Empty education in America --- I remember we made maps in grammar school, colored them in nicely, labeled them. Belgian Congo: I always wondered, what was Belgium this little country in Europe, doing in Africa. I had to find out myself.
Because they never told us. American exceptionalism did not allow teaching too much about colonialism, the real rest of the world. So the maps were just another bullshit exercise.
I was at school in England and Sri Lanka.......wow did we have to work hard. Maps/Geography/World History/Poetry/literature Grammar/Biology/Chemistry/SCRIPTURE/Math/Latin.
Then my daughter was mostly educated in the US...............absolute shit learning and constant testing (which I think was when a lot of good teachers left)
Because American educators are treated as functionaries of the state and business. Can't teach truths, let alone skills, as little Johnny or Jenny might be triggered or overly challenged by actual history or science.
Plenty of teachers try to reject that role but face two hurdles -- standard curricula, which are definitely corporate functionaries as you so eloquently point out; and then the ire of colleagues for "rocking the boat". I saw it only from a short distance as college faculty trying to assist HS science teachers with curricula. It's a bloody jungle in there.
I’m not sure if this is relevant today, but parochial schools back in my time provided a far superior education than did public schools. Whether nuns or lay teachers, they made us WORK. Oh, and that terror of the nuns’ disapproval, lol.
When I’d completed tenth grade, the local Catholic high schools closed and consolidated into one large one, which happened to be on the opposite side of town where we lived, so I attended the local public high school for 11/12 grades. I saw the difference immediately when I signed up for third-year Spanish; it was exactly the same as second- year Spanish at St. Matt’s. I dropped the class.
And I actually wasn’t allowed to take a course called “Harlem Renaissance”. I wanted to read the Black writers and would have been the only non-Black in the class. But the school principal told me, The boys are gonna hit on you, and the girls are gonna want to beat you up.
Yes. Catholic Schools had a good reputation for actually teaching.
Sorry you went to such a hopeless High School.
My daughter had a wonderful Education at Primary School in our Canyon but then Junior High happened. One of the largest schools in LA School District with police on the campus.
Arrgh, penguins. They were usually better teachers, I admit. But they shoulda seasoned the younger ones before sending them out into the older grades, 6, 7, 8. Oh the stories I could tell. Sweet-faced Sister Christine, maybe 21, who thought she could single-handedly stop the 6th grade boys from smoking cigs behind the church. NOT!
Our public school system is labor intensive because it's 100% adultist; also known as 13 years of obedience training. Students must get permission from adult authority for literally everything they do. Teachers' unions like this because it generates maximum jobs but, ironically, it's a recipe for burnout. The cure is self-directed education, wherein children and teens design their own "curriculum." Because they have control over their own education in this model, they're happy and they learn infinitely better and most of the discipline problems disappear; teachers are facilitators, not cops or firefighters. There's no cure for our failed system as long as liberals and the left continue to believe the system is noble and necessary. It's not. It's thoroughly retrograde and critical to keeping us on the imperial path. It alienates so many of its captives to the point that they throw their support behind terribly regressive political movements. Those who don't merely believe, many for life, that math and reading and history are horrible. That is to say, these things suffer from their association with school. Sadly, the vast majority of critics of the system call it out for its miserable politics and service to empire, correctly, but not for the shitty way it treats young people. Talk about denial...
"as long as liberals and the left continue to believe the system is noble and necessary..."
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Of course a good public school system is "noble and necessary" but over the past 60 years the right has continually chipped away at the institution both from without and within. And if you think school vouchers and charter schools are going to fix the US education system, you're either a cult member of the rich/right or you've been lied to. At BEST vouchers are a coupon for already rich people who already send their kids to private schools. At worst, wait until thousands of poor people suddenly find out that their voucher isn't sufficient to cover their kids' tuition at the for-profit private school which replaced the public one that had to shut down, and they have to turn to Wall Street for a loan to get them through high school.
What's nonsense is jumping to the conclusion that I'm pro-voucher and that I was condemning the ideal of public education and not the system we have. You could have asked, "Do you mean to say public education is an ignoble idea?", but instead you saw an opportunity to rant against vouchers, about which I said NOTHING. So, for the record, my beef is with the industrial school system we have, not the idea of public funding of education. The system we have is a choice (largely molded by the education industry), not the inevitable way schooling has to be designed or managed. It is, in fact, anti-child, ineffective, and expensive, not to mention something of an international joke. The one thing you got right is that the system used to be more effective 60 years ago and prior (though it was never very child-friendly), but you don't appear to understand what happened. To remedy that, I recommend you read "Insult to Intelligence: The Bureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms," by Frank Smith. It's old and out of print but he lays out what happened well. The only other critic I know of who understood what Smith did was John Taylor Gatto, whose work would also bring you up to speed and which is easy to find. In his case, I suggest starting with "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling."
Great model, one guaranteeing maximal resistance from the established "order". There are compromises. A colleague and I used the TAPPS (thinking aloud pair problem solving) method in our large classes (supposedly "lecture halls") of 150-175 college freshman bio/chem integrated curriculum students, with both he and I (the chem and bio professors) and four or five grad students circulating through the hall to listen to the students converse. While it was hardly ideal, it was a wonderful dent in the status quo of passive "learning", and a great way of identifying misconceptions.
For physical science teachers, I also recommend Arnold Arons' book, A Guide to Introductory Physics Teaching, also a nice source of student misconceptions in physics.
Thanks for the link. I'll take a look....Self-directed education is definitely hostile to the status quo, which is why I advocate abandoning the school system instead of sinking another century into "reform." If the elites were smart, they'd ban homeschooling and flood the system with cash, since the more money it has the dumber it gets.
My guess is they have much more in common than you'd like to believe, at least from the perspective of young people, whose feelings don't tend to enter into adult considerations of whether a system is "good" or not. Certainly French schools are much more rigorous than those of the U.S., but there's still plenty of pressure and fear of failure put on students, and little decision-making power given them. At the end of the day, it's a conventional, western system with all the hierarchy, authoritarianism, and punitiveness of any other western school system.
Just saw this, gyp dear. This is why first class day, first semester freshman bio I saw so many duuh blank stares at the syllabus. And I thought: why are some of these folks here? But it was at least partly what you said -- many were shocked by what the workload expectations looked like.
At some point American public schools substituted "passages" for actual texts, and teachers became less and less capable of handling the latter. (It likely coincided with the entry of Big Education into the market in the 1960s. All you needed was a library before that--free; after, you were dependent upon the pablum coughed up the publishers--profitable.) I've seen a high school yearbook from a school in Texas which indicated that kids used to do work that would be considered advanced for college students today, and their extracurricular clubs couldn't be handled by grad students today. Palpable dumbing down that appears to have been no accident...
I never used a standard textbook in any course I taught, but rather gave students my "notes" and embedded in them questions for discussions via the TAPPS method I alluded to earlier. Standardized texts, in trying to be everything to everyone -- including performing to the satisfaction of the often prominent scientists on their advisory boards -- end up generally serving mostly publisher pockets. Never found a single one I l really liked. I'd put several on reserve in the library for students to reference, but no requirements to buy (some nervous ones did anyway). Re: what you describe, I'm not adequately familiar, so can't really comment, but I can see that many of my collegiate colleagues would have felt naked without a course textbook aligned with their syllabus.
Good for you, but then it sounds like you yourself got an actual education and so had the knowledge base to go outside the standardization model. I think that's key: that the more dumbed down the system gets, the less teachers who attended that system know and the more they have to lean into "guidance" from industrial sources. As for the scourge of "passages," I recall wanting to read my challenging library book in 5th grade in the 1970s (before the Department of Education was born) but being required to put it down to go do the SRA garbage from IBM. An unforgivable insult to my intelligence, it consisted of brain-dead passages (you'd have to TRY to make something so boring and meaningless) which I had to read and answer questions on. Utterly pointless, but...the district had signed a contract with IBM and so it had to put us all through this dumbed-down ordeal that stole many hours from actual learning from actual books. (If it's true that you value what you give attention to, kids are correct to take away from school that reading doesn't really matter: no time is given to it, no matter how much a kid just wants to curl up with a book.) It's one reason I caution against throwing more money at schools: they tend to waste it on admins and contracts for the corporations that fund the campaigns of our Congress critters. Kids? An afterthought on a good day. (The people who think the system was just GREAT before No Child's Behind Left are completely out to lunch, but then it does serve their political agenda, which appears to be the whole point.)
UK education for me, so to add .... Religious studies (for me = Christian), Physics, French and / or Spanish and of course gym and outside sports.
Funny you mention "constant testing" ... my 2 educated in the EU, seem to have non-stop testing as well, but what gets me even more is the fact that there results are out of 9 or 90% ... err what?
Hubris is essential to underpinning America's delusional sense of exceptionalism — that fiction it presented to the world deriving from a place of isolation on a continent so blessed with resources and relatively untouched by the genocided native population such that it made those Eighteenth-century framers of the Constitution drunk with grandiose visions. Anyway, that's the way it seems to me.
"Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away". That 8 bars of melody by Merry Clayton is one of the all time gems. And my fave Stones tune of all.
rockefeller education. upton sinclair: 'the schools are not maintained to educate the young, but to keep them from being educated, to keep them from thinking, and to keep them from knowing about the social and industrial order into which they are born.'
Thank you for that slice of history my friend. Yes, truth is never learned in the u.s. and an experience in France taught me that. Not long ago I was working at CERN and people would say things like Coke Cola behind my back. One day I turned and said Ben Franklin, all of that disappeared with them knowing the French had saved the u.s. Or so I like to think ha. They were a bit shocked I knew the real history including theirs ha.
I was surprised a bit with the interest in dialogue. Even many in my family in the u.s. aren't interested in discussion. Curious, how far down the hole do we in the u.s. go before people understand American (my Central and South American friends hate that reference) Exceptionalism ended a several decades or more ago?
They are so right to hate it. Do you know Ruben Blades' song "Buscando America" -- his theme exactly -- he does this rap about everybody born on the continent north to south is American. Great tune if you like salsa rock.
If you ever just want a laugh or a cry, just look up these videos on the internet about the Yanks and Geography .... OR ANY SUBJECT... it is so baffling, words fail me.
"Politics is the comedy wing of the military industrial complex" —Zappa
When Shakespeare sagely said that, "all the world is a stage", whether he meant that literally or not, it likely was then, and certainly is now, absolutely true. All the world really is a stage—The narratives (narratives are the most powerful mind weapons in our world) we are bathed in from birth to death are - more often than not - counterfeit, and these narratives are the product of a parallel construction of events on a planetary scale.
"The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s a the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”—Malcom X
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." —Former CIA Director William Colby (Operation Mockingbird)
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
...
In almost every act of our daily lives ... we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. " —Edward Bernays, the Father of Propaganda
Another well said statement. Countries that commit genocide are NOT good. People who commit genocide are NOT good. Countries like the US that enable genocide and pretend it isn't happening are NOT good. Period.
Eretz Israel was created by the British and American Empires, within the petroleum-rich British colony of Palestine that British seized from the Ottoman Empire.
Since the British Empire is essentially defunct, the American one has full control over Eretz Israel. Without ongoing patronage of the USA, Israel would have nearly no military power and certainly not enough to subdue the much greater population of Palestinians who have occupied their land for at least the past two millennia.
We grow up breathing in lies the way a fish drinks water, not because we are evil, but because deception is built into the system that raised us. Every institution that touches us — school, media, government — was engineered not to empower, but to subdue. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the oldest pattern of empire: shape the mind, and the body will follow.
It is terrifying to realize how much of what we believed was never ours. The harder truth is that waking up is only the beginning.
To really see the system is to feel it shatter inside you — the myths about good wars and bad enemies, the comforting illusion of free markets and benevolent leaders, the idea that cruelty is an accident rather than a feature.
Most people flinch at that first crack of cognitive dissonance and retreat. They want to believe in some part of the dream — an "honorable" military, a "necessary" war, a "bad" foreign enemy. Anything to avoid facing the void that opens when you stop believing. But the ones who walk through it — fully, trembling, furious, heartbroken — find the only thing worth finding: truth without anesthetic.
The courage to stop pretending is the first real breath you will ever take.
We are dying. Not someday, but now. The clock is not some distant thunder. It is beating under your skin.
And yet we waste our hours on pettiness, on resentments, on imaginary divisions. We waste it hating the wrong enemies, fragile and holy this absurd experience of living actually is.
Every grudge you carry is a handful of sand thrown into the only fire you will ever burn. Every moment spent hardening your heart is a moment ripped from the short, glittering dream of being alive.
The grave is not waiting somewhere far away. It is opening under your feet with every step.
And still — despite the terror, despite the futility — we could choose to reach out. We could choose to meet each other, in kindness, before the night falls.
>>"We grow up breathing in lies the way a fish drinks water, not because we are evil, but because deception is built into the system that raised us. Every institution that touches us — school, media, government — was engineered not to empower, but to subdue. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the oldest pattern of empire: shape the mind, and the body will follow."
I was told by the Catholic clergy that people loved one another, as our car rolled past homeless people on the way to the convent.. I was also informed that God loved us and that if we wanted Hid help all we had to was ask…mmmmm! I tried to ask His help one day when the local bully took my new bike for a ride.. but somehow He never showed up… Mmmmm? Must have prayed to the wrong Guy…
Survival is the only way out, because when you are dead nothing matters, unless of course we have mounted a white horse on the way to heaven… furthermore, if you are under a
Mushroom cloud, your survival time will be less than the time it takes for you to blink… so much for observing the event…
it's not just who you pray to that makes you free.
It’s where your prayer leans:
Into blindness — or into truth.
Some lean into fear.
Some lean into power.
Some lean into silence.
And a few lean into the fire — awake, unafraid, and unbroken.
We stand with them.
If you’re ever near the wrong bar with the wrong crowd,
we’ll save you a seat.
First round’s on us.
Here’s to the wrong prayers, the wrong gods, and the right kind of awake.
Think it through, God, so great that He got Daniel out of the Lions den, got Jonah out of that Whales belly, and if that wasn’t enough………He got Giligaaaaaan OFF THAT ISLAND!
it's not just who you pray to that makes you free.
It’s where your prayer leans:
Into blindness — or into truth.
Some lean into fear.
Some lean into power.
Some lean into silence.
And a few lean into the fire — awake, unafraid, and unbroken.
We stand with them.
If you’re ever near the wrong bar with the wrong crowd,
we’ll save you a seat.
First round’s on us.
Here’s to the wrong prayers, the wrong gods, and the right kind of awake.
Think it through, God, so great that He got Daniel out of the Lions den, got Jonah out of that Whales belly, and if that wasn’t enough………He got Giligaaaaaan OFF THAT ISLAND!
Is this you John? Just make sure I’m talking to the right John here.” I was told by the Catholic clergy that people loved one another, as our car rolled past homeless people on the way to the convent.. I was also informed that God loved us and that if we wanted Hid help all we had to was ask…mmmmm! I tried to ask His help one day when the local bully took my new bike for a ride.. but somehow He never showed up… Mmmmm? Must have prayed to the wrong Guy…”
Caitlin quoted Bukowski today at the end of her writing.
Quoting the same man, I would like to add another...."what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”.
Charles Bukowski
When you read comments every day following or based on the writings by someone like Caitlin, given time, you really start to feel that you know the writers. You often wonder the fires they may have been forced to walk through. Especially the radical commenters. A small comment here about an ethnic background; an historical event that has impacted someone positively or negatively; an opinion seemingly so extreme that you dismiss it as motivated by either hate or anger or misunderstanding. You do not write that person off as a radical but make a mental note to see what they say tomorrow, or next week.
You form a conclusion. It takes time. We have a most interesting cross section of responders.
Right now, we are all walking through Bukowski's fire, as above., some quickly, some slowly. Some feel the flame, some just a fraction of warmth while others wonder what all the fuss is about in the first place.................
.......and then, right in the middle of all this, someone does walk through the fire, literally, and this act forces one to read what he said...... you remember the man, so you read it again. For that person there are no more fires, he has run his race. Words like those are never to be forgotten. Now 14 months past....
A moral and extremely courageous man, Aaron Bushnell, said that he was protesting against "what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers" and declared that he "will no longer be complicit in genocide".
The world should read his words over and over again.
Thank-you for sharing that. you are an astute observer, perhaps one of the few who is capable of walking through the fire, not run madly screaming through it like most of us.
That you can also quote Bukowski sheds light on you, but that you remember Aaron Bushnell is such manner is paradoxical ,because in a sense in his determination to cease to be complicit he fled from the fight. I do not condone or condemn him, such is the enigma of being , to be simultaneously courageous and coward.
An act he thought would be of value .....and it was. His reasons, totally selfless for he gained nothing, but I, like thousands of others, will never forget his motivation.
Do the Zionists not believe their acts are of value? Belief is not material but bares so much weight on us, All beliefs which bring a life to end are for me tragedy,
I appreciate the comment, and I share your sentiment. However, just because you cannot conceive what another can does not negate their perceptions. I do understand how my use of a particular word may be uncomfortable for many, but then again, I am not "the many", I am just one person with my own view.
I can acknowledge the courage it takes to sacrifice one’s life for a cause while simultaneously recognizing the lack of courage in doing so. It takes courage to live, to endure, to fight. The people of Gaza do not set themselves aflame; they fight to live. They refuse to die willingly. The evil forces perpetuating this decades-long tragedy are not troubled by any death, in fact, they applaud when a dissenting voice silences itself.
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you're doing it. Right now.”
“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest — but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
these statements were not meant for the evil forces.
Perhaps in away yes, his voice is not silenced, if there are others such as yourself who make certain his words do not die. I myself can not reconcile this quandary, the contradictions remain all too tragic, thank-you for not letting his voice be silenced.
(2) Courage comes in many forms. There is (a) courage to sacrifice your life to make a statement or achieve an outcome (b) courage to tolerate unlivable conditions (mentally or physically).
To assert that 'to sacrifice one's life to make/induce a change in another's thinking and on the world' is not courageous would be a blatantly myopic perspective.
You may consider 'a suicide' to be an act lacking courage, but if you've had any experience with suicides (eg. working at a suicide hotline, or having a friend/loved one commit suicide) you would understand (and appreciate) other perspectives other than your own.
Yes , sadly many have taken their own lives. As for you second point, I will not waste your time, you have already identified I am deficient in comprehension skills.
For those of us who do recognize that what we have been taught is a lie, it can be lonely because other people just do not want to hear it or they act as if your mental health needs a fix. The lies help us to hate each other, even those that we care about if they do not see through the lies. Anger gives us energy and clarity and gets us moving. Hate stops us in our tracks and creates confusion.
The denial in the US population about their country is simply off the scale. This is why people like Biden and Trump keep getting elected and why the US is doomed, as there is basically zero accountability for D and R politicians.
"They are not bad because of their religion". And yet, all religions teach that their followers are special, and worth more, and will be favoured by whatever superstitious entity will bestow blessings, and wealth, and even eternal life. It is the selfish appeal of religion. Ordinary people are transformed in their own heads by them into ubermenschen, better than their neighbours, who they, like their god, can despise for believing wrong things. In an ethno-supremacist state like Israel, where unbelievers are openly called 'subhuman animals', it becomes the foundation upon which racism and bigotry are built. It underpins the notion that the untermenschen are fair game, that they can be genocided and ethnically cleansed because that's what the superstitious entity everyone believes exists will do anyway. As Steven Weinberg observed: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” We are all, most certainly, products of our conditioning, but in racist, bigoted, savage states like Israel, surely it is not unreasonable to accept that religion plays an awful part in the dehumanising process? The Israeli lobby, after all, had not the slightest qualm about insisting Islam is evil. The world bought it, the media went along for the ride, politicians just added the lie to their repertoire. Surely the religion that today facilitates the shredding of infants, in refugee camps where they were promised they would be safe, and the anal gang raping of doctors to death, and a catalog of other atrocities, should be recognised for its part in the brutalisation of a people and, to a depressing extent, the world?
It's why I always tell people I am an perpetual "cheerleader", always rooting, for the complete eradication of organized religion itself... which has absolutely nothing to do with whether one believes, or doesn't believe, or isn't sure about, some type of existence of a "god", and how we got here, what our individual and collective purpose(s) is/are... basically, philosophy in general... which seems only natural for all of us humans to start wondering about, somewhere around the time of our own personal awareness of existence on this planet.
Assuming our species can make it thru the next hundred or maybe two hundred years or so (which is highly questionable, perhaps doubtful), without blowing ourselves up with nukes, or perhaps killing ourselves with climate destruction (or something like that), I really don't see the whole concept of organized religion making it another couple hundred years. We (us commenters) won't be around to see its slow eradication but at least it's an encouraging thought (to me anyway). And then hopefully replaced with some type of logical, far less destructive (less tribalistic), form of collective bonding.
The probability of belief in God and religions being around forever is very high (if one reads enough world history - including from a cultural and anthropologistical perspective).
Humans are creatures of storytelling - of myths, of narratives. That is how humans have evolved to think. And the belief in God and religions (irrespective of my atheist beliefs) has always been the primary narratives at the core of human civilizations (regardless of technological advancements or science).
Hence, it would be folly to underestimate the staying power of such beliefs.
I often really like many of your comments, and find them very thought-provoking but this one, not so much.
While I agree that a belief in some type of a "god" may be around a very long time, maybe forever (assuming we don't some how discover a better, or scientific, answer to big questions like.. how/why we're here, etc?), I purposely disconnected the issues of a "belief in a god" and organized "religion". One does not have to be religious at all to have a belief in some type of god (personally, I have no idea what I believe, in that respect.. some times I do, sometimes I don't, sometimes on the fence, depends upon the day I guess... and it rarely, if ever, comes into play in my life).
I think your use of "folly" might be kind of a strong word to use in this regard, as there seems to be quite a bit of current data supporting the idea of "declining religious affiliation", irrespective of any "cultural and anthropological perspective". But this does make me wonder about any new data regarding a belief in some type of god. I'll have to see if there is any new research on that.
If I had to guess, I would say that (even though the percentage of humans with "religious affiliations and observance" seems to be declining), the percentage of humans believing in some type of a god, higher power, etc (whatever anyone wants to label it), has probably not fluctuated much over the fairly recent years, like maybe last 50 or 100 or so(?) perhaps (because the two are different issues, and also... it seems to me to make perfect sense to believe, or not believe, or to be on the fence, about some type of a god... at least until/if we've somehow managed to arrive at some type of definitive answer).
>>"(assuming we don't some how discover a better, or scientific, answer to big questions like.. how/why we're here, etc?)"
But that's precisely the point that you miss - it's not about the science (or facts, etc.). That's why it's called having 'FAITH' - it's a belief system that doesn't need science/logic/etc. to support it.
>>"current data supporting the idea of "declining religious affiliation", irrespective of any "cultural and anthropological perspective""
I've never come across any COMPREHENSIVE data (current or otherwise) that has accurately been able to gauge the world-wide (8 billion+) support of beliefs in God or religion. For instance, if you consider religiosity of a country like India (1.5 billion), it has only increased in the last 30+ years. I would be HIGHLY suspicious of ANY data that makes ANY claims in ANY direction.
Also, new religions (especially new-age religions) are cropping up all the time all over the place. What you seem to miss (and Yuval Noah Harari is a good source on this), is that humans are creatures of stories/narratives/myths/etc. and religions are a primary source of such stories and storytelling - they often serve as the threads that bind human societies together.
I would suggest taking a more comprehensive view of religion (and its impact on human civilizations) instead of considering it under myopic facets if you wish to understand the role religion has played in the past and will CONTINUE to play in human societies into the future (rightly or wrongly).
Just a cursory search, produced this result which seems to suggest that religious affiliation is declining in the U.S. and Western nations (whether Pew Research can be considered reliable, I don't know?):
I will still always root for the demise of organized religion, and in this particular case (although I very often find your perspectives really interesting, and thought-provoking), this time, I do not find your position too compelling because it doesn't seem to me that it takes into consideration the rapid increase in the rate of science/technology development (a measure which I think will also affect religious affiliation percentage).
Anyway, I'm going to hang onto my original "opinion" about the eventual demise of organized (god-based) religion (which is the only point that my initial comment was trying to make) because I have not read anything in these comments to feel otherwise (irrespective of your position that one needs to have a "comprehensive" view of religion to make a prediction about its future... whatever you may mean by "comprehensive", or whether that is even possible to have), or to refute other articles/research I have read.
(1) Comprehensive means (a) not limited to just the US or the West, but global in nature (b) not limited to small slices of time but rather larger periods of history and social movements (c) means how religions affect even the most basic of human interactions (religions are a largest source of morality - rightly or wrongly) (d) how religions and religious beliefs affect all areas of study - politics, science, sociology, economics (eg. behavioral economics), psychology, and so much more...
(2) You do understand that the Earth holds 8+ billion people right? And that the US (and the West) are but a minority of this population. So any 'insights' about religion based on a minority of the population is inherently inaccurate.
(3) You obviously do not understand even the fundamentals of religion - it is NOT based on facts/science/etc. It's a BELIEF SYSTEM. What do you find so difficult to understand about that? Yet you keep harping about 'science/technology/new information/etc.' as if that has much of an impact on religions. If anything, that would have an impact on 'the belief about the existence of God', and religions have always found novel ways to ignore any such objections to the existence of God.
(4) You seem to have missed my point about the data collection and analytics and their limitations/biases/etc. for studies that point to either an increase or decrease of participation in religious beliefs. To wit, it is impossible to accurately sample 8 billion+ people to arrive at a definitive conclusion as to the increase/decrease of religious participation globally.
Your response contains a few strawman arguements ->
(1) You conveniently try to limit the scope to just the US and the West
(2) You disregard religions and religious organizations and institutions that are not based on God (eg. nontheistic religions like Buddhism, Christian atheism, nontheist Quakers, Jainism, Taoism). Many of these nontheistic religions share the same problems as the theistic religions that you seem to have issues with (and rightly so).
(3) Your opinion of my comments (past) is irrelevant to this discussion (but thank you for trying to use flattery to buttress your argument).
As I said before, your knowledge of 'religions' seems to be severely limited. Hence I suggest understanding religions of the world (current and throughout history) so that you understand better the subject that you are trying to have a discussion on and are able to make more informed arguments (or you can talk to people that have a background in religious studies for gaining a better perspective).
>>"But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
That's a logically fallacious statement (I understand it was made for rhetorical effect and not on the basis of logical validity or truth).
Good people can do evil things for many reasons (just as sometimes evil people do good things) besides religion. How about money, survival, self-interest, exploitation in the name of Captialism, and so many more reasons that have nothing to do with religion?
As I've said before, (https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/not-taking-a-position-on-gaza-is/comment/111311323), "Religion is often the scapegoat - the excuse - that people use to justify WHATEVER they want. NO religion supports Genocide. NO religion supports killing innocent people. But people will interpret religions in ways that support their goals - be it power, money, control, fame, whatever."
Mr. Weinberg's simple point, it seems to me, is that religion has an extraordinary capacity to allow people to feel good about themselves whilst committing acts of evil. With their god ladling love upon them, the religious can worship themselves whilst doing unspeakable things. See Israelis. It is precisely this that makes it such a valuable manipulator's tool. But: a scapegoat? Do you mean there would be no genocide or ethnic cleansing of Palestine if there were no religion? Surely the answer must be: probably? The atrocities in Palestine are more than a land grab, they are being done specifically and overtly in the name of a people who define themselves via religion, in order to rid the land of people they see as 'subhuman animals' because of religion. Israelis want land, their manipulators use religion to make them feel good about the inhuman means they use to steal it. Their most brutal battalions are the fundamentalist ones. The 'not in my name' protesters recognise this, and are rightly disgusted that their religion has been hijacked. Apparently quite a few religions teach that the world would be a much better place without unbelievers - does this mean religions actually do support genocide? Finally: surely no truly Good person would do evil for the love of money, survival, self-interest, exploitation in the name of Capitalism, etc? Good people put others first, even sometimes sacrificing themselves for the good of others, they don't rip them off, steal from them, or starve them to death. Whereas religious people certainly do.
It's been the system since the first city states set up their first absolute rulers. Might makes right. We're just witnessing it on a grand scale. Something the world has been doing to one another for centuries. Most world changing inventions started out as better weapons of war that were reinvented for a peaceful product once it wasn't needed for war for a bit. Think chariots and spears. Horses, bows and arrows and so on throughout history. Now, the clouds of arrows that armies used to throw at one another have been upgraded to jet fueled missiles. Catapults with rocks have become artillery shells. But, despite all of the upgrades, humans are still killing each other over resources that a stronger tribe wants and decides that their ability to out muscle the other tribe gives them the right to decimate the other tribes and take what they want. Nothing has changed in the frontal lobes of the human brain dating back to when the first tribes of men decided that they were better than the neanderthals they encountered and decided that the neanderthals had to go. There was no room on the planet for a species of human that seemed to be a lessor human version.
We are seeing the modern version of that in Palestine right now. In Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. We saw this back in the early 1990's when the Serbs decided that the Croats were a lesser human and decided that they all had to go away. We have seen this time and time again throughout history and Palestine won't be the last. We're watching another flare up between Pakistan and India right now. The Hindus of India has always considered the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh inferior. The difference now, is that both of these countries have nukes and short tempers.
Again, it's the systems. The systems that forge these tribal identities, which lead to tribal wars because might makes right.
Humans are such a flawed species and always will be until that domination instinct in the frontal lobe finally is mutated out. Or a better version of the species evolves without it someday way in the future.
Somewhat agree, except the part about the Serbs/Croats. The Serbs were trying to keep the multicultural Yugoslavia together, the EU/Germans wanted to break the country apart so they could feast on the pieces, and backed - as they so often do - nationalist fascist and racialist elements to that end.
Milosevic won his court cases against him, and he was poisoned before he could start the spill the beans once he was released. Tudjman however was kept far away from a trial; because his hands were as bloody as Nuttyahoos.
The region is still in turmoil today due to this utterly cynical manoeuvre, although once Russia liberates Odessa, Serbia will be able to join BRICS and have a direct trade route through the Danube.
I'm afraid the situation with the Hindus and Pakistanis is that they BOTH see themselves as superior, and once again Britain has done all that it can to stir up trouble between them for its own Imperial ends. India is mainly at fault in the current situation, especially in Kashmir, but don't think that Pakistan has clean hands either. As the Pakistani defence minister admitted recently, their hands WERE behind many terror attacks; and the West behind them. Ditto, needless to say, many equal Indian atrocities and who encouraged those.
The domination system may never go away, it is mammalian hardwired; but a wise society is wise because it has learned to bend that instinct into socially-beneficial acts and systems: the West has done the opposite, and created a system where that instinct is revelled in, for a small caste 'elite'.
We are not perfect creatures, nor ever will be in any realistic timeframe. But we COULD realise this imperfection, and turn it to society's benefit as a whole, rather than a small number's.
I agree wholeheartedly. We can do better. We actually have on occasion. As for the tribal divisions, I also agree with you, in that the imperialist west has had a hand in almost every instance of these wars. Britain especially, with the U.S. playing their second cousins in the background. I'm more concerned over this latest statement by the Pakistani Railroad minister threatening to lob nukes at India. I hope some cooler, saner heads will prevail here.
Both sides do that each time they have a conflict, last time I was in India (2002 if memory serves, but around then), they were also at the brink of war, and all the Indian media were gung ho about how Pakistan was about to be vaporised.
I remember holding court to a large group of young Indian men after a meditation practise, trying to get them to understand that this isn't just a "Big Bomb", that it would destroy and poison the sacred land for many, many generations to come, after some of them expressed their willingness to go that far. The whole 'Duck and cover' childhood messaging, etc. Being in and around Mumbai for the period I was there was somewhat nerve-wracking, as along with New Delhi this was absolutely Ground Zero.
Would Western deepstate 'influencers' try to instigate such a catastrophe to undermine BRICS? I wouldn't put a single penny against that bet.
And frankly, Indian and Pakistani leadership (Sans Imran Khan, and a few in India too) are as bad as our own. All we can do is pray wiser council prevails.
And that is the crux of it all. Someone, probably someone in the west, is stirring things up in Afghanistan again amongst the Pashto and, by proxy, some of the other factions who are poor and hungry. The tensions between the Muslims and Hindus goes back centuries but they have been stirred up once again because someone stands to gain from it. I want to believe that the cooler heads will prevail once again and things will eventually dial back to the low simmer its always been. Here's hoping.
I heard recently that Russia has just formally recognised the Taliban, which, at least historically, was a Pashtun based group. And the Taliban are very interested in the BRI, which is going to require stability across the area/region. Fingers crossed the Taliban leadership can impose enough discipline, and can crack down on the various western fronts, such as the AQ and IS groups, that mainly cause all the trouble.
(As a side note, the Talib dignitaries that visited Moscow were very impressed by the Russian women - that alone may well cause more social change for women in Afghanistan than every single Western bomb and bullet).
Modi's behaviour is almost guaranteeing future conflicts, with his treatment within India of minorities especially Muslims, and the unilateral revocation of Kashmir's Special Status, and the ethnic-cleansing he initiated there.
And as it seems every time the local Muslims will fight back against these outrages, Pakistan is going to be blamed (From the playbook of Israel's blaming of Iran), I fear it's going to take a miracle.
But they do happen, from time to time.
I'm one of those that thinks "Hope" was the cruellest release from the box by Pandora, but sometimes that's all we have left. xxx
I remember reading about that delegation visiting Moscow as well. I lived in Konduz as a special operations soldier in 2002 (the kind with no uniforms) and learned first hand all of the lies the western governments were telling everyone back home in the west. Although I despised the Taliban for their strict Sharia laws, I was awed by the way the people adapted and shrugged their shoulders. They are a very resilient people. I miss some of my comrades I worked with there. I often wonder what has happened to them after all of these years.
I'm afraid you're right about Modi and that scares me a little. He is always looking for an excuse to pick on the Muslims and this may be the spark he wants. I hope not because the Muslims will fight back if pushed too hard and things could escalate quickly with factions from around the region running to joint the new fight. I can see Al Qaeda factions and Daesh factions running down there to join up. Not something anyone wants. At least the sane ones anyway. Let's keep our fingers crossed that things will settle down in the coming days.
maybe not the diversity (tribes and peoples developing seperately adapted to their particular material circumstances) as such, but the system will indeed insert animosity, belligerence, competition to prepare exploitation.
That's when everything started. When media demonized the Serbs, they still did to eventually justify American "humanitarian" intervention. No different than what they are doing with Russia. Sheesh.
I agree, but the survivalist in me hopes that this happens long after I'm worm food. I don't wish to endure a world depopulating event while I'm still above ground. I've seen enough bad things from humanity in my life. I'm tired and just want to try and ride out the rest of my life in relative peace. I won't get that but I hope for the best anyway.
And I share that conviction entirely. I'd prefer not to see the worst of human behaviour up close. Russia had many advantages during the collapse of the USSR that we simply don't have. A wise person would have gotten out several years back - I've known this was coming for over 20 years. But I'm a Fool, always have been. Corbyn was the last chance to derail this process in the UK - the Establishment destroyed him. Now it's a waiting game.
I agree. Plus add the most devastating words ever written: that God created humans in his image and gave them dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the livestock, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. ...
If it wasn't so depressing, I'd recommend you a book by Steve Nicholls called "Paradise Found." If you are an animal lover, don't read it.
Philosophical, Caitlin. Thank you for making some sense of this world. (I fear that communism is no better than the rest.; after all, craven men/mostly men get involved.) "We get a short time here, and then we’re gone."). My go-to: The mass of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation; kudos to HDThoreau.
Empty education in America --- I remember we made maps in grammar school, colored them in nicely, labeled them. Belgian Congo: I always wondered, what was Belgium this little country in Europe, doing in Africa. I had to find out myself.
Because they never told us. American exceptionalism did not allow teaching too much about colonialism, the real rest of the world. So the maps were just another bullshit exercise.
I was at school in England and Sri Lanka.......wow did we have to work hard. Maps/Geography/World History/Poetry/literature Grammar/Biology/Chemistry/SCRIPTURE/Math/Latin.
Then my daughter was mostly educated in the US...............absolute shit learning and constant testing (which I think was when a lot of good teachers left)
Because American educators are treated as functionaries of the state and business. Can't teach truths, let alone skills, as little Johnny or Jenny might be triggered or overly challenged by actual history or science.
Plenty of teachers try to reject that role but face two hurdles -- standard curricula, which are definitely corporate functionaries as you so eloquently point out; and then the ire of colleagues for "rocking the boat". I saw it only from a short distance as college faculty trying to assist HS science teachers with curricula. It's a bloody jungle in there.
I saw and lived it in many modes over many years. It's a jungle alright, wherein even Tarzan might likely not survive.
Certainly the teachers were not teaching much at that time. Mostly they were policing a huge class and getting kids ready for the next test!
My daughter was bored to death and then kept skipping school which NOT one teacher told me, until she did herself.
Yep: it's mainly policing and a factory model.
Oh my god the hours the days I was bored and deprived of!!!
Hi Jenny
I’m not sure if this is relevant today, but parochial schools back in my time provided a far superior education than did public schools. Whether nuns or lay teachers, they made us WORK. Oh, and that terror of the nuns’ disapproval, lol.
When I’d completed tenth grade, the local Catholic high schools closed and consolidated into one large one, which happened to be on the opposite side of town where we lived, so I attended the local public high school for 11/12 grades. I saw the difference immediately when I signed up for third-year Spanish; it was exactly the same as second- year Spanish at St. Matt’s. I dropped the class.
And I actually wasn’t allowed to take a course called “Harlem Renaissance”. I wanted to read the Black writers and would have been the only non-Black in the class. But the school principal told me, The boys are gonna hit on you, and the girls are gonna want to beat you up.
Sigh…1970! 🙄
Yes. Catholic Schools had a good reputation for actually teaching.
Sorry you went to such a hopeless High School.
My daughter had a wonderful Education at Primary School in our Canyon but then Junior High happened. One of the largest schools in LA School District with police on the campus.
Hi Jenny
I did have a wonderful art teacher there. Thing is, I didn’t NEED an art teacher!
Arrgh, penguins. They were usually better teachers, I admit. But they shoulda seasoned the younger ones before sending them out into the older grades, 6, 7, 8. Oh the stories I could tell. Sweet-faced Sister Christine, maybe 21, who thought she could single-handedly stop the 6th grade boys from smoking cigs behind the church. NOT!
Vin, we were Catholics, not angels 😉
Our public school system is labor intensive because it's 100% adultist; also known as 13 years of obedience training. Students must get permission from adult authority for literally everything they do. Teachers' unions like this because it generates maximum jobs but, ironically, it's a recipe for burnout. The cure is self-directed education, wherein children and teens design their own "curriculum." Because they have control over their own education in this model, they're happy and they learn infinitely better and most of the discipline problems disappear; teachers are facilitators, not cops or firefighters. There's no cure for our failed system as long as liberals and the left continue to believe the system is noble and necessary. It's not. It's thoroughly retrograde and critical to keeping us on the imperial path. It alienates so many of its captives to the point that they throw their support behind terribly regressive political movements. Those who don't merely believe, many for life, that math and reading and history are horrible. That is to say, these things suffer from their association with school. Sadly, the vast majority of critics of the system call it out for its miserable politics and service to empire, correctly, but not for the shitty way it treats young people. Talk about denial...
"as long as liberals and the left continue to believe the system is noble and necessary..."
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Of course a good public school system is "noble and necessary" but over the past 60 years the right has continually chipped away at the institution both from without and within. And if you think school vouchers and charter schools are going to fix the US education system, you're either a cult member of the rich/right or you've been lied to. At BEST vouchers are a coupon for already rich people who already send their kids to private schools. At worst, wait until thousands of poor people suddenly find out that their voucher isn't sufficient to cover their kids' tuition at the for-profit private school which replaced the public one that had to shut down, and they have to turn to Wall Street for a loan to get them through high school.
Well said Tom!
What's nonsense is jumping to the conclusion that I'm pro-voucher and that I was condemning the ideal of public education and not the system we have. You could have asked, "Do you mean to say public education is an ignoble idea?", but instead you saw an opportunity to rant against vouchers, about which I said NOTHING. So, for the record, my beef is with the industrial school system we have, not the idea of public funding of education. The system we have is a choice (largely molded by the education industry), not the inevitable way schooling has to be designed or managed. It is, in fact, anti-child, ineffective, and expensive, not to mention something of an international joke. The one thing you got right is that the system used to be more effective 60 years ago and prior (though it was never very child-friendly), but you don't appear to understand what happened. To remedy that, I recommend you read "Insult to Intelligence: The Bureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms," by Frank Smith. It's old and out of print but he lays out what happened well. The only other critic I know of who understood what Smith did was John Taylor Gatto, whose work would also bring you up to speed and which is easy to find. In his case, I suggest starting with "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling."
“Liberals” and “left” weren’t necessary as both sides have contributed to a poor offering. ✌🏻
Great model, one guaranteeing maximal resistance from the established "order". There are compromises. A colleague and I used the TAPPS (thinking aloud pair problem solving) method in our large classes (supposedly "lecture halls") of 150-175 college freshman bio/chem integrated curriculum students, with both he and I (the chem and bio professors) and four or five grad students circulating through the hall to listen to the students converse. While it was hardly ideal, it was a wonderful dent in the status quo of passive "learning", and a great way of identifying misconceptions.
https://www.uwlax.edu/globalassets/offices-services/catl/teaching-guides/group-learning-materials/think-aloud-pair-problem-solving.pdf
For physical science teachers, I also recommend Arnold Arons' book, A Guide to Introductory Physics Teaching, also a nice source of student misconceptions in physics.
Thanks for the link. I'll take a look....Self-directed education is definitely hostile to the status quo, which is why I advocate abandoning the school system instead of sinking another century into "reform." If the elites were smart, they'd ban homeschooling and flood the system with cash, since the more money it has the dumber it gets.
Nothing like doing what you are learning is there : )
First thing we should do is stop exporting our school system to the rest of the world. https://carolblack.org/schooling-the-world
We certainly don't have your school system here in France.
My guess is they have much more in common than you'd like to believe, at least from the perspective of young people, whose feelings don't tend to enter into adult considerations of whether a system is "good" or not. Certainly French schools are much more rigorous than those of the U.S., but there's still plenty of pressure and fear of failure put on students, and little decision-making power given them. At the end of the day, it's a conventional, western system with all the hierarchy, authoritarianism, and punitiveness of any other western school system.
Every school in France students have to do Philosophy. This means 'critical thinking.'
Is there a synopsis or 'book report' version? I don't have time to watch an hour long film at the moment, and a summary would be appreciated.
oh the stupidity of American
schools sports teams hamburgers politicians,
it's endless
Hi Jenny
My daughter attended what was considered a pretty good public school.
Thing is: she NEVER had homework. When I inquired about it, she said, Oh they give us time in class to do it.
Huh. Guess that’s why it’s called “HOMEwork.” Nd the teachers clearly didn’t want to spend the entire period actually, er, teaching.
It left her totally unprepared for the workload of college.
Just saw this, gyp dear. This is why first class day, first semester freshman bio I saw so many duuh blank stares at the syllabus. And I thought: why are some of these folks here? But it was at least partly what you said -- many were shocked by what the workload expectations looked like.
At some point American public schools substituted "passages" for actual texts, and teachers became less and less capable of handling the latter. (It likely coincided with the entry of Big Education into the market in the 1960s. All you needed was a library before that--free; after, you were dependent upon the pablum coughed up the publishers--profitable.) I've seen a high school yearbook from a school in Texas which indicated that kids used to do work that would be considered advanced for college students today, and their extracurricular clubs couldn't be handled by grad students today. Palpable dumbing down that appears to have been no accident...
I never used a standard textbook in any course I taught, but rather gave students my "notes" and embedded in them questions for discussions via the TAPPS method I alluded to earlier. Standardized texts, in trying to be everything to everyone -- including performing to the satisfaction of the often prominent scientists on their advisory boards -- end up generally serving mostly publisher pockets. Never found a single one I l really liked. I'd put several on reserve in the library for students to reference, but no requirements to buy (some nervous ones did anyway). Re: what you describe, I'm not adequately familiar, so can't really comment, but I can see that many of my collegiate colleagues would have felt naked without a course textbook aligned with their syllabus.
Good for you, but then it sounds like you yourself got an actual education and so had the knowledge base to go outside the standardization model. I think that's key: that the more dumbed down the system gets, the less teachers who attended that system know and the more they have to lean into "guidance" from industrial sources. As for the scourge of "passages," I recall wanting to read my challenging library book in 5th grade in the 1970s (before the Department of Education was born) but being required to put it down to go do the SRA garbage from IBM. An unforgivable insult to my intelligence, it consisted of brain-dead passages (you'd have to TRY to make something so boring and meaningless) which I had to read and answer questions on. Utterly pointless, but...the district had signed a contract with IBM and so it had to put us all through this dumbed-down ordeal that stole many hours from actual learning from actual books. (If it's true that you value what you give attention to, kids are correct to take away from school that reading doesn't really matter: no time is given to it, no matter how much a kid just wants to curl up with a book.) It's one reason I caution against throwing more money at schools: they tend to waste it on admins and contracts for the corporations that fund the campaigns of our Congress critters. Kids? An afterthought on a good day. (The people who think the system was just GREAT before No Child's Behind Left are completely out to lunch, but then it does serve their political agenda, which appears to be the whole point.)
UK education for me, so to add .... Religious studies (for me = Christian), Physics, French and / or Spanish and of course gym and outside sports.
Funny you mention "constant testing" ... my 2 educated in the EU, seem to have non-stop testing as well, but what gets me even more is the fact that there results are out of 9 or 90% ... err what?
I don't know how old you are: Times have changed since I was educated in the Great British Empire.
Close to 60.
Way below me in age.
I envy you and your age.
American exceptionalism or American hubris. One leads to the other. Other countries have it too, except America’s is … well … exceptional.
Hubris is essential to underpinning America's delusional sense of exceptionalism — that fiction it presented to the world deriving from a place of isolation on a continent so blessed with resources and relatively untouched by the genocided native population such that it made those Eighteenth-century framers of the Constitution drunk with grandiose visions. Anyway, that's the way it seems to me.
So the 2nd Empire dies.
Good riddance to both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPoj7hVLR1s
"Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away". That 8 bars of melody by Merry Clayton is one of the all time gems. And my fave Stones tune of all.
lol Vin…
Mine is “Street Fighting Man”, which Mick Jagger wrote while he was in Paris during a riot. He admired that about the French!
Gems aglow in dark times.
rockefeller education. upton sinclair: 'the schools are not maintained to educate the young, but to keep them from being educated, to keep them from thinking, and to keep them from knowing about the social and industrial order into which they are born.'
Thank you for that slice of history my friend. Yes, truth is never learned in the u.s. and an experience in France taught me that. Not long ago I was working at CERN and people would say things like Coke Cola behind my back. One day I turned and said Ben Franklin, all of that disappeared with them knowing the French had saved the u.s. Or so I like to think ha. They were a bit shocked I knew the real history including theirs ha.
What, no grumbling, "Yanqui go home?"
I was surprised a bit with the interest in dialogue. Even many in my family in the u.s. aren't interested in discussion. Curious, how far down the hole do we in the u.s. go before people understand American (my Central and South American friends hate that reference) Exceptionalism ended a several decades or more ago?
They are so right to hate it. Do you know Ruben Blades' song "Buscando America" -- his theme exactly -- he does this rap about everybody born on the continent north to south is American. Great tune if you like salsa rock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgxVhDgFBGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRh1zXFKC_o
Empty ?.... understatement of the year.
Africa . . . no, that's a continent. Amazing, but not really. Ya think you coulda gotten say . . . Canada, numnutz?
If you ever just want a laugh or a cry, just look up these videos on the internet about the Yanks and Geography .... OR ANY SUBJECT... it is so baffling, words fail me.
A laugh in the short term, but a cry, a lament for the state of the society in the long run, I'd say.
Yep, me too. My kids over here, had a couple of times per year, for each of the following:
1. Meet an immigrant and hug them.
2. Meet an LGBT (had to wear purple to school) and hug them.
Could not believe it.. but strangely enough they were ill ON ALL DAYS,
....
Also this "Common Core" education is madness... check this out, well search "common core math examples with answers".
Yeah, the entire circus makes me dizzy. Speechless as a former educator.
"Politics is the comedy wing of the military industrial complex" —Zappa
When Shakespeare sagely said that, "all the world is a stage", whether he meant that literally or not, it likely was then, and certainly is now, absolutely true. All the world really is a stage—The narratives (narratives are the most powerful mind weapons in our world) we are bathed in from birth to death are - more often than not - counterfeit, and these narratives are the product of a parallel construction of events on a planetary scale.
"The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s a the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”—Malcom X
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." —Former CIA Director William Colby (Operation Mockingbird)
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
...
In almost every act of our daily lives ... we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. " —Edward Bernays, the Father of Propaganda
Much more on this narrative control mind matrix here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/counterfeit-continuity-in-our-fourth
"Israel is a bad country full of bad people."
Another well said statement. Countries that commit genocide are NOT good. People who commit genocide are NOT good. Countries like the US that enable genocide and pretend it isn't happening are NOT good. Period.
Eretz Israel was created by the British and American Empires, within the petroleum-rich British colony of Palestine that British seized from the Ottoman Empire.
Since the British Empire is essentially defunct, the American one has full control over Eretz Israel. Without ongoing patronage of the USA, Israel would have nearly no military power and certainly not enough to subdue the much greater population of Palestinians who have occupied their land for at least the past two millennia.
for Period, you can use pads with wings... to prevent bleeding onto trousers. Period.
That was an asinine comment. What the fuck is wrong with you?
If you want to discuss female biology, go elsewhere.
Um, nope. Period.
No problem: stay here and make an ass of yourself, dickhead.
We grow up breathing in lies the way a fish drinks water, not because we are evil, but because deception is built into the system that raised us. Every institution that touches us — school, media, government — was engineered not to empower, but to subdue. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the oldest pattern of empire: shape the mind, and the body will follow.
It is terrifying to realize how much of what we believed was never ours. The harder truth is that waking up is only the beginning.
To really see the system is to feel it shatter inside you — the myths about good wars and bad enemies, the comforting illusion of free markets and benevolent leaders, the idea that cruelty is an accident rather than a feature.
Most people flinch at that first crack of cognitive dissonance and retreat. They want to believe in some part of the dream — an "honorable" military, a "necessary" war, a "bad" foreign enemy. Anything to avoid facing the void that opens when you stop believing. But the ones who walk through it — fully, trembling, furious, heartbroken — find the only thing worth finding: truth without anesthetic.
The courage to stop pretending is the first real breath you will ever take.
We are dying. Not someday, but now. The clock is not some distant thunder. It is beating under your skin.
And yet we waste our hours on pettiness, on resentments, on imaginary divisions. We waste it hating the wrong enemies, fragile and holy this absurd experience of living actually is.
Every grudge you carry is a handful of sand thrown into the only fire you will ever burn. Every moment spent hardening your heart is a moment ripped from the short, glittering dream of being alive.
The grave is not waiting somewhere far away. It is opening under your feet with every step.
And still — despite the terror, despite the futility — we could choose to reach out. We could choose to meet each other, in kindness, before the night falls.
It is the only thing left that matters.
Yes, we are born into an ocean of lies,
no more aware than fish in water.
Deception is our trade.
Lies are our mortar.
We build everything with it.
The younger generations are our apprentices.
It’s not a conspiracy theory.
It’s older than empire.
Gladiators. Bread. Circus.
Win the crowd.
Keep them afraid.
It always works.
Dare to wake up
It might tear you apart.
Easier to go back to sleep.
Easier to live with the ignorance of bliss
than to live with the agony of knowing.
But if you do awaken,
behold: there are islands of truth.
Growing a spine, learning to stand
it’s an evolution.
It takes courage, conviction,
and an immense amount of time.
If you find yourself ashore on an island of reality,
build carefully.
Mix your mortar with only truth.
For the ocean's tidal forces are great,
and the waves of lies are relentless.
Whatever is built with lies
will be washed away.
👏👏👏 Deep, and so much to reflect on. Thank you!
>>"We grow up breathing in lies the way a fish drinks water, not because we are evil, but because deception is built into the system that raised us. Every institution that touches us — school, media, government — was engineered not to empower, but to subdue. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the oldest pattern of empire: shape the mind, and the body will follow."
💯 Well said!
I was told by the Catholic clergy that people loved one another, as our car rolled past homeless people on the way to the convent.. I was also informed that God loved us and that if we wanted Hid help all we had to was ask…mmmmm! I tried to ask His help one day when the local bully took my new bike for a ride.. but somehow He never showed up… Mmmmm? Must have prayed to the wrong Guy…
They taught us to believe in a love that never had any skin in the game.
It's easier to preach kindness from behind locked doors than to bleed for a stranger on the street.
Some prayers were never meant to be answered — they were meant to wake us up.
If the 12,000 nuclear warheads ready to be dropped on our loving ways don’t “wake us up”, nothing ever will.
Maybe survival isn't the real test.
Maybe the real test is whether we can wake up — even if survival isn't guaranteed.
If the world ends in flames, better to be awake enough to witness it for what it is, than to sleep through the final lie.
Survival is the only way out, because when you are dead nothing matters, unless of course we have mounted a white horse on the way to heaven… furthermore, if you are under a
Mushroom cloud, your survival time will be less than the time it takes for you to blink… so much for observing the event…
Even if the blink is all we get, it matters whether we blink awake or asleep.
Survival is a moment. Awareness is a choice.
Even if the blink is all we get, it matters whether we blink awake or asleep.
Survival is a moment. Awareness is a choice.
Even if the blink is all we get, it matters whether we blink awake or asleep.
Survival is a moment. Awareness is a choice.
Wrong prayer.
Right prayer, wrong prayer, god or God —
it's not just who you pray to that makes you free.
It’s where your prayer leans:
Into blindness — or into truth.
Some lean into fear.
Some lean into power.
Some lean into silence.
And a few lean into the fire — awake, unafraid, and unbroken.
We stand with them.
If you’re ever near the wrong bar with the wrong crowd,
we’ll save you a seat.
First round’s on us.
Here’s to the wrong prayers, the wrong gods, and the right kind of awake.
Think it through, God, so great that He got Daniel out of the Lions den, got Jonah out of that Whales belly, and if that wasn’t enough………He got Giligaaaaaan OFF THAT ISLAND!
Or wrong God….
Right prayer, wrong prayer, god or God —
it's not just who you pray to that makes you free.
It’s where your prayer leans:
Into blindness — or into truth.
Some lean into fear.
Some lean into power.
Some lean into silence.
And a few lean into the fire — awake, unafraid, and unbroken.
We stand with them.
If you’re ever near the wrong bar with the wrong crowd,
we’ll save you a seat.
First round’s on us.
Here’s to the wrong prayers, the wrong gods, and the right kind of awake.
Think it through, God, so great that He got Daniel out of the Lions den, got Jonah out of that Whales belly, and if that wasn’t enough………He got Giligaaaaaan OFF THAT ISLAND!
God is a male according to your descriptions. …. He ??? Who would have thought God would choose to be a male? Patriarchy at work in heaven ???
Is this you John? Just make sure I’m talking to the right John here.” I was told by the Catholic clergy that people loved one another, as our car rolled past homeless people on the way to the convent.. I was also informed that God loved us and that if we wanted Hid help all we had to was ask…mmmmm! I tried to ask His help one day when the local bully took my new bike for a ride.. but somehow He never showed up… Mmmmm? Must have prayed to the wrong Guy…”
Caitlin quoted Bukowski today at the end of her writing.
Quoting the same man, I would like to add another...."what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”.
Charles Bukowski
When you read comments every day following or based on the writings by someone like Caitlin, given time, you really start to feel that you know the writers. You often wonder the fires they may have been forced to walk through. Especially the radical commenters. A small comment here about an ethnic background; an historical event that has impacted someone positively or negatively; an opinion seemingly so extreme that you dismiss it as motivated by either hate or anger or misunderstanding. You do not write that person off as a radical but make a mental note to see what they say tomorrow, or next week.
You form a conclusion. It takes time. We have a most interesting cross section of responders.
Right now, we are all walking through Bukowski's fire, as above., some quickly, some slowly. Some feel the flame, some just a fraction of warmth while others wonder what all the fuss is about in the first place.................
.......and then, right in the middle of all this, someone does walk through the fire, literally, and this act forces one to read what he said...... you remember the man, so you read it again. For that person there are no more fires, he has run his race. Words like those are never to be forgotten. Now 14 months past....
A moral and extremely courageous man, Aaron Bushnell, said that he was protesting against "what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers" and declared that he "will no longer be complicit in genocide".
The world should read his words over and over again.
Thank-you for sharing that. you are an astute observer, perhaps one of the few who is capable of walking through the fire, not run madly screaming through it like most of us.
That you can also quote Bukowski sheds light on you, but that you remember Aaron Bushnell is such manner is paradoxical ,because in a sense in his determination to cease to be complicit he fled from the fight. I do not condone or condemn him, such is the enigma of being , to be simultaneously courageous and coward.
Tre Peperoncini
An act he thought would be of value .....and it was. His reasons, totally selfless for he gained nothing, but I, like thousands of others, will never forget his motivation.
Reason enough for Aaron..
Let his name, like Rachel Corrie’s, never be forgotten, Con.
Do the Zionists not believe their acts are of value? Belief is not material but bares so much weight on us, All beliefs which bring a life to end are for me tragedy,
there is no way i can conceive of him as a coward. he did not flee the fight, imo.
I appreciate the comment, and I share your sentiment. However, just because you cannot conceive what another can does not negate their perceptions. I do understand how my use of a particular word may be uncomfortable for many, but then again, I am not "the many", I am just one person with my own view.
I can acknowledge the courage it takes to sacrifice one’s life for a cause while simultaneously recognizing the lack of courage in doing so. It takes courage to live, to endure, to fight. The people of Gaza do not set themselves aflame; they fight to live. They refuse to die willingly. The evil forces perpetuating this decades-long tragedy are not troubled by any death, in fact, they applaud when a dissenting voice silences itself.
his voice is not silenced. i'll quote him again:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you're doing it. Right now.”
“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest — but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
these statements were not meant for the evil forces.
Perhaps in away yes, his voice is not silenced, if there are others such as yourself who make certain his words do not die. I myself can not reconcile this quandary, the contradictions remain all too tragic, thank-you for not letting his voice be silenced.
>>"The people of Gaza do not set themselves aflame; they fight to live. They refuse to die willingly."
I feel compelled to contradict you on these assertions ->
(1) Suicides in Gaza have increased post Oct.7 (https://rebelmouthedbooks.squarespace.com/blog/2024/5/8/suicide-in-gaza-an-invisible-arm-of-genocide). Not everyone can maintain their sanity and mental health in a Genocide perpetrated by Israel - the likes of which have not been experienced since WW2.
(2) Courage comes in many forms. There is (a) courage to sacrifice your life to make a statement or achieve an outcome (b) courage to tolerate unlivable conditions (mentally or physically).
To assert that 'to sacrifice one's life to make/induce a change in another's thinking and on the world' is not courageous would be a blatantly myopic perspective.
You may consider 'a suicide' to be an act lacking courage, but if you've had any experience with suicides (eg. working at a suicide hotline, or having a friend/loved one commit suicide) you would understand (and appreciate) other perspectives other than your own.
Yes , sadly many have taken their own lives. As for you second point, I will not waste your time, you have already identified I am deficient in comprehension skills.
>>"As for you second point, I will not waste your time, you have already identified I am deficient in comprehension skills."
Thank you, I appreciate that.
For those of us who do recognize that what we have been taught is a lie, it can be lonely because other people just do not want to hear it or they act as if your mental health needs a fix. The lies help us to hate each other, even those that we care about if they do not see through the lies. Anger gives us energy and clarity and gets us moving. Hate stops us in our tracks and creates confusion.
The denial in the US population about their country is simply off the scale. This is why people like Biden and Trump keep getting elected and why the US is doomed, as there is basically zero accountability for D and R politicians.
Corporate imperialist muppet Team R Tweedledee or corporate imperialist muppet Team D Tweedledum.
Remember, Muh Democracy Is At Stake.
Thank you Caitlin! Much love and solidarity as always ❤️
"They are not bad because of their religion". And yet, all religions teach that their followers are special, and worth more, and will be favoured by whatever superstitious entity will bestow blessings, and wealth, and even eternal life. It is the selfish appeal of religion. Ordinary people are transformed in their own heads by them into ubermenschen, better than their neighbours, who they, like their god, can despise for believing wrong things. In an ethno-supremacist state like Israel, where unbelievers are openly called 'subhuman animals', it becomes the foundation upon which racism and bigotry are built. It underpins the notion that the untermenschen are fair game, that they can be genocided and ethnically cleansed because that's what the superstitious entity everyone believes exists will do anyway. As Steven Weinberg observed: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” We are all, most certainly, products of our conditioning, but in racist, bigoted, savage states like Israel, surely it is not unreasonable to accept that religion plays an awful part in the dehumanising process? The Israeli lobby, after all, had not the slightest qualm about insisting Islam is evil. The world bought it, the media went along for the ride, politicians just added the lie to their repertoire. Surely the religion that today facilitates the shredding of infants, in refugee camps where they were promised they would be safe, and the anal gang raping of doctors to death, and a catalog of other atrocities, should be recognised for its part in the brutalisation of a people and, to a depressing extent, the world?
Very well said.
It's why I always tell people I am an perpetual "cheerleader", always rooting, for the complete eradication of organized religion itself... which has absolutely nothing to do with whether one believes, or doesn't believe, or isn't sure about, some type of existence of a "god", and how we got here, what our individual and collective purpose(s) is/are... basically, philosophy in general... which seems only natural for all of us humans to start wondering about, somewhere around the time of our own personal awareness of existence on this planet.
Assuming our species can make it thru the next hundred or maybe two hundred years or so (which is highly questionable, perhaps doubtful), without blowing ourselves up with nukes, or perhaps killing ourselves with climate destruction (or something like that), I really don't see the whole concept of organized religion making it another couple hundred years. We (us commenters) won't be around to see its slow eradication but at least it's an encouraging thought (to me anyway). And then hopefully replaced with some type of logical, far less destructive (less tribalistic), form of collective bonding.
The probability of belief in God and religions being around forever is very high (if one reads enough world history - including from a cultural and anthropologistical perspective).
Humans are creatures of storytelling - of myths, of narratives. That is how humans have evolved to think. And the belief in God and religions (irrespective of my atheist beliefs) has always been the primary narratives at the core of human civilizations (regardless of technological advancements or science).
Hence, it would be folly to underestimate the staying power of such beliefs.
I often really like many of your comments, and find them very thought-provoking but this one, not so much.
While I agree that a belief in some type of a "god" may be around a very long time, maybe forever (assuming we don't some how discover a better, or scientific, answer to big questions like.. how/why we're here, etc?), I purposely disconnected the issues of a "belief in a god" and organized "religion". One does not have to be religious at all to have a belief in some type of god (personally, I have no idea what I believe, in that respect.. some times I do, sometimes I don't, sometimes on the fence, depends upon the day I guess... and it rarely, if ever, comes into play in my life).
I think your use of "folly" might be kind of a strong word to use in this regard, as there seems to be quite a bit of current data supporting the idea of "declining religious affiliation", irrespective of any "cultural and anthropological perspective". But this does make me wonder about any new data regarding a belief in some type of god. I'll have to see if there is any new research on that.
If I had to guess, I would say that (even though the percentage of humans with "religious affiliations and observance" seems to be declining), the percentage of humans believing in some type of a god, higher power, etc (whatever anyone wants to label it), has probably not fluctuated much over the fairly recent years, like maybe last 50 or 100 or so(?) perhaps (because the two are different issues, and also... it seems to me to make perfect sense to believe, or not believe, or to be on the fence, about some type of a god... at least until/if we've somehow managed to arrive at some type of definitive answer).
>>"(assuming we don't some how discover a better, or scientific, answer to big questions like.. how/why we're here, etc?)"
But that's precisely the point that you miss - it's not about the science (or facts, etc.). That's why it's called having 'FAITH' - it's a belief system that doesn't need science/logic/etc. to support it.
>>"current data supporting the idea of "declining religious affiliation", irrespective of any "cultural and anthropological perspective""
I've never come across any COMPREHENSIVE data (current or otherwise) that has accurately been able to gauge the world-wide (8 billion+) support of beliefs in God or religion. For instance, if you consider religiosity of a country like India (1.5 billion), it has only increased in the last 30+ years. I would be HIGHLY suspicious of ANY data that makes ANY claims in ANY direction.
Also, new religions (especially new-age religions) are cropping up all the time all over the place. What you seem to miss (and Yuval Noah Harari is a good source on this), is that humans are creatures of stories/narratives/myths/etc. and religions are a primary source of such stories and storytelling - they often serve as the threads that bind human societies together.
I would suggest taking a more comprehensive view of religion (and its impact on human civilizations) instead of considering it under myopic facets if you wish to understand the role religion has played in the past and will CONTINUE to play in human societies into the future (rightly or wrongly).
Just a cursory search, produced this result which seems to suggest that religious affiliation is declining in the U.S. and Western nations (whether Pew Research can be considered reliable, I don't know?):
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/12/21/key-findings-from-the-global-religious-futures-project/
Btw, I found this Slate article from many years ago, "An Agnostic Manifesto", very interesting (and perhaps you might as well): https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/06/the-rise-of-the-new-agnostics.html
I will still always root for the demise of organized religion, and in this particular case (although I very often find your perspectives really interesting, and thought-provoking), this time, I do not find your position too compelling because it doesn't seem to me that it takes into consideration the rapid increase in the rate of science/technology development (a measure which I think will also affect religious affiliation percentage).
Anyway, I'm going to hang onto my original "opinion" about the eventual demise of organized (god-based) religion (which is the only point that my initial comment was trying to make) because I have not read anything in these comments to feel otherwise (irrespective of your position that one needs to have a "comprehensive" view of religion to make a prediction about its future... whatever you may mean by "comprehensive", or whether that is even possible to have), or to refute other articles/research I have read.
Some issues you seem to have missed/ignored ->
(1) Comprehensive means (a) not limited to just the US or the West, but global in nature (b) not limited to small slices of time but rather larger periods of history and social movements (c) means how religions affect even the most basic of human interactions (religions are a largest source of morality - rightly or wrongly) (d) how religions and religious beliefs affect all areas of study - politics, science, sociology, economics (eg. behavioral economics), psychology, and so much more...
(2) You do understand that the Earth holds 8+ billion people right? And that the US (and the West) are but a minority of this population. So any 'insights' about religion based on a minority of the population is inherently inaccurate.
(3) You obviously do not understand even the fundamentals of religion - it is NOT based on facts/science/etc. It's a BELIEF SYSTEM. What do you find so difficult to understand about that? Yet you keep harping about 'science/technology/new information/etc.' as if that has much of an impact on religions. If anything, that would have an impact on 'the belief about the existence of God', and religions have always found novel ways to ignore any such objections to the existence of God.
(4) You seem to have missed my point about the data collection and analytics and their limitations/biases/etc. for studies that point to either an increase or decrease of participation in religious beliefs. To wit, it is impossible to accurately sample 8 billion+ people to arrive at a definitive conclusion as to the increase/decrease of religious participation globally.
Your response contains a few strawman arguements ->
(1) You conveniently try to limit the scope to just the US and the West
(2) You disregard religions and religious organizations and institutions that are not based on God (eg. nontheistic religions like Buddhism, Christian atheism, nontheist Quakers, Jainism, Taoism). Many of these nontheistic religions share the same problems as the theistic religions that you seem to have issues with (and rightly so).
(3) Your opinion of my comments (past) is irrelevant to this discussion (but thank you for trying to use flattery to buttress your argument).
As I said before, your knowledge of 'religions' seems to be severely limited. Hence I suggest understanding religions of the world (current and throughout history) so that you understand better the subject that you are trying to have a discussion on and are able to make more informed arguments (or you can talk to people that have a background in religious studies for gaining a better perspective).
>>"But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
That's a logically fallacious statement (I understand it was made for rhetorical effect and not on the basis of logical validity or truth).
Good people can do evil things for many reasons (just as sometimes evil people do good things) besides religion. How about money, survival, self-interest, exploitation in the name of Captialism, and so many more reasons that have nothing to do with religion?
As I've said before, (https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/not-taking-a-position-on-gaza-is/comment/111311323), "Religion is often the scapegoat - the excuse - that people use to justify WHATEVER they want. NO religion supports Genocide. NO religion supports killing innocent people. But people will interpret religions in ways that support their goals - be it power, money, control, fame, whatever."
Mr. Weinberg's simple point, it seems to me, is that religion has an extraordinary capacity to allow people to feel good about themselves whilst committing acts of evil. With their god ladling love upon them, the religious can worship themselves whilst doing unspeakable things. See Israelis. It is precisely this that makes it such a valuable manipulator's tool. But: a scapegoat? Do you mean there would be no genocide or ethnic cleansing of Palestine if there were no religion? Surely the answer must be: probably? The atrocities in Palestine are more than a land grab, they are being done specifically and overtly in the name of a people who define themselves via religion, in order to rid the land of people they see as 'subhuman animals' because of religion. Israelis want land, their manipulators use religion to make them feel good about the inhuman means they use to steal it. Their most brutal battalions are the fundamentalist ones. The 'not in my name' protesters recognise this, and are rightly disgusted that their religion has been hijacked. Apparently quite a few religions teach that the world would be a much better place without unbelievers - does this mean religions actually do support genocide? Finally: surely no truly Good person would do evil for the love of money, survival, self-interest, exploitation in the name of Capitalism, etc? Good people put others first, even sometimes sacrificing themselves for the good of others, they don't rip them off, steal from them, or starve them to death. Whereas religious people certainly do.
Rod:
As well as the concept of “Manifest Destiny”.
“And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love…” William Blake
Truly sublime, Caitlin. You should wax philosophical more often...
Jai Ma
It's been the system since the first city states set up their first absolute rulers. Might makes right. We're just witnessing it on a grand scale. Something the world has been doing to one another for centuries. Most world changing inventions started out as better weapons of war that were reinvented for a peaceful product once it wasn't needed for war for a bit. Think chariots and spears. Horses, bows and arrows and so on throughout history. Now, the clouds of arrows that armies used to throw at one another have been upgraded to jet fueled missiles. Catapults with rocks have become artillery shells. But, despite all of the upgrades, humans are still killing each other over resources that a stronger tribe wants and decides that their ability to out muscle the other tribe gives them the right to decimate the other tribes and take what they want. Nothing has changed in the frontal lobes of the human brain dating back to when the first tribes of men decided that they were better than the neanderthals they encountered and decided that the neanderthals had to go. There was no room on the planet for a species of human that seemed to be a lessor human version.
We are seeing the modern version of that in Palestine right now. In Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. We saw this back in the early 1990's when the Serbs decided that the Croats were a lesser human and decided that they all had to go away. We have seen this time and time again throughout history and Palestine won't be the last. We're watching another flare up between Pakistan and India right now. The Hindus of India has always considered the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh inferior. The difference now, is that both of these countries have nukes and short tempers.
Again, it's the systems. The systems that forge these tribal identities, which lead to tribal wars because might makes right.
Humans are such a flawed species and always will be until that domination instinct in the frontal lobe finally is mutated out. Or a better version of the species evolves without it someday way in the future.
Somewhat agree, except the part about the Serbs/Croats. The Serbs were trying to keep the multicultural Yugoslavia together, the EU/Germans wanted to break the country apart so they could feast on the pieces, and backed - as they so often do - nationalist fascist and racialist elements to that end.
Milosevic won his court cases against him, and he was poisoned before he could start the spill the beans once he was released. Tudjman however was kept far away from a trial; because his hands were as bloody as Nuttyahoos.
The region is still in turmoil today due to this utterly cynical manoeuvre, although once Russia liberates Odessa, Serbia will be able to join BRICS and have a direct trade route through the Danube.
I'm afraid the situation with the Hindus and Pakistanis is that they BOTH see themselves as superior, and once again Britain has done all that it can to stir up trouble between them for its own Imperial ends. India is mainly at fault in the current situation, especially in Kashmir, but don't think that Pakistan has clean hands either. As the Pakistani defence minister admitted recently, their hands WERE behind many terror attacks; and the West behind them. Ditto, needless to say, many equal Indian atrocities and who encouraged those.
The domination system may never go away, it is mammalian hardwired; but a wise society is wise because it has learned to bend that instinct into socially-beneficial acts and systems: the West has done the opposite, and created a system where that instinct is revelled in, for a small caste 'elite'.
We are not perfect creatures, nor ever will be in any realistic timeframe. But we COULD realise this imperfection, and turn it to society's benefit as a whole, rather than a small number's.
I agree wholeheartedly. We can do better. We actually have on occasion. As for the tribal divisions, I also agree with you, in that the imperialist west has had a hand in almost every instance of these wars. Britain especially, with the U.S. playing their second cousins in the background. I'm more concerned over this latest statement by the Pakistani Railroad minister threatening to lob nukes at India. I hope some cooler, saner heads will prevail here.
Both sides do that each time they have a conflict, last time I was in India (2002 if memory serves, but around then), they were also at the brink of war, and all the Indian media were gung ho about how Pakistan was about to be vaporised.
I remember holding court to a large group of young Indian men after a meditation practise, trying to get them to understand that this isn't just a "Big Bomb", that it would destroy and poison the sacred land for many, many generations to come, after some of them expressed their willingness to go that far. The whole 'Duck and cover' childhood messaging, etc. Being in and around Mumbai for the period I was there was somewhat nerve-wracking, as along with New Delhi this was absolutely Ground Zero.
Would Western deepstate 'influencers' try to instigate such a catastrophe to undermine BRICS? I wouldn't put a single penny against that bet.
And frankly, Indian and Pakistani leadership (Sans Imran Khan, and a few in India too) are as bad as our own. All we can do is pray wiser council prevails.
And that is the crux of it all. Someone, probably someone in the west, is stirring things up in Afghanistan again amongst the Pashto and, by proxy, some of the other factions who are poor and hungry. The tensions between the Muslims and Hindus goes back centuries but they have been stirred up once again because someone stands to gain from it. I want to believe that the cooler heads will prevail once again and things will eventually dial back to the low simmer its always been. Here's hoping.
I heard recently that Russia has just formally recognised the Taliban, which, at least historically, was a Pashtun based group. And the Taliban are very interested in the BRI, which is going to require stability across the area/region. Fingers crossed the Taliban leadership can impose enough discipline, and can crack down on the various western fronts, such as the AQ and IS groups, that mainly cause all the trouble.
(As a side note, the Talib dignitaries that visited Moscow were very impressed by the Russian women - that alone may well cause more social change for women in Afghanistan than every single Western bomb and bullet).
Modi's behaviour is almost guaranteeing future conflicts, with his treatment within India of minorities especially Muslims, and the unilateral revocation of Kashmir's Special Status, and the ethnic-cleansing he initiated there.
And as it seems every time the local Muslims will fight back against these outrages, Pakistan is going to be blamed (From the playbook of Israel's blaming of Iran), I fear it's going to take a miracle.
But they do happen, from time to time.
I'm one of those that thinks "Hope" was the cruellest release from the box by Pandora, but sometimes that's all we have left. xxx
I remember reading about that delegation visiting Moscow as well. I lived in Konduz as a special operations soldier in 2002 (the kind with no uniforms) and learned first hand all of the lies the western governments were telling everyone back home in the west. Although I despised the Taliban for their strict Sharia laws, I was awed by the way the people adapted and shrugged their shoulders. They are a very resilient people. I miss some of my comrades I worked with there. I often wonder what has happened to them after all of these years.
I'm afraid you're right about Modi and that scares me a little. He is always looking for an excuse to pick on the Muslims and this may be the spark he wants. I hope not because the Muslims will fight back if pushed too hard and things could escalate quickly with factions from around the region running to joint the new fight. I can see Al Qaeda factions and Daesh factions running down there to join up. Not something anyone wants. At least the sane ones anyway. Let's keep our fingers crossed that things will settle down in the coming days.
the divisions (serb/croat, pakistan/India) are not completely 'natural'. the system exploits them.
the system creates them in the first place.
Exploitation comes afterward.
maybe not the diversity (tribes and peoples developing seperately adapted to their particular material circumstances) as such, but the system will indeed insert animosity, belligerence, competition to prepare exploitation.
That's when everything started. When media demonized the Serbs, they still did to eventually justify American "humanitarian" intervention. No different than what they are doing with Russia. Sheesh.
Humanitarian bombs dropped from 40,000ft onto women and children. And a cackling narcissist psychopath or two to gloat about it to media afterwards.
Hi Terrance
This is one instance in which I disagree with Caitlin.
Humanity ( and I use that word loosely) must be vomited out by Mother Nature as the scourge that it is.
Only then will this beautiful planet flourish.
I agree, but the survivalist in me hopes that this happens long after I'm worm food. I don't wish to endure a world depopulating event while I'm still above ground. I've seen enough bad things from humanity in my life. I'm tired and just want to try and ride out the rest of my life in relative peace. I won't get that but I hope for the best anyway.
:'D :'D
-- You say "Worm-food" too!
And I share that conviction entirely. I'd prefer not to see the worst of human behaviour up close. Russia had many advantages during the collapse of the USSR that we simply don't have. A wise person would have gotten out several years back - I've known this was coming for over 20 years. But I'm a Fool, always have been. Corbyn was the last chance to derail this process in the UK - the Establishment destroyed him. Now it's a waiting game.
I agree. Plus add the most devastating words ever written: that God created humans in his image and gave them dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the livestock, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. ...
If it wasn't so depressing, I'd recommend you a book by Steve Nicholls called "Paradise Found." If you are an animal lover, don't read it.
"We are funneled through carefully crafted factories of conditioning by the malignant systems under which we live."
A sad truth beautifully said.
Philosophical, Caitlin. Thank you for making some sense of this world. (I fear that communism is no better than the rest.; after all, craven men/mostly men get involved.) "We get a short time here, and then we’re gone."). My go-to: The mass of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation; kudos to HDThoreau.
empire (only) fears communism, because it knows if it people see how it succeeds, it's over for empire.
”A government of the richest people, by the richest people, for the richest people will perish the earth.” Dartwill Aquila
Such a long, long time to be gone, but a short time to be there…