The World according to Wally (Part II)
According to the opinions voiced during Part I, the concensus was reached (under people posting their true intent and not just clowning around) that if people would just be aware of what was happening and what the consequences of their actions were: Things would change.
While I have hope for humankind . . . it comes with footnotes.
People are too egocentric, even if the basic facts and figures of what is happening right now were common knowledge the average human would choose to ignore that in light of a more immediate concern: Dinner. And if not dinner, mortgage payments. Replacement of the car. If you are Massai: enlarging the herde so one can have more wives. I, before the world. The “Weath of Nations”, arguably the most influential book with regards to Capitalist economies states that with regards to his work any man acts only out of self interest. To put a meager (and not the best, that’s your job) quote in here: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” Now, I do not know if this was ever the case with humans, and I’m pretty sure it does’t apply everywhere. But whether it was or has become true it can be recognized everywhere now.
So, this is what we have to change. Hell, even Smith himself already argued against an economy based purely on “For the greaterglory of I”
OK, let’s run with the idea. Better education is never a bad thing. And it may lead to new leaders, which, concidering humans have this idiotic hero worship thing going on, may be the best hope for us. It will also convert an X number of people. People in a position to change, may change. And, like stated in part I People who have changed will influence other people.
But: How does one get a better understanding of what is going on in the world. How does one teach children the extent of their impact on the world around us. It is not simply a matter of stating that we have to change. We have to know how to change. And knowing how to change depends largely on the influences upon us.
What is the inpact of:
* Schooling
* Home situation
* Religion
* Culture
The very definition of what constitutes a better world differs in each person and even if the same facts and figures that make some people cry out in frustration are available to everyone, people will come to different conclusions and some/most will fail to see what the fuss is about.
Now, to get back to the bit you’ll be posting on: “If more people would be aware of their actions, things will change”. Now, how would these aspects of thought forming listed above require one to go about achieving such enlightenment among ones fellow citizens.
In Part I, the snowball effect was stated. Things need to change gradually (not that we won’t find something to do about all the cows if we “reached enlightenment” en mass tomorrow)
This is where my footnotes come into play.
We are playing a game with a time limit.
A strict time limit. There are currently 800 million people hungry in the world. As in: below UN set standards for the bare minimum of living. There is currently much cultureal/political/religious diversity in the world. People who percieve that they are being oppressed (wether true or not) often strike out. People who have no food, but see rich company excecutives drive through will throw stones. And many of the cultureal/political/religious diversity come with guns. Some of them BIG guns.
While it has been stated that “as long as I’m still around afterwards I don’t much care about how things get done” this view comes with the drawback that if certain key parts get taken during whatever will reduce our numbers, we won’t be living in a mostly human free paradise, but a nice nuclear winter.
I’d much prefer to walk a less violent path. And I’m sure a great many other people do to.
So, not only do we have to get people to become aware of the world around us. But we have to do it fast.
Our hope lies in 2 things. Ourselves, and our children.
We can teach ourselves to be better humans than we are now. With study, self consciousness and objective reasoning we can look at our postition in the world, our impact upon it and change it if we choose. But the vision we will get depends on where we come from. The 4 impacts listed above (and there’s more of them) have shaped how we look at the world. How we perceive our rights and wrongs. They have even shaped the vision we will come to when pondering our future.
The view we will arrive at wil not be purely that of one of these influences. Or, even that could be.
And once we reach the vision of what we need. And once we have acted upon what we need to do. Those same influences will still be around when we try to impart our wisdom(or lack thereof) on our children.
How does one handle these influences. And how does one navigate these murky waters to a more enlightened outlook on life. And once we have reached this state. How do we prevent these same influences of spoiling our best hope for the future. How does one wield them, use them, and forge from them: a better tomorrow.
And most importantly: How do we do it before we blow ourselves up.
Same rules apply as last time, though I’m adding “no Ad hominem“
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All political, socio-economic, philosofy bullshiitake aside
This is what I did today. I had my first actual shooting in 弓道. This is the result of my first arrow
I would hereby like to announce my retirement from the world of Japanese archery
Seriously, I’m never going to equal this. Why try
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Quote of the day:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one
- MIke Godwin
It is difficult to fully apprehend what you write. My English is not so fully developed as yours. But when I read your statement I get back some hope for the future, for you can’t be the onlyone thinking along those lines.
Beiing aware of the consequences of ones actions not only for now, but also for the future of our childres is not an easy task. I try to keep it small, at home, at work etc. and be aware of the choises I make. We will talk about these things, when we are in Japan. Can hardly wait.
Ina
Corollary to Godwin’s law : whoever is first to mention nazism or Hitler is considered to have lost the debate by forfeit.
Here’s the little something I wrote between 2 technical drawings. More to come, unless we solve the problem this week-end.
I’ll start by addressing the beginning of your post, your “we need to change capitalism presto” comment. If, as you suggest, we’re working under a tight deadline, making the revolution in the process may be a little too time-consuming. I think we can still make major changes under the capitalist system.
When you buy – or refuse to buy – a product, you’re not only considering the pure technical characteristics of said product. That’s a well-known fact, from marketing experts to boycott activists, and sadly something many engineers have a hard time wrapping their head around. Businesses sell business practices, ethics, commitments. American Apparel does not sell sweat-shop-free clothes out of benevolence. Lush does not sell vegan, non animal-tested products out of benevolence. Your local co-op did not stop providing plastic bags out of benevolence. That factory in Shimane did not fund a wild life sanctuary out of benevolence. Of course it’s not all pure marketing. Of course the decision-makers believe in what they are doing, or so I hope. But they can do so in a sustainable manner because they have a market for it.
So : a few people have ideals, businesses notice the new niche, more people notice the new product, learn about said ideals and can support them more easily since products are available already.
I know that consumerism is far from being a perfect approach to many problems, especially environmental. But bear in mind that we can include in that list our consumption of books, documentaries, podcasts, whatever.
It’s another version of the snowball effect, complementing word of mouth or education, enabling it on larger scales. It has the advantage of working fine and fast in the world as we know it.
The religion angle is tricky. In my opinion what the various different churches should go through is something similar to what the Japanese emperor went through when confronted with McArthur.
They must admit to not be god.
They represent a view, a fairly decent view in most cases, of the world. And how to be a good person in this world. However, they assume to have the monopoly in viewing the world correctly. The church is made up of individuals. Individuals are human and therefore fallible. To accept the word of a human blindly would be folly. To reject criticism outright would be folly in any situation.
I myself would not hesitate to remove religion for myself, but I know it fills an important role in our society, many people use their belief for many different ends. To deal with hardship, to sustain hope. Faith can be a very powerful force in someone’s life. It could be used to shape a better tomorrow. Unfortunately they don’t have the best track records regarding abuse of power. Any organisation that big has a level of corruption. A sad truth of humanity.
Children have a higher amount of immersion in school than religion (unless the school is religious of course) and this can therefore influence a child’s development greatly. The effect of school can be subdivided. Teachers, as it is ultimately these individuals who relay most information. The system and teaching aids, as the teacher won’t always be speeching and you will be doing some stuff solo. Your classmates, as important as your teacher to learn from are your classmates, as outside of school they live in a different world and one can learn a lot from that.
So with all these influences one has to look at the type of school, get to know the teachers and look at the community it serves. How does one make sure your kid gains a wider view of the world while it can as likely get a bad teacher and those kids we introduced our little baby to ended up being very ethnic little bitches.
The engineer in me wants to control the input of the different variables. But that is hard to do in today’s society.
One could homeschool, but who really has time for that. Besides, that would deprive your kid of all the multicultural and social benefits of going to school.
So you will just have to trust your kid to have the strength and moral fibre to make the right decisions and recognise the greater truth from all the individual things we are taught. This can of course be helped by the home situation. Schools, if properly chosen should not corrupt one (too badly). Schools improperly chosen can do about the same damage as a cozy little cult.
The home situation. Whether referring to the raising of a child or of oneself, one should strive to make this as open as possible. As well informed as possible. With internet nowadays one can find whatever fact one wants, including many many lies. The trick with regards to kids is that you should not grant your children the freedom to make the right decisions and guide them exclusively to your conclusions. One should accept that total freedom in choice leads one’s children to depression and wrong lifestyles. It would be nice if they learned the same lessons we did without getting hurt. But we learned those lessons because we got hurt. And neither will they truly learn ‘till then.
Obsessions should be avoided. Blind veganism (to touch close to one of the posters) as much as career chasing or religious zealotry is dangerous. The home is a place of rest, of balance. And it is the place where one should always be able to discuss stuff. Many homes are none of these things. A place to feel safe is crucial in ones study for self-improvement, to safely assess and experiment with the things learned elsewhere.
These different factors combined could form the basis of that better education and higher awareness required for action. These will improve yourself and those directly around you.
As I was the one that brought the timeframe into this I purposely left that aspect untouched. To choose the right school for your own is of course fine and dandy, but the timeframe dictates that we educate all of our society. NOW
A lot of very good points, and so many cues thrown my way!
Of course I’ll start with what I disagre with.
“One could homeschool, but [...] that would deprive your kid of all the multicultural and social benefits of going to school.”
‘Scuse me? I know you went to a hippie school so maybe you have a different input than me but here is how I’ve always seen the school system. Kids are strictly and arbitrarily separated by age group. They have few opportunities to bond with kids from other classes, i.e. younger/older kids. I even attended a school that, because they had many many pupils and small school grounds, had separate recess time by grade. And having been in the shoes of one of those annoyingly fast learners who skips classes, I know how much of an outcast being the young kid/the old kid makes you. So w have segregation by age.
Until recently, genders were segragated too, and still sometimes are for sports class.
Multicultural and multi-social? That would be the case in the ideal republican school, but de facto, public schools recruit on geographical criteria and private schools, on financial ones. Hence, we have a rather socially homogeneous population.
Finally, the few and only adults school kids deal with… are teachers and administrative workers. Again, a very limited, homogeneous group.
Most of the experiences at diversity, kids get outside school. By going to sports clubs, by hanging out at the park or in the library, by following their parents in their errands they can interact with people of different ages and occupations. How can we seriously expect kids to learn about the world if most of the info they get about it is second hand?
(today is no overtime day, more to come later :p )
I may have gone to a mulit-cultural school. But so did you, miss I had to learn english to even attend. And considering thelaws that have passed since we left school concerning the diversity of schools (or maybe that’s just Holland and france is lagging behind horribly again).
Even if one went to an all-[insert ethnicity] all-[same social background] school. The families have different outlooks on life. They may just have taught their kid something you didn’t know. Being a kid means taking things in baby steps. They will learn only slightly less from a kid from across the country as a tutti.
But . . .if you don’t agree: We’re open to suggestions.
True, schools will need to change. If everyone was free to pick guided by choices we would make there’d be quite a few empty schools.
But I’m not answering all the possibles here
Holland, more progressive than the rest of the Western world? Man, that would be a first.
You’re right about the multi-cultural part, I realised that as I submitted my text. But even with diversity policies, the age groups, adult to child ratio and educational background of the adults would remain very artificial and nothing close to that of the real world. Most kids if not all would be exposed to more diversity and get a more accurate experience of the world if they didn’t have to spend their whole forking day sitting in a classroom. But enough with the homeschooling debate, it’s only a detail in the original question.
I suppose I have to address the remark that’s meant just for me, eh? Choice of life. Veganism, hobbies (how many kids reallllly enjoy sitting through music theory classes?), career, religion. I don’t think they all equal, since some of these lifestyles are dogmas transmitted blindly from generation to generation (religion obviously, but also the “you’ll be a doctor my son” mentality) while some are the result of -hopefully- enlightened choices.
I value freedom and enlightened choices in all of these. Obviously you cannot grant an infant the same freedom as a 10 year old or a teenager because they don’t have the same reasonning abilities. But you can adapt discussions and decision-making to the age of the kid. I haven’t been around enough children of every age to give you dates, but I guess it comes with practice. Just like I never had the “sit down, darling, you’re old enough to know how babies are made” talk, I think parents can adapt the complexity of the information they give and the level of freedom they grant reasonnably at any age.
Ultimately, you never control anyone’s actions, though. If my child wants to eat meat, I won’t buy it or cook it (that’s my freedom) but if they want to spend their allowance on big macs, so be it. If my child decides to embrace a career I find ridiculous, I have to trust that I raised them smart and sensible enough so that they know better than me. If my child wants to go to some depraved, liberal country where they can smoke pot, I can only hope they’ll tell me first so I can make sure they won’t be driving back. I set the limit at physical harm.
The trick in granting total freedom is that there must not be an agenda behind it. You cannot give your children sexual education and sexual freedom because you know that, statistically, kids raised that way tend to have sex only in their late teens and that’s what you really want to happen. If you grant freedom to your children, you have to be ready to accept that your 13 year old daughter may start fooling around, and trust that, since she has always made her own decisions, she will know better than taking risks with her health and will know where to set limits. Taking that liberty away at that point will only disserve the agenda you had in the first place. Taking freedom away is telling your children : there will always be someone else to take that kind of decisions for you. And that’s really not a message you want to send.
This leads me to the next part : that was for what I know. The part that I don’t know, however, comes in another point of your post. “The home is a place of rest, of balance. And it is the place where one should always be able to discuss stuff“. That, I do not know how to balance. I don’t know where free discussion stops and emotional blackmail starts. This is something I still have to learn.
Boy, that really does not answer your questions, now, does it.