Moonlapse
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Blog Comments posted by Moonlapse
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I am not arguing against the essence of what you hold. Yet, one cannot leave it to a 15 year old, much less a 5 year old, to make these decisions. The experience and knowledge of their elders must be used to guide youngsters. College is the place for 'liberty'. I had a prof who held that a mind did not begin to mature till age 35. 'Freedom' has its concomitant; 'obligation'.
Reminds me of an incredibly revelant passage in this book.
Universal institutionalized formal forced schooling was the prescription, extending the dependency of the young well into what had traditionally been early adult life. Individuals would be prevented from taking up important work until a relatively advanced age. Maturity was to be retarded.
During the post-Civil War period, childhood was extended about four years. Later, a special label was created to describe very old children. It was called adolescence, a phenomenon hitherto unknown to the human race. The infantilization of young people didn’t stop at the beginning of the twentieth century; child labor laws were extended to cover more and more kinds of work, the age of school leaving set higher and higher. The greatest victory for this utopian project was making school the only avenue to certain occupations. The intention was ultimately to draw all work into the school net. By the 1950s it wasn’t unusual to find graduate students well into their thirties, running errands, waiting to start their lives.
How many articles have you read about the current crop of college graduates who now leach off their parents... I recall reading at least two in the past year.
I don't think that schools per se are wrong. I think that parents should have a choice about who is influencing their children, and how. Obviously, a school that can educate children to post graduate levels by the time they are 18 would do a lot of business. Other schools would innovate to try to get the same reasults with less overhead or do a more thorough job for the same cost. I am against the monopolization of schools much like I would be against government-backed monopolization of food sources.
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Parents/guardians need to play a direct role in education. That is what it means to be a parent.
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Some services do hold some value. I mean seriously, I value public libraries (even if I buy any book I need, if i cant find the info on the internet) and I value the fact that some minute fraction of my tax money goes to medical care for nieces and nephews of mine whose parents are utterly incompetent at providing for themselves, let alone a child.
Now, how different do you think the U.S. would be if idealogues and corporate giants never gained control over state matters, society had not been shaped through forced schooling, foreign interventionism never came into play, etc. ?
In this scenario, however it plays out in your mind, would the government or corporations be so overbearing? Would people be more inventive, entrpreneurial, and reliant on themselves and their communities? Would the U.S. be a hegemon? Would we targeted by terrorism?
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"Maybe its just Americans, but a lot of people I know are conditioned to think that giving people (other than themselves or who they associate themselves with) a lot of freedom is undesirable."
Amen! U.S.A. today.
"How do you give people the ability to reason, forsee consequences, and respect the freedom they and others deserve? With a state regulation or institution?"
What would you substitute?
I intended the educational freedom idea to be a starting point.
"Most government intervention never truly solves any problems, it transfers responsibility from individuals to an establishment and reinforces the need for further intervention as a solution. I'm rambling now..."
Slavery? Civil rights? Crime? The gluttony of CEO's and BoD's?
Can we just get rid of corporate welfare? Social security? Immense layers of bureaucracy? An interruption in these would seriously inferfere the expectations of entire structures and groups of people who are accusomed to and reliant upon them. I feel that most people are so alienated from other real people and so captivated by abstract masses of 'authority' and media that its hard to imagine these people becomming motivated to ensure that the others around them are not just slipping through the cracks. I do actually believe that this would be the natural reaction for fully responsible people - people want harmony and are sympathetic by nature. I know that I myself am hesitant to significantly contribute monetary aid to anything because I consider the taxes taken from my paycheck, the taxes I pay when purchasing anything, the taxes I pay for simply owning property, etc to be more than enough of a sacrifice on my part. However, I am incredibly interested in the children in my extended family and try to stimulate their intellects as much as possible. Instead of buying meaningless, waste-of-time toys, why not get them a good book or something they can be creative with? I do this because I think it will make a big difference in their lives later on. Perhaps they won't be satified with the generic meaning for life handed to them.
"The point is, that freedom itself doesn't solve problems, but it creates people who can - because they have learned that using your mind and/or body to overcome the challenge of survival is the essence of life."
Without government or its 'interference', how would these other 'people', create and maintain this end?
Mutual agreement. Clothes are a necessity right? Many people wopuld probably not survive without them. Does that mean that the government needs to be involved with clothing people? Groups of people use their mental and physical capabilities to produce clothes. As a consumer, I buy the clothes that I like best or think are the best value. The people making these clothes create and mantain this end without having to govern me and I aquire the clothes by mutual agreement and benefit. So many things are percieved to be only the realm of the state. It hasn't always been this way, it slowly became this way.
"The reason I've focused on educational deregulation in many of my discussions is because children are the key to social change. I'd like to see kids growing up and learning outside the influence of the government with no limitations on what they can know or think and see the resulting changes in the U.S."
I agree with most of what you have said about the education system in the U.S., yet it has produced so much for the modern world. What, exactly, would you substitute?
My point, in my response, is that the individual alone or even in large groups, cannot gain or maintain 'freedom' without government. Again, I cite slavery as one example.
I don't think the schooling system has produced so much for the modern world. Education has... but the U.S. school system is not primarily focused on education IMO. History and my personal experinces confirm that for me. Do you know about Thomas Edison's education?
Government is necessary. Absolutely. However, its role should be to enforce individual rights and protect its citizens from outside threat. Slavery cannot be practiced without violating these rights. Violence, theft, etc.
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"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours." - Hunter S. Thompson
Congratulations! -
They all left the door open for someone or some group to assume the state's power to remove freedoms from or exert control on the rest. I would define freedom as ultimate personal accountability. Maybe its just Americans, but a lot of people I know are conditioned to think that giving people (other than themselves or who they associate themselves with) a lot of freedom is undesirable.
Perhaps that's the case now that many people are not accountable to themselves and the natural consequences of their actions, but rather to a regulation and its state imposed consequences. If you remove much of the overarching behavioural control of government (that does not directly apply to individual rights), many people will have nothing within themselves to fall back on. Does that mean the situation deserves to persist? How do you give people the ability to reason, forsee consequences, and respect the freedom they and others deserve? With a state regulation or institution?
Most government intervention never truly solves any problems, it transfers responsibility from individuals to an establishment and reinforces the need for further intervention as a solution. I'm rambling now...
The point is, that freedom itself doesn't solve problems, but it creates people who can - because they have learned that using your mind and/or body to overcome the challenge of survival is the essence of life.
The reason I've focused on educational deregulation in many of my discussions is because children are the key to social change. I'd like to see kids growing up and learning outside the influence of the government with no limitations on what they can know or think and see the resulting changes in the U.S.
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Ah, I overlooked this! Makes me think... if this concept was widely considered, would humans be able maintain some sort of equilibrium? Or do you think that this revolution/freedom/oppression cycle cannot be affected?
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I'll keep punching and kicking as long as I can.
The rules I don't want are the ones created by the people who think that freedom should be forfieted in order to create a specifically controlled and designed society. Common good, my ass. I just want individual rights, not to have individual rights given to some entity, corporate/state/whatever, and have the latter supercede the former. I think that people, with all possible information available to them and without an institution to psychologically condition them, will come to this conclusion. Just a hunch, I guess. So basically I want a true education system (not a school institution which mimics hierarchical prison), which means the parents teach or decide who teaches their children, and without any censorship of information. I firmly believe in the rational capabilities of the human mind, no matter what the supposed 'intelligence quotient', when it is given its own freedom.
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I attended a private school for a number of years and I did extremely well during that time. I actually achieved very decent grades in public schools up until my later highschool years when I completely lost interest in going to school. I still managed to get accepted to the engineering department at the Univeristy of Colorado, but I changed my major to earth sciences in an attempt to compensate for my lack of any motivation to sit in a classroom and do the same crap I had done for the last 12 years. It really didn't make a difference and I soon dropped out. I was just glad to get the hell out of the small town I grew up in.
If I had the same frame of mind when I was young that I do now, I'd currently be about 6 years (or more) ahead of where I am, career-wise. How powerful do you think corporations would be if teenage kids regulary became entrepreneurs and produced and learned by their own will and with an unsupressed passion? This iwas a reality that existed in the early days of America, that has now been choked almost to death. "Overproduction" was the label given to it - millions of independent humans passionately following their own dream. It severely limited big business. It's no wonder that Rockefeller and Carnegie heavily funded mass schooling.
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It makes me sick.
Indeed. The quoted poem makes me sick. Multiple readings will bring out the underlying meanings. I felt a lot of suicidal hopelessness in my late teens because even though I had an incredible desire to learn, I absolutely despised school and viewed my failures there as failures in life - a message beaten into every childs head. In my mind, my will to succeed and my inability to function on a scholastic level seemed to be a direct contradiction. I mean, I knew that I was capable of excelling if I had the will to do so. I inevitably blamed and hated myself for this. After all, the children are the ones that recieve permanently recorded failure grades for their inadequacy... schools can't fail at educating them... right?
Anger, of all things, has fortunately led me to do a lot of things that ultimately destroyed my pre-concieved mental barriers. Anger itself does not equal hatred and has the potential to be one of the most positive of forces.
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As an afterthought - Code Igniter is great as well, especially for remote host users.
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It absolutely blows my friggin mind when people fight so hard to keep this system, or think that pouring more money into it will somehow fix the situation.
From this book:
Children are made to see, through school experiences, that their classmates are so cruel and irresponsible, so inadequate to the task of self-discipline, and so ignorant they need to be controlled and regulated for society -
If you're not itching to be utterly independent, then here's a little advise for you. Landing a decent job has as much to do (or more) with social networking as actual qualifications. You need to get to know some people who are doing what you want to do.
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Right here and now is probably the most opportune place and time in history to be able to sucessfully be an entrepreneur with self-education. I'm not saying, "Don't get a regular job." In fact, manual labor jobs have created an intense motivation for me to succeed on my own.
I started working on my dad's farm/ranch when I was 11, and have worked mostly construction and automotive jobs since, with the exception of a few computer jobs which really sparked my interest.
Right now, I have a job overseeing a crew of tire and lube mechanics. I've been with this company for 5 years and in that time I've applied for 80+ computer/clerical jobs, some of which I was called back on, none of which I was hired for.
The fact that I was able to find vast free resources for webdesign and programming on the net, learn how to do it, hookup with motivated people and make even a fraction of my currect paycheck working in my spare time is incredible to me. I wish that I had been able to shed the subservient mind-frame that I learned in school earlier and realized that my future and my life are completely in my hands.
Anything you want to do, learn it - you don't need someone to teach you - and stay persistent and patient. Anyways, I'm rambling now. lol Just keep this in mind.
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Ahhh but at least its free! As if you'll ever stop reading...
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"life outside the bubble that can be the US..."
I often wish that most fellow Americans would experience this. Write down as much as you can, for your own sake!
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Your sinister ferretousness will be crushed by my flying squirrel commandos of Caerbannog. Witness!
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Ahhh, don't tell me I killed this fantasic dialogue! /me flogs self
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I'm not sure why but this makes me think of a book called Influence - Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.
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I am frowning upon this.
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Sounds fun!
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I've had an idea in my head for a while. I have a mental image of a slightly stylized oak tree, roots and all with no leaves. When I finally accomplish the goals I've set for myself, to my satisfaction, I may just have it tattooed on my back - as a personal reminder.
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Nice, the Focus has come a long way.
Good to see you have a 2006. -
True. I think another problem is that the world in general is an incredibly overwhelming thing for someone to try and figure out, let alone things so seemingly esoteric as philosophy and politics. Just the challenge of living successfully and enjoying life are so demanding, as it always has and always will be, that its almost necessary to pick some group or ideal to follow when it comes to these topics - rather than face the daunting task of processing all the available information and formulating your own viewpoint. I know that I, for one, have done this. I think the problem is that instead of defining their fundamental principles, people find a group to fit into and press themselves into a mental mould.
I mean, why do we put so much focus on the conservative/liberal dichotomy? Does it have more to do with the actual politics or the fact that we will naturally try to force everything to one side or the other? I don't know any free thinkers that wholly accept one side or the other, not to mention the variations within the two divisions. Its all a sham and people need to find out what they really believe in, as an individual and not a part of some social collective. I seriously hope, and I know the odds are extremely slim, that the next president is not partisan. The thing that matters most to me is that the whole 'politician' paradigm shifts from "We have to pass as much legislation for our group as possible and by any means!" to "We need to represent the smallest minority, the individual, and use legislation only as a tool to protect the individual if the need arises."
The Sociology Of The Ayn Rand Cult
in Moonlapse's Private Blog
A blog by Moonlapse in General
Posted
More insight into the paradox of Ayn Rand, from Nathaniel Branden:
(this will most likely bore the living daylights out of nearly everyone)
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/ar...devers_rand.htm
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/ar...wer_preface.htm
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/ar...nswer_part1.htm
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/ar...nswer_part2.htm