How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
What do you, Philosophers, tell prospective parents about how to raise (Old Norse, raisa) their children so that they will be good citizens, good parents themselves, and good thinkers?
So you haven't reared (Old English, r?ran) so much as a hamster, children are the future and how they are brought up (OE) matters to everyone, parents or not.
So you haven't reared (Old English, r?ran) so much as a hamster, children are the future and how they are brought up (OE) matters to everyone, parents or not.
Comments (116)
I can't say that I've ever offered unsolicited advice to prospective parents about how they ought to raise their children, and I'm not sure how well received it would be. My guess is that I'd tell them what I did, and knowing that my children are without flaw, they should take my advice.
In short, the key to success in most every regard is a real education, and if you stress that and insist upon that, all else tends to follow, including such things as good citizenship, morality, and general perspective.
I must also say that I appreciate your Old English and Norse references, considering both are my first languages. I still can't get a hang of this modern English.
If we can just get them started on the path to self-learning and development, and give them as much of a head start as possible, maybe they'll surpass us all.
How to make a child into a good thinker is tricky... Trick them into thinking that learning is fun, or at least show them that the product of learning is desirable?
So treat your child as a good citizen, a good thinker, a good parent; take them seriously and they will be seriously worth taking seriously.
Talking a lot, and nicely, to children is critical.
Children from middle class homes hear many more normal conversational words by first grade (5 to 6 years of age) than children in poor families (referred to as the 30 million word gap). The quality of conversation is also quite disparate between middle class (or higher) and working class (or lower) families. Poor children tend to hear far fewer conversational words; more command words; more negative words ("SHUT UP YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" as the kid is slammed into the seat on the bus) and far fewer positive words. Children in prosperous families are read to, hear many praise words, and much less negative or command language.
What difference does this make?
Poor children often begin school with more than a 2 year deficit in language. Not only do they know fewer words, their word response time is slower. They learn less well. Some children can not overcome these deficits even with tailored remediation. Children who begin school 2 years behind have difficulty catching up, and in fact fall further behind as time goes on.
Worth while topics are also important.
And as each child is different I have no knowledge that could be applied universally accept to remind them that the kids will be the future of humanity so they should try not to fuck them up too badly.
Like... what topics would you suggest for the average toddle <2 years old?
Good question. Just what would a two year old be able to understand?
I have a nephew of that age that is a little slow starting to talk. When he comes over he has found out that I will lend him my computer to play on if I am not working. While all he really wants to do is paint, he will usually sit still for a few seconds while something is explained to him.
So I guess the topics should be things that will be useful to him /her as they interact with their surroundings.
Nonsense baby talk is definitely off the list of topics.
I teach at a bilingual school and at the secondary level the kids biggest problem is expressing themselves in social settings because they spend most of their time studying subject specific words.
Nonsensical baby talk isn't as nonsensical as some of the nonsensical adult talk here. At least baby talk serves a useful developmental purpose. If someone handed you a 9 week old puppy I bet you'd be emitting baby talk in 2 seconds. (Puppies respond favorably to baby talk; once they are 9 months to a year old, they don't respond to it more than they respond to normal language.)
Why don't you give him some finger paint, then he could enjoy actual tactile sensations as well as a computer screen. You could make some thick white unflavored gravy and then color it. If he ate it, it wouldn't matter (just don't use cadmium or chromium as yellow or blue tint. Stick to edible food colors.) Have him play with it on the sidewalk; when he's done, just hose the kid and the sidewalk off.
I enjoy telling parents what they are doing wrong. It's usually so obvious, even the dog is appalled.
Basically this. (Y)
One of the main things I already try to teach my 2 year old is to try-and-try again. Any skill takes time and effort to master. So I applaud her effort (even if I also think she's very smart). I don't want her to give up when it gets tough but to relish the challenge. If I can teach her that, she can accomplish anything she sets her mind to.
Also, apparently Dutch people in general are pretty relaxed about raising kids if happiness is anything to go about: Why Dutch Children Are the Happiest in the World
Also, if I was raising a small child now, I would curtail the amount of time they spend playing with electronic devices - smart phones and the like. I see toddlers on trains, transfixed by some game or another on some device they're holding. They need more time with good old fashioned objects, dirt, dogs, toys, building dams with rocks in a creek, going fishing and climbing trees. //end rant.
Whatever he or she experiences, of course. The world is full of wonders. Look at this car. Look at that tree. Our job is to open the curtains.
Quoting Wayfarer
Like everything else, moderation is important here too. But the electronic world is full of wonders too. And one may use it to show stuff which the kid would never see otherwise.
Truth be told, no parent can avoid the confession that sometimes you must give the kid some cartoon to watch, if only to catch your breath :D. We have lives too, and kids don't know that. I agree that it is important to restrain it a bit (otherwise the kid will always reach for the tablet or phone, it is simpler and closer than going outside, and we are Occamists at heart). We have had success by determining that cartoons are not to be watched in the morning. The time for cartoons is after the return from school (around 6 PM), for about one hour. But if we are in the mood, we invite him to watch a movie with us rather than just watching some cartoon. He enjoys it much more.
Also, make a practice from an early age of telling your children what the correct action or language is to be used in a given circumstance, rather than only telling them their current behavior or language is incorrect. For example. If your 3 year old says, "give me that water right now!" Don't just say, that's bad. Tell them, "may I please have that water." In other words, give them the action or language that is appropriate for that instance. Reward behavior you want to see.
Nonsensical baby talk isn't as nonsensical as some of the nonsensical adult talk here.
Aye Aye Aye, I wonder who you mean.X-)
At least baby talk serves a useful developmental purpose.
For tiny babies yes but talking to them normally has exactly the same effect so I don't see the value of it. It is positively damaging once the child starts to imitate others speech.
If someone handed you a 9 week old puppy I bet you'd be emitting baby talk in 2 seconds.
No I would not, and I don't care how cute he is either
Why don't you give him some finger paint, then he could enjoy actual tactile sensations as well as a computer screen.
Hell no. I leave that shit to his mother. She is a preschool teacher and she is used to cleaning up the mess.
Have him play with it on the sidewalk; when he's done, just hose the kid and the sidewalk off.
Where I live there are no sidewalks, only dirt roads. They say that it will be paved within the next five years, but they have been saying that for the last ten.
I enjoy telling parents what they are doing wrong. It's usually so obvious, even the dog is appalled.
I stick to telling them what their kids are doing wrong and let them figure it out from there.
Oh, dirt roads -- ready made sandboxes.
Quoting Sir2u
Well... I feel too inhibited to emit baby talk to a baby or a puppy if there are other adults in the room. But I've heard that it's useful for baby-parent bonding, and they all seem to do it. And infants don't talk that way when they learn to talk, merciful god.
And what's a little embarrassment when you can give them a linguistic headstart? ;)
Pay attention to the child's school! I don't know how we came to holding parents 100% responsible for raising children when it was a priority purpose of education to prepare our young for life and good citizenship. Our children are being destroyed and driven to suicide by their schools, communities, and online activity.
I believe the first school mass killing happened in the high school where my daughter was a student. We were new to the area and needed help because my X had abandoned us during the 1970s recession, when people were losing everything and it was next to impossible to get a job. A young man who needed help stayed with us for a while, as did many teenagers needing help, passed through our home. The school was so impersonal that no child got help.
At this time, a columnist published an article saying teachers should not have to waste their time with poor students. I was horrified and called him to discuss this. He was very proud of himself because so many teachers appreciated what he said.
The young man who entered the school ready to kill, had already killed his parents. His parents were teachers and lived in a good neighborhood, if you want to call a totally dysfunctional neighborhood a good neighborhood. His older sister was a model student and a good daughter. What could go wrong?
The principal was made aware of the fact that the young man was having a problem, and the principal in a school where teachers should not have to waste their time on poor students, mishandled the crisis that was brewing. A couple of days later, several students were shot. I think one teacher and a couple of students were killed. So much for teachers not having to waste their time on poor students.
Around this time, two of my daughter's friends ended up in prison for killing another female friend in a Satanic ritual. I think we are struggling to make our schools and children safe, and I think a return to preparing the young for life and good citizenship could turn things around. Between now and then, we need to be more realistic about what a parent can do, when our schools are no longer helping the parents raise the children, because the schools are preparing our young for a technological society with unknown values. The schools are a very important part of the problem and the solution. Parents can not prepare their children for life in a culture where people do not know values and do not what to help the children.
Learning is a whole lot of fun. My school teacher grandmother had me draw a picture and then tell the story of the picture. She wrote my story and from then on, I believed I was a good writer. She played Scrabble with me and a card game called Flinch, then my uncle took over with Cribbage, Pool, and Chess. :grin:
My kitchen was a great laboratory when great-grandchildren visited. Baking soda and vinegar are amazing when mixed together. Filling a pan with salt water and then boiling the water out, leaves us with salt. Cooking foods that require measuring cups and spoons is a favorite way for grandmothers to teach math. And what can be more fun than nature walks?
Statistically, children who have active grandparents to visit do better.
This is a quoted AI answer. Note that 2023 was not the year with the most shootings, contrary to what AI said. 2019 would be the peak. Covid cooled things off in 2020. Viva la virus.
Children should not be allowed to consult AI sources until they are at least 21 years old. Let them learn to think for themselves first. Adults who depend on AI should be locked out of AI for at least 5 years, or until they are able to think independently again.
I think we need to be more alert when dealing with teenage males. It seems this is a rough time for teenagers and especially males. Young men who have access to weapons may not be a threat, but if they are like Kipland Kinkel, excessively fascinated with guns, bombs, death, and killing, then all weapons need to be removed. Kip struggled with evil thoughts for a long time before he flipped out.
Primitive tribes handled this with rites of passage. Perhaps that is better than ignoring a serious problem?
I say this even if I bought into your idea that the government should offer such a high level of support for families. That is, if you want the government to do all this, do that, but don't ask teachers to do things other than teach. They didn't sign up to raise other's kids or fix the world's problems.
So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts.
quote="L'éléphant;1006735"]There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. There is actually a point in the life of children when the influence of the outside world, social media, advertising, outside friends takes precedence and may replace the teachings of good parents. This should be taught to parents and educators alike.[/quote]
There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.
However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained.
The influence of school experiences is probably weaker than it is thought to be. The multiplication tables I learned have endured. Ditto the grammar and spelling lessons. The largest part of my school experience was being socialized to an externally regulated work day. I resented it then and I still resent it. I don't know what school is teaching these days.
Quoting L'éléphant
We often have too little information about a violent person's childhood to make a connection. But in a significant number of cases, (I believe) bad childhood experiences contributed to bad adult behaviors. However, a lot of people with pretty bad upbringing manage to NOT re-enact their childhood trauma on others.
This is true, up to a point. Schools are not social service providers. No surprise. What might be more surprising is that "educating kids" is calibrated for their future in the economy (or lack of it).
There are good schools which do educate children well. I'd say that 20% of school age children are in these good schools. A lot of these children will go on to college and take on professional work. At the other end of the spectrum there are, just for symmetry, another 20% of school children who are in dysfunctional schools. Their families, their communities, and their schools are consistently poor. That leaves a big middle which ranges from fairly good to poor.
Why is this the case? 'Society' needs a cadre of well and properly educated people to manage its affairs. There are excellent schools (public and private) which deliver.
'Society' also recognizes that there is a cadre of people who do not have much of a future in the economy. Excellence in education for this group would be a wasted effort. The larger population in the middle, the 60% of children, have a broader future in the economy, and receive such education as is required. A lot of these people in the middle will be respectable members of the 'working class'; they will have jobs, families and be major contributors to the economy, but they do not need elite skills.
I don't like it, but that seems to be the way it is. Raising up the underclass and the less skilled members of the working class isn't an educational function. Even if the schools were funded and prepared to deliver excellent education to every child, it would not match the needs of the existing national economy.
And it is that, the existing national economic structure, that would have to be reorganized to provide a good job -- a raison d'être -- to every adult in the country. Production of goods would have to be re-shored, be almost entirely domestic. The economy would need very strong central direction from the government to accomplish this. A significant redistribution of wealth would have to come about -- much less concentrated at the top, more dispersed throughout. And so on.
It's not going to happen, but such huge changes might accomplish what some people are asking schools to do.
Yeah, and my response was motivated by my wife being a public school administrator. There's the never ending pull to make schools the universal social security system for every child. Teachers already have an impossible job, and none of them are trained in social work.
"The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, all around, and it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's loud, and it's fun for a while.
Many people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to wonder, 'Is this real, or is this just a ride?' And other people have gotten off the ride, and they come back to us and say, 'Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.'
And we kill those people. 'Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride! Shut him up! Look at my [money]! Look at my [money]!' It's just a ride.
But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride.
And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to believe that there is an uncrossable line of separation. The eyes of love see that there is no line.
And now, here's the kicker: The choice to be in love, to be in joy, is already yours. The choice to be in peace is already yours. The choice to be in gratitude is already yours. This is your birthright.
So, let go of the fear. Be love. Be peace. Be joy. Be grateful. Be here now.
It's just a ride."
- Bill Hicks, while dying of pancreatic cancer at the age of 32.
I was helped a great deal by one (1) teacher who referred me to a state program which enabled me to go to college instead of taking the first clerical job that came along. It was a strategic intervention on her part, for which she was unfortunately never thanked. No other teacher, no administrator, and no counselor (did we have one back then in '64? Don't know) saw any reason to steer me towards something better.
I'm not complaining. The teachers at Podunk High School taught their subjects well, indifferently, or badly. Nothing more than teaching was, or should have been, expected. After all, no one expects the butcher, the baker, or the body shop to solve people's larger problems.
You seem to think you represent teachers. What justifies that?
What do you think of grade school textbooks before 1958, when we changed the purpose of education?
Sara H.Fahey spoke about Public Schools and American Patriotism at the 1917 National Education Association Conference about why an institution for making good citizens was also good for making patriotic citizens. She was proud of preparing the young to unionize. She was proud of educating immigrant children about American values, and that the immigrant children would learn from their parents.
My grandmother was a teacher at the time, and she felt so passionate about defending democracy in the classroom she was in her 80s, before she stopped teaching. When she had to retire, she joined VISTA and worked with migrant children. Then she volunteered in schools. When she died, I wanted to know the set of values every child learned, so I started buying old textbooks and books about education. I know, from the health textbook, the math textbook, and the reading books, that children were taught to be respectful of others, and to be considerate, and family values, and virtues, and character values.
In 1917, education for technology and vocational training were added to education, but education for good moral judgment and good citizenship remained the priority of education until 1958.
Good. You tried to assert what you truly were, a gay man. But in doing so, you were aware that your values were not necessarily at odds.
They do and they don't, both good and bad. There are those families caught in cycles of poverty, poor education, and violence, and others with long term successes. That's from learned behavior. No question I see my parents in my own behavior and I see myself in my kids' behavior.
This isn't to say other people and events haven't affected me or that I've not made my own decisions. Regardless of where my behavior comes from, I'm held responsible for it.
But my point is that your childhood influences don't always wither away.
Quoting Hanover
We might want to know something about the history of education. Education began at the dawn of our use of language, around the campfire, when we thought of ourselves as members of a tribe and were not as individualistic as we are today. We have such tribal people today. Our individualism and family units, rather than tribal units, began with farming and owning land separate from everyone else's. Rather than the hunter-gatherer organization, without no concept of separate property rights. I am trying to convey a different consciousness than we assume today. The point is that the first thing we learn in the tribe is how to behave. We learn our tribe's myths and why we do things as we do. Everyone in the tribe reinforces the behaviors of the tribe and the reasoning of their myths. This is what is natural to our species, and I want to stress that EVERYONE REINFORCES THE WAYS AND REASONING OF THE TRIBE.
Much later, the Romans were organized by family order, and the father was responsible for training the sons, while the mother trained the daughters. Eventually, they had schools, but it is not until the Greeks that education got really interesting. Before this, Sparta was communal and had a tribal education led by the leaders and focused on war. Males learned to fight, and females learn how to keep things going while the men were gone to war giving them more equality than Athenian females had. On the other hand, Athens had education for individuals, and later Hellenism was adopted by the Roman schools.
I want to throw in Genghis Khan. He made it unquestioned that his people should never settle down and start accumulating things like the city people do, because the city way of life, with its division of rich and poor people, leads to immorality.
You are right, and I want to add some thoughts that support that.
Each generation is different. Another term we can use is "cohort". A cohort is everyone who comes of age at the same time. A cohort is defined by its time in history. I am a baby boomer. Most of our parents hated war, and Beatniks came out of that, then greasers, then hippies, and for my son and daughter, it was meth that determined the flow of history. Good luck to the parents who try to prevent their sons and daughters from going with the movement of their time. And is that really what we want? Our lives are changing faster and faster. Do we want our children to cling to the past?
I am thinking of a troop of apes trying to survive hard times do to climate change. Those who are not flexible and willing to try new things are the least apt to survive. It is in our genes to adapt to change, and it is too bad if our parents perish because they can not make the change. Young people are much more apt to try new things, because if they die, they are easy to replace. But biologically, our brains become more resistant to change because nature can not afford to lose its breeding populations, and sometimes the old and tried ways are best.
Sometimes, many years of life experience lead to wisdom, so we should all follow the health rules, including exercise, just in case someone might benefit from our memory of the past and gained wisdom.
:lol: :rofl: That is hilarious. Just try to go against nature and see how well that works.
It is really curious to me why anyone would think ignoring nature is a good idea. Lacking knowledge of nature is a good thing, why? Modern people want to believe they are very smart, but I don't think ignorance or denial of nature leads to that. :joke:
Very well. Sketch your best guess about how we evolved and then insist we stay true to that course else be punished by Mother Nature.
I think this is something we should be more concerned about that adaptation. We can only step forward confidently once we appreciate what happened before us. This is likley why human progress tends to take the form of 3 steps forwards then 2 steps back.
I do not just make up thoughts. What I think, is the result of learning. If you think my facts are wrong, tell me which facts and what you think is correct with better information. That is how philosophy started. Coming from Athens, it is essential that we get our beliefs right. This is not equal to arguing mythology. It is science with facts that either are or are not true.
I am not sure what we need to know about the past, but I do think it is possible we are in the resurrection, and it is archaeology, geology, and related sciences that are resurrecting the past, and it is our purpose today to assimilate all this knowledge and rethink everything.
This is the kind of thinking I find most scary. There is something to be said for conservative values as much as there are for liberal ones.
It would not be my guess, but the sciences that determine facts. Anthropology is one of the main sciences, and the study of DNA is another, and math plays a part in this, too. Many books are written on the subject, and it does not reduce to a post. However, you might want to start a thread about evolution versus the God who made us of mud. I don't think the discussion belongs in this thread.
What have I said bout human nature regarding parenting and growing up that you disagree with?
That could be an interesting thread. I am kind of shocked that we appear to disagree about the need to rethink everything. At what time in history did people think the way you believe we should think? Are you good with justifications for slavery and justifications for moving native Americans off their land and intentionally turning their children against them? How about exploiting the poor to accumulate national wealth. When were our thoughts well-informed and just, rather than something we need to rethink?
There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.
However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained.
The influence of school experiences is probably weaker than it is thought to be. The multiplication tables I learned have endured. Ditto the grammar and spelling lessons. The largest part of my school experience was being socialized to an externally regulated work day. I resented it then and I still resent it. I don't know what school is teaching these days.
So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts.
— L'éléphant
We often have too little information about a violent person's childhood to make a connection. But in a significant number of cases, (I believe) bad childhood experiences contributed to bad adult behaviors. However, a lot of people with pretty bad upbringing manage to NOT re-enact their childhood trauma on others.[/quote]
I like the discussion you are having. What motivates us to right or wrong? I have walked through hell. We all must go to hell from time to time to get a sense of meaning. But we should not go there without the help of the gods, because we can so easily get lost in hell. That means depression or even psychotic events. The gods are concepts that can help us find our way.
I was in hell because of being traumatized when I was a year old. It was a medical thing and no one knew of post-stress syndrome back in the day, and no one ever thought that a medical problem would interfere in my life so much. I was lucky to come across an explanation of post-stress syndrome and also a book about traumatized children, and I gave this information to a counselor I was seeing, and he knew how to fix the problem once he knew what caused it. The rest of my explanation of hell and gods comes from mythology and became very important to my reasoning.
Joseph Campbell was the guru of mythology. He believed humans need a shared mythology and that when we do not have that, we are forced to create our own mythology using the people in our lives as the gods and monsters of our private mythology. That is where psychogly comes in.
The psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., wrote Goddesses in Everywoman and a book for males, Gods in Every Man. She says the gods and goddesses are prototypes. Her books are fascinating as she tells how different childhood experiences affect the different prototypes.
Oh, oh one more thing that strongly influences us; our position in the family. If we are the first child, middle child, or last child, it matters.
I hope someday we break free from the mythology that has dominated most of our lives and come up with a better understanding of our human existence than the one religion gives us.
That was not our reality when my grandmother was a teacher, and the priority for education was good citizenship and helping each child discover his/her talents and interests. We are talking about the enlightenment and the death of it. We are talking about the very meaning of the democracy we inherited and the Military Industrial Complex that has replaced it.
Why is it better for me to use the first quote and against the rules to use the second one? I much prefer the second quote.
But to your thoughts on education, what are your education concerns? Supplying the employers with trained employees and securing economic goals. The Greek philosophers would choke on such materialistic goals, but those goals are ideal for the Military Industrial Complex. The most important element of our liberty is having good moral judgment and we prepared the young for that without religion until the 1958 National Defense Education Act left moral training to the church.
Why is money so important? The only people with less income than I have are the people who have no income. But my life is rich and full, thanks to self-education and the internet that connects me with people who share my interests and concerns. :lol: I have to laugh at myself. I feel so strongly about being okay with material poverty, but not okay with intellectual poverty. What are we not going to teach all the children who are not college material?
What an interesting statement. How does liberalism threaten us? Can a liberal such as myself have good moral judgment?
Contemporary society would choke Greek philosophers in ever so many ways.
Look, I'm not proposing that we toss Greek philosophers into the fire, but they didn't exist in a world of 8 billion plus people, AI, automation, atomic weapons, mass media, and more, much more.
Yes, I do want schools to educate students so that they can be employed and prosper in the economy of the 21st century. I don't know to what degree even this goal is practical. AI and automation are serious challenges to employment -- and not just for semi-skilled workers. Some very good students who just graduated with degrees in computer science are finding themselves irrelevant.
You have a fetish about the National Defense Education Act. I can't help you with that.
I agree with you entirely about the military-industrial-complex. It is flourishing and is a malignant influence, in distorting military policy, government budgets, domestic production, and world trade (in weapons, particularly).
Quoting Athena
I sympathize with you. I spent many years poor for the same of pursuing intellectual goals. I'm 79 now, and am very glad that I still have a (reasonably) agile mine and not too many material concerns--knock on wood.
I just don't see a past golden age in North American education, as experienced by the 90%+ of the population who were neither part of the elite nor had any likelihood of joining the elite. The elite received what I think you would consider a very good education -- heavy in the humanities, Greek, Latin, etc. For boys going into business, (even law, until relatively recently) higher education was of little use.
I'm thinking here of the later 19th century, mostly. As society, industry, business, etc. became more complicated, greater education was needed for success. Andrew Carnegie was well-self-educated, with some basic education received in Scotland. He did well. J. P. Morgan graduated from Boston's English High School, learned French and German at university in Europe (1 year), then returned to the US and began as an apprentice banker. He did well.
During the 20th century, college education became a requirement for more types of work. In 1960, according to Statista, 7.7% of the population had at least a bachelor's degree, and 40% completed high school. Today it is about 37% and 91% respectively. The increase from 7% to 37% over the last 65 years has been quite gradual. The steepest increase was between 1960 and 1990, rising from 7.7% to 21.3% of the population.
I was lucky to be able to complete college in 1968, thanks to a state program. Had it not been for that, I would have been among the 40% with only high school, and not prepared for much of anything.
Okay, but how should we react to the danger? Several times in history, we have faced major changes. I am fixated on the cause and result of passing the 1958 National Defense Education Act and turning the whole of our nation into a Military Industrial Complex. If this continues, we have fought every war for nothing. But that is just one of several life-changing changes.
Oh, oh, China intentionally prevented change. Change was considered a danger that needed to be avoided. Confucianism was very conservative, and some Christians, Muslims, and Jews are conservative.
Any danger. Cautiously and with consideration of what effects it may have. If we start literaly changing everything about how we live unforeseen problems will arise. Revolutions are revolutions because they cause severe upheaval.
For example, in today's world people complain about how the economy is bad and their quality of life has fallen without fully understanding this is not at all true for the vast majority of the population around the world who have seen an increase in their quality of life.
Quoting Athena
You must be using hyperbole? We do actually constantly rethink things all the time, but thankfully we do not act on them because all people have some conservativism too.
But we must act on them. We can not continue with the racism that prevents social justice for all. We can not continue living in denial of global warming and exhausting our resources. The longer we live in denial, the worse the reality will be. I don't want to be drinking recycled water, and I don't want to experience food shortages, and once good farm land turned into deserts. Living as people lived when the bible was written will not protect us from a harsh reality that is developing.
Imagine the hardship and suffering it woudl cause to ban people from using fuel, or switching to vegan diets. The best we can do is attack the problems we foresee from multiple angles. We are already doing so in many sectors and huge strides have been made already in terms of how we manage farming. In the near future we probably won't need farmland as hydroponic will have moved on a lot.
The only real threat I am concerned about is AGI, but I am not entirely sure that can/will happen anytime soon. Hard to say. If it does that has far more potential to ruin our lives as well as improve it dramatically.
I am not overly concerned about the future of humanity tbh. Someone needs to be and it looks like you are so that is enough for me.
I so want to respond to everything you said but I am exhausted and heading to bed. I am thrilled that you valued intellectual pursuits above material wealth. I hope I understand you correctly. Now for education. Have you tried buying old grade school textbooks? They were about preparing children for life, not just preparing them for jobs. Unless you see this for yourself what I am saying is just words with no meaning. Especially important was using our schools for Americanizing immigrants. This education was not about technology until 1917, and the US mobilized for the First World War. The war demanded technologically trained men, and we scrambled to prepare for the First World War.
I don't think anyone was thinking about what this would do to our economy. We had not experienced the level of technology that changed our reality rapidly because of wartime demands. Even those who fought in the Second World War, did not expect to pay income taxes because they didn't think they would ever earn enough to have to pay an income tax. We transitioned from an industrial economy to a service economy in the 1950's. You know, around the time Eisenhower was the US president and asked Congress to pass the National Defense Education Act.
You might notice I am saying the world wars changed education, and a byproduct was folks leaving the farms and moving into cities where they hoped to have better jobs and better lives. Adding vocational training to education was a wonderful benefit for thousands of Americans. But all this way, the priority of education was preparing the young to be good citizens, until the 1958 National Defense Education Act replaced what Eisenhower called our domestic education with education for technology for military and industrial purposes.
That explanation is way too long, but I don't know what can be cut out of it. I checked with my favorite second-hand online book store, and they do not have The Democracy Series grade school textbooks. We were preparing for war with Germany at the time. One of the texts makes comparisons between our way of life in the US and Germany. It was believed that patriotism was the most important part of our national defense until the military technology of the Second World War.
This isn't very philosophical, but maybe someone can morph it into a philosophical statement. The old textbooks promoted families. Dick and Jane's mother stayed home to take care of the family. The father went to work to support the family. The grandparents lived on a farm. It was not gays who ruined family values. It was the National Defense Education Act and labor laws that changed the family with education for a technological society with unknown values. This has something to do with the cost of a high-tech military and modern warfare, and having a fully employed adult population paying income taxes. For military and economic reasons, Mom can not stay home and care for the family. A homemaker does so much more than prepare meals and keep the home clean. But who wants to be "just a housewife".
No, but I did buy some old family / sex education books from between 1900 and 1920. Their advice on family and marriage (sex) was perhaps applicable before WWI; it became less applicable year by year. "Sex" per se didn't change, but the roles of men, women, and marriage were changing rapidly. Further, the culture was undergoing rapid multi-directional changes and so was the economy. The Crash of 1929, resulting depression, and WWII brought about even more dramatic changes.
I learned to read using Dick and Jane readers. Sure, in the 1950s (I started 1st grade in 1951/52) some aspects of D's & J's world were familiar; many mothers were at home; most fathers worked. But even in the small town Podunk I grew up in, some mothers had to work, some fathers didn't, and there were some children who were clearly poor and not well cared for. We were poor; my working father did not wear a suit (it seems like the D&J father did).
Quoting Athena
Was D&J a good reading text book? I don't know, but at least it wasn't based on any of some of the very screwy ideas some schools use and fail to teach children how to read. I don't remember much about reading books after 1st grade.
The classrooms I remember from 1952-1964 were peaceful. Was this because Dick and Jane readers had modeled peaceful, cooperative, respectful behavior? I doubt it very much. We were peaceful, cooperative, and respectful because those were common family values and were expected. No, not every family transmitted or practiced these values consistently. Enough did that the "herd standard" worked pretty well. And we lacked diversity; we were all pretty much culturally the same.
It's axiomatic that life is always changing. There was no period in American / Canadian history when society was not undergoing significant change. As James Russell Lowell put it in his poem, Once to Every Man and Nation, "time makes ancient good uncouth".
Quoting Athena
Schools, teachers, and school books have always been preparing children for both LIFE and jobs. Only for the severely disabled or the extremely privileged will LIFE and WORK not be inextricably entangled. Didn't the Lord tell Adam and Eve that "from now on, you will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow"? Genesis 3:19. No more easy street for you, buddy!!! Now, get out of here, and get to WORK.
Quoting Athena
Hope you are sleeping well!
Being civil and training them manners and to take pride in their chores(not just doing it for the parents), all by the trained teachers or parents doing this themselves, and asking them to pay attention.
On the other hand, these old books tell me sex is okay, but a woman should never expect a man to help with the children! She must take care of everything so he is free to focus on his career. I sure would have liked a wife like that when my X walked out and I had to support the children. It would have been wonderful to have a full-time homemaker like many women were before women's lib. When I needed a wife like that, my opinion of worth as a homemaker went sky high. :lol:
On to textbooks, Dick and Jane textbooks were for the "see and say" method, which is highly dependent on memory and resulted in a large number of students failing. I am so grateful for my teacher grandmother because I could not learn to read and was put in the group for dumbies. She taught me phonics and used the Jerry and Alice textbooks. Those books were for learning phonics AND they brought in different values. A main character in the Jerry and Alice books was a single woman.
Back to war and education. In the US, the divorce rate went sky high following WWII. During the war years, the government, textbook makers, and media had strong relationships to maintain patriotism. After the war, there was a shift to strengthen family values. The Democracy Series of grade school texts and later Dick and Jane are good examples of this.
I want to stress the importance of this focus on values because of the herd of which you speak. Quoting BC
That was very much the result of intentional government, bookmaker, and education goals. Now darnit and I am so sorry but I am going to break the ban on AI because this is a perfect time to use it and the health of our nation needs this information.
I have to modify that by saying the public broadcasting channels were government-funded and focused on values. :lol: Some people don't like the left-leaning programming, and perhaps "Jerry and Alice" were also left-leaning? I asked AI and found another disagreement with AI. :cry: I am losing faith in AI. But I am thrilled to find an explanation of our consciousness at the time.
That was when Billy Graham talked to Eisenhower about putting "God" into our Pledge of Allegiance and focusing on communist people, not being Christian people. AI saying the government wasn't involved with political media agendas may not be the whole truth. The Communists liberated women long before the US. At first, the USSR economy improved when women entered the workforce. However, divorce and abortion rates increased, and then increasing numbers of women and children fell below the poverty level. We can add to that, increasing women and children being more involved in crime and violence, both as victims and perpetrators.
I was horrified when a teacher expressed great enthusiasm for a new computer learning program that told the story of the new bully on the block, being a girl. This was topped by the popularity of Captain Underpants, and our local school library preferring socially inappropriate books to the classics because the children would read them. We have come a long way from our reading books, teaching our young good values, and creating a herd with moral values.
Do you prefer evolution to Creationism? The evidence I have seen on TV or read in books, and the college lectures I have learned from, say, the ape-like creatures that became humans succeeded because of the better social organization.
Bonobos have a different social structure than chimpanzees. They are female-dominated and more sexual, and more cooperative. Many of us have Neanderthal genes, but modern man won, possibly because of better social organization. Athenians held that you can not have too many people in a democracy because when we become strangers to each other, our social bonds break down. Our morality depends on our social bonds.
Exactly what was the point you were trying to make?
I believe you are speaking of social bonds. I am quite sure mass murderers do not have good social bonds. How many people are in your town? Does your town have enough farm land and water to be self-sufficient? How does your town resolve problems?
What is AGI?
About drastic change. We live on a finite planet, and we act as though there is an infinite supply of everything we need. But some folks know better so we have very expensive military power and wars. I would have more hope if people were more conscious of reality.
When I was microfilming old newspapers for a library, I read a warning in a 1920s newspaper. "Given our known oil supply and rate of consumption, we are headed for economic disaster and possibly war." All Industrial economies collapsed, and the world went to war. I have a very low opinion of human intelligence.
One of the many things I don't much about are the theories (good and bad) about teaching reading. I have seen several studies that emphasize the importance of hearing A LOT of language in the first 4 or 5 years of life -- not babble from a television, but spoken by care-givers in a positive manner. The more complex, the better. By first grade (5 or 6 years) a child needs to have heard around 30,000,000 words. Being reared in a diminished and negative language environment can make acquisition of reading (and other school-taught skills) very difficult-to-impossible.
I grew up in a large family; positive speech was plentiful. I remember being read-to, comic books usually. I don't remember having any great difficulty learning to read. I attended a small-town school and most of my classmates also were successful readers.
The difficult transition for students who fail in school is when learning to read shifts to reading to learn. That has happened by 4th or 5th grade. I remember that in 5th grade I became obsessed with mushrooms, which I read about in the World Book Encyclopedia we had in the classroom.
Quoting Athena
Artificial General Intelligence doesn't exist--yet. AI, and its large language models, are a step in that direction.
No. But you have to admit that as an adult absorbing all kinds of learning from your environment, that the childhood teachings we learned have been modified. And this is what I meant. It could happen that the values you learned as a child have been beneficial to you as an adult and so that's what you follow.
Where it is difficult for a child to hear 30 million positive (non-command / non-curse) words is in poor families, especially poor black families. Children from these families may arrive at school with a 10 million-word deficit, and a lot of the words they have heard have been negative, commands, or curses. Again, it is the language of the caregiver, not the television or uninvolved people that matter.
I bring this up because for these poor children, remediation of language deficits is very difficult, and by 3rd grade, the child has often fallen far behind--which becomes yet another barrier.
IF there is a solution for this language deficit, it is to train caregivers to "start talking" positively and a lot. The sort of talk that helps is, for instance, describing to the child how the bed is made; how the laundry is done; how the dishes are washed (all at the fairly early language learning stage). Praising the child is important. What the child needs to hear a lot less of is the negative language one sometimes hears on a bus, from parent to child. It can be very harsh.
Can parents be taught? Yes, provided there are funds to launch the kind of intensive outreach that is needed, and to maintain the instructional programs for years on end.
Thank you so much for saying something interesting about education and learning. What you said justifies the Head Start program. I watched a cognitively-challenged mother raise her children, and she herself did not have the vocabulary nor the wit to talk to her children. I encouraged her to do so, but she could not understand the importance. We have a housing project for low-income families with Head Start and child care on the grounds. These challenged people need that for so many reasons. They love their children, but their judgment is lacking and the State may take their children. We need more housing that supports these parents and prepares children for learning.
I recently found math books for children that are stories that can be read to a child at bedtime. These books are awesome as they do more to help children understand math concepts. Far back in the day, some school textbooks also taught math by telling stories, and values like being considerate and cooperative were also in the stories. It is quite obvious to me, children learn language but fail to learn math because we ignore math but talk all day, every day.
I had the most fun with a great-grandson who was in my care because he was a very active child, and I introduced math when walking. His whole body was learning math. One of my math books suggested the need to actively learn math.
Oh my, I am so moved and passionate about this. When people say education is about preparing children for industry, I have to argue that many teachers teach because they love the children and teaching. What can be more rewarding than opening a child's mind to the marvels of learning? We need to give back the teacher's authority over his/her classroom.
When my teenage daughter got in trouble with the law, she had to go into counseling and the counselor told her she learned better. She most certainly did. But the teen years are a form insanity. :lol: Back in the day, there was not the flood of books for the teen years that we have today.
I Googled, "Does TV influence teenagers" and AI gave a strong "yes, it does". I think we were much wiser in the past when we had censorship. I hope you look for more information. Maybe you can find a cite that supports your statement and share it.
Quoting BC
That I believe that is true. By age 8, our brains are literally changed and we do not absorb information as we do before age 8. But in some ways, our brains are better prepared for cognitive work.
Quoting BC
That is something I did not understand. The harsh language was just wrong, but criticizing was showing I care. :worry: Like many in my cohort, parents meant well, but did a lot of harm because we were raised with a lot of criticism. I think the Great Depression influenced our parents, who meant well. I think the parents' sense of security influences how the parent understands life. Insecurity is very damaging.
And I want to say, my mother, like many mothers, was a single mother, and I was raised in a day care center, where I withdrew and stayed to myself. To me, the rest of the children were like animals and I didn't want to fight for a toy. Day Care may not be a good thing for all children.
Quoting BC
My granddaughter took advantage of the Birth to Three program that was available in the city. I wish I had had such a supportive program when I was a young mother. My X kept the family isolated, and I feel for all the pioneer women who were isolated when we moved west and filled the wilderness with civilization. They should have at least had the Internet. That would have made life so much better!
AT least the internet, but chances are the computers would not have fared well being banged around in the ox carts on the way west. Then there was the problem of a reliable connections, even with the extremely slow transmission rate, which was a bit slower than the average ox cart. Not to mention making the oxen hitched to the ox-powered generator run fast enough so you could check your e-mail. And we haven't even touched on the problem of dirt from the sod roof falling into the computer's hard drive and screwing things up.
No, back then civilization had a hard time. I mean, one's latest issue of The New Yorker was sometimes 6 months late! The local general trading store just didn't keep up with fashion, not to mention all the gnawing vermin in the cabin that were hard on one's wardrobe.
It was a great thing when the CBC finally started broadcasting life-saving symphony concerts and operas to the wilderness around Toronto, where paved roads and V-8s hadn't arrived quite yet.
Well then, it must be TRUE. AI says so! But this is an old debate, and as I recollect there has never been a definitive answer to the question of whether, how, and how much comic books, movies, TV, video games, and music affect behavior. We know with certainty that billions of people engage with all these media, but to what effect is harder to say.
Untangling all the influences on a person from cradle to grave is an insurmountable problem--because we are always both the subject and object of our lives. There are too many factors for which an accounting would have to be made, and each individual brain is dealing with all these factors in a somewhat unique fashion.
It is clear that there are patterns in behavior observable in large groups of people. For instance, more women and fewer men are attending college now. That's a reversal. Why? That's much more difficult to get a handle on. We can both propose various reasons, as experts have, and the proposals both do and do not explain the changes. This is just one of a thousand patterns to account for.
Advertising, marketing, and sales data show that media messages affect consumer behavior to some extent. But even here, where whole industries are built on collecting and analyzing consumer behavior, there are few hard and fast rules one can count on. The manufactured objects themselves (everything from breakfast cereals to cars) are in themselves attractive objects. One doesn't have to have seen advertisements to buy packaged cereals. Seeing a new car on the street can stimulate one's itchy desires, even without media preparation. Or the car itself may have no effect at all on the viewer.
So, when we turn to deeper issues of influence -- one's habits of thought, ethics, imagination, complex behavior -- like parenting -- it is far more difficult to find clear, unmistakable connections between influences and practices. Still, it is obvious that there are connections--we just can't be precise about them, usually.
If one "examines one life" as the philosophers recommend, one will find both explainable and inexplicable patterns in one's life. That's true for everybody else, too.
Good for her. Yes, in a way teen years are a form of 'insanity'. The overriding principles are recalcitrance and insubordination.
I just read Quoting BC reality check on my fantasy of pioneer women having the internet, and maybe back in the day, survival needs made parenting easier. He sure drew a good picture of life being more challenging than it is now.
I keep studying just in case I find myself sitting at the large dining table in the sky with the Great Thinkers of history. I would love to hear what they have to say about our times. However, we do have the sentiments of a Sumerian father, whose son did not appreciate the good life his father gave him and did not focus on his education to become a scribe. It seems to be our nature to have difficulty getting through our teen years.
The first one comes from having social studies classes in college, and the impression that once something gets through the process of research, it resymbolizes reality as much as a plastic-wrapped steak resymbolizes the cow it came from.
You mentioned imagination, and I am thinking of the copycat crimes, and wonder if lives would be saved if we didn't give the world bad things to copy? The news might be important, and so might the delivery of the news be important. Personally, I am in favor of a higher standard of ethical professionalism.
Many people hold the parents responsible and say they should be able to prevent their child from watching TV programs that could have a bad effect. I think that is not realistic because this involves more than our own children. I think violent and cruel TV shows are socially bad for everyone. Kind of like Socrates saying we should be careful about the stories of the gods that we spread.
I know a frightening show can leave me feeling frightened, and one that makes me feel bad, such a show about a man abusing his wife, can cause me to feel bad for 3 days. I have to be careful about what I watch, and I know everyone is not like me. But I would not want my children to watch a show that is upsetting to me. Perhaps asking our children how they react to different shows could result in reasoning that is good for our own families?
And music- have you seen how Elvis moves his hips? :gasp: My mother thought he was an excellent entertainer. I think the music in my day got us out of Vietnam. Music is very important. And some rap music is good, and some is socially very bad.
Granted, one would not be able to imagine a cow based on a steak, but the steak is still 100% cow. So, even though social research generally examines just a small slice of the whole society, it still is society that is illuminated -- poorly, better, or brilliantly, depending. Having said that, we have all read social research to which the response is a resounding "what?" or "so what?".
One piece of research that does come to mind is this: People who watch a lot of local news organized around crime stories tend to be more fearful about their neighborhoods than actual crime would justify. That makes sense: there are too many repetitions of the same violent story line that are actually not relevant to 99% of the larger community. If you are not in a gang, dealing drugs, and so on, you are not likely to have somebody shoot you for non-payment or being on some other dealer's turf.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road was a disturbing story. I was going to watch the movie as well, but decided it would load way too many disturbing images into my head. I've read a couple of science fiction stories where the same thing applied -- the text was disturbing enough. So yes, material that is disturbing to adults is likely to be just as disturbing to children.
Quoting Athena
Some news media (in Australia) have made limited moves to limit the details of crime reporting, or limit the amount of coverage of sensational crimes. In a competitive environment that's hard to do, of course, and if all the other stations are covering it, well... But it makes sense that wall to wall coverage of every school shooting spree might inspire copycat behavior.
Quoting Athena
Elvis isn't one of my favorites, but I have lately been listening to a lot of popular music from the 60s and early 70s. There were a lot of great performers! Good looking young singers, great voices, sometimes great lyrics but sometimes vapid songs.
Okay, and should we subject our children to that? When we had sensorship, we could tell the stories but make the show less sensational. Have you seen the original King Kong movie? The sexuality was there, but not in-your-face like the modern version of the movie. I much prefer the indoendo to the in-your-face sensationalism we have today; that is cheap and a jolt to my nervous system.
I watched Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with friends, and we were shocked by all the sexuality we did not remember being in the show. Disney's Fantasia is also very sexual. However, it is doubtful that those who are not sexually experienced would notice the sexuality. It is the difference between a strip tease and the in-your-face experience common today. And frankly, it is to me, a little gross. I think I am pretty liberal. I just don't like things done with no class. :lol: Oh dear, I may be a snub. But I think having standards are important to a civilization. I don't like bringing everything down to the lowest level, and I don't think that is good for society.
Reality check, I remember hearing songs were written by adults with standards until the Beatles came along with their own songs. AI agrees with me. :lol: This is appropriate for this thread because there is a long history of musical revolutions and parents fighting against it. I mean, touching while dancing is shocking! The waltz is immoral. :wink: How do we keep our children good when we are falling into evil?
At least we stopped advertising cigarettes. I think some agree there is a connection between what we see and what we do. For a very short time, I did advertising research until I realized how unethical that is. The average person has no defenses against the manipulation of advertising that is largely subliminal. People earn good money figuring out how to manipulate potential customers.
AI gives a different intent to Disney's Fantasia than I expected. :lol: It was not marketed for children, but adults, and it is too bad we cannot use AI quotes that make our post more interesting.
So, question: Where did AI get its opinions about Fantasia? Certainly NOT from watching the film as either a human child or an adult!
I'm not altogether against AI, but like electrification, mechanization, automation, the assembly line, photography, motion pictures, the telephone, radio, television, internet, and a lot of other industrial innovations, it will have both predictable and unanticipated + and - consequences. We can rest assured that the companies building and selling AI will not take responsibility for any of those consequences.
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday
Suddenly
I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hangin' over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly
Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday
Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday
I like operatic music, but some of opera's lyrics are slop -- slop set to sublime music, quite often.
Were the big stars of Rock and Roll and Folk music talented? Oh God, yes they were. But everybody wasn't a big star, up there with the Beatles, the Doors, Bob Dylan or PP&M. There were second and third string rock bands doing bubble gum slop (which, as it happens, isn't totally without merit; it doesn't have a lot of merit, but still...).
Censorship is fine when one doesn't like the stuff the censor is shredding, anyway, but not so great when it is one's favorite books, poems, newspapers, magazines, films, etc. that are getting trashed.
In the good old days (which were not so good) censors worried about sexual content -- which back then was more like innuendo and suggestion. A glimpse of stocking was something shocking. CHOP! Married couples (in some films and tv programs, had "Hollywood beds" -- single side by side -- to avoid the obvious fact that couples slept together, quite possibly naked, and -- “QUELLE HORREUR!” engaged in sexual intercourse right there in that double bed!!! CHOP!
So sexual innuendo, and god forbid that the film should present a positive image of certain immigrant groups, certain political groups (leftist, labor, etc.) or socialism / communism CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! No homosexuals on screen, please, and no mention of the actor's homosexuality off screen. CHOP! No unwed women getting pregnant, no blacks and whites together -- absolutely not!!! It was OK to have Sydney Poitier sweating for a bunch of German nuns, but that was the limit. CHOP!
Donald Trump didn't like the Smithsonian Institution's display about impeachment (sore issue with Donald) so the display was withdrawn. CHOP!
Donald Trump doesn't like it mentioned that he lost the 2020 election. It wasn't stolen from him, HE LOST IT!!! CHOP!
Violence was never at the top of the list for censorship. Violence, mayhem, scary monsters, freaks, crashes, bullets flying, etc. were normally not viewed as problematic.
Of course it isn't good to bring everything down to the lowest level. Sex in itself is not a low level. It's a topic. It can be treated in a lot of different ways, some elegantly, some crude, some poetically, some politically. Sex can transgress standards and be worthy of a film, or be very pedestrian and belong on the cutting room floor, along with the pedestrians.
I don't have any ready made guidelines. I'm pretty tolerant on many topics (except certain political matters). Have I never been offended by a film? I suppose -- I went to see I AM CURIOUS YELLOW, the Swedish shocker sex film of the late 60s. It was a bore and I left with a headache. I saw DEEP THROAT in the 70s; I'm gay; its plot was pretty much heterosexual. Another headache, another bore. Quality queer sleaze doesn't offend me, but it's usually not worth movie-length treatment. 5 minutes is about right. "For god's sake, stop talking and DO SOMETHING!"
About shows, I loved the Chippendale shows. And I don't mind eye candy.:grin:
I lost a very old book about marriage, which said sex is not a bad thing, and in its day, that may have been a shocking thing to say. My grandmother and her friends thought sex was for animals and not humans. In the old book, the author argued that good sex makes a marriage good, and an anthropologist argued that good sex can keep the man and woman together for longer, and that gives their offspring a better chance in life. Love improves our health. Being happy improves our health.
It is good for the children when the parents are loving and happy, and today, the parents can be of the same sex. Hopefully, we can work on having healthy attitudes with better science.
But I like that innuendo and suggestion, and I don't like in-your-face anything. And I don't like being yelled at. When I was dealing with teenagers, I enjoyed heavy metal music, but that is not what I want to hear or watch today. My son liked Kiss, and I am quite sure my mother would say they were good entertainers. Should we start a thread about the popular music we listened to when we came of age?
Philosophically, we come from a long history of believing good music is important. AI makes an interesting statement about the history and science of good music. Too bad it is against the rules to quote AI. The AI statement would be a good way to start that thread.
I think each cohort has its unique music inspired by the time. AI says that during the Great Depression, bands offered escape and entertainment. Performing was very important to my mother and Bob Hope. Both of them wanted to make people happy. Back in the day we did not take happiness for granted.
For sure the mood of the country is different today than when I grew up full of hope that we would make a better world. I am trying to stay connected to the subject of this thread.
The mood of the country is different than it was say 70 years ago. But then those 70 years have changed us as well. So neither the world nor we are the same.
Quoting Athena
That raises an interesting question: What features of a given time (say, 1890s, 1940s, 1990s... either 'inspire', 'cause', or 'influence' music's periodic changes? Ragtime became popular in the 1890s, at the same time that Jim Crow laws were most draconian. Despite Blacks being terrorized and excluded, Ragtime was very popular in the Black community where it originated, but it also became popular among middle-class whites. Why? How?
Two technical developments helped: one was the wide available of sheet music. At this time before radio and recorded music, many people produced music at home, and there was a large sheet music industry feeding the demand for interesting music. The other development was the increased availability of the player piano, which enabled households to buy performances of both classical and contemporary music. A roll of ragtime might better capture the rhythms than interpreting sheet music.
Black artists (like Scott Joplin) weren't celebrated; quite often the whole black origin of Ragtime was 'white washed'.
Are you familiar with Louis Moreau Gottschalk? He preceded Ragtime by 20 years, at least but he had a very strong influence on both Ragtime and later Jazz (he died in 1869). He wrote a lot of music for piano and orchestra; here's a short piano piece, which is a fair introduction if you have not heard him before: The Banjo:
Gottschalk, Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton. There were dance bands, and then big bands -- the kind you see in old movies, like Benny Goodman or Glen Miller. Then Rock and Roll, and here we are.
I agree that each sub-generational cohort has its preferred genre, but the varieties and the generations are kind of all mushed together. Hard to sort out one thing from another.
How could it not become popular?! It is energetic and lifts a person's spirits. The total opposite of Jim Crow.
Thank you for mentioning things like the availability of sheet music and pianos. Immediately, I thought of my grandmother. It was obvious in her day that a respectable young lady knew how to play the piano. She gave my sister and me piano lessons. I had no idea how important that was to her but I can see that today.
I googled for more information about the availability of pianos, and the explanation came with mention of the social status in a growing middle class and what the piano had to do with that. The growing middle class and increased availability of sheet music and pianos were the result of developing technology. Which pushes me to ask, when did typewriters become essential, and demand for typewriters and people trained to use them skyrocketed with the First World War.
I am moved to tears, and I am not sure why. Perhaps because I am experiencing a strong connection with my grandmother and her generation. And my head is screaming for a philosophical thought that can bring my experience back in line with a philosophical forum. Can you help me? What am I experiencing? It goes with notions of god and man. That is a reality bigger than myself, and being a part of that bigger reality. We are all in the river of time.
That river can be represented with both music and art. Sorry, folks, you can take me out and shoot me, but I have to use AI to make this post much richer than what I can do without it, and my emotional experience at the moment demands I ride this wave. Question, forces behind ragtime music. AI says.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk would begin this transfusion, right?
This is a little far from raising children, but if we did so with a bigger picture of reality, would that change how we raise them? For example, if we are moving into a period of extreme weather, might we want to prepare our young for this? A man is presenting awesome historical explanations on the internet. He said we have had very long periods of extreme climate change that almost led to our extinction. What if we should prepare our young for that? Ignoring what is happening does not seem intelligent to me. We send our children to church to save their souls, but how about preparing them to deal with a water shortage using science instead of mythology, and thinking the earth has always been as God created it, and nothing of importance changes.
I wish everyone knew much more about geology than they do. AL fails to give an adequate explanation of what oil has to do with banking, but at least knowing what it has to say would be helpful. You might Google 'what oil has to do with banking' then get back to me. We need to figure the cost of war into the cost of oil. Taxpayers are paying the real cost of oil even if they don't drive. The division of the rich and the poor is unjust, considering what our tax dollars are paying for and what we get in return.
I think high schools should make Youngquist's books about geology mandatory reading. We can not stop the suffering by ignoring our reality and shifting your responsibility to make sane decisions to others, is not being responsible.
Where are we going to get the water for hydroponic farming? What do you know of our supply of water? Google, areas in the US that have water shortages. If you want nightmares, check the NASA map of groundwater in the US. We get food from Mexico. Check out its underground water supply. We are living on borrowed time, and our populations are increasing while our supply of water is decreasing.
Now check out what oil has to do with farming. You can stick your head in the sand, but that will not come out well. I don't think anything is more important to our decision-making than geology. All I can do is make people aware of what they need to know.
No so far from the matter of raising children.
Children can grow up to be open to the always-changing world, to new music ("All music was once new"), new art, new science, new technology, and so on, while also being open to the past. I have no idea of how, exactly, parents should go about that other than to be open themselves both to the ever changing present and the past. And they should do that with as much taste and selectivity as they can manage. New fashion might be hideous, and some new technology might be insidious. We don't have to rush out and buy it.
Well, geology IS the bedrock of reality, so, yes.
Iran is currently in a water crisis -- not enough to go around. The SW United States is headed toward the same crisis. Johannesburg, South Africa came very close to zero water in the very recent past. The Oglala Aquifer laying under much of the Great Plains is being depleted. The Colorado River is heavily over-subscribed, and its reservoirs may never recover (at least in time to make a difference).
The Greens, Environmentalists, Vegetarians, and Vegans want us to quit oil altogether, right now. I used to think that too. But we can't. James Howard Kunstler's book Too Much Magic argues against technological optimism: Oil and coal are the root cause of global warming. They are also the root of global prosperity. That's where we are, for better or worse. All sorts of whiz-bang solutions are offered, but the fact is: we are stuck with oil. We have passed "peak oil" but that doesn't mean we will run out tomorrow. It will take about as long to run out as we have been using petroleum -- so another 100 years, roughly.
We can't quit using oil because it is too deeply integrated into our technology ("just one word: PLASTICS" was said to The Graduate), our chemical supply, our transportation--electric cars not withstanding, our pharmaceuticals, agriculture, our clothing (polyester, nylon), and everything else. Water mains and gas lines are now made out of plastic.
It is so critical a substance that if we abruptly stopped using carbon fuels to save the climate, the world's economies would crash -- and that crash would cost many lives all over the world, from starvation, from loss of electricity--wind and solar not withstanding, from lack of water, lack of transportation, lack of work and income, and on and on.
Unfortunately--and it really is unfortunate--the consumption of carbon fuels is not declining much.
Is there nothing to be done? Of course there is. We could build a lot more wind and solar farms, everywhere. Nuclear power is available. We could shift away from individual auto use. There are about 1 billion cars on the road in the world. The individual car/driver was never sustainable, and for large areas of the industrialized world it wasn't necessary, either. We could all get a lot more frugal in our energy use.
But there are 8.1 billion people to convince. Fat chance of doing that! Fat chance of getting the US Government (DT et al) on board environmental salvation.
Speaking of geology, we are in the Anthropocene epoch, where industrial substances are not only altering the global climate, but laying down industrial substances in new geologic layers.
That was beautiful, and I will make this reply simple.
A child born today could be alive 100 years from now.
What if all this crashes in only 100 years? Will our young be prepared to figure out how to survive? We would be far past peak oil if it were not for fracking. If we can't stop using oil, how will people stop using oil one hundred years from now?
According to Youngquist, Rome fell because it exhausted its source of gold. Constantine moved the capital to Rome because that was where the best supply of gold was, and that gold was not shared with the whole of Rome. I am trying to figure out how to discuss things philosophically. Are we as intelligent as we think we are? Or are we all stooges living in denial and about to lose it all?
Once again, I am desperate for more information, and in desperation, I turn to Al because at the moment I can do no right. Maintaining this discussion outside the bounds of philosophy is also wrong. AI puts this back into the philosophy bag.
"All this" will crash. The young of 2125 won't be grappling with an oil shortage. In 100 years heat will be the biggest problem -- heat; previously unseen climate and weather patterns; drinking water shortages; insufficient food production; maintenance of critical aging infrastructure. In 100 years it is likely that intolerable heat will prevail in many parts of the world, including parts the United States. Specifically, it will be too hot and too humid to carry out agricultural labor. Disease pattern changes are already under way. We can expect that malaria, West Nile virus, chikungunya. Lyme disease, zika virus, and more will become endemic in much of the US (because of heat and the spread of ticks and mosquitos and the diseases they carry).
End of the world? Not quite. But it is likely to be a world with fewer people, fewer resources, fewer comforts, and very big problems. Let us hope that there we don't have nuclear warfare to add to the future's problems.
People who can will adapt and life will go on.
People who could not adapt through no fault of their own will have departed this world.
I am selfishly glad that I am an old man in 2025, and will have departed this world long before things get much worse. Who is to blame? Let's keep it simple and just blame everybody since the Industrial Revolution. Our generation's government and corporate leaders are doubly culpable for knowing that coal, oil, and natural gas cause climate change and not doing something about it. Let them be hanged twice.
The next several generations will join the class of climate criminals if they do not act. The Angry Children of 2125 will have no shortage of responsible and guilty parties at which to shake their fists!
And in Texas, the grade school textbooks do not mention the problem, and because they buy so many textbooks, they are written to please the people in power. Other states buy books made for Texas, but they may be modified to fit the different state standards. That is unethical.
In 1920 a newspaper warned "Given our known oil supply and rate of consumption, we are headed for economic disaster and possibly war." There is no excuse for our ignorance. Carter was right about avoiding war by reducing our consumption of oil, and Reagan was a liar when he said we have all the oil we need, because that depended on a military a presence in the Middle East. Technology extended our time to use oil. A technology that depends on a lie and ignorance is unforgivable, and it was the media's duty to keep us informed. We might delay the collapse of our economy but we can not prevent it, while at the same time we are destroying our planet.
We need honesty and we need to act on what we know. We must not let the discussion stop at ignoring the problem because change would hurt.
HEAR! HEAR!
Which AI are you using? Are you using the summary labeled as AI which Google provides to a query? For quick checks, it generally delivers acceptable answers--at least, they are as good as Google query results, which are sometimes not good, but usually are at least acceptable.
I generally don't use CHATGPT, or other AIs--not for any great reason; I just don't find it that entertaining.
AI is a tool; so is Google. Of course it's there to make money, now or in the near future, but that's no surprise. I think the problem the Management here has with AI is people substituting AI output for their own thinking, their own composition. I'm against people doing that because it's only by actually doing their own thinking and their own research and their own writing that they will get better at it.
You are not substituting AI output for your own thinking, which you have clearly been doing for a long time. So pick up the tools that help you gather information. Any tool, be it a pencil and note cards or Ai.
No!
Punish only up to the extent of the law. Anything beyond that is vindictiveness. Vindictiveness and wisdom cannot co-exist in you simultaneously.
On the other hand, I'll own up to a certain amount of vindictiveness toward responsible agents who wrecked the climate and caused billions of deaths.
I don't always agree with Google AI, and that is annoying. How dare they say something that is wrong. I don't want people believing something that is wrong. I don't think AI has emotional intelligence and that can be a threat. Some of us do not want to be ruled by a king, nor AI.
You have batches of material like that too, material you have learned well and can spool off in a post. It's a great thing to have, a working memory that is full. (I'm not bragging -- I can't remember what the weather was like here last month. Did I take my pills this morning? What did I spend the 20 bucks on that was in my wallet? Etc.). I wish I had learned more in college Geology 101; we had a wonderful teacher. The one thing I remember vividly is his description of plate tectonics which was still a relatively new discovery. I remember some stories in the 6th grade Weekly Reader about the International Geophysical Year, 1956. One of the stories was about the sea floor spreading out from big cracks--a key piece of continental drift. As for the different types of rocks we were taught, not much remains. Plagioclase feldspar? the name stuck but the description didn't.
As you were.
Thanks for calling me out on that.
Sadly, "the extent of the law" may include capital punishment. I am against capital punishment for two reasons: #1, in the United States, at least, justice has been perverted in a significant number of convictions, including those of capital cases. The wrongfully convicted are sometimes exonerated by the hard work of a few justice groups. It's bad enough if someone spends 20 years in prison for a wrongful conviction. A wrongful execution is beyond appeal.
#2, execution is an unseemly activity for the state to engage in. Prison is punishment enough -- for life if need be, but in most cases, not that long. Now, I don't like the way states run their prisons either. People can become better in prison, no worse, but that takes a commitment to betterment. We don't have that, by and large. I don't like states running gambling operations, either, or if they so chose, any of the traditional rackets.
So, "they can hang twice" is a rhetorical flourish, not an action plan. Besides, I probably won't be around in 10 years, never mind 100. There is some comfort in getting closer to the end.
There is room for improvement in the justice system and it is constantly being evaluated, reviewed, analyzed. But to say that capital punishment shouldn't be part of the system because the justice system is not perfect is similar to saying we will not give every and each individual what they deserved because we don't have a perfect system. Desert is the main focus of punishment. In a philosophical argument, desert is a way of acknowledging a person as a moral agent.
Let me ask you, if capital punishment shouldn't be one of the choices of punishment because of an 'imperfect system', then why incarcerate criminals at all, as in life sentence, or twenty years in prison? Life sentence and capital punishments are both punishments based on desert. If you say we don't have a perfect system, then you should apply your objection to all types of punishment, not just capital punishment.
I wouldn't want to see someone incarcerated for twenty years if they don't deserved it.
Heck, I don't want to see anyone spend one year in jail at all.
Quoting BC
Oh really? Execution is an unseemly activity for the state to engage in? Who should deliver the execution then? The federal government? The City government?
What's missing in your point is that the State is made up of everybody -- including the voters. The state is made up of moral agents who decided that a capital punishment is an appropriate punishment for a given crime.
Quoting L'éléphant
I am not holding out for "perfection". What I say is that the justice system (particularly on the state level in certain states) is bad enough that irrevocable sentences (execution) should not be ordered. Evidently, some states are much worse than others when it comes to police and prosecutorial misbehavior and incompetence. Exoneration can only benefit the living.
Even if the Justice system were to be perfect, I am still against capital punishment. I do not believe it has the power to dissuade someone from committing a capital crime, because #1 murders are often committed in the heat of the moment when regard to consequences is low. #2 reason is that in our system, for better or worse, execution often occurs long after sentence is passed. This greatly dilutes any theoretical benefit of prevention.
"The State" of course is an abstraction and can't execute a fly. Executions are carried out by individuals working for the state. It is unseemly for the state to ask employees to carry out what are cold blooded murders. The employees may feel OK about it -- I don't actually know -- but the execution is definitely cold-blooded murder, by definition.
Minnesota has had several exoneration cases, recently, which freed men who had been in jail for up to 20 years. There is a tipping point -- varying by individual -- when the last exoneration becomes too many to put up with. I have not reached that point for imprisonment.
I don't think I am being sentimental about capital punishment. People die every day in unwholesome, perverse situations, killed by -- for lack of a better term -- deluded self-centered assholes. It makes me angry that these kinds of death occur, but society seems to be OK with it, as long as it isn't in their part of town. So far, in 78 years, I haven't personally known anyone shot down on the street.
I don't approve of capital punishment, along with an assortment of other things. I have no plans to personally do anything radical to stop it, like self-immolation on the steps of the prison.
The main purpose of any punishment is desert.
The philosophical justification for punishment desert. I did not invent this.
When I engaged with criminals, it seemed evident that the reason they did bad was that they did not know how to do better. Especially one young person broke my heart when he explained he was glad to be sent into the correctional system because he wanted to know how to do better, and he felt wronged when he learned our correctional system stopped at punishing.
To have a just correction system, we need knowledge of our nature and the importance of liberal education. Understanding human nature does not come from the Bible, despite what Christians believe.
I think the best information I came across came from a Bahi woman in Canada. She realized that just punishing children is not helpful unless they are taught what is right. She created virtue cards for teaching virtues and wrote a book to go with the cards.
I'll say AMEN to that.
I have been reading a history of Amsterdam, a place that invented and applied the term "liberal" back in the 16th century, and which has had a continuing influence on the city. Their liberal ideals were to become a significant element in western culture.