Good. The fabled Athenians, Pericles' vaunted Athens, engaged in war, international trade, slavery, patriarchy, money-lending, Saturday night pub brawls, political infighting and hypocrisy with as much gusto as every other nation-state on the face of the Earth. So did the fabled young American Republic. When you idealize a shining moment as if it were a sustained condition, you fail to see the grubby century in which it was a moment of importance. — Vera Mont

We have come a long way. I speak against the 1958 National Defense Education Act, but the shift to a focus on technology did increase equality. Women gained rights that western culture never before gave them. People of color are more protected by the law than they ever have been and we have extended this protection to people who are homosexual or fall in different places in the gender spectrum. In Oregon, everyone is fed and we are going for providing medical care for everyone as well. Instead of arresting homeless people and driving them away, we are making serious efforts to shelter everyone. Before these efforts to be better human beings, we educated everyone, and with vocational training in 1917 that meant the masses had far more opportunities for upward economic mobility than ever before. These are the result of technology and also the result of democracy and the notion that education can improve the human and the improved humans can lead to an improved society, lifting the human potential.

Pointing to what you believe are faults, seems to blind you and those who have the same perspective, from seeing the good of our democracy and the hope of the future that democracy will continue to lift the human potential. I see huge improvement in how we live and this is the result of the characteristics of democracy being taught. At the same time, I see social chaos and mass murders, and the development of a police state, that is what we defended our democracy against. I say this unfortunate turn is also the result of education for a technological society with unknown values, and intensionally ending the transmission of our culture to our children through our education system. This is a conflict between Christians and secular people and a battle for a national future between those who have faith in humans and those who do not.

Fortunately, we have this forum and the opportunity to examine what is and what can be.

As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned. — T Clark

Agreed - I think that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it cannot be moral in certain circumstances, and that some things that are legal can be immoral in certain circumstances.

But it is different when considering the existence of moral facts. Moral facts could be vague, or very specific, and could be applied by a virtuous person in novel ways. There would be room for creativity, even, when considering the application of moral facts in a way that we don't have when considering the application of some of the very specific laws we have. — ToothyMaw

I like Clark's statement that a moral statement expresses a value, not a fact, but our moral judgment is better with science. Time and again civilizations have fallen because they could not provide enough for their unnaturally large populations, usually, the final blow being a climate change that led to famine. I think somewhere in that statement of fact there is a moral but the moral is something we can learn from history, not an inborn morality. I think our destruction of rivers, lakes, and now the oceans, and other environments, is very immoral. The harm we have done to our planet is causing conditions that are deadly and should we be held accountable for that, given we were ignorant of the damage we were causing?

I think much of our behavior is controlled the same as other animals' behaviors are controlled by hormones and survival needs. Native Americans are known to learn what we might call morals from animals. The book "The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, explains why people cheat, gossip, care, share, and follow the golden rule by explaining animal behaviors. That is in agreement with Clark and the notion of inborn morality. But I have read taking care of children for 20 years is not normal and in one tribe 3-year-old children were left to fend for themselves when there was a serious food scarcity. We know today that in places like Afghanistan daughters can be sold, and in England, at the beginning of industrialization, starving people sold their children to factories. What we think of as only decent human behavior is the luxury of having full stomachs. I don't know how to word that moral but we would be very foolish to ignore the importance of feeling physically and emotionally safe. Hunger can revert us back to a less kind, less civilized struggle for survival.

I have a different perspective, and use - as you have seen - different source material.
Matters won't get worse from argument; they won't get better from refusal to engage; odds are, they won't change at all. I'm open to any of those eventualities. — Vera Mont

Yes, you have a different perspective and think it is the perspective of your cohort which is different from the perspective my cohort, A cohort being a period of history that shapes our consciousness. You remind me of the introduction to a very old textbook that explains people in a democracy can be very critical of democracy and then the book goes on to explain democracy and how our criticism is about resolving problems, not a desire to destroy our democracy and replace it with something else. I am just not sure your cohort has the rest of the explanation of democracy.

You sure do not know the military might we have today is not what we had in the past. We did not always feel responsible for supporting democracy around the world and we were very resistant to giving tax dollars to the military. When Eisenhower first served the Defense Department, his wages were so low he rode the bus to work.

Joseph Campbell said mythology is about teaching the young how to be good citizens and that we need to share a mythology for psychological, social, and political reasons. The US created its own mythology and passed it on to its young until 1958. Then education for technology destroyed that mythology and the national heroes that went with it. Technology has drastically changed the benefits of those serving in the military.

Joseph Campbell said Star Trek is the closest thing we have to a helpful mythology. The social organization of Star Trek is more like Plato's Republic than the family of gods and the mythology of the gods, which did organize Athens when Socrates was poking holes into what people believed.

You and I disagreed about the changing role of technology and war, and I want to point out that the Greeks and Romans both had war gods, but they had different ideas about the good or bad of a war god. The Greeks spread a culture that has endured. The Romans spread an empire that fell. We might admire Roman accomplishments, but the Romans depended on Athens for their technology, like the Borg takes technology. The US is becoming like the Borg but in the past, it did stand for God, family, and Country. Forgetting what we stood for means we have fought every war for nothing.

Oh I disagree. I think you're doing a very good job of explaining your qualms to the forum contributors. Philosophy is for everyone, it's a discussion, the minute we think it is a speciality, elite subject or something that requires some certificate or qualification then true organic philosophy does on that table.

And thank you for throwing me into this quandary by leaving me the argument against the ideal.
— Athena

"An" ideal to be sure. Nobody knows exactly what ought to be the true ideal to pursue. Hence the existence of such forums no? To explore eachothers thoughts, experiences and personal input into the great argument so that we may gather the facts, beliefs and interactions neccesary to hopefully see the wood from the trees.

Yes and certainty is a very difficult thing to capture. Just when one things they have ultimate certainty someone throws a wrench in the cogs and we are left to consider the exceptions to such a case. I hope thanksgiving goes well for you and your family. Have a great celebration :) — Benj96

I just criticized Socrates for being defiant and foolish when his life was on the line, but being defiant can make a person deserving of being treated like a hero. You are so gracious to say we all need to be heard in our struggle to know truth and I certainly believe that is true of hearing the woman's voice. I think Socrates pushed for that and that we may owe him that daily meal given to heroes. I have always thought he stood for freedom of speech in the goal to know truth and he gave his life for that.

However, I am not sure if Socrates' and Plato's relationships with women were something I could value? This ties in directly with the women's liberation we have had, which to me, is more oppressive of the feminine element than what we had. I loved the Hippy period that raised our consciousness of the Gia, Earth, Mother goddess. My life and my children's lives would have been totally different if my husband at the time had also been caught up in that cohort's fascination with love and peace and valuing the mother as I did. Women being anything else may be masculine, not feminine? However, I did hear a leading woman in the space program use domestic terms to explain what is important about our space program. That is, just because a woman does what men do, she does not have to think totally as a man does but to be competitive she needs to think as men think. Plato's republic and the city being everyone's parent, while those in power are not organized by families, scares me because I think that is the path to tyranny.

I could be so wrong but I fear men bring us to tyranny and on the other hand women may retard technological progress? Those nations that advanced technology were patriarchies and I do not know of any matriarchy that advanced technology?

However, now I think of how age changes us. I wanted to be devoted to family but as my children aged and I aged, I wanted to be more active in the community, and like many women in my cohort, we thought we would return to college and have careers when the children were old enough. To our horror, our husbands were not supportive of that. Later in life, I regret I did not embrace math and science when I was young. But I also think my human experience would not have been complete without going through the mother stage. What do I mean by a human experience? A well-rounded emotional trip with changing relationships as we all age and in time become our parent's caregivers. I have concerns that technology and materialism are disconnecting us from the human experience? And maybe that concern is more on topic.

The tyrants were forced from power before they could punish Socrates, but in 399 he was indicted for failing to honor the Athenian gods and for corrupting the young. Although some historians suggest that there may have been political machinations behind the trial, he was condemned on the basis of his thought and teaching.

So what is your point? Socrates' father was a sculptor and Socrates followed his father's profession. Having to work for a living is not as good as being wealthy because of owning property. As a sculptor, Socrates faced hazards to his health and the problem would have increased with age. Socrates could have avoided death, but I think his ego and old age problems saw his immortality rested in being put to death. Had he been a younger man, I think he would have chosen to save his life rather than his ego.

His trial was about being an offensive person, and his punishment was up to arbitration. He was voted guilty by a very narrow margin, but his suggestion that he be treated like a hero instead of punished resulted in increasing the number of people who voted against him in favor of the death penalty. I think his ego got the best of him, but that is what made him famous. Had he been less annoying, we may never have heard about him. The young would not have admired him. Sort of like Trump, he thrived on everyone talking about him and his act of defiance turned people against him.

It is said his philosophy career was begun by a desire to prove the oracles wrong. Perhaps that annoyed the gods who then used men to end Socrates' life. That is not a serious statement, but I think Socrates was foolish at the moment and I don't think he cared if he died because old age is not nice to us.

This thread is about how technology changes our lives, and it was political technology that was changing the lives of Athenians. In the past, Socrates' would have been judged by the Oligarchy, but in Pericles' democracy, it is likely the majority of those who judged Socrates were farmers who would have stronger feelings about people knowing their place and staying in it, being conservative instead of a progressive out to change things, and even worse, acting as though he was entitled to the honor given a hero!

Whatever, I have totally enjoyed looking for more information and coming to new conclusions.

I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true because all extrinsic moral claims rely on unverifiable or untrue moral axioms and, thus, that the only truth moral claims are subject to is relational to other claims and the axioms those claims are based on; extrinsic justifications for moral claims just pass the buck until a(n) (incorrect) moral axiom is reached.

Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims. — ToothyMaw

Your statement reminds me of an explanation of "ignorance of law is no excuse". That ancient consideration was about being a decent person and if someone did something really terrible, ignorance of a law did not excuse what the person did. It was an unforgivable violation of decent behavior that everyone should know.

Morality limited to "the law" is a very low morality. A higher morality is a good understanding of virtuous thinking and action. A moral is a matter of cause and effect and when a person does not have such reasoning, the person's mind is inadequate and the person needs to be under the authority of someone with better reasoning. Our liberty is protected with education to develop virtuous people with good reasoning.

Speaking against such education is immoral because there is a bad effect when such education is neglected.

You're absolutely correct. I agree. I was referring to how modern society pits the bread against the home. Which is a terrible shame as bread is made at home too. Whoever holds down the Fort enables others to go beyond it to fetch additional resources knowing the home is not going to fall into disarray without them. Again i do apologise if it came across as sexist it was not what I meant so I'm doing my best to clarify the context on which I meant the description — Benj96

Ah, now I love you. :heart: And thank you for leaving the argument against women staying home to care for the family to me.

When my children were teenagers during the 1970 recession, Dad walked out leaving me to take care of the home and support the family. I would have loved to have had a wife! It would have been wonderful to be able to focus on my job and how to maneuver into a career instead of trying to do it all. I would have loved to come home to a clean house and a meal and have someone else to resolve all the problems young people have. Old books advised women about taking care of everything so the man would be free to focus on his business or career.

When I was a member of the Cicero Society, I watched the older men coach a young man to assure his success. These men had wives who never left the home and their wives were like helpless children when it came to knowledge of the greater world. Fortunately for their wives, these men had stocks and their wives were well taken of when they died but I would not want to be one of them.

I have known older women who absolutely hated their husbands and were very thankful when their controlling and possibly abusive husbands dies. I have read a journalist's record of pioneer women who were passionate about the injustice they suffered when we went to war because of slavery but did nothing about the slavery they endured because we called their slavery marriage. Some of them could have been married off at age 14 to an older man who wanted someone to do his laundry and cook for him, and back in the day rape and abuse of a wife were sanctioned by law.

I was raised by a divorced mother and when I say women have the freedom of barbarians, I do not mean that as a good thing, because they can be forced by circumstances to work for very low wages and deal with all the problems of poverty when raising their children. Today that means more of them are homeless with their children and the assistance programs can not take care of all of them even though the lucky few needing help can receive much more assistance than in the past.

Something I regret about philosophy is the lack of women's voices. Many philosophers dealt with the education of children, but the mothers' perspective is missing. I think I have more words and experiences to say what is wrong with being a full-time homemaker than I have for the Dick and Jane or Leave it to Beaver models of the good family life.

I am struggling here, I do not know how to philosophically express the injustice of patriarchy and the value of matriarchy. The injustice of autocracy and the value of democracy. And thank you for throwing me into this quandary by leaving me the argument against the ideal.

:lol: And now I must rush out and buy the rest of the Thanksgiving Dinner that I must make for the helpless men in my life. No matter how hard we try, it seems nothing is that easy to explain with absolute certainty. :chin:

Oh I'm sorry Athena! :( I didn't intend it as an insult, honestly. Perhaps I need to reconsider how I explain myself.

I meant bread winner in the purely capitalist capacity which doesn't consider bread winning to involve raising a family (which ofc it ought to). It only uses sums (of money) as the "bread" for which I spoke in this case.
As in generating income for the family unit. As we know it's very difficult to stay at home and raise children while also having a full time job. Time is limited and we cannot do everything at once sadly. We must delegate responsibility for a family. — Benj96

No worry, I know you had no intention of offending and you get gold stars for your explanation of why you said what you did. :heart: Yes, it is today's capitalism that has our values really screwed up. But we should remember Adam Smith. He understood the importance of morality to economics and just assumed educated people would also be moral people and that it would be the educated people who ran the show.

By the time my second child was ready for kindergarten, I thought I was losing my mind and I absolutely had to get involved in the world outside of my home! I totally expected to complete my college education and have a career and help pay for children's educations. I found out too late I did not choose my husband as well as I thought I had. And so goes life. I will just leave this subject by saying someone needs to care for the children and there are sooo many good things a homemaker does, but we should not be limited to domestic responsibilities. Unfortunately, not all men are secure enough to allow their wives the freedom to actualize themselves outside of the home. At least that was so in the past. When men supported the family and women stayed home to care for them.

As you express the wisdom is not this or that, but this and that.

Benj96 — Benj96

Benj your input is essential to a better exchange of thought with @Vera Mont. Socrates was a poor man not one of the elite. People are not paid to think about how to raise human potential and yet we know of Socrates not many of the elites of Athens. Democracy is about education such as education for good moral judgment that Adams Smith assumed educated people would have and everyone becoming better human beings. This is not exactly a capitalist value.

I prefer something a little more up-to-date. It's fine that both the Greeks and Americans taught their upper-class boys patriotism, citizenship and Hellenistic and Christian values respectively. Sometimes, in Athens and New England... All I'm saying is that the pink rear-view mirror does not show the whole landscape in its true colours. As for militarism, there were boys of 12 in the Civil War and 14-year-olds enlisted in WWI. That's one side-effect of patriotic fervour I consider unfortunate. Maybe I have a few issues with your characterization of all public education since 1958, but there is no point going into that here.
Suffice it to say, no slant on education could ever have been evenly applied to all states, and whatever way the curriculum was tweaked, it would not have altered the course of technological development. — Vera Mont

You appear to have a very closed mind on this subject and I am afraid arguing with you will only make matters worse. I hope someday you are enlightened by the philosophy behind democracy and what education has to do with that.

Well I think it's a wonderful thing that mothers can now participate as true bread winners for the family, it must be incredibly empowering, almost on a par with the husband if not in some cases exceedingly so depending on their respective professions. But someone has to take care of the childers.
Its a fine balance indeed. I would personally be happy for a wife to succeed in her career while I raise the children. And I think that dynamic is increasing. A long awaited one. — Benj96

Whoo that was insulting! "true bread winners" :rage: Quick let me put on my philosopher's hat and see if I can deal with this like a reasonable person.

Exactly who do you think put food on the table in 1836? The woman was almost every industry needed to meet the family's needs. She likely made all the clothing, all the soaps for laundry and bathing, she of course washed those clothes, hung them on a line, and ironed them. She likely chopped her own wood for the cooking fire and if she was well informed she regulated the heat of her oven by using different woods. She planted and tended to the garden, harvested the food, and preserved it. Then she put the food on the table and people did not have the health concerns we have with processed foods. But speaking of health concerns, a well-informed woman knew the healing plants in her area and she took care of everyone, often without the help of a doctor. Everyone meaning not only her family and extended family but the sick and elderly people in the community as well. I considered my domestic skills were my contribution to the breadwinning and I enjoyed winning ribbons at the local fair :grin: and sitting on important decision-making committees.

The term "just a housewife" came up with women's liberation and it made me furious! I am not sure how we came to be so disrespected but it was in the air. At the same time, I was thinking other than providing a paycheck our husbands were rather useless because progress had also reduced the need for a man. We were no longer afraid of being attacked by Native Americans, and the only time I held a gun was to protect a friend from her abusive husband, so how did we get through this period of time with men having a hirer status than women?

Throughout history, women held things together when men went to war, and some of them were just as good on the battlefield. Today, I think it is clearly women who are advancing civilization and I think it was the grandmas who got us on the track of civilization.

Money is a part of life, but not the only thing of value.

Are you saying the 1958 National Defense Education Act was not a fundamental change?
— Athena

Yes, I am. It's not the 'after' picture I disagree with, but the 'before'.
Education in the US was modeled after Athens's education for well-rounded individual growth.
— Athena
Where? When? How long? For which children?

Apprenticeships began in America in the 1600's and was an early form of education. Since coming to the New World, the Puritans were needing skilled workers. These apprenticeships were developed to teach young boys a trade that they would continue into adulthood.
Need we mention the vast differences in church-sponsored education, in racially segregated education, in income levels? I think we do need to mention child labour:
Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike.
The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.
This makes the 1958 reform just another step in 20-year process. — Vera Mont

If you are really interested in the history of education you will love reading Paul Monroe, Ph.D.'s book "A Text Book on the History of Education published in 1910 or James Mulhern's book "A History of Education" copyright in 1946 and 1959. I am sure there are more but these are the ones I have and you should be glad to know how mucheducation is the result of philosophy from ancient times and increasingly so with Descartes, Locke,Spinoza, and Hobbes. Those who know only education for technology, for military and industrial purposes, and totally new and different experiences of education, and therefore a new and different experience of being humans.

You love philosophy so you should love knowing the Greeks debated such things as can a person learn ethics? At what age can they learn? There was a time when the Greeks thought only by age 30 were they ready for such education compared to the pope who said something like "Give me a child until age 6 and we will have him for life", which goes better with the philosophers I mentioned and their focus on education for good ethics. Something I come to appreciate even more, since reading Confucius and his contemporaries who were concerned with training one's self to be highly ethical.

It is very hard to answer you in a post short enough for people to read. Would you like to focus on 1635 and the Latin school, versus religiously controlled schools? That is where things get very interesting. Enlightenment versus Christianity.

How about passages from the 1917 National Education Association Conference? That book makes my heart swell with patriotic feelings. It really gave me a passion for education for democracy.

"The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor."

Child labor is shocking and that might be a problem because it could throw us in denial of the wrongs of autocratic industry that killed the children's mothers and fathers. The sin is complete disrespect for the well-being of others. We had child labor laws before that. And that sin is devoid of the thousands of years of philosophy that are available to us. :grin:

I think I have to stop working. It is interfering too much with my time for answering you. I really want to discuss the child labor act that kept children out of mines and industries during school hours and how industry tried to close the schools as we mobilized for WWI, claiming the war caused a labor shortage and they were not getting their monies worth from education because they still to train labors and what technology and war had to do with keeping the schools open.

I say it wasn't a fundamental change but a stage. — Vera Mont

Are you saying the 1958 National Defense Education Act was not a fundamental change? Education in the US was modeled after Athens's education for well-rounded individual growth. That is the complete opposite to education that specializes in everyone. I can not think of anything that could change the US more radically than going from education for well-rounded individual growth to specialization.

Pericles of Athens spoke of the importance of being well-rounded in a democracy where the people hold the power to make their own laws or change them as needed. When people are specialized they must rely on the experts instead of trusting their own authority. A democracy needs people interested in many things so they can participate in a government that does many things.

Right now the US is experiencing culture wars and this is directly related to the change in education and ending the priority purpose of preparing everyone for good citizenship. We went from education for good moral judgment to amoral education, specifically so nothing would slow down our technological progress. We went from preparing everyone for independent thinking to "group think".

This is no longer the democracy we were. A decision that could be made in 15 minutes now takes months because of all the paper involved, and it is totally insane to think this is more efficient. Bureaucrats and teachers are so burdened with paperwork and so controlled by the policy, they have little time for anything else, like actually getting the work done. I would bet 5 years after covid is no longer an issue, we still have empty shelves in stores, and other obvious signs of a system breaking down because we have taken authority away from individuals who are now controlled by policy and paperwork. This is not the democracy we defended but what we defended our democracy against.

Does the technology not get used against civilians though? A drone dropping a bomb on a city may not be a human pilot, but the people the bomb is dropped on are still civilians all the same.

If the drone drops explosives on a purely technological and automated post then that is better in that people were not involved. But sadly tech operations and people (engineers/programmers/installers) are not inseparable. The tech doesn't arise out of thin air, so human victims are always a potential. — Benj96

And that is what is driving the spending on military technology. I should have saved the link I posted for this reply. It starts with air warfare and the nuclear bomb. Before those two things the US felt protected by the two oceans so it did not spend on developing a high-tech military force and it had a domestic education not education for technology.

Our lives did not change as rapidly as they are changing now and this changes everything. Constant rapid change disturbs the stability we need to feel in control of our lives. The whole ball game has been changed and Russia and China are threatening.

China has a much larger population than the US and this will mean many more highly intelligent college graduates. Not only will China have an advantage because of having a larger well-educated population but their eugenics program may assure China has more people born with a superior intelligence potential. With an interest in how technology is changing things, you might want to read this article about China's eugenics program. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838

Likewise. — Vera Mont

I am aware that the US has used military force for economic reasons and I have very strong feelings about Roman/Christian behavior that is unacceptable and based on an unjust belief in their superiority and entitlement. However, neither are the same as today's political/military actions. The goals were much smaller than they are today and they involve all of us more than in the past when the military conflicts were very small, compared to world wars and now world domination.

I am thinking the world wars, fundamentally changed the US attitude about war and this change is expressed in the 1958 National Defense Education Act. This is a good subject for a thread about technology changing our lives. I liken what the world wars did to the US with Athens after the Persian wars. Athens started forcing other city-states to continue paying tribute and the other city-states supported Sparta in crushing Athens. Leading Socrates and his followers to find fault with democracy.

United States focuses on military research and development
US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020. The US military burden decreased slightly from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 per cent in 2021.

US funding for military research and development (R&D) rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period. In 2021 spending on both decreased. However, the drop in R&D spending (–1.2 per cent) was smaller than that in arms procurement spending (–5.4 per cent).

‘The increase in R&D spending over the decade 2012–21 suggests that the United States is focusing more on next-generation technologies,’ said Alexandra Marksteiner, Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘The US Government has repeatedly stressed the need to preserve the US military’s technological edge over strategic competitors.’ — STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The more fundamental truth of things doesnt change with time otherwise it wouldn't be the truth of the matter would it? And wisdom I guess is being able to define those same base values in a system or society that is forever changing. — Benj96

Back to your statement. What is the truth we are talking about? We are in dangerous territory now because what is true in one culture may not be true in another culture. What may be true at one point in history may not be true at another point in history.

In the past wisdom of elders was appreciated but with our technology today, who asks anything of a grandparent instead of going online to get the information? You know a teacher will value online research more than what a grandparent says. Oh, oh and painfully oh, often people do not agree about history. Were we White folk justified in enforcing segregation? In Isreal, you can be sure the Jews do not tell their children history the same way the Palestinians remember that history. These are very touchy things and we come to these truths with our different perspectives.

The challenge is to state a truth that is everyone's truth. You know what I mean? I think that is a huge challenge.

I have checked what I said about culture and grandparents. I was surprised to find so much information and enjoyed reading different reports. I need to check with my library about getting more information from the published papers.

America was never about family and God! It's always been about wealth, power and conflict. — Vera Mont

I think you are speaking of a very small percentage of the US population. I believe 100% that the great majority of US citizens were about family and most of them worked for very low wages, like my grandmother who was a teacher, and my mother who was a keypunch operator. Of course, being a teacher was much more meaningful to my grandmother's generation of teachers who thought they were defending our democracy in the classroom. Being a keypunch operator was just a way of paying rent and putting food on the table. I did not know my father until I was 18 and he 100% stood for the idea that women stay home and care for the family and the man supports the family. He did not get rich but as an engineer, but he certainly earned more than the women.

Not until women's liberation did women have equal rights to education and job opportunities. All economic and social factors assured we stayed home and cared for our families. Some women became teachers or nurses and they were not paid well. The increase in wages for women is amazing when compared to the past. But no one earned that much until after WWII. Fortunately, housing didn't cost that much and one wage was enough to support most families.

Your bias on what is important military information discourages me in discussing the military situation with you. I think it is a mistake to believe things are as they always were for the US.

The people that know us best - our strengths and weaknesses, are family, right? — Benj96

No, unfortunately, other things are happening. It seems the instinctual drive is social acceptance and status with one's peers. Also, it is common for young mothers to want distance from their mothers and heaven's forbid grandmas should give advice about raising children! Our wisdom gained by years of working with children, reevaluating ourselves, and seeing our youthful mistakes, are not appreciated! The research on mother-daughter relationships is new and I like what this one says. https://ct.counseling.org/2020/01/uncovering-the-root-cause-of-mother-daughter-conflict/
"I have concluded that society sets mothers and daughters up for conflict." I think that is especially so with the social changes we have been through.

This thread is about technology and employment but it very much could technology and family relationships and changed social order. I very much blame education for a technological society for the breakdown of the family and parent/child conflicts.

On the other hand, statistically, children who have involved grandparents have an advantage over those who don't. But during the teen years, grandparents tend to be unappreciated. Some of my friends have told me when the young adult gets older the relationship can become a good one again.

A grandchild can be as knowledgeable a book worm as they like in life but if they don't feel cared for, listened to, in this individualistic, materialist society they are growing up in then I'd imagine theyd feel pretty lonely and isolated. — Benj96

Oh yes, I am quite sure that is true. But it is not just the children and grandparents having this problem. Education for technology and what technology has done to our lives is hurting all relationships, and once in a while it has improved relationships! I love to see a father in the park with his children. I am hoping men will become better husbands and fathers. For bloody sure autocratic industrialization that took the father out of the home and held him in a hierarchy of power and exploited the laborer, harmed families as much as slavery did. Technology has taken the mother out of the home too. If the father is an active father, the technological family may do even better than in the past, If the father is not in the home, or is not helping in the home and with the children, things are worse. Our women have the freedom of barbarians and I do not mean that as a compliment.

The more fundamental truth of things doesnt change with time otherwise it wouldn't be the truth of the matter would it? And wisdom I guess is being able to define those same base values in a system or society that is forever changing. — Benj96

Now that is a true philosophical statement. I love it! :heart: I have to go to work. I will ponder what you said and look forward to getting back to you.

Not until after the capitalists broke all their toys and a millions of lives. I don't think they could have nationalized industry - or very much else - given the popular mind-set. Obviously, what call fascism is not quite congruent with my definition. — Vera Mont

How did the capitalists break the system? I think our economy goes up and down in relation to the supply of oil and its demand, the same as Rome's economy went up or down in relation to its supply of gold. Both of these economic swings are tied to military expenses. Advancing technology increases military expenses and that starts to hurt the taxpayers. That is a big problem with standing armies. If your economy depends on having military might, because the source of gold or oil you need is under the control of another nation, you have to have a good economy.

Prussians came to see the economy as a very important part of modern warfare, and for that definition of fascism...

Fascism
In terms of economics, fascism incorporates elements of both capitalism and socialism. Fascist economists advocate for self-sufficiency and individual profit, but promote government subsidies of corporations. Fascist economics thus supports a blend of both private and public ownership over the means of production—there is an emphasis on private profit, but at the same time, the national interest is ultimately more important.
https://home.heinonline.org/blog/2020/07/capitalism-socialism-or-fascism-a-guide-to-economic-systems-and-ideologies/

When was this? In which decades of its existence was the US not engaged in any armed conflict? — Vera Mont

I expected that reaction. Unfortunately, I can not copy and paste the charts of US military spending and I hope people follow the link and take a good look at the US commitment to war and military force. Our past commitment to military spending was nothing compared to what it is now. This is a huge change, huge! Please look at the charts. The US was known for its resistance to war, not the power of its military force.

Big War Spikes
There have been four major spikes in US defense spending since the 1790s.

Big Spikes in Defense Spending

Chart 2.33: Big Spikes in Defense Spending

Viewed across the two centuries of US power, defense spending shows four spikes. It spiked at nearly 12 percent of GDP in the Civil War of the 1860s (not including spending by the rebels). It spiked at 22 percent in World War I. It spiked at 41 percent in World War II, and again at nearly 15 percent of GDP during the Korean War.

Defense spending exceeded 10 percent of GDP for one year in the 19th century and 19 years in the 20th century. The last year in which defense spending hit 10 percent of GDP was 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War.

The peak of defense spending during the Iraq conflict was 5.66 percent GDP in 2010. — Christopher Chantrill

The founding fathers of the US feared standing armies and intentionally made it difficult for the US to go to war and they gave citizens control of the purse strings.
This is part of the US constitution....
Article I, Section 8, Clause 12:

[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; . . .
[/quote]

And I offer this evidence that the US was not interested in being the military power it is today...

https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/news/war-powers-resolution-1973#

War Powers Resolution of 1973

“...to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution...and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities."

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 (also known as the War Powers Act) "is a congressional resolution designed to limit the U.S. president’s ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad.” As part of our system of governmental “checks and balances,” the law aims to check the executive branch’s power when committing U.S. military forces to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. It stipulates the president must notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and prohibits armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days.

h that's a shame. Perhaps you are the new enlightened family member that shows them how the world works and how to empower themselves to lead a more fruitful life?

Education can be be recieved from others or from the self (through rigorous/thorough and balanced observation - all things considered).

We ought to listen to wise teachers. And when our wisdom parallels or overcomes theirs, we ought to offer it in turn to those less educated. It's our duty to give those tools to the ones without them, level the playing field as it were. Restore the balance to avoid exploitation. — Benj96

Heavens no! I wish but the last thing the young want is advice from an old person. Books advise grandmas to hold their tongues and experience has taught me the wisdom of what they say.

There was a time when a great-grandson was my best buddy. Then he became a teenager and I told him I was losing him and he sweetly said, "I will always love you." That was a long ago and we haven't spoken much since then. I used to have so much fun with the great-grandchildren. We went on adventures and did science in my kitchen. I still can't let go of the things I had for them. I am hoping to pass the really good stuff on to another great-grandson when he is old enough.

I am not sure we can turn the clocks back to when grandparents were more important than technology has made them. Our whole culture has changed. We are much more materialistic than we once were and our children are exposed to so much and are pushed so hard in school that they don't have the time to just be children.

In responding to Vera Mont I felt aware of how drastically military technology has changed us. I don't like to think about that but denying our changed reality is not a good thing. Even when we entered WWII we thought our best military advantage was our patriotism and our individual judgment. That is what we educated for but the technology of WWII changed all that. In the past, it took us a year to mobilize for war. Today we can enter a war and do more damage in four hours than several troops could have done in several months. Our patriotism is no longer needed. We can wage wars without disturbing our morning routine. That is not how it was in the past and with enemies like China, I don't think we can ever again demobilize as we once did after every war. We are as focused on war as the Prussians who lived for the love of war as much as the US lived for the love of God and family.

I know it's off topic, but as an SF aficionado, I have to defend the Star Trek personnel. Starfleet is a military organization, with a chain of command and uniforms and all that, (and Kirk was a bit of a maverick) They're not supposed to be independent individuals. There is plenty of individualism and scholarship in the civilian population of their time, as well as entrepreneurship - just no money used in the Federation. — Vera Mont

Okay, I love the original Star Trek, and if you can watch and compare the original Star Trek with the Next Generation. The original Star Trek comes from education before 1958, for independent thinking and good moral judgment. The Next Generation comes with the change in education and "group think". While some may think the group thinkers are good for democracy, they might want to think about China and about our reactionary politics and the very biased media we have today.

Star Trek frequently had the theme of a computer-run society. We have a computer-run society now but don't see it that is humans controlled by policy. The National Defense Education Act shifted the purpose of education and who makes the education decisions. Even if we threw all our weapons into the sea, we are organized by policies set by others, and not family order and independent thinkers.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. Aldous Huxley
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

Our effort to establish a base on the moon is being presented as an idealist challenge for the glory of mankind, not as a desperate star wars race for the control of the moon and whose missiles will be there. We have gone beyond fear of a nuclear bomb to star wars and I don't mean the movie but the reality of controlling missile bases and satellites. Our high-tech military is very vulnerable because it does not work without our satellites that can be taken out with the same technology of hitting an asteroid off course.

NASA says China wants to control the Moon in shocking claimhttps://tech.hindustantimes.com › tech › news › nasa-sa...
Jul 20, 2022 — NASA is concerned that China might control the entire Moon. China has sped up its target of building a research base on the Moon within eight ...

How does a government step in and recycle assets?
— Athena
Regulation, tax reform, public works, welfare legislation. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/franklin-delano-roosevelt-and-the-new-deal/ Similar measures were taken by the Bennett government in Canada. In some other countries, of course, the political upheaval knocked down existing regimes.

I think if we are serious about defending our democracy, we also need to get serious about replacing the autocratic model of the industry with the democratic model.
— Athena

The trouble is, not enough of you (and not enough of us, either) are serious enough about it to stop the large minority that are eager to destroy it outright. The destroyers have a huge advantage: they're never hampered by truth, principles or scruples. — Vera Mont

Okay, I am not sure but I suspect people who have the same information tend to agree and that disagreements are the result of not having the same information.

I am going to start with quotes
This is to get a laugh and lift our spirits....

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex. Aldous Huxley
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes+

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/aldous-huxley-quotes

In the past, personal and political liberty depended to a considerable extent upon governmental inefficiency. The spirit of tranny was always more than willing; but its organization and material equipment were generally weak. Progressive science and technology have changed all this completely. Aldous Huxley That is certainly true about Eisenhower's warning of the Military Industrial Complex.

Now back to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Hoover and Roosevelt worked together to give us a fascist form of government. That is leaving property in the hands of private owners, but regulating industry. WWII intensified the new relationship between government and industry because government contracts were greatly increased, bringing us to the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned us about. Eisenhower could have put the Military Industrial Complex in place without the bureaucratic organization that Roosevelt and Hoover gave us and because we do not talk about the bureaucratic and then education change and the Military Industrial Complex, none of that exists in the minds of citizens.

However, in a college text about Public Policy and Administration, it is mentioned that the US adopted the German model of bureaucracy and this shifts power and authority from individuals to the beast, the governmental bureaucracy over the people. This bureaucratic organization begins with the Prussians and is what made Germany strong enough to engage the allies in war.

Now during Eisenhower's administration, he asked congress to support the National Defense Education Act and replaced our Domestic Education (education for good moral judgment without religion, and the culture that made liberty possible) with education for a technological society with unknown values and that brings us to where we are today.

People know fascism for the horrors committed by Nazis, and I have a book for teachers explaining how they should treat every child exactly the same, and they should be impersonal. At all levels of bureaucracy, policy demands being impersonal and a person can be fired for violating policy. What rules, is policy not individual moral judgment. We were sold this reasoning on the idea that it is more efficient. We mostly are totally unaware of the bureaucratic and educational changes and what that has to do with what is happening today.

If you can't have "decided principles" through religion, then the principles need to have a rational, logical, and empathic core that automatically makes people gravitate toward that logical good as doing otherwise would lead to misery. A truly liberal society free from religion requires the people to understand morality as a system that is logical and not decided upon them. — Christoffer

In the past gods and goddesses were connected with nature and that means they had to be kept happy or bad things would happen. Today this is environmental science. We understand the forces differently, but both, are understanding doing the right thing has good consequences and doing the wrong thing has bad consequences.

As scientific as we think we are, we are doing a very poor job of living with finite reality and each other. Christianity is part of the problem because Christians ignored the wisdom of aboriginal people. Christians rejected the notion that Gia, our planet, is a living organism that we must take care of and we destroyed the environment for many years and created an economy dependent on oil, knowing in the 1920s that this was a bad idea. We have ourselves completely disconnected from the rhythms of our planet and the heavens.

I believe spirituality is a vital part of having mentally and physically healthy lives. I am a part of something much bigger than myself and what I do or do not does matters. Science gives us better information about what should and should not be done than the mythology a religion built on a belief in miracles!

The Greeks asked, how do the gods resolve their differences. They answered, the gods argue until there is a consensus on the best reasoning. That is science, and democracy is an imitation of the gods.
It is also the meaning of logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe. Science looks for the reason, not the reasoner, and our judgment must depend on good reasoning, because the reasoner is not going to clean up the messes we make, nor give us a new planet to screw up. This is unless we believe the destruction of Florida (by water) and California (by fire) are the work of God and not a man-made problem. How different are we from the ancients who tried to appease a god when a natural disaster hit?

It's the large organized religions, washing hands with the secular elites, that promoted uncontrolled fecundity, to ensure unlimited cheap labour and expendable armies for their wars. — Vera Mont

Oh, oh, I think we are getting further and further off the topic of labor and technology, however, when Billy Graham, the Evangelical leader, met with Eisenhower, we could liken that moment in time with Constantine announcing he saw a cross in the sky and said the Christian god would make it possible for Rome to win wars, and he made Christianity a legal religion in Rome. We got "in god we trust" on our money and "One nation under God" was put in our pledge of allegiance and we all knew we had to save the world from those godless people in the USSR. Now we believe a book about kings and slaves taught us about democracy, evidently forgetting the Bible is what made the power of those born into royalty legitimate.

God is good for wars and wars are good for God. Except for the Greeks. Those oddballs didn't think highly of a god of war and they were too retarded to have an empire. Although they did colonize much of the known world. :chin: And when we want wisdom and culture we do turn to them.

I did mention the world's debt-load - with three links to graphs illustrating it. That's what will the break capitalist system: it runs on the expectation of future growth. When expectation outruns the capability for growth, you get a recession or depression. Then the government has to step and recycle the assets. But now, the assets are not available to government: they've been block-chained and bit-coined and legerdemained out of reach.... if they ever existed in the physical world where people need food and shelter.
Wars used to grow economies, both in the arming phase and the rebuilding phase, because people worked their asses off to produce munitions and supplies for the soldiers and the soldiers got paid and spent money and the war profiteers raked in the money and hired more people and invested in peactime construction.
When you wage war on margin, you're gambling with your national economy. And when wars are waged not for territory and resources but hegemony, there is material return for the winning nation.

n the future what will organize the people and how will that organization be maintained?
— Athena
Local war-lords. By force of arms. Except, they won't be able to get into the rich people's bunkers, which will be occupied by the late rich people's ex-servants, ruled by the self-promoted mercenaries. — Vera Mont

You speak of modern economic realities that I know very little about. I am sure that information is very important here. I googled an explanation of chain blocks and bookmarked it. I will need time to assimilate this new information. It is very foreign to me so I can not simply go from what I know to this new information.

How does a government step in and recycle assets?

"When you wage war on margin, you're gambling with your national economy. And when wars are waged not for territory and resources but hegemony, there is material return for the winning nation." should the word "no" go in that sentence, "there is no material return".

Nations have fallen because of excessive military spending. I like Nintendo's original Gengis Khan game because you have to keep your economy balanced or you lose. We are highly aware of Rome's military expenses leading to increased taxes that hurt the economy.

The neocons wanted military control of the mid-east, which would mean more affordable oil for the US and high profits for oil companies. This requires a partnership with the government that pays for the wars and supplies the military personnel while companies like Haliburton get extremely rich supplying the military needs. That is the Military Industrial Complex. Our economy benefits only if the cost of gasoline stays low. If we don't get that cheap oil, we have a Roman situation of destroying our economy by taxing the people too much to pay for the acquisition of resources. Higher taxes and higher prices for oil and everything dependent on oil, are crushing us. We have not lived with finite reality very well.

The future you speak of is possible but this last election in the US gives me more hope for democracy than I did have. I seriously need to give time to look into education in my community. If democracy is not learned our democracy is not protected and I am not sure we are doing a good job of preparing our young for democracy. I think if we are serious about defending our democracy, we also need to get serious about replacing the autocratic model of the industry with the democratic model.

I have been watching old western TV shows and they are terrible! Again and again, the shows are about people with guns and rifles having power and those who are inept with the gun or rifle are the losers. Star Trek's Captain Kirk is the John Wayne of outer space, and the new Star Trek Generation is "group think" and less individualistic. We need a balance of individualism and "group think". Do we want a future that is ruled by a force of arms and self-promoted mercenaries?

The problem with deciphering capitalism is that it doesn't have a constant value. In a poor nation, capitalism can very rapidly improve the quality of life for the people and increase wealth. But as soon as capitalism enters a stage where the majority of the people already have accumulated wealth it starts to tap into just being about cash flow, earnings, and gains. It stops being a system of change and instead becomes a "Baudrillardian eldritch horror" in which people become a slave to it, regardless of whether they want to or not. It starts to corrupt the people and divide them into rich and poor and over time increases that gap until the rich becomes so powerful that they essentially take over power from the government.

This is the state where people start to work themselves to death. Because they're not part of a society that is gaining wealth as a collective but rather has become a new type of slave society. In this new type, people live in an illusion of existential value that they cannot distinguish from any other reality. People lose track of basic existential questions like love and death and replace them with a monetary valuation of status. People start to think they are in love with someone when they're basically just together with them because of the status it produces, they get children because that's a family status, and they have a certain job which is a further acquired status. In the age of the internet, this has also been intensified as people project these statuses out to people surrounding them, further blinding them into this system.

This is the Baudrillardian horror, modern western capitalism has evolved into an unseen monster that people think is "quality life". It's so ingrained into our psychology that we're never even questioning how this life works. Everything we do is part of this capitalist mentality, everything is about some kind of status or monetary gain and loss, and the most obvious sign of this is how much more popular "quick fix" existential treatments have become. The desperate search for "meaning in all the chaos", without people understanding what that chaos really is.

And so, some, like Marx, developed political philosophies that examined the inner workings of capitalism and alternatives to it. But Marx is also outdated since it focuses entirely on the industrial age of development, which had entirely different inner mechanics, especially lacking the Baudrillard perspective.

With so many people in the world today, with such a technological explosion that the last 150 years have produced, it is impossible to maintain a society based on Marx's ideas and it's also impossible to maintain a society of modern capitalism. Because essentially any political philosophy regards the citizen as a cog in a machine, without essential value other than its function.

If these cogs are changed into automation, into robots and we dislocate humans from the traditional machine, then that becomes an existence that has never been available on a large scale before. We are so ingrained in the idea of "work" that people don't know how to manage their time outside of it. It has, throughout history, either been about survival or monetary gain at its core and occasionally, for a few, been a place of meaning. But on a large scale, how can everyone find meaning?

That is the core problem that philosophy and people need to solve when advanced automation starts to reshape society. — Christoffer

I need to take your post in smaller pieces. :lol: A weak brain you know. Let me begin with I love your post because it is mentally stimulating. I argue because that moves the discussion forward.

"If these cogs are changed into automation, into robots and we dislocate humans from the traditional machine, then that becomes an existence that has never been available on a large scale before."

You reminded me of a story about a White man going to the top of a mountain with a native American and looking down on a large city, with great pride the White man says, "before all this what did your people do?" The native American said, "we sang a lot". Our athletic games come from ancient times when people had time on their hands and a person could gain status by accomplishing physical feats. Civilizations had many gods and many festivals and we would do well to take the money out of our community events and get back to participating because that is what a community does. I used to love going to the fair with my children and we all entered something and won ribbons. Now the fair is a money-making event with no appeal to me at all! I don't want to see the newest and best pans or whatever. I want to see how my family compares with all the others.

I was a homemaker. That means taking care of all the family needs using my domestic skills, and also participating in the community as a volunteer and sitting on decision-making committees. In a democracy, we should all experience committee work because that is where we learn on democracy works. In the past, I would have ground corn with other mothers and grandmothers and we would talk about how things are and how they should be, and what needs to be done. It is time for the strawberry festival, isn't it? What do you plan on bringing? I ramble and I may not have made a point, but I think there are still women who remember when life circled around our families and perhaps making music together. And planning for our community. :broken: Thank you for giving me a place to share what I value and to talk about democracy and achieve arete.

"But on a large scale, how can everyone find meaning?" Everyone can turn to their family and if that is not a pleasant experience, turn to the community and act on your talents and interest. We the people, give us all meaning and purpose when we understand democracy and good citizenship. :heart:

Your "Baudrillardian eldritch horror" has also been called "the beast." Even in ancient times, Rome was the beast consuming everything its citizens could give in exchange for bread and circus. I especially see this when the wealth of the nation depended on importing metals and gold, which required armies to secure that source of metal and gold, leading to military people coming to power and taxing the people into poverty as well as taking their sons to keep the beast healthy. I have a problem with Jesus saying to turn our backs on family and put God first. I think there are good reasons to put family and community first.

We already have lots of wars. Climate migrations will start some more. So will the totalitarian backlash that's engulfing more and more democracies. Once the economy breaks down, who pays the warring armies? Who buys the munitions? Who makes the machines? When money stops making money, there will be no more investment; no more capitalists. Once they're gone, whoever takes over the broken pieces of civilization will have to decide what leftover automation they want to keep and to what purpose. I don't know who that will be. Whatever we think of it now won't matter then. — Vera Mont

No worry, no one is paying for wars in the US because we do them on credit. :joke: That sounds really stupid but we are not paying for wars as we once did. The world wars were funded by selling war bonds, and while much was done to make people patriotic and willing to support the wars, we drafted the men our nation needed to sacrifice in the struggle to win wars. Until technology replaced the troops needed to win a war. With technology, we don't have to draft people into a war and that makes it much easier to hook us into wars that we can carry on without disturbing our daily lives.

In the future what will organize the people and how will that organization be maintained?

Democracy is like religion in that it is a way of life that must be learned. A democracy may choose a Mussolini or Hitler and tyranny may rule. What does that look like? How is power gained and maintained? Should we prepare for the collapse of our civilization and if so how?

It does. And that is how capitalism operates. I pointed it out as a demonstration of that fact. Not because I believe its the ethical thing to do.

My beliefs are that those at the top, ought to have the greatest sense of responsibility and duty to those at the bottom. Not an easy task for sure.

They must exert their knowledge and wisdom and position of power in an effort to serve the most vulnerable/uneducated and protect them from exploitation. They may not even enjoy the responsibility but see it as a duty they must rise to.

If at any point such a leader is not truly serving the foundation of their society, then they ought to resign and let those who are take over the wheel of the ship of humanity.

If one wants to speak for everyone, they had better be sure they have the skills to do so. — Benj96

What a delicious subject! :nerd: The historical Roosevelt family would certainly agree with you. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

Andrew Carnegie was as morally compromised as Doctor Jeckly and Mr. Hyde. He talked a good talk about the dignity of man and was known as a philanthropist, but when it came to the reality of economic competition he took the wrong side of the coal miners' fight for fair wages. He was cutthroat when it came to getting rich. At the time the science of Darwinism made our industrial reality very ugly, with the elite believing they were superior and entitled, and that created a terrible reality of using and abusing laborers. But Andrew Carnegie met your criteria of benefitting society.

In addition to funding libraries, he paid for thousands of church organs in the United States and around the world. Carnegie's wealth helped to establish numerous colleges, schools, nonprofit organizations and associations in his adopted country and many others.
Founded: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Ass...
Spouse: Louise Whitfield Carnegie
Works written: The Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's Story — Carnegie Corporation

And when coal is cheap, many families could enjoy warm homes. Throughout our industrial history wealth was built by exploiting laborers and it made the good life affordable to many. We would not be where we are today without human sacrifice. If the masses want better lives let them take advantage of education. If we give them free education and they do not take advantage of it. then of course they will have little value and why should worry about them? They made the choices that left them valueless. My family is among these people who did not make the effort to be educated.

I know that. Also the other way around. There are very powerful forces pitted against public and democratic education in the US right now, and they've been making considerable gains.
Republicans, and white conservatives, have long been hostile to public schools. School desegregation drove white evangelicals to become the strongest Republican demographic. Ronald Reagan promised to end the Department of Education in 1980. Trump put Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education,
At the same time, the same states that curtailed women's reproductive rights and ban books.
There has been an “alarming” surge in book censorship in the United States since last year totaling 1,586 book bans or restrictions in place, according to the director of PEN America, a nonprofit focusing on free speech and literature.
The "we" to which you belong is being pushed to the margins. — Vera Mont

You make a good argument and you speak of the biggest reason I am opposed to Christianity. I have a book about the organized Christian opposition to the Nation Education Association and I have dealt with Christians who hate John Dewey.

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. Wikipedia
Born: October 20, 1859, Burlington, VT
Died: June 1, 1952, New York, NY — Wikipedia

I may not agree 100% with John Dewey but I highly respect him. The following is why so many Christians hate him. That link is restricted but the explanation given here is good. And if you are familiar with my post, you know where I agree with him.

John Dewey developed a pragmatic theory of inquiry to provide intelligent methods for social progress. He believed that the logic and attitude of successful scientific inquiries, properly conceived, could be fruitfully applied to morals and politics.

Pragmatism and moral progress: John Dewey's theory of ... — Kory Sorrel

About the increased banning of school library books, I wish school librarians and teachers had better judgment. I strongly disapprove of socially inappropriate books such as "Captian Underpants" being in school libraries and the classics not being in the school libraries. When I teacher has to explain to young children that what makes a book funny is inappropriate behavior and they should not behave like that, then prehaps it should not be in the school library. We work hard at home to teach our children how to behave and I can not imagine a thinking parent wanting the school to make socially inappropriate behavior okay.

That brings us to social engineering and what you said about a philosophical debate about what is good citizenship. This is a very difficult subject and my favorite approach to it is what science has to do with good moral judgment. Today one of the most hotly debated issues is our sexual differences, and :lol: the importance of wearing a mask. How many people wouldn't mind if they needed open heart surgery and no one in the room was wearing a mask? If someone thinks that is okay, that person needs a science lesson and it is shocking how many people are scientifically ignorant. Our sexual differences is another scientific subject, but unfortunately, the Bible is the only book many people read and trust and when such strong emotions are tied to religious beliefs it can be impossible to have a rational discussion about some things such as our sexual differences.

I am sure today many more books that could be highly offensive are being published and sold to schools. When I objected to a school's choice of books, I was told children will read "Captain Underpants" but they will not read the classics. That is amoral thinking and its focus is on the technology of reading, ignoring how the book could lead a child to believe unacceptable social behavior is condoned and funny and Mom and Dad are just out of touch with the modern world. Now, this is a very sensitive subject! Who is the proper authority over children, the school or the parent?

Wonderful idea! How? Who are "we" and where do "we" get the power to take decision-making out of the hands of corporate boards? Before anything positive can happen in education, industry, utilities or infrastructure, you need to clean up the democratic process. At this point, that's a helluva tall order!
It's still doable, but only with a huge surge of support from the polity. At 51/49% split in electoral clout, I don't see whence that impetus can come. — Vera Mont

Here is a google page with many choices for learning about the Demming institution. Beside links it is on Twitter and Facebook https://www.google.com/search?q=Demming+instution&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS926US926&oq=Demming+instution&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i512l3j0i13i30l5j0i8i13i30.8570j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Wonderful idea! How? Who are "we" and where do "we" get the power to take decision-making out of the hands of corporate boards? Before anything positive can happen in education, industry, utilities or infrastructure, you need to clean up the democratic process. At this point, that's a helluva tall order!
It's still doable, but only with a huge surge of support from the polity. At 51/49% split in electoral clout, I don't see whence that impetus can come. — Vera Mont

I believe education is essential to democracy. Democracy is like religion. It can not be the way of life if that way of life is not taught. Same as there would be no Christianity if it were not taught.

However, humans need to do something with their time and not all can manage a sense of purpose without work. Some will work with what they like, some will probably revive extreme religion in search of purpose and some might go insane. For this there need to be a new philosophical movement that focuses on existential questions from the perspective of a life without work. — Christoffer

I very much like your awareness of culture and how mass migrations can be very disruptive to established cultures.

The original purpose of free public education in the US was to teach good citizenship and thereby prevent social problems. There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. To have liberty there must be a culture that makes that possible we replaced that past education with education for a technological society with unknown values. Some good things came out of this and it appears some bad things are also coming out of leaving moral education to the church and not transmitting the culture we once had.

For how to manage life without work, families and cultures have given civilizations social order for thousands of years. For sure we need to discuss what that might look like today.

No, because a better question would be: "is it ethical to keep people working themselves to death in a system that doesn't care for them?

Define if capitalism is healthy or an illusion of healthy. The way the world works today consolidates wealth to a very few on the backs of workers working themselves to death.

Automation would cut out the "working to death" part and present a conundrum for the wealthy in that there won't be people having money to purchase the goods they produce with automation. So in order to keep the economy running, some kind of universal basic income is required so that the loop is kept intact. The less people work, the larger that UBI needs to be, leading to more freedom for the people to do what they want instead of "working to death".

Essentially, automation is a capitalist's dream of cheap labor and high income, but it would kill the market if no one has the money to buy products or services these capitalists provide. So essentially, it's the end of capitalism by maximizing capitalism.

The more advanced automation gets, the less we will be able to keep capitalism as it exists today and in the end, we would require a new system to replace the old.

If we do not figure out a working system, this will lead to future wars and conflicts. — Christoffer

This thread has moved fast and I lost track of what people are talking about. Sorry, everyone.

This post is back to the beginning and I love the lines "a better question would be: is it ethical to keep people working themselves to death in a system that doesn't care for them?" along with this line
"The way the world works today consolidates wealth to a very few on the backs of workers working themselves to death." However, this is such a big subject it is like being lost at sea with no sense of direction.

Especially in the beginning of industrialism humans were treated very badly but it lead to wealth and that wealth is essential to progress, education, hospitals, and public utilities. When something like printing makes art and books cheap, low-income people can afford them and that makes their lives better. I worry about how many liberals understand the importance of good jobs and big industry that provides those jobs and those affordable products and wealth? Exactly how do we establish an economic and social system that works for everyone?

There was a time when we had a family order that meant the woman stayed home to care for the family and the community as well. I think her role was vital to a humane society. The family was financially supported by a man. This was not ideal because the division of labor became too great. When women went to work, increasingly women and children fell below the poverty, because the women worked for lower wages than men and they had to pay for child care unless someone in the family cared for her children, and the divorce and abortion rate began to climb. At the same time, two people working in the family meant more families buying homes and more families buying homes made one paycheck too small and the cost of housing too high.

Who is caring for the people? What else happened to our social order besides an increase in jobs and wealth? How about community planning and banking? Can community planning and banking be adjusted to better serve the people?

And my favorite- what if we replaced the autocratic model of the industry with the democratic model?

I love drumming! How about the Japanese drummers? Do you like them too?

The bagpipe is wonderful and my goodness the bagpipe player in the video had a lot of lung power. In general, the aggressive male behavior is sexually arousing and the female belly dancer was a great of expression of what is happening. The one known exception to the taboo of fathers having sex with their daughters is a tribe that hunts and kills hippos. That is a dangerous thing to do and upping the testosterone increases the chances of success.

Along this line, the Roman soldiers in their metal and leather suits are also hot. Hum, I wonder how much our sexuality plays into war?

We have lots of ways - have had for thousands of years: wind, rivers, tides, sun, ground-heat. Not wasting so much of it would be a good start. Maybe making fewer people - but then, weather, its resultant competitions, and the crash , along with the usual war, famine, pestilence, etc. will take out much of the surplus population. And more efficient living arrangements? Cities are already moving underground; that'll help some people survive.
So, yes, there is likely to be a viable remnant of humans - always assuming, which is a big assumption - there is no all-out nuclear war - and they will likely start some kind of human activity. (Probably killing one another over the last clean pond, which they will contaminate in the conflict.) — Vera Mont

I think if we educated for a better reality our young would be on a path to a better reality, as our literate forefathers were on the path to democracy, instead of being consumed with notions of doom and gloom that robs of the ability to move forward on a positive path. A positive for Christianity is assuring people, God will make everything good again. Well, that is not all good because God did not build Noah's ark and I think life is what we make it, not what a god makes it, but staying positive is very important to working for what could be instead of slipping into despair like the horse in the movie, "The Never Ending Story".

The Behaviorist Method is good for training dogs.
— Athena

No, it isn't!

Excuse me, but can you give me a hint of how you came to know of the Behaviorist Method of education and training dogs? Your flat-out denial of professional dog trainers using the Behaviorist Method to train dogs is a shock to me. It is as shocking to me as denying the sunrise begins in the east. We might add commercials and political campaigns are also based on the behaviorist understanding of our behavior. Ring the bell and we rush to buy the item that we might be able to buy in the future. Shocks us with the bad behavior of a candidate and we will vote for the opponent. No political discussion or debate is required.

How can the post-crash civilization, which is almost 100% guaranteed, have hope without preparing the young for that?
— Athena

The best way to prepare them is to teach them elementary survival skills: how to find your way home, how to build a fire, where to dig for water, how to build a raft and a lean-to out of wreckage, how to season termite stew, how to avoid pissing off the big guy sitting next to you.
There are some good books, like https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15798335-scatter-adapt-and-remember

:lol: Ever since patriarchy replaced matriarchy women have lived in fear of pissing off the man, but women's liberation has changed that. Now we have a better understanding of what we can achieve when we are united and our children are doing better than they ever have in the history of civilization.

I have survivalist books and I understand very well the threat of tyrants and bullies. That is what we must educate against because things will not be good for humanity if those jerks are the only ones with power.

Summary
Effective communication requires both feeling and facts and using a language that is fundamentally logical yet can express ideas that are far from logical. — RussellA

Reading your explanation while listening to classical music is an awesome mental and feeling experience. All the posts here have been extraordinary, one building on top of another bringing me to a thinking and emotional crescendo and this is something we should experience every day. It is what I seek when I turn on my computer. It is what gives me faith in human beings along with Elvis singing if we can think it we can make it so.

I gather we are from different countries and that certainly improves the discussion because it gives us different points of view. I suppose some of you may not be familiar with the past news reporter, Walter Cronkite. He seemed to take great care to report the news with the balance we need to understand the facts and think for ourselves. That fairness of reporting is something our young have not experienced and that distorts their understanding of democracy and our human potential. Our present amoral society being the result of education for technology with unknown values, and very bad for humanity.

I have a book on economics that explains how important trust is to doing business and having a good economy. We must return to education for good moral judgment. We must return to grammar and math as it was taught before our infatuation with technology. You all give me more hope than I have had in many years. :heart:

I never saw that Elvis performance. It brings tears to my eyes. All our democratic campaigns should be using that song. He embarrassed the soul of democracy. Our democracy and liberty do not mean doing and saying anything we want whenever we want. Democracy is about achieving arete and the highest morality.

"Arete - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Arete
Arete (Greek: ἀρετή, aretḗ) is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to 'excellence' of any kind—especially a person or ..."

That goes with Greek debates about the good life and morality, and the need to expand our consciousness for good moral judgment.

Thank you so much for that Elvis video.

One aspect of your posts that I find reinforcing is your exemplifications that are happening or have happened in the real world. A lot of posters don't offer many actual exemplifications that they have read about or witnessed in detail. It adds such a lot to posits when good exemplification is included.
As a teacher of 30+ years, before I took early retirement, I don't think I only ever focussed on merely producing trained monkies for the tech world as you seemed to suggest is happening today.
I think there is a great deal of social and moral training/debate/discussion that goes on, at least in Scotland's Secondary Schools. I was involved with a lot of 'link' initiatives with employers and universities such as 'The Glasgow University Ambassador scheme' etc. The morality, ethics, politics, social impact of my field of Computing Science was very much an aspect of what and how I taught the subject, but perhaps it was not as big an aspect as it should and needs to be. There was the enormous pressure of getting through the material, preparation, intermediate testing and reporting, etc etc in preparation for the big final exam. So, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the balance correct. But the pupils I taught seemed to have a higher quality of inputs compared to what I remember receiving or being offered when I was at school. — universeness

Thank you for your explanation. Teachers generally feel like I am attacking them and not the system. My grandmother was a teacher when it was a very low-wage job with no benefits. She was totally devoted to teaching because her generation believed they were preparing the young for good citizenship and that was essential to having a strong and united democracy. That is why I keep hammering away at the importance of education for democracy. It is a very idealistic understanding of democracy and education.

At the 1917 National Education Association convention, we were preparing for WWI and it was the teacher's job to turn her students into patriotic citizens who understood why our democracy must be defended. One teacher argued schools should be models of democracy and that teachers should have the power and authority to teach as they see fit rather than be under the authority of the administration. Another speaker said we should model Germany's education for technology because of its great war successes and advanced technology. For technological reasons (relatively low technology) our education continued to focus on patriotic citizens until the military technology of the second world war which gave us air warfare and the nuclear bomb.

The US, being a young nation with huge resources, and dominated by Christians, flipped into the German model of education and our industrial background made this more radical and war-focused. In the past it took us at least a year to mobilize for war. Now we can strike and do more damage in 4 hours than any nation could have done in several months. We were known for our resistance to war. Now we believe it is our military might that makes us great and this is the will of God, thanks to Billy Graham and how presidents used him and Christianity to turn us into what we are today.

We decided to prepare our young for a technological society and leave moral training to the church. That was a huge mistake! We went from using the Conceptual Method of education to the Behaviorist Method and the Behaviorist Method is good for training dogs. It does not prepare the young for independent thinking and that is why this thread is so important! There are many reasons for our moral crisis, as has always been so because humans are not born knowing good citizenship. Even in primitive tribes, the young must be taught how to be adults. From tribes to the present we must have a culture to have social control instead of a tyrant and authority over the people. I am saying we prepared our young for Q-anon just as Germany prepared its young for the Nazi party. The Behaviorist Method is good for training dogs. It is not the education people in a democracy must have, and neither is Christianity. Faith in technology or God is not better than faith in what well-educated humans can achieve.

Yes, that is hopeful. Meanwhile, the Proud Boys are marching and the glaciers are retreating, entirely oblivious to each other.
All those previous upheavals in human civilization - including, let us not forget, the complete eradication of previous civilizations - were confined to a locality, affecting no more than one continent at a time. The train we've been collectively seeing approach for the past century and done nothing to avoid, is about to crash into the entire globe at once.

My hope is for the post-crash civilization. (even if it's ants) — Vera Mont

How can the post-crash civilization, which is almost 100% guaranteed, have hope without preparing the young for that? All industrial economies depend on oil and that is a finite resource. When it is gone it is gone and economies will crash. What we need is a way of producing energy that does not depend on a finite resource, and lithium is even more finite. Lithium also requires a lot of water and that has become a scarce resource that is getting even harder to come by. Copper is harder to come by. We no longer have copper, silver, and gold in our money because those minerals are now comparably scarce and too expensive. Our coins had real value and that is no longer true. Our coins lasted for centuries and that is no longer true. Thinking what our coins are made of doesn't matter is a mistake. We have to believe a lie to believe it doesn't matter what our coins are made of.

Anyway, education is our only hope. If our young are not prepared for democracy, that is not what they will have after the crash. If the literature for democracy does not survive, as a little of it did survive the fall of Rome, then the future will not carry an awareness of democracy.

If the young are not prepared for democracy they will not have democracy.

If only you were a teacher. — ucarr

I won't become a classroom teacher, but from time to time I think about doing programs for schools that might encourage children to embrace their curiosity and learning. I sure wish I could find someone to do this with me.

This is what a good teacher makes her students experience and feel directly and naturally. No facts and figures hammered into memory, just a direct experience of life as something dynamic revealing itself moment to moment to those paying attention. Life long learners emerge from such classroom experiences because authentic education is half a step from entertainment. — ucarr

Yes, yes, yes! Teachers are forced to teach for the test and are too controlled by the government!

What I want to do is exactly what you said should be done. Yes, entertaining and engaging.