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WHY FIRST GRADE TO 12TH IS COMPLETELY USELESS, INCLUDING PARTS OF COLLEGE ..
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ubon
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Dyhalto
7536
Ugh. pianotm, I was actually complimenting you while pointing out something I disagreed with. I'm sorry for acknowledging your musings with a reply. Next time I'll just do as everyone else did.
You're 50% right. Yes, government exists as a metaphysical social utility, so there's nothing tangible you can eat or take shelter in.
But you make the same mistake a lot of people do on the subject : You separate government into an entity of it's own and critique it by itself. You can't do that. Government is the administrative faculty for whatever social structure we choose to live under, and whatever rules we set out for our community. Even in a hypothetical society of totally equal peerage, "government" would exist in the form of procedures used to resolve issues that affect more than just the individual, like the conch shell in Lord of the Flies. In other words, government and civilized society are inseparable. If you want to go around saying "government this, government that" and "we don't need it", then it just shows a profound lack of understanding on your part.
Also, your Santa analogy is dumb. Parents choose to have their children believe in Santa, knowing the myth will eventually be exposed. What does that have to do with anything?
If you want a more relevant one, use Money. It doesn't actually exist. We collectively agree to assign nominal value to coins/bills/shells so that we can interact with each other in a fairly civilized way. Seems pretty much like what you were going for.
You're 50% right. Yes, government exists as a metaphysical social utility, so there's nothing tangible you can eat or take shelter in.
But you make the same mistake a lot of people do on the subject : You separate government into an entity of it's own and critique it by itself. You can't do that. Government is the administrative faculty for whatever social structure we choose to live under, and whatever rules we set out for our community. Even in a hypothetical society of totally equal peerage, "government" would exist in the form of procedures used to resolve issues that affect more than just the individual, like the conch shell in Lord of the Flies. In other words, government and civilized society are inseparable. If you want to go around saying "government this, government that" and "we don't need it", then it just shows a profound lack of understanding on your part.
Also, your Santa analogy is dumb. Parents choose to have their children believe in Santa, knowing the myth will eventually be exposed. What does that have to do with anything?
If you want a more relevant one, use Money. It doesn't actually exist. We collectively agree to assign nominal value to coins/bills/shells so that we can interact with each other in a fairly civilized way. Seems pretty much like what you were going for.
eplipswich
2728
Talk about overreaction from pianotm - -" Just saying. (It's regarding Dyhalto's post, not mine, by the way.)
DarklordKeinor
2478
author=Dyhalto
Government is the administrative faculty for whatever social structure we choose to live under, and whatever rules we set out for our community.
That's government as an ideal. That ideal breaks down when you factor in groups that lobby politicians; basically, the political parties become representatives of interest groups rather than the people that vote them into power.
author=Dyhalto
In other words, government and civilized society are inseparable. If you want to go around saying "government this, government that" and "we don't need it", then it just shows a profound lack of understanding on your part.
Agreed. Government is necessary, but the real conversation is rooted in the size and scope of government. Mindlessly expanding the government to take on additional functions is hardly the answer. The school system in America is the perfect demonstration of this concept. http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/throwing-money-at-education-isnt-working
Basically put, the law of diminishing returns is a bitch.
author=Bandito
1. Education doesn't encourage thinking, it just wants you to repeat and memorize.
That honestly depends on the teacher and the curriculum they're preparing their students to follow. Education is supposed to encourage free thought and inform us on how the world functions. What the student takes out of the education is relative to the effort they put into it and the versatility of their teacher.
author=Bandito
2. You don't need 12 years of education to learn all the stuff you need to learn.
First of all, this quote doesn't explain what we NEED to learn. Second of all, education isn't limited to the social institution: it occurs everyday we live. The institution reinforces values and key concepts in us that we are supposed to expand on throughout our lifetime.
author=Bandito
3. Apprenticeship > Education.
Before education, we have a thing call apprenticeship. A child learns from a true professional; the professional teaches him EVERYTHING from writing, math, reading, and, the most important part of education, HOW TO DO THE JOB.
Then home-school your child and put them on a vocational track. For some individuals, this approach works fine. However, there is a preponderance of evidence that demonstrates that education is more beneficial to society.
Take, for instance, the assertion of this study: If all students in low income countries left school with basic reading skills then 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. This is equal to a 12% cut in global poverty. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001902/190214e.pdf
The link I provided demonstrates that education yields a positive benefit towards GDP growth and personal income. The facts are clear: education is good for society.
author=Bandito
Nowadays a kid has to go through 12 years of education and the best job he'll prob get is Mcdonald's if he doesn't waste his life another 4 years. Sad, but true.
"The average dropout can expect to earn an annual income of $20,241, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (PDF). That’s a full $10,386 less than the typical high school graduate, and $36,424 less than someone with a bachelor’s degree." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education/dropout-nation/by-the-numbers-dropping-out-of-high-school/
That efficiently refutes that line of bullshit.
Shinan
4314
Well actually government isn't here to enslave its people. The government is here to serve its people. Also the government consists of its people. I know it's easy to reduce the government to some ominous entity but it is actually most of the people around. The public sector is the largest employer in most countries.
Of course this is just an ideological difference. I think the government exists for its people by its people. And someone else says it exists to control its people. But it's essentially just two ways of looking at the same thing.
Of course this is just an ideological difference. I think the government exists for its people by its people. And someone else says it exists to control its people. But it's essentially just two ways of looking at the same thing.
Sated
4005
author=mawk
the best thing about this ridiculous and unfounded tea-party hyperbole is that the man posting them has a pony saluting a flag for his avatar -- meaning he probably believes every word
The best thing is that Harmonic seems to think that there is a "leftist" option in American politics...
TheNecromancer
3160
author=pianotm
Goddoes not draw in straight lines. Order is the act of controlling Chaos. Government cannot justify its existence any other way.
xD Hmm, let's try something here...
God is not a fact of science, nature, or society, but a figment of the public imagination. That is to say, it exists exclusively because the people will it to exist. It is the living embodiment of the idea that existence is only as real as we perceive it to be. I will take the risk of even saying that the existence of God is a magical act of human consciousness.
It exists because we believe it exists, we want it to exist, and since many people are incapable of thinking for themselves, we need it to exist. You can say this isn't true because God would continue to exist if we stopped believing in it, however that is not where the proof lies. Once you believe in something, ceasing that belief won't make it go away. Santa Claus (Saint Nikoloas, Bishop of Myra) died in the fourth century, yet to this very day children everywhere absolutely expect him to climb down their chimneys on the 25th December each year.
If everyone in the world died except you, you would continue to exist, because you transcend belief. If God mobilized his army and decided that the best way to preserve peace would be to exterminate all civilians, then God would cease to exist because it does not transcend belief. The angels would have nobody to protect and no reason to guard it's secrets. Heaven would have nobody to regulate. The bible would have no laws to consider. The entire religion would cease to serve a purpose. The angels would either go home and establish a normal life, or obsess with their clouds by going in every day and remember that there is no point to being there. Like that, it would vanish, because without the people, it cannot exist, because God is not a real entity, but a philosophical one. One that with the above test, proves absolutely to be just as illusory as unicorns.
Well, it doesn't work on every line, but I like it. I may use this next time in a religious discussion.
Let's talk about religion now and purple monkey dishwasher.
AznChipmunk
4613
I don't really post here much, but the rather sensationalist thread title caught my eye and I thought I'd give my opinion, even though it's probably likely to purposely incite responses like this. I'm also going to ignore any of the political comments in this thread and try to focus on the initial opinions quoted.
Being a product of the American public school system (and a public university student nearly done with their degree), I've lived my whole life, like many others at my age, bound by this system. Many or most of my major successes and failures in life have been defined by this system. While it has certainly been difficult and trying at times, I can say without any doubt that it has immensely increased the quality and also potential quality of life of not only just those around me, but vast numbers of people across the world.
Here's why:
1. Learning to learn:
It is certainly true that for many exams that I have taken, they have simply been of that "memorize", "pass", and "forget" nature. Yet, the repetition of this act has taught me to pick up temporary skills quickly and also has given me confidence in my ability to learn. For example, if I need to learn how to bake a cake for a friend's birthday, even if I only have a little experience in the kitchen, it is simple enough to look up a recipe and follow instructions.
Also, while it varies from person to person, you do not always forget everything. I may not know the exact terms of the Treaty of Versailles yet I still know the basics, the "gist" of World War I. I can still do basic derivatives and integrals after taking years of (and forgetting) calculus and it will be much easier for me in the future if I develop a heavy interest in mathematics or physics.
This is why musicians, performers, artists, writers, programmers, etc. all practice. I can learn and practice a piece on piano for a performance, and forget it a few months later, and yet, I'll still be better for it overall.
As a semi-nitpick, not every skill takes only 2-3 years to learn. Bringing up musicianship again, it takes considerably longer to properly learn to play your first instrument than that, unless you are a prodigy. It takes many years of practice. That's what these 12 years are, practice for a vast variety of different things.
2. Developing culture:
You may call this "social engineering" or whatever but going to school develops a shared culture for humans. It's much easier for people to connect to one another when they are doing the same things. While not ALWAYS true, people in school mostly make friends with people in their same grade level who will be in the same graduation class. Why? Because you're around these people all the time, you do the same homework assignments, listen to the same lecture, etc. etc. It gives people a common ground. On top of that, there is the fairly obvious factor of the larger cultural knowledge that you will develop from going to school, whether it is about historical actions or local events or whatnot.
Going to school teaches you how to "behave", but I don't mean that in the fall-in-line don't-rock-the-boat kind of way, but rather how society works: cultural norms, morality, discipline (for work in the future), etc. Several people have mentioned it in this topic so I don't feel a great need to expand upon it.
3. Discovering passions and opening doors:
In my state (I don't know the exact details about others so they may differ) children at public school begin taking required choral/music classes in elementary school for a year or two. From then until high school, you are required to take a number of elective courses including music classes, art, dance, drama, philosophy, computer science, environmental science, etc. (These vary very heavily across schools, of course). On top of that, there's the required "core" classes, including English/Literature, Math, PE (Phys. Ed.), Bio/Chem/Physics, and a foreign language.
Why are we taught such a large variety of subjects? Because very, very few of us humans overall know EXACTLY what we want to do in life long-term, and kids in the age range of 5 - 18 are even less sure of what they want to be. I could take on an apprenticeship when I'm 13 for 6 years, but it won't necessarily be the thing I will want to do when I'm 19. How many people do you know that followed through their first grade "dream job" of being an astronaut or fireman? Hell, I've already had a great deal of success in my field, and I still don't know exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life.
We can maintain our own hobbies in our own time, but school allows us to explore a wider variety of interests that we would have done so on our own.
While being an extremely broad generalization, it is certainly possible. You don't have to be highly intelligent to get straight A's. However, I think that smarter people will likely see the inherent value in getting an A (or B, or even a C) over an F. Having good grades throughout your schooling will in any case open up a significantly wider pool of opportunities, not just in learning but in all sorts of experiences. You'll only be limiting yourself if you decide to do poorly in school because you think it's bullshit or that you're "subscribing to the system" or whatever.
In middle school and high school I took about 4 years of Spanish classes. While I no longer know the intricacies of its sentence structure or verb conjugations, I can still understand bits and pieces and can have a basic conversation. While traveling to foreign countries, I have been able to communicate with them due to them being taught English in schools. These doors would have been closed to me otherwise.
---
Being in school is an environment where you will be around and develop with a number of other humans. You learn to talk with others. You learn how people react when certain things are said to them, and you learn how to react yourself when hearing certain things. You learn to read and write, or at least how to fine tune these abilities. You learn how to acquire new skills and also how to practice them. In essence, you learn to communicate.
Being in school gives you the opportunity to meet others and interact. Potential boyfriends/girlfriends, becoming part of a club or organization, friends, enemies, etc. On the whole of society, it can be said that the quality of life and standard of living has risen considerably over the last few centuries, and widespread schooling and education is certainly one of the reasons why.
Now, this is not to say that humans who have not been educated or who have not been to school, public or private, have less value than other people. In fact, I know many wonderful people who aren't part of the same "system". Some people simply have the drive to go out, learn, and communicate on their own. But school provides a starting point for everyone in general.
Also I'd like to make a last comment. It is definitely true that there are people with awful situations in schools who cannot get education, largely in areas of poverty with situations where people cannot pay for higher education or children have to work instead in order to support the family and cannot go to school. There also are schools that simply have bad teachers, or children who simply do not perform well under a particular environment or in a particular subject. These are regrettable and unfortunate, but the issue doesn't exactly lie in the concept of schooling itself but probably in some larger social issue.
Sorry for the essay.
Being a product of the American public school system (and a public university student nearly done with their degree), I've lived my whole life, like many others at my age, bound by this system. Many or most of my major successes and failures in life have been defined by this system. While it has certainly been difficult and trying at times, I can say without any doubt that it has immensely increased the quality and also potential quality of life of not only just those around me, but vast numbers of people across the world.
Here's why:
1. Learning to learn:
It is certainly true that for many exams that I have taken, they have simply been of that "memorize", "pass", and "forget" nature. Yet, the repetition of this act has taught me to pick up temporary skills quickly and also has given me confidence in my ability to learn. For example, if I need to learn how to bake a cake for a friend's birthday, even if I only have a little experience in the kitchen, it is simple enough to look up a recipe and follow instructions.
Also, while it varies from person to person, you do not always forget everything. I may not know the exact terms of the Treaty of Versailles yet I still know the basics, the "gist" of World War I. I can still do basic derivatives and integrals after taking years of (and forgetting) calculus and it will be much easier for me in the future if I develop a heavy interest in mathematics or physics.
This is why musicians, performers, artists, writers, programmers, etc. all practice. I can learn and practice a piece on piano for a performance, and forget it a few months later, and yet, I'll still be better for it overall.
2. You don't need 12 years of education to learn all the stuff you need to learn.
If education truly centers itself around real learning and not rote memorization, the amount of stuff you need to learn only requires 2-3 years.
As a semi-nitpick, not every skill takes only 2-3 years to learn. Bringing up musicianship again, it takes considerably longer to properly learn to play your first instrument than that, unless you are a prodigy. It takes many years of practice. That's what these 12 years are, practice for a vast variety of different things.
2. Developing culture:
You may call this "social engineering" or whatever but going to school develops a shared culture for humans. It's much easier for people to connect to one another when they are doing the same things. While not ALWAYS true, people in school mostly make friends with people in their same grade level who will be in the same graduation class. Why? Because you're around these people all the time, you do the same homework assignments, listen to the same lecture, etc. etc. It gives people a common ground. On top of that, there is the fairly obvious factor of the larger cultural knowledge that you will develop from going to school, whether it is about historical actions or local events or whatnot.
Going to school teaches you how to "behave", but I don't mean that in the fall-in-line don't-rock-the-boat kind of way, but rather how society works: cultural norms, morality, discipline (for work in the future), etc. Several people have mentioned it in this topic so I don't feel a great need to expand upon it.
3. Discovering passions and opening doors:
In my state (I don't know the exact details about others so they may differ) children at public school begin taking required choral/music classes in elementary school for a year or two. From then until high school, you are required to take a number of elective courses including music classes, art, dance, drama, philosophy, computer science, environmental science, etc. (These vary very heavily across schools, of course). On top of that, there's the required "core" classes, including English/Literature, Math, PE (Phys. Ed.), Bio/Chem/Physics, and a foreign language.
Why are we taught such a large variety of subjects? Because very, very few of us humans overall know EXACTLY what we want to do in life long-term, and kids in the age range of 5 - 18 are even less sure of what they want to be. I could take on an apprenticeship when I'm 13 for 6 years, but it won't necessarily be the thing I will want to do when I'm 19. How many people do you know that followed through their first grade "dream job" of being an astronaut or fireman? Hell, I've already had a great deal of success in my field, and I still don't know exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life.
We can maintain our own hobbies in our own time, but school allows us to explore a wider variety of interests that we would have done so on our own.
For the most part, people who get straight As are generally dumb as f*ck.
While being an extremely broad generalization, it is certainly possible. You don't have to be highly intelligent to get straight A's. However, I think that smarter people will likely see the inherent value in getting an A (or B, or even a C) over an F. Having good grades throughout your schooling will in any case open up a significantly wider pool of opportunities, not just in learning but in all sorts of experiences. You'll only be limiting yourself if you decide to do poorly in school because you think it's bullshit or that you're "subscribing to the system" or whatever.
In middle school and high school I took about 4 years of Spanish classes. While I no longer know the intricacies of its sentence structure or verb conjugations, I can still understand bits and pieces and can have a basic conversation. While traveling to foreign countries, I have been able to communicate with them due to them being taught English in schools. These doors would have been closed to me otherwise.
---
Being in school is an environment where you will be around and develop with a number of other humans. You learn to talk with others. You learn how people react when certain things are said to them, and you learn how to react yourself when hearing certain things. You learn to read and write, or at least how to fine tune these abilities. You learn how to acquire new skills and also how to practice them. In essence, you learn to communicate.
Being in school gives you the opportunity to meet others and interact. Potential boyfriends/girlfriends, becoming part of a club or organization, friends, enemies, etc. On the whole of society, it can be said that the quality of life and standard of living has risen considerably over the last few centuries, and widespread schooling and education is certainly one of the reasons why.
Now, this is not to say that humans who have not been educated or who have not been to school, public or private, have less value than other people. In fact, I know many wonderful people who aren't part of the same "system". Some people simply have the drive to go out, learn, and communicate on their own. But school provides a starting point for everyone in general.
Also I'd like to make a last comment. It is definitely true that there are people with awful situations in schools who cannot get education, largely in areas of poverty with situations where people cannot pay for higher education or children have to work instead in order to support the family and cannot go to school. There also are schools that simply have bad teachers, or children who simply do not perform well under a particular environment or in a particular subject. These are regrettable and unfortunate, but the issue doesn't exactly lie in the concept of schooling itself but probably in some larger social issue.
Sorry for the essay.
Shinan
4314
author=Link_2112Uhm. God in this case was just another word for "the natural order". Like how you say when you encounter something that was clearly built artificially "god does not draw in straight lines, this was created." (this would happen in a movie or a game. No one actually says lines like this)author=pianotmxD Hmm, let's try something here...
Goddoes not draw in straight lines. Order is the act of controlling Chaos. Government cannot justify its existence any other way.
In fact I think this proverb-like thing tends to be used against the existence of gods generally.
TheNecromancer
3160
From what I can see from searching, it's a line from a movie that has been given a meaning that is similar to what you're saying(which I find kind of silly). But it looks like the proverb is actually "God draws straight lines with a crooked stick", which is used by many religious people to explain why we have pain and suffering in what God has so perfectly created. Suggesting he has a hand in making things right even though we are crooked sticks.
Either way, he said God and I found it fun to replace all those words. It totally works heh
Really though, would there be less chaos without our current government to enforce laws and organize resource management? If there were no laws and every person personally fought over resources...
Btw, resources are things like trees and water and oil. Not people -.- We need government, but what we need is a government without petty bickering and posturing and lobbyists. Just because those things exist doesn't make government useless. Only makes it broken. We need to fix it, not abandon it.
Either way, he said God and I found it fun to replace all those words. It totally works heh
Really though, would there be less chaos without our current government to enforce laws and organize resource management? If there were no laws and every person personally fought over resources...
Btw, resources are things like trees and water and oil. Not people -.- We need government, but what we need is a government without petty bickering and posturing and lobbyists. Just because those things exist doesn't make government useless. Only makes it broken. We need to fix it, not abandon it.
ubon
66
I think you could have written his argument off just based on the way he wrote Chaos in all caps, like a tangible thing he had special reverence for.
or by the way it didn't contain any Pavarotti
or by the way it didn't contain any Pavarotti
Dyhalto
7536
author=DarklordKeinor
That's government as an ideal. That ideal breaks down when you factor in groups that lobby politicians; basically, the political parties become representatives of interest groups rather than the people that vote them into power.
It's not the ideal. It's actually how it is.
Yes, eventually the positions in a government become filled with gluttons and nepotists or agents thereof, because that's where people gravitate to when they want to change the rules of society to favor them. But that's not the fault of government for existing anymore than stabbing is the fault of a knife for existing.
author=DarklordKeinor
Government is necessary, but the real conversation is rooted in the size and scope of government. Mindlessly expanding the government to take on additional functions is hardly the answer.
Following my last point, you may notice that government has grown continuously and become increasingly complicated as human civilization progresses. We keep adding all these newfangled constitutions and charters and bill of rights and whatnot, as well as various agencies to enforce them like supreme courts and ombudsmen.
The reason we add these things is so that, when the administrative portion of our society gets taken over by gluttons and nepotists, we can remove them without having to resort to a violent uprising.
If by "expanding the government" you meant increasing taxes, social spending, stuff like that, then nevermind. That's a different discussion altogether.
author=Jude
I can't believe how easily you let harmonic turn this into a libertarian discussion. Again.
Actually, it was my fault this time.
DarklordKeinor
2478
author=Dyhalto
It's not the ideal. It's actually how it is.
Yes, eventually the positions in a government become filled with gluttons and nepotists or agents thereof, because that's where people gravitate to when they want to change the rules of society to favor them. But that's not the fault of government for existing anymore than stabbing is the fault of a knife for existing.
Last time I checked, we didn't set any rules; our representatives do. They set rules that favor their agendas, associates, and the interest groups that pay them off.
I'm not saying that by nature the government is corrupt for merely existing. What I will suggest is that the inadequate mechanisms that are put into place, and the vast size of the government, allows for the ability to game it.
author=Dyhalto
Following my last point, you may notice that government has grown continuously and become increasingly complicated as human civilization progresses. We keep adding all these newfangled constitutions and charters and bill of rights and whatnot, as well as various agencies to enforce them like supreme courts and ombudsmen.
The reason we add these things is so that, when the administrative portion of our society gets taken over by gluttons and nepotists, we can remove them without having to resort to a violent uprising.
It goes without saying that we require a method to enforce laws and regulations that are put into effect.
But if the system we have in place is so effective, why wasn't George W. Bush impeached for his bullshit war in Iraq. The Democrats had majority control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2007, so the capability to remove one of the "gluttons" (Bush) was there. Instead they funded Bush's war and didn't complain until after the media raised their objections. I've not seen any evidence that suggests the "gluttons" and "nepotists" are being held to task in any real capacity.
author=Dyhalto
If by "expanding the government" you meant increasing taxes, social spending, stuff like that, then nevermind. That's a different discussion altogether.
I agree: that's another discussion for another time. Taxes are nothing more than a means of drawing revenue that can, but do not necessarily, equate to expanded government.
I'm more so referring to over-regulation, corporate welfare, and wasteful spending, as opposed to social spending.
I'll use some of the examples from this link, but not all, to make my point: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste
1. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties. (Great example of what I mean by expansion. As other parts of government grows, the parts of government that have become outdated are still maintained.)
2. The Federal Communications Commission spent $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland. (Wasteful, unnecessary spending by any other name.)
3. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.(My gripe with this should be self-explanatory.)
I could also go into a diatribe on our militaristic behavior as a nation, but I'll leave it there. As government expands, as does inefficiency and corruption. Hell, this is a common issue with any centralized power that has become too expansive. The Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition comes to mind.
ubon
66
author=DarklordKeinor
3. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.(My gripe with this should be self-explanatory.)
author=literally a quick google search
NRCS's natural resources conservation programs help people reduce soil erosion, enhance water supplies with groundwater recharge, improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat, and reduce damages caused by floods and other natural disasters.
it's really weird when people let themselves be whipped into an outrage by easy buzzwords without even looking around for a possible purpose behind a program, instead assuming that there's none at all and the people who put it into action must have been literally insane
because, like, you understand what happens when you just harvest off the same land over and over, right? it grows arid. crop rotation and rest periods are a necessary part of agriculture, and that program exists not to keep farmers from farming, but to provide an income for them when they can't.
are the rest of these talking points you've regurgitated as well-researched?
author=Link_2112author=pianotmxD Hmm, let's try something here...
Goddoes not draw in straight lines. Order is the act of controlling Chaos. Government cannot justify its existence any other way.
God is not a fact of science, nature, or society, but a figment of the public imagination. That is to say, it exists exclusively because the people will it to exist. It is the living embodiment of the idea that existence is only as real as we perceive it to be. I will take the risk of even saying that the existence of God is a magical act of human consciousness.
It exists because we believe it exists, we want it to exist, and since many people are incapable of thinking for themselves, we need it to exist. You can say this isn't true because God would continue to exist if we stopped believing in it, however that is not where the proof lies. Once you believe in something, ceasing that belief won't make it go away. Santa Claus (Saint Nikoloas, Bishop of Myra) died in the fourth century, yet to this very day children everywhere absolutely expect him to climb down their chimneys on the 25th December each year.
If everyone in the world died except you, you would continue to exist, because you transcend belief. If God mobilized his army and decided that the best way to preserve peace would be to exterminate all civilians, then God would cease to exist because it does not transcend belief. The angels would have nobody to protect and no reason to guard it's secrets. Heaven would have nobody to regulate. The bible would have no laws to consider. The entire religion would cease to serve a purpose. The angels would either go home and establish a normal life, or obsess with their clouds by going in every day and remember that there is no point to being there. Like that, it would vanish, because without the people, it cannot exist, because God is not a real entity, but a philosophical one. One that with the above test, proves absolutely to be just as illusory as unicorns.
Well, it doesn't work on every line, but I like it. I may use this next time in a religious discussion.
Let's talk about religion now and purple monkey dishwasher.
THANK YOU! FINALLY! Somebody who understands what I'm saying!
Sorry for the double post but this just didn't feel like it belonged in the reply to Link.
Well, thank you. But you can critique government on its own, because even though it cannot exist without the will of the people, it can still act on it's own. A government's purpose is to control (That is, to maintain order, order being the essence of control because is not natural, Chaos being the natural order, and therefore, to maintain order, absolute control must be established). A government works best when it works for the people without consideration of its own existence. This is what our current government was intended to be.
That having been said, what can also happen (and does happen), government, being comprised of a collection of people with their own individual thoughts (again, this does not make government real. It simply acts as a driving force for the government), whether embodied in a statue, a magic conch, or a cosmic Jewish zombie (Link may want to play Captain Obvious again and...well...erm...point out the obvious: how dare I mention god in a discussion about the imaginary and not point out that this all applies to such an entity! Appalling! I kid, though. Go ahead, Link. It's not proof of no god , and indeed, no proof can exist because there is no measure against which to compare, but it is a very strong argument against ), is that a government can become obsessed with its own existence. To an extent, it may still serve the people, but it will begin to feed upon the people and resources in order to sustain itself. We see examples of this in the old French regimes of the 18th and 19th centuries, leading to revolution and the arrival of such men as Napoleon.
So you see, we must be able to criticize the government by itself. WE MUST CRITICIZE THE PEOPLE WHO ESTABLISH THE GOVERNMENT, YES, but once the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, the people no longer have control. They have a vote, but once their chosen representatives are in place, other forces immediately go to work on them. As the government begins to feed on the people (and in as such, feeding on itself, like the ouroborus) it becomes--oh, what is the word I'm looking for?--decadent?--lazy?--indifferent?--they're all close but none of them seem to fit--I'll settle for bloated, which doesn't quite fit, either, but at least puts one in mind of a parasite--it becomes bloated. Like a leech sucking on the blood it's victims, it begins to take more than it gives. How can you criticize society for this? Maybe they put their absolute faith in this system, or maybe they didn't, but however much faith they put into it, that trusted IN GOOD FAITH that their government would serve them. The government, for its part, reneged on the contract and essentially told the people to go screw. Then when the people rebel, they are the ones that history remembers as the villains. It even happened in our own American Revolution! We Americans are the only ones in the world who think Paul Revere was a hero and not a traitor. The sentiment is so prolific that written history is constantly trying to vindicate Benedict Arnold as being a man loyal to the rightful government.
We see this happening to our own government, though it hasn't become a parasite yet. It still gives more than it takes, though that is marginal at best. Since 1920, our government is increasingly more authoritarian. Go back to my post saying that a government by its nature must eventually become totalitarian. There is a right and wrong way to do this. Throughout history there have been totalitarian governments that their subjects were perfectly happy with and mostly cared for the welfare of the people. Still, when we think of totalitarianism, etched in our minds are such people as Adolf Hitler, Caligula, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, Tomas de Torquemada, and the list goes on and on.
Finally, as for trust in government: many people believe that our government can be absolutely trusted. Such people do not include the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Bennjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Hancock, all of whom completely believed this of government. In fact, they were so certain of government's natural inclination towards totalitarianism, they recommended that the people organize an armed revolution once every couple of centuries. They would actually be surprised and disgusted at the trust we have placed in our three century old government.
Many people believe that our government is the best government, the kindest government, and will always act justly. In fact, most American people believe this. We believe it so much that there is a movement to completely abolish the second amendment and place our faith squarely in the military and police.
Don't forget that this was the exact sentiment in Germany in the 1930s. What happened? The people gave up their rights to weapons...and what happened next was the second greatest atrocity in history, second only to the Russian Gulags of the Cold War (for a comparison, the Holocaust is generally believed to have claimed 6,000,000 lives while the estimates for the gulags vary between 8,000,000 and 30,000,000--there's no way to know the numbers for certain--one figure suggests 90,000,000, but that is absolutely ridiculous as that would have been almost half of the entire population of Russia! "The Great Terror" by Robert Conquest puts the figure at roughly 10,000,000. Conquest notes that the figures are not exact and that exact figures are probably impossible to come by. If you research, you'll see that the same notation also applies to the Holocaust).
Think about that. Nazi Germany was very popular. A large chunk of the American population supported Hitler during the 1930s. If you think our government isn't capable of something like this, consider this: HB 645, which passed a few weeks ago, gives our military the authority to corral citizens into approved holding areas in the event of emergency, and it also gives the president the power to declare martial law and emergency powers without the approval of congress or regional governors. FEMA has been digging mass graves across the nation, (I live near one of these facilities), and I have a friend at Woodlawn Cemetery who tells me that the government is trying to requisition all available cemetery space across the country. The use of predator drones in countries we are not at war with has increased, and these countries complain, but they don't challenge the U. S.'s right. Now, the FAA has lifted restrictions to allow the use of drones over American soil (though they still aren't granted access to national airspace...which means they can't fly higher than rooftops.). We have the government's assurance that they aren't ready to start using predator drones here. In 2012, Habeas Corpus was repealed from our laws along with Posse Comitatus (the law that prevents the military from acting as a police force on American soil), and the military was given the authority to indefinitely detain civilians on American soil and to remove them from American soil.
Now, before you scream conspiracy theory, these are all facts that our government has made no effort to hide, and assures us that these measures will help to PRESERVE OUR FREEDOM! The right to corral citizens into military bases preserves our freedom? The right to detain citizens (posse comitatus) without telling them what they've been arrested for (habeas corpus) preserves our freedom?
These are the people who run our public schools. You are trusting your children to these people! Those wonderful schools, that exalt our government like god on a pedestal, that have convinced us that the individual letters mean nothing to the meaning of a word and that pronunciation and representing "proper pronunciation" (as if there were such a thing) is more important in spelling, that tell us that history isn't important to our education, but "social science" is; these schools are run, directed, mandated, approved, and facilitated by our government. Do you trust the government enough to leave your children with them? I don't. What's more, the people who created our government advised us not to. The downward spiral of our nation began when we started to think the ideas of our Founding Fathers were outmoded and obsolete. Freedom is obsolete? Enjoy the decline.
author=Dyhalto
Ugh. pianotm, I was actually complimenting you while pointing out something I disagreed with. I'm sorry for acknowledging your musings with a reply. Next time I'll just do as everyone else did.
You're 50% right. Yes, government exists as a metaphysical social utility, so there's nothing tangible you can eat or take shelter in.
But you make the same mistake a lot of people do on the subject : You separate government into an entity of it's own and critique it by itself. You can't do that. Government is the administrative faculty for whatever social structure we choose to live under, and whatever rules we set out for our community. Even in a hypothetical society of totally equal peerage, "government" would exist in the form of procedures used to resolve issues that affect more than just the individual, like the conch shell in Lord of the Flies. In other words, government and civilized society are inseparable. If you want to go around saying "government this, government that" and "we don't need it", then it just shows a profound lack of understanding on your part.
Also, your Santa analogy is dumb. Parents choose to have their children believe in Santa, knowing the myth will eventually be exposed. What does that have to do with anything?
If you want a more relevant one, use Money. It doesn't actually exist. We collectively agree to assign nominal value to coins/bills/shells so that we can interact with each other in a fairly civilized way. Seems pretty much like what you were going for.
Well, thank you. But you can critique government on its own, because even though it cannot exist without the will of the people, it can still act on it's own. A government's purpose is to control (That is, to maintain order, order being the essence of control because is not natural, Chaos being the natural order, and therefore, to maintain order, absolute control must be established). A government works best when it works for the people without consideration of its own existence. This is what our current government was intended to be.
That having been said, what can also happen (and does happen), government, being comprised of a collection of people with their own individual thoughts (again, this does not make government real. It simply acts as a driving force for the government), whether embodied in a statue, a magic conch, or a cosmic Jewish zombie (Link may want to play Captain Obvious again and...well...erm...point out the obvious: how dare I mention god in a discussion about the imaginary and not point out that this all applies to such an entity! Appalling! I kid, though. Go ahead, Link. It's not proof of no god , and indeed, no proof can exist because there is no measure against which to compare, but it is a very strong argument against ), is that a government can become obsessed with its own existence. To an extent, it may still serve the people, but it will begin to feed upon the people and resources in order to sustain itself. We see examples of this in the old French regimes of the 18th and 19th centuries, leading to revolution and the arrival of such men as Napoleon.
So you see, we must be able to criticize the government by itself. WE MUST CRITICIZE THE PEOPLE WHO ESTABLISH THE GOVERNMENT, YES, but once the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, the people no longer have control. They have a vote, but once their chosen representatives are in place, other forces immediately go to work on them. As the government begins to feed on the people (and in as such, feeding on itself, like the ouroborus) it becomes--oh, what is the word I'm looking for?--decadent?--lazy?--indifferent?--they're all close but none of them seem to fit--I'll settle for bloated, which doesn't quite fit, either, but at least puts one in mind of a parasite--it becomes bloated. Like a leech sucking on the blood it's victims, it begins to take more than it gives. How can you criticize society for this? Maybe they put their absolute faith in this system, or maybe they didn't, but however much faith they put into it, that trusted IN GOOD FAITH that their government would serve them. The government, for its part, reneged on the contract and essentially told the people to go screw. Then when the people rebel, they are the ones that history remembers as the villains. It even happened in our own American Revolution! We Americans are the only ones in the world who think Paul Revere was a hero and not a traitor. The sentiment is so prolific that written history is constantly trying to vindicate Benedict Arnold as being a man loyal to the rightful government.
We see this happening to our own government, though it hasn't become a parasite yet. It still gives more than it takes, though that is marginal at best. Since 1920, our government is increasingly more authoritarian. Go back to my post saying that a government by its nature must eventually become totalitarian. There is a right and wrong way to do this. Throughout history there have been totalitarian governments that their subjects were perfectly happy with and mostly cared for the welfare of the people. Still, when we think of totalitarianism, etched in our minds are such people as Adolf Hitler, Caligula, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, Tomas de Torquemada, and the list goes on and on.
Finally, as for trust in government: many people believe that our government can be absolutely trusted. Such people do not include the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Bennjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Hancock, all of whom completely believed this of government. In fact, they were so certain of government's natural inclination towards totalitarianism, they recommended that the people organize an armed revolution once every couple of centuries. They would actually be surprised and disgusted at the trust we have placed in our three century old government.
Many people believe that our government is the best government, the kindest government, and will always act justly. In fact, most American people believe this. We believe it so much that there is a movement to completely abolish the second amendment and place our faith squarely in the military and police.
Don't forget that this was the exact sentiment in Germany in the 1930s. What happened? The people gave up their rights to weapons...and what happened next was the second greatest atrocity in history, second only to the Russian Gulags of the Cold War (for a comparison, the Holocaust is generally believed to have claimed 6,000,000 lives while the estimates for the gulags vary between 8,000,000 and 30,000,000--there's no way to know the numbers for certain--one figure suggests 90,000,000, but that is absolutely ridiculous as that would have been almost half of the entire population of Russia! "The Great Terror" by Robert Conquest puts the figure at roughly 10,000,000. Conquest notes that the figures are not exact and that exact figures are probably impossible to come by. If you research, you'll see that the same notation also applies to the Holocaust).
Think about that. Nazi Germany was very popular. A large chunk of the American population supported Hitler during the 1930s. If you think our government isn't capable of something like this, consider this: HB 645, which passed a few weeks ago, gives our military the authority to corral citizens into approved holding areas in the event of emergency, and it also gives the president the power to declare martial law and emergency powers without the approval of congress or regional governors. FEMA has been digging mass graves across the nation, (I live near one of these facilities), and I have a friend at Woodlawn Cemetery who tells me that the government is trying to requisition all available cemetery space across the country. The use of predator drones in countries we are not at war with has increased, and these countries complain, but they don't challenge the U. S.'s right. Now, the FAA has lifted restrictions to allow the use of drones over American soil (though they still aren't granted access to national airspace...which means they can't fly higher than rooftops.). We have the government's assurance that they aren't ready to start using predator drones here. In 2012, Habeas Corpus was repealed from our laws along with Posse Comitatus (the law that prevents the military from acting as a police force on American soil), and the military was given the authority to indefinitely detain civilians on American soil and to remove them from American soil.
Now, before you scream conspiracy theory, these are all facts that our government has made no effort to hide, and assures us that these measures will help to PRESERVE OUR FREEDOM! The right to corral citizens into military bases preserves our freedom? The right to detain citizens (posse comitatus) without telling them what they've been arrested for (habeas corpus) preserves our freedom?
These are the people who run our public schools. You are trusting your children to these people! Those wonderful schools, that exalt our government like god on a pedestal, that have convinced us that the individual letters mean nothing to the meaning of a word and that pronunciation and representing "proper pronunciation" (as if there were such a thing) is more important in spelling, that tell us that history isn't important to our education, but "social science" is; these schools are run, directed, mandated, approved, and facilitated by our government. Do you trust the government enough to leave your children with them? I don't. What's more, the people who created our government advised us not to. The downward spiral of our nation began when we started to think the ideas of our Founding Fathers were outmoded and obsolete. Freedom is obsolete? Enjoy the decline.
DarklordKeinor
2478
author=mawk
because, like, you understand what happens when you just harvest off the same land over and over, right? it grows arid. crop rotation and rest periods are a necessary part of agriculture, and that program exists not to keep farmers from farming, but to provide an income for them when they can't.
This presupposes that it is the public's responsibility to provide the farmer an income in the instance they can't farm. How about they don't farm on the land that it is going bad and find another area to farm or another means of income?
author=mawk
are the rest of these talking points you've regurgitated as well-researched?
That snark comment assumes I didn't research any of it. Let's see if my points stand up, shall we?
Point 1: Feel free to google what I wrote and make variations. Not a single website I saw on the first three pages justified why we were maintaining the usage of vacant lots.
Point 2: The Nascar point is the result of an FCC outreach program to get people to go digital (DTV). I still call it unnecessary spending, considering they could have ran either a radio ad, tv ad, or simply use a brochure.
http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/10/fcc_goes_nascar_racing_to_publ.php
Point 3: I'm aware of the purpose of the Conservation Reserve Program, but it is far more counter-intuitive than you realize to pay people not to farm.
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/SFT-Farm%20Policy%20%281-07%29.htm
"When their 10-year CRP contracts are completed, most farmers will have been paid enough money to cover the full market value of the land. Why should taxpayers pay the full value of land to protect it from exploitation, only to see it again exploited at the first opportunity for profit? The CRP should be transformed into a program for purchasing permanent conservation easements on environmentally fragile farmland. The land could then be kept out of production, unless needed for some legitimate public emergency."
So going back to your comment on "providing income for farmers when they can't farm" you should know that the contracts they receive go on for years. The quote I provided above kindly makes my case. Let's see if the FSA and USDA supports this assertion.
"In exchange for a yearly rental payment, farmers enrolled in the program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality. Contracts for land enrolled in CRP are 10-15 years in length. The long-term goal of the program is to re-establish valuable land cover to help improve water quality, prevent soil erosion, and reduce loss of wildlife habitat." http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?area=home&subject=copr&topic=crp
While the long term goal of the plan is desirable, the farmers are making money for the next 10 to 15 years doing nothing. So if we pay $2 billion annually for them to do nothing with their land, that means, in ten years worth of time before the contracts expire, we've invested $20 billion dollars on land that is not going to be used.
To wrap this post up, all the farmers would have to do is not farm the land. Government is not needed to pay them to do nothing. And if they don't practice crop rotation, and they overgraze, then their land will become infertile; that's the farmer's fault and is hardly the public's problem.
