quite a different understanding from Martin Luther and Protestantism that is not by works that we gain immortality, and paradoxically Protestantism is known for its work ethic. What to explain that one?

Wow that is a curious statement. To whom are you speaking?

People I admire are not offensive but yet they are bold when asking for what they want. I especially remember a man who was a major in a small town, and he was always cool and in control but not controlling. He listened to others very well and brought out the best in them and bought opposing points of view together. He was awesome!

Some people dominate with charisma. I think this was the Athenian goal of arte.

The Athenian sophist used rhetoric to persuade people and could be both admired and hated. Socrates was surely greatly admired and hated. Cicero was one of the most influential men in history because of his writing and oratory skills and yet he was killed, as was Socrates killed. What do we have to learn from this history?

Where did you get that picture? It looks like it is a small piece of a larger picture.

While the hair is important, the mustache is most often associated with the barbarian aesthetic. While the civilized Romans were clean-shaven or only had hair on their upper lip when it was part of a full beard, the Germanic men set themselves apart by only wearing a mustache – a bit different than the mustachioed, limp-wristed hipsters we see today. For many Romanized Germans, Gauls, and others, the mustache was a way to show off ethnic heritage. These men would wear the traditional styles of the Empire and speak perfect Latin, but still make a nod to their bloodlines by shaving everything but their mustaches.

450px-PazyrikHorseman

Their clothing is also an obvious contrast. Rather than the flowing robes that are impractical for fighting, rough terrain, and the manly art of conquering ones enemies, the Visigoths are seen in leg wraps – believed to have been originally developed to help protect the men’s legs from both the moisture and dense brush common in the parts of Europe from which these tribes originate.

The shorter length of the tunics and the cut-off sleeves allowed for maximum mobility – making them ideal garments for the quick movements required in battle.

Both men and women would dye their tunics, braid their hair, bathe regularly, and many digs have found that most carried a comb with them at all times.

That came from this link http://masculine-style.com/historic-style-barbarian-clothing/

It is interesting the author speaks of the manly art of war. I am sure not all cultures were based on the art of war, and some cultures were a mix of the domestic arts and the art of war. This could make for an interesting discussion of the woman's place in these different cultures.

I think I disagree with you? I have not been as successful in life as I think I would like to be because I was way too defensive and pushed people away. In my old age, I seem to notice those of us who are always on the defense are not likable people, nor are we good parents, and we lack the skills necessary for getting our way. This is a serious political problem because we can not make the world a better place when we lack the skills to get what we want. It is a pretty serious deficiency.

When we were children we were pretty powerless. That is not a good way to spend the rest of our lives. Today we have much more information about social skills than we had the past and a much better understanding of developing support systems. We need to take advantage of this information. We need to open the windows and doors for the good to come into our lives and back out into the world.

We need this forum to share with each other and stimulate the good. :flower:

My goodness you say such interesting things!

Hitler and Trump are the result of education for technology for military and industrial purpose and Prussia bureaucratic order. It is both that made Germany the New World Order and made the US what Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex and the Bush family bragged about the US being in control of the New World Order. This is what we defended our democracy against, now we are what we defended our democracy against and only when we realize, only when our democracy is defended in the classroom, will our democracy be strong again.

With the change in education, it is also very important we replace our autocratic industry with the democratic model. If we did both, return education to defending democracy in the classroom and replace autocratic industry with democratic industry, our democracy would be strong again.

What I want to know is, if a law saying we must have medical insurance is unconstitutional, is it also unconstitutional to have a law that requires us to have car insurance? I remember when having car insurance was only a good idea to be covered in case of being sued. It was not a law that we had to have the insurance.

In a democracy, perhaps we all want to own a hospital? Why have an insurance company instead of supporting the medical facility a community needs directly? I think our reasoning is as silly as not having a community paid water supply and sewage system and making water and sewage privately owned and controlling who gets water and sewage who does not, by the person's ability to pay for it. I know we pay for water and sewage but not the same way we pay for medical care. The internet and medical care and our education should have more of a utility mentality behind it, that a private capitalist mentality.

Why are our taxes supporting a Military Industrial Complex instead of our communities?

I love your relating democracy with biological function. Have you read John Dewey a past expert on education? He speaks of an organic democracy and the transition to a nuclear state. The US is experiencing an education problem that shifted its organic democracy to a nuclear Military Industrial Complex. So many people are writing about this now, but none of them have studied the history of education so they are not mentioning the most important part of the ramifications of replacing liberal education with education for technology and what military technology and corporate interest have to do with the transformation.

I am afraid Bill Gates is misled when he pushes for education for computer technology over education for being humans living in human communities. Surely computer technology can improve our lives, but not if we do not develop our independent humanness and sense of our responsibility for the present and future. Our trust in technology is no better than our trust in a God. We need to trust ourselves and each other.

Whoo, wait a minute am I wrong or was that a little misogynistic? What was ever said about Mother Mary for you to say she is concerned about punishing us and would call us sons of bitches? That kind of misogyny is a bit unnerving to me. Are you a safe person for me to interact with or should I expect to be the target of anger? Or perhaps I am misinterpreting you after a marriage with a man who had a controlling and castrating mother?

:lol: I think most of us spend our lives trying to recuperate from our unpleasant pasts. I think that is where we can find most of our problems, and we keep projecting them into the present. Philosophically speaking, this problem is reduced when we follow rules of good manners and attempt to respect everyone. By doing our best we create the possibility of having good outcomes, instead of ruining the moment with past traumas.

I wish you would say more. I think privacy is very important. Do you disagree with that? I think feeling safe is important. Do you disagree with that? I think our relationships are much better when we share social agreements and feel like we can trust each other. Do you disagree with that? What would follow is discretion is important. Discretion, good manners, and respect. Not shoving a difference in someone's face is being respectful and that is conducive to feeling safe and having good relationships. Now who the other person is, doesn't matter because we show all people the same courtesy and respect. It doesn't matter who they are, because it is our behavior that matters. Doesn't that solve a lot of social problems?

Jump on it. Start the thread and pm me. The religious debate is not just are the Hebrew, Jewish, Christian, Islam stories the only true story, and it is not if their God is the only true God, but the worthiness of all human beings who contributed to life on earth for millions of years. Is there a jealous, revengeful, punishing and fearsome God judging all these people and deciding who of them get to enter the good afterlife or who do not, and does he give this power to humans and the right to kill those who are different from them in the name of God! What makes a human worthy?

Or as Thomas Paine asked, in a universe that may be full of planets with life like ours, did Jesus have to play the same drama of enduring torture and sacrificing his life on each of these planets? If this is the way God works, it would have to be the same everywhere, right?

As a White Anglo Saxon Protestant male I have to hope that both of those possibilities are nothing more than wild rumors. Better add a humor emoji. :naughty: :rofl: — Bitter Crank

God bless you for that good laugh. :lol: :rofl: I really needed it. Doctors are giving me information that I do not like and if it weren't for family, good friends and humor, I could choose to leave the playing field. I will take that up in another thread asking folks why they are here because I am asking myself why I am here.

Women's hormones are known for their reaction to a baby crying. I love the subject of hormones and human behavior but maybe that would be going off topic here?

Here is a goal I think worthy. We all learn more about how our brains work and about how hormones effect us and what effects the production of hormones. Our freedom of speech without better information could be folly. :wink:

I would love a thread about fashion and what it says about us and our culture. I am planning on going to an annual Christmas dinner at the Hilton and I always wear a semiformal. It is very disappointing when many people show up in jeans and teeshirts. Stay at McDonald's if you want to dress like that. When I complain I am told this Eugene and in Eugene formal means jeans without holes in them, and not even matters too much. Sorry, Jeans are great on the farm or in the mill, but there is a time and place for dressing up. Do a thread about fashion and culture and PM me.

I think social agreements are very important. Are you saying they are not?

Don't forget Islam. Jews were opposed to Greek nudity and their females had to be virgins to assure the child would be the man's child because only the man's child had inheritance rights. Christianity and Islam carry on Jewish notions. All are intensely opposed to homosexuality and all want women to be virgins and under the control of men.

That was fun reading but a little of topic. :rofl: How about a thread "does the clothing make the man?"
I am sure with all of us we could come up with interesting things to say. Like for sure dude, those Romans in their metal and leather uniforms are sexy. :love:

Love and war and sex appeal.

And for penis envy- yeah I think Freud got it wrong, however, I do think having a penis would make peeing easier. I think of the breast envy women can have. It makes sense to be proud of a large penis, or breast, as that signals I am a better man or woman. I am sure this reasoning is good in the animal world and although we may not reason things this way, some things are below our reasoning. Oh, oh I think once upon a time, there was male womb envy, when the goddess was the most important and perhaps only god. Wow is this on topic or off topic?

I am quite sure male domination was the result of having to defend permanent territory. A result of farming. We may have been more like bonobo than chimpanzees. Female domination is possible and leads to different social behavior. :lol: The big concern about colored people taking over is overlooking what female domination could do to us and maybe that is the greater threat to the status quo.

PS when men watch football their testosterone level rises and they become more aggressive.

For sure. Christianity is blended of paganism. It was put together with Roman Law of Nature. That isn't a study of nature, but a legal tool taking what is common between separate city/states to make legal decisions involving the persons from different city/states. It was their way of knowing truth. The reasoning was if most people believed something was true, it is true. Putting all the truths together in one religion was just pragmatic. But now we are getting off topic, so maybe we should a different thread for this?

Regarding freedom of speech Thomas Paine did not get the honor he deserves because he was a deist and Christians considered this as bad as being atheist, so he was not honored with statues as others were. What Christians have done to those who do not share their faith is terrible. The biggest challenge to John Kennedy when he became president was to overcome Protestant prejudice against Catholics, and we are still dealing with prejudice against Jews. Should not we address this in a discussion of freedom of speech?

And there has to be life after death, because surely I am not a 72 old women, and what is seen as an old woman is only a delusion. The reality is I am a young, attractive and physically fit woman, who wants to be a physically attractive and fit male in my next incarnation. There is absolutely no way I will have the benefits of being a male with my present body.

I love your post! :love:

You said "The Greeks particularly worshipped Priapus, a fertility God, whose symbol was an erect penis. These Priapic statues were very common inside and outside buildings. In one invasion, the soldiers snapped off all the stone erections they found -- a clear enough message. We won; you lost. We modern people who haven't worshipped fertility gods are not likely to get what the little dildo-ike sculptures meant to the ancient people."

I think we should look to the east to improve our understanding of the ancients. In the East we have a better record of the importance of yin and yang. I think we will find, wherever a society was militarized the importance of males and maleness is exaggerated and nothing symbolizes this better than a large penis. For a woman, the equivalent would be large breast. Rape also goes with war. Domination being all important. While the woman is the passive cow and object of male domination and the male is the bull, representing strength and power, an object of worship in many ancient civilizations.

According to a book I have about the history of Chinese sexuality, there was a period when the ruler increased his yang by watching people being tortured. There was also a tribe that practiced extremely rare socially accept incent. Because hunting rhinos is so dangerous, men prepared for this by having sex with their daughters. We have held the notion that males should not decrease their aggressive energy by having sex before a game. Whatever, there is a connection between sexual behaviors and a social need for highly aggressive males.

The Spartan social organization that made male and military relationships more important than heterosexual and family relationships is an interesting contrast to Athens and our own society. The male and male relationships would not do well in Rome where the father was all important! Rome was a better ground for the Christian notion of a Father in Heaven than other places. I don't think the Hebrew God is a father and the Hebrews surely would not have worshiped a holy mother. The Catholics raising the female to an important spiritual/God position is interesting.

I absolutely loved that! I remember having to wear short skirts and how painfully cold my legs got in winter. I complained to my mother and she sent me to school in pants and the school told her not to send me to school in pants again. I couldn't even wear long skirts because at that time, only older girls could wear long skirts. When I was old enough to wear long skirts, the style was wearing very short skirts. I rebelled and have a closet full of long skirts. By God, no was going to take the privilege of dressing like a woman from me. :lol:

Wearing those short skirts made no sense at all because it was just awful if a boy saw our underwear. Have you ever played on the play equipment at an elementary school in a short skirt? My wonderful mother resolved that problem by making me bloomers to wear under my skirts. The dress we have forced on women over the years was truly handicapping! And while I am uncomfortable with a male dressing like a woman, I am perfectly comfortable dressing like a man. Gardening in a dress is most unpleasant.

I have a delightful book arguing God prefers women have long hair. Seriously this is said in the Bible! Women who want to please God should not cut their hair.

Another of my old books is about us having the freedom to be women. I have a problem with not protecting women and children, but leaving them as unprotected as barbarians and forcing women to be as men. I think women's lib destroys our freedom to be women, and that this has a lot to do with the large number of females who think they are homosexual and are strongly against us doing the body care things women have done for a long time. We have become free to be as men, but not different and equal. That goes with it being okay for a woman to wear pants but men shouldn't wear skirts.

We have been through a long run of men's clothing being absolutely boring. How about these fashions?
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&biw=1024&bih=710&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=GJkSXNi6Ioa-0PEP3a2WgAQ&q=men%27s+fashion+riegn+or+louis+&oq=men%27s+fashion+riegn+or+louis+&gs_l=img.12...111894.146972..151593...2.0..0.120.3320.15j18......1....1..gws-wiz-img.......0j0i67j0i30j0i10.ZNQFq16QJVA

Our sexuality and social rules is one of the most interesting things we can about.

I will point out there is a difference between our private lives and being public. Our new technology has seriously disrupted the privacy we once had, and this lead to many questions about our social rules.

Like our roads have rules to protect everyone, societies have rules. I have a strong preference for those rules being based on reason rather than religion, and a very strong preference for privacy. I think those rules are good in advancing trust and reducing fear. I hope we can speak more about this. If I think you are like me, I am not afraid of you. However, when I think you are different from me I have all kinds of fears. What will you do and how should I behave? Today a lot of people are loosing their jobs and some are even incarcerated because we do not have agreement on the rules. You don't have sex unless you are married and then you have sex only that person, makes sexual decisions very simple, and that helps people keep their jobs and stay out of prison.

Our liberty goes with the notion that decent people follow the rules, so we do not need authority over the people to make people do the right thing. And again, I will bring up the importance of privacy. These issues were intense in the conflict between Sparta and Athens and for sure their sexual morals were not compatible with Hebrew morality. :rofl: The Jews became much more concerned about educating their sons, when their sons began behaving like Greeks. :gasp:

How about this- the best thing we can do for humanity is expanding their awareness of others, while at the same time having rules for their sense of security because when people feel safe, they are not afraid and relationships are better. Rules can change but perhaps changing the reasoning before forcing a change is a good idea?

Just curious what sorts of things you see as examples of the above? — Terrapin Station

Whoo, that is an awfully big subject! Right now I am bothered by what looks sexual confusion to me. So many people don't appear to know what they are and what they want to be. I am not opposed to homosexuality but really, some men trying to be women won't succeed any more than I can pass as a teenager. I don't like being an old wrinkled person but I have to live with that, and some dark-skinned people may want to be white and that could lead to a lot of trouble. It is not just that trying to be what we are not, can be a problem for us, but also it can be a problem for those engage with us. Out of this comes pain, distrust, fear, and these lives can become unbearable to those lives them. :rofl: Looking 30 years younger would be a huge improvement in my self-image and ideas about what I can do with my life, but that ain't going to happen, so I look in the mirror and tell myself I look just the way a grandma should look. If I had magic wishes I would wish for everyone to be happy with who they are.

I don't think I want to get into an argument about how men think and how women think. I will just clarify I am a woman and we have fought for a couple of hundred years for respect. That fight has really heated up and the tension between men and woman right now is concerning. I am shocked by the number of men who have lost their careers because of something they said to a woman, or a touch. When women are so angry they will intentionally destroy a man's career, there is a problem.

Exercising self-control is something that is learned and this is not as simple as knowing 10 steps for dealing with anger. Technological knowledge for managing anger does not equal the ability to do so. It takes repeated effort to change our thinking habits and responses. How one fantasizes about men or women or children or animals will probably influence how one reacts. To each his own said the lady as she kissed the cow. Just know our thinking habits influence our emotional responses, It can be really, really hard to get teenagers to focus on the school work, but those who do are likely to have better life choices than those who don't. When we make public decisions, we need to consider everyone, not just ourselves. However, what happens behind closed doors is private.

Those are excellent statements but I thought you also said democracy is the problem. I think we need to be careful about that because when we say democracy is the problem, or modern democracy is the problem, then we undermine the will to defend democracy. Our democracy for sure has problems, however, it is not the problem.

A strong democracy must have a strong education to manifest the characteristics of democracy. A strong democracy requires liberal education at the primary school level. The young must be prepared to be free people, that is a liberal education. Education for technology that sees our young as something we prepare to be products for industry is not education for free people. I keep repeating that because Oregon had a mayor who got people to vote for taxes for schools by saying our young are products to prepare for industry. Oregon made itself dependent on outside investors like a third world country, and this mentality is coming from the world bank. Our reality is undermining our democracy, but the problem is not democracy. I don't think people are aware of anything regarding education except it is tied to individuals and communities making money. Defending our democracy in the classroom just is not a concept we hold. We are taking our democracy for granted and that is a mistake. Now we are criticizing democracy and making matters worse!

However, what are saying needs to be said, as long as it doesn't appear to find fault with democracy. That may seem really picky but as I struggle to raise awareness of what democracy is and that our democracy is threatened, making the picky distinction seems important to me.

I want to stress our forefathers were fanatical about science and that was tied to ideas of liberty. Science would trump the Trump if people understood what science has to do with our liberty, and that as citizens of a democracy they need to be informed of the scientific point of view. We need to reawaken the connection between science and good moral judgment and science and democracy and liberty. A liberal education is not devoid of science. We must not confuse scientific thinking with education for technology and for a high tech society with unknown values, that accepts education as a means to prepare the young to be products for industry. We have a lot of thinking errors to clear up if we are going to save our democracy.

My concern is that, in general, we have trashed human dignity and made everything meaningless. We have created anarchy and because anarchy becomes intolerable there is pressure to go to the other extreme of excessive control. When people are not self-controlled, the pressure to control them increases. Like a well-behaved dog does not need to be kept on a leash, but an untrained dog needs to be on a leash. What rules the individual, physical urges or the mind?

I don't know? The way you worded that sounds appealing to me. I think there are lines to be drawn, but I am not sure where those lines should be drawn. I think science might have something to say about the positive and negative effects of explicit sexual scenes. Clearly, some is called art and some is called pornography and perhaps the effect of these two is different? My concern is cheapening our humanness and playing to fantasies that are abusive, or believing hurtful acts are okay if that is what one wants to do. How art expressing intimacy can also bring out the best in us.

As for limits on freedom of expression, I most certainly think civil people are ruled by reason and not their impulses. But Trump is not a good example of this.

I do not believe it is good for society to make intimate behavior public. I also am not at all in favor of freedom of expression. I am strongly in favor of freedom of speech that is about reasoning, but not about cussing and saying offensive things. As I see it, it is only the freedom to reason that needs to be protected, and that is protected by not violating rules of human decency. I am really glad to read others seem to have this point of view.

Please consider what education has to do with the change in our democracy. I am asking you this, because we need a revolution and to take back the control of our schools. This is an incredibly difficult challenge because poorly informed people are not the people we want in charge. However, those who understand democracy and the relationship of education to democracy need to take control of education, and before this can happen, the number, and power, of these people has to be greater than the Military Industrial Complex that got control of our democracy following WWII, and turned us into what we defended our democracy against.

How can awareness of what happened, be increased? There are possible organizational changes that could be made, but most important is returning public education to education for democracy and replacing autocratic industry with democratic industry. The enemy of the people rarely was invaders. The enemy of the people since the beginning of civilization has mostly been those who took the controlling positions on the one hand, and on the other hand, ignorance of the people. Voting for a Lion King President is simply ignorance. I am afraid Christianity is not compatible with democracy? God is not sending us great leaders to take care of us. We must rely on ourselves.

Trump seems to stand for individualism but not for reasoning, and that leads to violence as push leads to shove. He calls someone who does not stand strong with a lie, weak, attacking those who do not please him with shame and lost power to do their jobs. He and Bush are proud about taking action without thinking and without consulting others. This behavior is not compatible with democracy. Republicans seem to be Christian and like having the power and glory of God, but their morals are not compatible with democracy, which is shared power and glory. George Washington at no time boosted he was the best.

I love your post. :love: But, but being stupid idiots is not about being a democracy! Far from it! The whole point of democracy is having good judgment! :cry: What am I doing wrong? No one understands what I say of education. Seriously, if I were speaking with people of my grandmothers day, I think they would understand what I am saying, instead of defending education for technology. How horribly paradoxical it is that people think I am opposed to knowing what is vitally important, and then tell me democracy is about being stupid idiots.

Why are we not sharing the belief that democracy is about being well informed and empowered to make the best possible decisions?

The problem with democracy that wrote of is a failure to understand democracy. The Greeks loved their public works. It is what we the people do, not what I, your major or your president does.

BrianW, I would love to get my hands on the book you read.

Are you aware of the importance of the Greek and Roman classics that were the foundation of liberal education? No one understood democracy until there was literacy is Greek and Roman classics. A correct understanding of our equality does not come from the Christian bible but from the Greek gods who were all gods and very different. The people of Athens believed we were made in the image of the gods because of our capacity for reason. As a bird is born to fly, humans are born to reason, and because they have the capacity for reasoning they can live by reason. For them to do this, they must be civilized. Rural people are not civilized people. (I don't mean today's people, but in the past, people living outside of cities just didn't have information available to them and did not realize any need for it.)

Interestingly the Iroquois Confederacy also lived with a belief that a man taught them to live by reason, and they also influenced the development of our federal government.

Cicero is essential reading. The Roman statesman explains that only when we live by reason, do things go well, and to not care about universal law and living by the law is ignorance. Our democracy is not just about equality, but about knowing the laws of nature and basing our decisions on them. If we understood the source of our democracy and the importance of science to our democracy, there is no way we would continue to contribute to global warming because in the moment that is what is best for our economy. We are violating the laws of nature and denying the consequences and that is not being a good democracy.