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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (33565)	4/2/1999 1:54:00 AM
From: PiMac	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You say, <<we ought to educate and train the unproductive workers to become more productive>> and, <<Far more students in supportive environments succeed, far more often than people who are threatened with failure.>> and, << Really rotten stupid students would have to leave school.>> Removing the really rotten students from school makes it impossible to educate the unproductive workers. This is contrary to supplying the capital for the investment of <<supportive environments>>. If we remove the <<There are some (very, very few) masochistic and self-punishing students who must be flogged or worse to get them to obey (and learn)>> from the educational structure, and place them in the medical structure, where abnormal is the norm, we are left with a perpetual class of students/workers who are too normal to be diagnosed, and too stupid/unproductive to be responsive to <<varying the rewards of education, welfare, crime, and vice (and not changing labor market conditions) we can shift the proportions of people in each of the categories, but we cannot drive many of the to work for the jobs available right now.>> The <<supportive environments>> that elicit success, from all--not just the already productive--are nowhere in your post. In a previous post, you presented the foreign policy of the civilized, <<federated>> nations to be keeping a cap on the excesses, like war or despotism, or state-economies, of the rogue and undeveloped countries. Again, no provision for <<supportive environments>> that will allow the unincluded nations to be federated. Not putting words in your mouth, Nihil, but without a positive commitment to a project with a very long period till profit, are we not committing to the default, negative of <<supportive environments>>: euthanasia [active or passive], or the misery of prison, poverty, or exploitation? My one complaint with honest, rational philosophies is that they rearrange the structures of the status quo, most excellently, but have no place in the system for changing the individuals that perpetuate much of our unworkable structures. Relying solely on external structures cements the status quo as it is for the future. The poor, sick, broken-hearted may always be with us, but this philosophy guarantees it. Any philosophy that achieves more rational outcomes in our society is very worthwhile. But it is a philosophy, different in kind, that would remove the individual quirks that keep reappearing in society, causing irrational outcomes, and reduce the sting from poverty, sickness, despair for good. I admit the external structure of gene manipulation, and what follows that, may make the second philosophy moot. I just find my faith inadequate to believe there are not unforeseen complexities that will waylay this simple future resolution. Supporting the 'external structure path', with so little acknowledgement of another proven attitude, and so much perfidy already committed, has become loathsome for me. Why do we give so little heed to the power that <<supportive environments>> have upon countries and classes and families and people. Power that would improve our own world, our own lives?