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Take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that there is no Illuminati.
The Illuminati were basically an old free-thinker's club in Bavaria. They're harmless. :P
For serious. I like my Off-Topic Forums like the name says: off-topic.
Thank you. I admit I started this thread off on the wrong foot. I'd just watched the video I'd posted and was in a panic about it. And the fact that the first response was clearly a joke didn't help my mood.
Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?
That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.
Do nothing. Support no one.
I mean, I vote, but I do it pretty cynically. There's not a lot of reason to believe complete strangers about anything.
In the first quote block you mention that you're not idealogical and you're back at square one. That's the finish line, bro. If you approach everything in life from a position of "no prior opinion" you will be a wise man indeed.
Yeah, but there's that old saw about "the only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." How can I be a good person if I ignore a growing evil? How can I have the word Archpaladin in my username? A person has to practice what they preach, and I feel that I'm not doing that in my life, particularly because I don't know WHAT to practice or preach.
I'm not quite sure what the source of your crisis is, but I suggest you try mixing up the sources of media you consume. I'm reading some pretty strong apocalyptic narratives from your post, and (as Shadowborn mentions above) that is a favorite tool of manipulative jerks to control people. Your way of life is not at risk. You're going to be fine. If you're playing video games on a computer you own, you have it pretty damn good. Time to sit down and appreciate that for a while.
The computer's a hand-me-down from my parents, and my brother never wastes an opportunity to tell me how much of a waste of time video games are, when I could be playing the Scottish bagpipes like him or doing something else "productive." I suppose you could describe my situation as an "early midlife crisis." I did vary the sources of media I consume. That's what got me into this quandary in the first place, as I got most of my political views and affiliations from my family, which is strongly Democrat due to both my parents working in the local public school district. My mother's an occupational therapist who works with students that have to deal with developmental or neurological disorders, while my father keeps the entire district's computers running, which is why I have my own computer to begin with, as he takes the old ones they don't use anymore and fixes them up as a hobby. I actually only stumbled on the YouTuber I linked to in the beginning by accident. I started watching an AmazingAtheist video (I think this guy is an a#+~*#&, but he's not ashamed to admit it and some of his videos do have a great deal of insight, though I don't know what to make of the accusations of him e-begging or the whole Bananagate issue), who plugged a friend of his, MrRepzion (Definitely a nicer, more humble person than TJ, he brought to light several issues I wasn't even aware of, he was really the first YouTube channel I actually subscribed to), who linked to one of RockingMrE's videos about the problem of women lying to their partners about contraception in order to become pregnant without their partner's knowledge or consent. After that, I watched some more of his earlier stuff and thought it presented a different perspective, so I subscribed to him too. After rewatching some of his stuff, I wonder if he too is falling victim to the radicalization he's recently accused the Men's Movement (which he identifies with but is not an actual member of) and the LGBT movement (his opinion of this is that gay people wanting to have sex is private and okay in his mind, but that feminist style thinking, particularly in the form of "queer theory" has come to dominate it, basically that gay people and LGBT advocates aren't the same thing) of. I was starting to get leery when he made a video that he summarized as "Joseph McCarthy, a man smeared by Leftist liars."
Wow...that was a lot longer than I expected. But basically, I'm concerned that I need to change my way of life, to take a more definitive moral stand on things and speak out against what's wrong. But I don't know what IS wrong anymore, or what is right. I've always identified as a moderate in almost anything, and that's still true, but I want to be an informed and moral moderate, rather than merely an apathetic one. As the Dark Side spirits said in KotOR II: "Apathy is death."
This thread has only improved with time.
I know, right? Everytime I see a thread about Cultural Marxism, I get all excited, like, it's going to be a discussion of Trotsky's theory of combined and uneven development, or debates on the national question between the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party and the Social-Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and I am always disappointed that it turns out to be right-wing theories that New Left holdovers in the professoriat are turning Americans gay in order to undermine the biological family.
Anyway, I hope to read Das Kapital soon and will be relying heavily on Comrade Hawkshaw's links above.
Vive le Galt!
I was in a panic over the state of things a while ago. What I did was I tried to figure out what I valued. Not what others told me to value, but what I felt was true and real. In politics, EVERYONE has an agenda, and all of them have easy solutions for you to buy into. So don't.
Start with yourself. Find out what you WANT and VALUE, not what you fear and are disgusted by. Then read up on what those who valued the same things have thought, and for good measure, dare to question this by reading some who oppose those thoughts. And always keep in mind that framing a question like a simple choice between two distinct options is the oldest trick in the salesman's repertoire. There are an infinite number of options, and indeed, which ideas are connected have changed dramatically over the years.
I feel at this point I should congratulate you. What you are going through is something that is often called awakening. It's a dramatic and weird process for most people, but well worth it. The main problem is that once the simple answers no longer satsify you, it just keeps getting more complex.
And yeah... teach people, all people, what you can.
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Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.
Those aren't even all dichotomies. To pick one at random: 'natural law' is literally nothing more than a set of preferences someone doesn't want to be honest about. At best, it's the set of things the speaker wants to be universals. It's trivial to concoct a natural law system to support anything at all.
Unless, of course, by natural law you mean things like gravity. But gravity is not a political issue.
Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.Those aren't even all dichotomies. To pick one at random: 'natural law' is literally nothing more than a set of preferences someone doesn't want to be honest about. At best, it's the set of things the speaker wants to be universals. It's trivial to concoct a natural law system to support anything at all.
Unless, of course, by natural law you mean things like gravity. But gravity is not a political issue.
Gravity is a political issue if the powers that be want it to be one. As an example, we have a manager of a university-level school in Sweden who actually thinks the contents of the physics subject should be cut down and rewritten because there is a lack of "female" physics discoveries, and physics should not be about certain answers, but instead should focus on each person's personal views on physics.
Yeah, true story. Moira von Wright is her name.
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This thread has only improved with time.Is that seriousness or sarcasm? I'm honestly kind of frustrated trying to figure things out anymore. There've been some very good counterpoints on this thread to the arguments various YouTubers I've watched have made. While it IS good that I'm not blindly following one ideology or the other, I'm back at square one. What do I do? Who do I support? What can I do to deal with what people are saying is the coming collapse of Western society? I like Western society, I grew up in it. Am I a bad person for just wanting to help kids learn how to read part of the day, selling bread and soup for the other part of it, and maybe playing a few BioWare games or Pathfinder play-by-posts on my days off, while not paying more attention to the problems our society faces and doing my part to uplift humanity?Depends on who you ask. A Randian would say that you're a subhuman because you're not living primarily for your own selfish ends.
As far as Western society goes. You're not one of the prime movers and shakers. (if you were you wouldn't be searching a gaming messageboard for this kind of advice) You're an indvidual caught up in the gears like most of us.
What you can do is follow my simple principle.
Do your best to make sure that your part of the world, your neighborhood, the place that you work, the places that you shop and conduct your buisness are better off for having you in it. The rest will take care of itself.
Zousha, I've not read all the way through this but I'm thinking that LazarX's advice is probably the best. Try and live a good life. And open your eyes. What evidence is there - really - of a creeping Marxist tide? Rantings on youtube are not evidence, they are opinion. Not all opinions are equal.
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Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.Those aren't even all dichotomies. To pick one at random: 'natural law' is literally nothing more than a set of preferences someone doesn't want to be honest about. At best, it's the set of things the speaker wants to be universals. It's trivial to concoct a natural law system to support anything at all.
Unless, of course, by natural law you mean things like gravity. But gravity is not a political issue.
I guess I misspoke before. I meant natural rights, the freedoms that all individuals are born with. Life, Liberty and Estate, to quote Locke.
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Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.Those aren't even all dichotomies. To pick one at random: 'natural law' is literally nothing more than a set of preferences someone doesn't want to be honest about. At best, it's the set of things the speaker wants to be universals. It's trivial to concoct a natural law system to support anything at all.
Unless, of course, by natural law you mean things like gravity. But gravity is not a political issue.
Gravity is a political issue if the powers that be want it to be one. As an example, we have a manager of a university-level school in Sweden who actually thinks the contents of the physics subject should be cut down and rewritten because there is a lack of "female" physics discoveries, and physics should not be about certain answers, but instead should focus on each person's personal views on physics.
Yeah, true story. Moira von Wright is her name.
Yes, it's this type of revisionism that scares me.
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Archpaladin,
As it should. And I say that as a European liberal so I'm somewhere only Anklebiter can even see in American politics. ;-)
America is really not socialist, it's not in danger of becoming socialist barring a highly unlikely revolution. It's creeping slowly and painfully towards the kind of place Europe has been for decades where the individual is still pretty much free but certain things are provided as of right and paid for by taxes. Over here even the right wing parties don't dare talk about welfare and health the way they do in the States. Those are public goods. The government obviously* has to back them. But we're still mostly capitalist over here.
However, if you're questioning things then that's really a good place to start. A better one is to figure out what questions you really want answered. As Sissyl says, figure out what's important to you, then find out who's getting it done/opposing it. Support or fight them but remember they feel the same as you. With a few exceptions, people in the other party are not evil, they just have a different idea of what's important than you do. Above all, question your inforamtion sources and find a challenging, but sane opposing position to verify against. The Internet has a lot of crazy on it. Beware, for here be dragons.
*=for a given value of obviously. What's obvious to people brought up in a system is not always obvious to those outside it. Amd it may nto be correct.
As others have said, the best way to find your place in the ideological spectrum, is to go out and learn more stuff. Read about Communism, read about Religion, read Nitsche, read St. Thomas Aquinas, read Plato, read Dawkins, find out where the stuff that people rise banners to is all about. Every single one of them has something important to say, even if you end up completely disagreeing; at the very least, they will help you ask yourself questions you hadn't thought about before.
Eventually you will gravitate towards a particular ideological sweet spot, which will then help you define your perspective. But always remember we never stop learning, so what feels right today might no longer feel right tomorrow. It's what makes everything so complicated: You have to stand on solid enough ground to move forward, but you can't nail yourself to it if you are to move at all. This doesn't mean you need to change your views for the sole sake of changing them, but it does mean that we must always be humble and honest about what we know, because we certainly do not know it all.
Those aren't even all dichotomies. To pick one at random: 'natural law' is literally nothing more than a set of preferences someone doesn't want to be honest about. At best, it's the set of things the speaker wants to be universals. It's trivial to concoct a natural law system to support anything at all.
Not to nitpick (well, maybe a bit!), but Natural Law is a universal moral guideline that is not determined by writen law, in contrast to Positive Law, which is a moral guideline made up by man.
Regardless of whether we accept certain Natural Laws, or there being any Natural Law at all, I'm not sure where the lack of honesty jumps in here.
Because while that's true in theory, any actual given Natural Law is what some proponent thinks the real Natural Law is. If there really is a Natural Law, we don't have any idea what it is. "Natural Law" in practice is just a way to push a particular set of Positive Law as the universal moral code.
But none of that makes it dishonest. Most proponents of Natural Law claim to deduce it from principles given by a higher power which either determines those laws or has an insight on them, or try to determine them based on what seems to be innately perceived by humans.
It is perfectly understandable to dismiss those claims by saying their sources are false/mistaken. But that is not the same as lying.
Every structure, every organization, every society, every system devised by man reflects the human psyche. It may only be to a small degree, but the reflection is always there. The things one person needs or feels is vital will almost without fail be at least important issues to other people. Try as we might, we can never disconnect ourselves from what we are - and thus, human society will keep being a reflection of the principles that govern our thoughts. In other words, basing the fundaments of a society on the workings of the human brain is not a bad thing. For example: Private ownership has been a part of all those societies Western civilization has encountered in etnological studies.
More clearly, Western (and indeed other) law is based on what the populace considers just, at least to some degree. This is why, for example, it's pretty hard finding a country where murder is allowed.
Ummm... THAT is a strong statement, LazarX. I think you will find that if you check the figures and measurements of education level, it may fluctuate a bit, but the trend is firmly upward-pointing.
Natural law= things i think are inherently right but can't support.
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Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.
That you would lump Nietzche and Marx together shows that your education in the matter is lacking. Philosophically they could not be further apart, aside from neither being big fans of religion.
I'm sure, ES, that if you had tried, you could have put that nicer.
I'm not really sure what Locke and Freud are doing together and counterposed to them, either, but, eh, whatever. I'm just lurking.
I'm sure, ES, that if you had tried, you could have put that nicer.
I'm not really sure what Locke and Freud are doing together and counterposed to them, either, but, eh, whatever. I'm just lurking.
One was locked -get it?- away in an island, the other one drew dicks on everything.
The point of contention is pretty evident.
One was locked -get it?- away in an island, the other one drew dicks on everything.
I always thought John Locke was kind of a whiny biznitch.
Yeah. He started off as a cool character, but then lost his style.
Then again, LOST was mostly a disguised realit show about philosophers, so I guess persona retention gets wonky. With Rousseau, Bakunin, Hume, Locke and whathaveyou.
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This thread has only improved with time.Is that seriousness or sarcasm? I'm honestly kind of frustrated trying to figure things out anymore.
One thing to keep in mind for the Off-Topic board is that you are going to get a range of answers - some related to the topic, some related to the board culture, and some just crazy or silly talk. There will also likely be a lot of tongue in cheek responses, and cross-chatter. Just roll with it.
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That you would lump Nietzche and Marx together shows that your education in the matter is lacking. Philosophically they could not be further apart, aside from neither being big fans of religion.
Stop and think: one ideology over the other? Are there only two?That's how the issues generally seem to present themselves. Individual liberty vs. collective good. Rationality vs. Consequentialism. John Locke and Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. Objective morality vs. subjective morality. Brain chemistry and natural law vs. social engineering and statism.
:) Didn't both of them basically map Hegel onto the modern world, along with various critiques and tweaks?
...But basically, I'm concerned that I need to change my way of life, to take a more definitive moral stand on things and speak out against what's wrong. But I don't know what IS wrong anymore, or what is right. I've always identified as a moderate in almost anything, and that's still true, but I want to be an informed and moral moderate, rather than merely an apathetic one...
From what I've read of your posts in this thread, it sounds like you're still in high school. (Not a jab at all; just an observation.) Take a breath; your only job right now is to learn. Seriously. That's your job.
You're asking great questions (keep asking!) but it seems like you're too eager to find an answer to some of the things that great philosophers have struggled with for lifetimes. And you're also doing it without any sort of pedagogical framework. As a consequence, your mind is bouncing between persuasively expressed but irreconcilable viewpoints expressed by people whose only qualification may be that they happen to have a webcam. You're not giving yourself time to simply process the information and work it out and so your anxiety is shooting through the roof.
Obviously, just my arm chair psychobabble here, but that's definitely the trend I'm seeing from your beginning to your most recent posts.
Long-term, if/when you go to college, take some classes in sociology and philosophy. Short-term, start with what you think are some fundamental truths and gradually work your way out from there (e.g., If murder is wrong, why is it wrong? If it's because one is using force to deprive another of something, then are there circumstances when the use of force is okay? What constitutes the use of force?). Figure it out on your own instead of listening to internet polemicists.
(Personally, I play video games and I'm in two separate Pathfinder campaigns. That's what I do for fun and my husband doesn't understand it a bit. I also volunteer on two local boards, I'm a locally elected (unpaid) official, and I'm a lawyer with my own private practice. Amazingly enough, you can do things that are a "unproductive" (as your brother would say) and still manage to make a meaningful contribution to the world. If anyone tells you things are an either-or situation and you have to choose between two options, don't believe them.)
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Continuing on with the reading recommendations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence
The declaration is a good document to really study in depth. Especially the indictment portion of it.
There are a bunch of other contemporary writings / letters that are also pretty cool - Thomas Jefferson - A Summary View of the Rights of British America, and John Adams has a bunch of letters.
If you are worried about making a difference, these guys, your founding fathers, they were educated and well read, and they engaged in debate. They have their faults, like any human being, but they were a cut above your average youtube troll.
Watching the HBO mini series John Adams while trying to track down and read the various papers and letters and debates would be entertaining.
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Whenever the United States has gone to the point where the citizenry might actually rebel, we usually cough up an FDR type figure to save capitalism from itself, by blunting the worst of it's excesses and relieving the pressure. Nowadays the preferred approach is "Bread and Circuses" as the average public these days is considerably more ignorant, perhaps willfully so, than the average Depression-era farmer.America is really not socialist, it's not in danger of becoming socialist barring a highly unlikely revolution. It's creeping slowly and painfully towards the kind of place Europe has been for decades where the individual is still pretty much free but certain things are provided as of right and paid for by taxes. Over here even the right wing parties don't dare talk about welfare and health the way they do in the States. Those are public goods. The government obviously* has to back them. But we're still mostly capitalist over here.
Are you talking about Fordism and post-Fordism?
Because while that's true in theory, any actual given Natural Law is what some proponent thinks the real Natural Law is. If there really is a Natural Law, we don't have any idea what it is. "Natural Law" in practice is just a way to push a particular set of Positive Law as the universal moral code.
Those aren't even all dichotomies. To pick one at random: 'natural law' is literally nothing more than a set of preferences someone doesn't want to be honest about. At best, it's the set of things the speaker wants to be universals. It's trivial to concoct a natural law system to support anything at all.Not to nitpick (well, maybe a bit!), but Natural Law is a universal moral guideline that is not determined by writen law, in contrast to Positive Law, which is a moral guideline made up by man.
Regardless of whether we accept certain Natural Laws, or there being any Natural Law at all, I'm not sure where the lack of honesty jumps in here.
Exactly. We could replace Life, Liberty, and Property with anything else (In fact, I wouldn't put the latter two in my own top three list and would accept the first only with lots of caveats.) and it would be no less arbitrary and no less a bunch of meaningless gassing.
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...But basically, I'm concerned that I need to change my way of life, to take a more definitive moral stand on things and speak out against what's wrong. But I don't know what IS wrong anymore, or what is right. I've always identified as a moderate in almost anything, and that's still true, but I want to be an informed and moral moderate, rather than merely an apathetic one...From what I've read of your posts in this thread, it sounds like you're still in high school. (Not a jab at all; just an observation.) Take a breath; your only job right now is to learn. Seriously. That's your job.
You're asking great questions (keep asking!) but it seems like you're too eager to find an answer to some of the things that great philosophers have struggled with for lifetimes. And you're also doing it without any sort of pedagogical framework. As a consequence, your mind is bouncing between persuasively expressed but irreconcilable viewpoints expressed by people whose only qualification may be that they happen to have a webcam. You're not giving yourself time to simply process the information and work it out and so your anxiety is shooting through the roof.
Obviously, just my arm chair psychobabble here, but that's definitely the trend I'm seeing from your beginning to your most recent posts.
Long-term, if/when you go to college, take some classes in sociology and philosophy. Short-term, start with what you think are some fundamental truths and gradually work your way out from there (e.g., If murder is wrong, why is it wrong? If it's because one is using force to deprive another of something, then are there circumstances when the use of force is okay? What constitutes the use of force?). Figure it out on your own instead of listening to internet polemicists.
(Personally, I play video games and I'm in two separate Pathfinder campaigns. That's what I do for fun and my husband doesn't understand it a bit. I also volunteer on two local boards, I'm a locally elected (unpaid)...
Thanks for the sentiment, though I'm actually a college grad. Four-year degree in English Lit with a few philosophy and religion courses under my belt (they were required, as I attended a Catholic college). I've been out of school and working various jobs for the past two years (personal care attendant, historical society intern, standardized test scorer and now Americorps reading tutor and Panera cashier/busboy/dishwasher). I was so focused on finding employment that I was ignoring these kinds of questions. But now that I've got relatively steady work I find myself starting to examine my life, to see if it's worth living, like Socrates famously put it. And I'm not sure about whether I should be content with the life I currently lead and need to make changes.
And I kind of wrote my brother's opinion of productivity a while ago when his definition is basically "don't want to work, I just want to blare on the bagpipes all day." :P
There are those who are not interested in keeping checks on the power of the state over the individual. Rarely, if ever, have these people actually lived in a society where such checks do not exist.
Ummm... THAT is a strong statement, LazarX. I think you will find that if you check the figures and measurements of education level, it may fluctuate a bit, but the trend is firmly upward-pointing.You're looking at school attendence and graduation figures. I'm looking at the mountains of data that's coughed up regularly like a gurgling volcano, and how people make use of it. People are more wilfully ignorant to the point where they will ignore a candidate who's lying because they can't stand the color of the skin of his opponnent.
When Climate Change Denial, the rejection of the sensible metric system, When so-called Intelligent Design continues to gain ground as something that should be given "equal time" with evolution, when people like Sarah Palin are held up as examples of intellectual thought, that's a sign that we as a society are growing dumber, not smarter.
Your claim was that the depression-era farmers were better educated than the general population today. Allow me to doubt that.
There are those who are not interested in keeping checks on the power of the state over the individual. Rarely, if ever, have these people actually lived in a society where such checks do not exist.And there are those for whom minimizing the power of the state over the individual seems to be the only issue. Rarely, if ever, have those people actually lived in a society where the state was as limited as they wish.
Actually, I've never met anyone, even online, who wanted to remove all checks on the power of the state over the individual, though I've been accused of such by some libertarians.
And what is your view of private property? Is it a good thing?
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After watching this video, I've become deeply concerned about the state of things here in America. What can I do?
I see two options.
1. Stop watching ridiculous propaganda videos
2. Watch ridiculous propaganda videos and laugh at them.
The myth of "America is getting worse" is factually wrong. The kids now are smarter than we were (all test scores are higher relative to the same tests given before) and better behaved (Juvenile crime is WAY down. I know, I am a juvenile probation officer.)
The kids are alright.
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Ummm... THAT is a strong statement, LazarX. I think you will find that if you check the figures and measurements of education level, it may fluctuate a bit, but the trend is firmly upward-pointing.You're looking at school attendence and graduation figures. I'm looking at the mountains of data that's coughed up regularly like a gurgling volcano, and how people make use of it. People are more wilfully ignorant to the point where they will ignore a candidate who's lying because they can't stand the color of the skin of his opponnent.
When Climate Change Denial, the rejection of the sensible metric system, When so-called Intelligent Design continues to gain ground as something that should be given "equal time" with evolution, when people like Sarah Palin are held up as examples of intellectual thought, that's a sign that we as a society are growing dumber, not smarter.
Let's see... In the 1930s, nobody believed in climate change, the system of measurements was even more absurd than it is today, Intelligent Design WAS taught in schools, and Sarah Palin wasn't born yet.
I think you are observing the last dregs of willful ignorance and mistaking it for a "rising tide" rather than a slow, desperate ebb.
The sorts of things you are observing today as signs of a lack of critical thinking were in fact embraced by the vast majority of the population in prior generations, whereas now half (if not a majority) or people oppose them.
Man, this thread is f#+~ing crazy. If I were Archpaladin Zousha (sounds like a plutocrat name to me!), I wouldn't even know where to begin.
As for myself, I wonder if I qualify as a Cultural Marxist. I mean, you never hear of me referred to as a Marxist thinker, but, damnit, I was all up in that Communist shiznit--Stalin, Mao, Castro, Baader-Meinhof, all that shiznit! Vive le Galt, mo'fo!!
But, really, the problem with Marx is that he located the source of man's alienation in the expropriation of surplus value from his labor by the plutocracy, when, in reality, the source of man's alienation is the fact that
Hell is other posters.
We could also discuss other views that were generally held in the 30s, what with racism, women seen as unfit for any sort of jobs, psychiatric patients put in institutions, sterilization programs, widespread death penalties, and so on and so on and so forth.
Yes, farming is serious business, and was so in the thirties. Even so, you were claiming they were better educated than we are today. No dice.
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The Illuminati were basically an old free-thinker's club in Bavaria. They're harmless. :P
Being a Lit major, surely you can recognize the irony of poo-pooing other people's boogeymen while remaining frightened of the faceless, nameless threat of "cultural Marxists" who are marching forward with their decades-spanning plan of the destruction of Western civilization.
My problem is how people pick and choose what they want to fit their own narrative. Ayn Rand is an excellent example. Came to mind because I keep seeing Gilt's name. :)
Many Christian Conservatives say that they enjoyed Atlas Shrugged or prescribe to her ideology. Ayn Rand was an Atheist and hated religion as much as she hated socialism. It's all over in her writing. That tells me that those guys either chose to ignore all of that and focus on what they agree with or they didn't actually read it and only going off filtered information. My point is if she's right about everything in socialism being bad, then the true must be same for religion. Or is she just mistaken about religion because that part the reader doesn't agree with her belief.
This whole America is a Marxist society is the same thing. You really think people won't take to the streets if the government marches into your home and says you have to be a police officer because we need police officers? Nothing against police officers btw, just an example.
Everyone (this includes myself) needs to listen to more than one narrative and ask what the ultimate objective is. Often the most extreme are the loudest because they're the smallest group. Much like forums on the internet. It's okay. Obama got re-elected. You will survive. Just like many liberals survived through Bush.
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Your claim was that the depression-era farmers were better educated than the general population today. Allow me to doubt that.Ummm... THAT is a strong statement, LazarX. I think you will find that if you check the figures and measurements of education level, it may fluctuate a bit, but the trend is firmly upward-pointing.You're looking at school attendence and graduation figures. I'm looking at the mountains of data that's coughed up regularly like a gurgling volcano, and how people make use of it. People are more wilfully ignorant to the point where they will ignore a candidate who's lying because they can't stand the color of the skin of his opponnent.
When Climate Change Denial, the rejection of the sensible metric system, When so-called Intelligent Design continues to gain ground as something that should be given "equal time" with evolution, when people like Sarah Palin are held up as examples of intellectual thought, that's a sign that we as a society are growing dumber, not smarter.
I would agree that in general people have more knowledge today, but I would argue that more people today are deficient in processing and applying knowledge than ever before. I teach college level physics lecture and lab and many of my pre-med and business major students lack basic arithmetic skills to the point of absurdity. I bet that farmer could visualize a unit of measurement. If I told him that 1 kg is roughly 2 pounds on Earth, I guarantee he wouldn't tell me that a bag of seed masses at 2000 kg. He might not know the arithmetic to do the conversion but he would know that his answer, if it were 2000kg, can't be right. My students mass their cell phones, some of them remember that they have to multiply by the acceleration due to gravity to get weight in Newtons, and then they convert to pounds and tell me their cell phones weigh anywhere between 17-5000 lbs without batting an eye. A handful of them acknowledge that they did something wrong. A couple actually get the right answer. I have horror stories that would make you shudder.
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. A couple actually get the right answer. I have horror stories that would make you shudder.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. - So Crates
"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of
today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for
parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is
foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest
and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
-Peter the Hermit, 13th Century AD
I remember a quote i'll try to find about early colonial colleges, with a parent showing up and being surprised to find kids just lazing about the dorms, barely moving in a lethargic haze.
I don't think there was ever a time where what you're describing HASN"T been the case.
I would agree that in general people have more knowledge today, but I would argue that more people today are deficient in processing and applying knowledge than ever before. I teach college level physics lecture and lab and many of my pre-med and business major students lack basic arithmetic skills to the point of absurdity. I bet that farmer could visualize a unit of measurement. If I told him that 1 kg is roughly 2 pounds on Earth, I guarantee he wouldn't tell me that a bag of seed masses at 2000 kg. He might not know the arithmetic to do the conversion but he would know that his answer, if it were 2000kg, can't be right. My students mass their cell phones, some of them remember that they have to multiply by the acceleration due to gravity to get weight in Newtons, and then they convert to pounds and tell me their cell phones weigh anywhere between 17-5000 lbs without batting an eye. A handful of them acknowledge that they...Your claim was that the depression-era farmers were better educated than the general population today. Allow me to doubt that.Ummm... THAT is a strong statement, LazarX. I think you will find that if you check the figures and measurements of education level, it may fluctuate a bit, but the trend is firmly upward-pointing.You're looking at school attendence and graduation figures. I'm looking at the mountains of data that's coughed up regularly like a gurgling volcano, and how people make use of it. People are more wilfully ignorant to the point where they will ignore a candidate who's lying because they can't stand the color of the skin of his opponnent.
When Climate Change Denial, the rejection of the sensible metric system, When so-called Intelligent Design continues to gain ground as something that should be given "equal time" with evolution, when people like Sarah Palin are held up as examples of intellectual thought, that's a sign that we as a society are growing dumber, not smarter.
Do you really think that the kind of math you do in pre-med and ESPECIALLY business is going to hold a candle to the kind of proofs you have to do in physics? Two different worlds man, you of all people should know that. I do, and I hate math beyond all reason.
Fear. And trembling. And nausea.
That's how you educate the plebs!