Americans can hold the same idea in two different contexts at the same time: While embracing interdependence at home, we must also embrace self-reliance on the international stage
America can not stand on her own two feet until she empowers and educates her people to stand on theirs. The Republican propaganda machine utilizes language acquisition and literacy education to deceive and enslave their constituency.
Language acquisition and literacy educators in our primary, secondary, and collegiate schools teach a theory of emotionally driven behavior. This cognitive construct must be further assimilated by a student to understand and comprehend more advanced works in literature, psychology, philosophy, religion, and law. This neurolinguistic programming is also reinforced with a socially accepted reflexive stimulus-thought-emotion-act cognitive construct as professed by our academia in literature, religion, psychology, law, and philosophy. The Republican propaganda machine makes full use of this animalistic reflexive cause and effect emotional process where thoughts stimulate emotions that drive behavior. But this is a false cognitive construct of a highly evolved and human cognitive-emotional re-processing mechanism where cognition, not emotion, precipitates the neurological and biochemical physiology that does drive behavior.
Emotions, as perception of physiological states of being, have evolved to guide, re-process, and re-construct cognitive behavior towards those thoughts and beliefs that feel good and empower the individual. The Republican propaganda machine relies on humanity’s ignorance and inability to re-process, re-structure, and re-organize one’s own internal thoughts, beliefs, and awarenesses towards joy, well-being, and success and rely on a person’s education into an automatic, reflexive, and animalistic behavior responses to blame their outside surrounding and observable “reality” (as the machine has defined it to be) as causal to their pain, suffering, and failure.
Americans are made weak and ineffective in their efforts to combat the Republican propaganda because they are “educated” and have accepted the Ancient Greek philosophers’ and today’s academic dissertations of emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability. Americans need to understand that emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability exists only when cognitively dwelling upon the lack or absence of that which is wanted, desired, or intended. The lack of our own educational academia to understand our highly evolved and human cognitive-emotional re-processing mechanism has created an opening for a power-hungry, apathetic elite to dominate the political landscape.
Our educators, especially those in language acquisition and literacy development need to understand they are teaching an erroneous psychology of emotionally driven behavior. Disempowering emotionally negative cognitive activities can be re-processed, re-structured, and re-developed into emotionally positive cognitions that reflect health, well-being, and success, if a person has developed the abilities, skills, and beliefs to do so. A Republican constituency of emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability can be transformed, transmuted, and reinvented into a humanity of joy, freedom, and power with the imaginative, artistic, and creative mind necessary to fashion and manifest their wanted, desired, and intended world, reality, truth, and favored fortune.
Or, like the Republican elite, is that not the American the Democratic elite want from our educational institutions?
Well, as Michael Monett commented, I'm not sure I fully understand all that you're presenting i your analysis. I certainly agree that our education system has largely been put to the service of dumbing us down, and the emphasis on emotional response over cognitive mentation is widespread on left and right. There are times when the emotional response may be what's best suited to the situation, as when there is a need to respond to grave injustices. Cognitive thinking may indeed lead to an emotional response, which, in turn, leads to action. And let me be clear: I am responding with what may be an imperfect grasp of the points you are trying to make.
Don't be so humble, John. I've got a bunch of fancy paper on the wall, and I think all that gobbledygook boils down to a particularly creative prologue to "whataboutism." 1st P.: Repub. propaganda uses "language acquisition and literacy education to deceive and enslave...." So, poorer command of language and less literacy is going to set us free? Our current school system, per Jackson post, teaches a "cognitive construct" (P. 2) that "must be further assimilated by a student to understand and comprehend more advanced works in literature, psychology, philosophy, religion, and law." Maybe it's just catastrophically incomplete. It's bad for us to comprehend these things? He seems to know about a better way, but isn't sharing it with us. Maybe some real-life examples? "Americans" (which?) can't combat Repub. propaganda because they know too much about "ancient Greek philosophers?" Well, that's not the stereotype MAGA, for sure. It was fun, anyway....
When educators were replaced by politicians in control of education, it was doomed. I used to know lots of teachers highly motivated to help kids. Now, every teacher I know is teaching because it's great pay, great hours, and now that politicians dictate curriculum, they barely have any academic duties besides babysitting the kids and doling out boring, repetitive sub-third world learning they had no input formulating.
Hello chickens! Come roost beside me; I know why you're here.
If you have read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", you also know why. At least China gives their plan a name and does most of it out in the open.
Self-recrimination aside, what Thom talks about is sensible and do-able.
My friends and I fought a very destructive pipeline and gas export project for 15 years. We challenged every permit, our state did too for water and air; the owners failed and cancelled it. Most letters/emails I wrote ended with: "Sending fossil fuel from one end to the other of a tired, hot planet is insane!".
As we go green, we can make some amends, help ourselves, and do what is right for American generations to come.
To Biden's credit, he's actually doing something about the self-reliance issue. Trump made a big noise about it to get elected, then did nothing - a complete failure. Not an easy task, to turn such a big ship as free trade in a different direction. I wish nations would covet their own natural resources rather than ship them all around the world, but that boat has sailed. In Canada and the U.S., we're getting perilously close to exhausting our natural resources. But our young folks will say, as long as we have "weed" and some munchies, nothing to worry about.
It was easy to convince Americans to do those things: it made produce and menial work more economical (or so we were told) by providing cheap labor, for producer and consumer alike. Never mind that we are still paying for the loss of jobs and income for all but the richest Americans, and having to support most of Latin America.
We must move to a single world government and end nationalism. It's our only hope of preventing extinction. Humans have proven we won't even admit to the actual problem. I doubt we would do so as one world government, but at least we'd stop wasting 3/4 of our resources fighting each other for the benefit of a handful of old white men who never put THEMSELVES at risk.
How about if they gave a war and we didn't attend. How about we never attend any war again, none of us.
OK, time for the scare tactic. People, we have to end war because we are less than 10 years from combat robots who don't have Asimov's laws. As each cotton gin replaced 1,000 slaves, each combat robot will replace 1,000 soldiers with a conscience.
Something like 24 LNG terminals are being built or expanded so the USA can replace Russian methane sales to Europe. Forget environmental issues, which are eliminated if they simply remove the carbon, making methane hydrogen. Just looking at economics and politics, this will divide Europe and Russian ties while tightening US and European ties.
It will also drive up methane prices in the USA, and I suspect drive propane prices down.
I don't want America standing alone. I want every country on earth to shut down immediately if ONE country is attacked. Only then can we achieve peace.
One of the ways that makes this a timeless piece is by weaving together the narrower story of the individual with the wider story of us all. Really, it's the same story: I am the world; the world is me. For good or bad, the slightest flutter of our wing -- each word, action, thought, feeling (Other than for scholarly analysis, why do we insist on separating our whole consciousness into conflicting elements?) -- reverberates instantly, affecting those around us and, in turn, affecting so many others in wider and wider concentric circles, like pouring water into sand.
I think most would agree that the core of any structured and functioning society is the family unit, traditional or otherwise. More poignantly, of song and legend, it is: "Oh, what we teach our children!" ...Or, perhaps, what we DON'T teach them: our own severely limited biases and destructive misunderstandings!
To put it another way, the ugliness in society largely reflects bad parenting skills. Why not let the innocent remain innocent, at a fundamental level beyond the rote education of the meat mind (as necessary as that is to survive and fit in), to see the world anew as it is -- both astoundingly beautiful as well as utterly terrifying? Understanding the problem at its most basic cause is the key part of the solution. As obvious as it gets.
So the question becomes, can the purity and humility of innocence -- not naivete -- and natural curiosity be protected and allowed to flourish into adulthood? Isn't the "wisdom of a child" the thing sorely missing nowadays and throughout the sordid history of human civilization?
It's a fine mess we've made of things with all of our so-called "worldly knowledge" imparted to the children, ensuring that they grow up just like us, carbon copies repeating the same old mistakes over and over. Isn't it about time for a new approach? Is it truly possible to break the cycle and open our minds to the lessons nature is trying (and evidently failing) to teach us?
It seems that for our own individual survival as well as that of the whole planet, Mommy and Daddy have much to learn from their kids.
The wake up call that very few people are considering is the ruin of our US Public Education System for all our K-12 students. Practical classes such as Home Economy, Shop Classes and Debate have been replaced by Foreign Languages, Multi-Cultural Understanding, World Religions and Ghetto classes for our ESL children. In comparison, Germany has long been focused on getting their high school students to graduate with a completed apprenticeship program that assures non-college bound students a path to high quality jobs. https://www.froshcollegeconsulting.com/2020/05/germanys-successful-apprenticeship-system-finally-embraced-by-10-u-s-states/
Teenage pregnancy is soaring, and drug use among our young people is creating a generation of sad, hopeless young people who know they have no job skills, no literacy skills and no future. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3229472/
In our national effort to keep wages and benefits low for our K-12 teachers, and in our efforts to turn our US schools into social-cultural propaganda systems we have failed all our children - and US employers do not have enough quality workers to staff current businesses- let alone new High tech Manufacturing jobs. In desperation employers are using thousands of Temp Agencies to fraudulently assure employers that their workers have US residency visas, Social Security Cards and a work permit. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/as-temp-agencies-grow-many-prey-on-undocumented-immigrants-for-cheap-labor-505c5b2f6231/
Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are refusing to adopt E-Verify that automatically determines whether a current and prospective employee is legally present in the US. Thus, the US has created a perpetual JOB MAGNET that signals to all the world's families and workers that America does not have enough workers, skilled or unskilled, to fill their employer demands https://www.fairus.org/issue/workforce-economy/illegal-aliens-taking-us-jobs. So, they come, and we continue to fund our US K-12 system lower than other developed countries, and we continue to replace functional and necessary classes with classes that won't help our students develop work and life skills. https://www.insperity.com/blog/what-is-e-verify/
Our young people can lift mountains if we give them Debate Classes where they learn to speak politely with each other, and explore how to disagree without name calling.
Our young people can build healthy families if they know how to cook, balance a check book and know the consequences of drug use and casual sex.
Our new immigrants will make America stronger if we quickly teach them English, and get them a Home Room Study class to pass their Math and Science, plus give them and their families an assured path to become US citizens.
So, Mr. Hartman is correct: We are all in this together.
Mr. Hartman's citations:
The myth of individual self-reliance has fueled libertarian and Republican fantasies ever since high school kids started reading Atlas Shrugged. Nonetheless, we truly are all in this together, and the more the morbidly rich try to pull out of their societal obligations the poorer and more desperate our nation becomes.
But at the level of nations, self-reliance is not only good but essential. If China were to attack Taiwan and simultaneously cut off all ships carrying goods to America, our economy would be on its knees within weeks. If Saudi Arabia were to cut off oil to the US, inflation would eat us alive.
Americans can hold the same idea in two different contexts at the same time: we’ve done it for centuries. While embracing interdependence at home, we must also embrace self-reliance on the international stage.
America can not stand on her own two feet until she empowers and educates her people to stand on theirs. The Republican propaganda machine utilizes language acquisition and literacy education to deceive and enslave their constituency.
Language acquisition and literacy educators in our primary, secondary, and collegiate schools teach a theory of emotionally driven behavior. This cognitive construct must be further assimilated by a student to understand and comprehend more advanced works in literature, psychology, philosophy, religion, and law. This neurolinguistic programming is also reinforced with a socially accepted reflexive stimulus-thought-emotion-act cognitive construct as professed by our academia in literature, religion, psychology, law, and philosophy. The Republican propaganda machine makes full use of this animalistic reflexive cause and effect emotional process where thoughts stimulate emotions that drive behavior. But this is a false cognitive construct of a highly evolved and human cognitive-emotional re-processing mechanism where cognition, not emotion, precipitates the neurological and biochemical physiology that does drive behavior.
Emotions, as perception of physiological states of being, have evolved to guide, re-process, and re-construct cognitive behavior towards those thoughts and beliefs that feel good and empower the individual. The Republican propaganda machine relies on humanity’s ignorance and inability to re-process, re-structure, and re-organize one’s own internal thoughts, beliefs, and awarenesses towards joy, well-being, and success and rely on a person’s education into an automatic, reflexive, and animalistic behavior responses to blame their outside surrounding and observable “reality” (as the machine has defined it to be) as causal to their pain, suffering, and failure.
Americans are made weak and ineffective in their efforts to combat the Republican propaganda because they are “educated” and have accepted the Ancient Greek philosophers’ and today’s academic dissertations of emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability. Americans need to understand that emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability exists only when cognitively dwelling upon the lack or absence of that which is wanted, desired, or intended. The lack of our own educational academia to understand our highly evolved and human cognitive-emotional re-processing mechanism has created an opening for a power-hungry, apathetic elite to dominate the political landscape.
Our educators, especially those in language acquisition and literacy development need to understand they are teaching an erroneous psychology of emotionally driven behavior. Disempowering emotionally negative cognitive activities can be re-processed, re-structured, and re-developed into emotionally positive cognitions that reflect health, well-being, and success, if a person has developed the abilities, skills, and beliefs to do so. A Republican constituency of emotional suffering, slavery, and vulnerability can be transformed, transmuted, and reinvented into a humanity of joy, freedom, and power with the imaginative, artistic, and creative mind necessary to fashion and manifest their wanted, desired, and intended world, reality, truth, and favored fortune.
Or, like the Republican elite, is that not the American the Democratic elite want from our educational institutions?
Reference: symbioticpsychology.com.
Well, as Michael Monett commented, I'm not sure I fully understand all that you're presenting i your analysis. I certainly agree that our education system has largely been put to the service of dumbing us down, and the emphasis on emotional response over cognitive mentation is widespread on left and right. There are times when the emotional response may be what's best suited to the situation, as when there is a need to respond to grave injustices. Cognitive thinking may indeed lead to an emotional response, which, in turn, leads to action. And let me be clear: I am responding with what may be an imperfect grasp of the points you are trying to make.
Maybe "whataboutism" isn't precise. I was using it as shorthand for: "Both parties do it, so who cares-ism."
Don't be so humble, John. I've got a bunch of fancy paper on the wall, and I think all that gobbledygook boils down to a particularly creative prologue to "whataboutism." 1st P.: Repub. propaganda uses "language acquisition and literacy education to deceive and enslave...." So, poorer command of language and less literacy is going to set us free? Our current school system, per Jackson post, teaches a "cognitive construct" (P. 2) that "must be further assimilated by a student to understand and comprehend more advanced works in literature, psychology, philosophy, religion, and law." Maybe it's just catastrophically incomplete. It's bad for us to comprehend these things? He seems to know about a better way, but isn't sharing it with us. Maybe some real-life examples? "Americans" (which?) can't combat Repub. propaganda because they know too much about "ancient Greek philosophers?" Well, that's not the stereotype MAGA, for sure. It was fun, anyway....
Well, I was trying to be nice.... :)
When educators were replaced by politicians in control of education, it was doomed. I used to know lots of teachers highly motivated to help kids. Now, every teacher I know is teaching because it's great pay, great hours, and now that politicians dictate curriculum, they barely have any academic duties besides babysitting the kids and doling out boring, repetitive sub-third world learning they had no input formulating.
Thanks for introducing me to this way of looking at it. I'm not sure I understand yet, but I want to see if I can, by re-reading what you just wrote, and then checking out the link you just gave. It sounds a lot like Stoicism in some ways. ( https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-and-how-can-it-turn-your-life-to-solid-gold/ )
So far, my psychological perspective on what has happened to us the last 45 years has been focused on the psychology of authoritarianism. ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view?resourcekey=0-WGxUhtR8lhJdnFck4tTIyA , https://theauthoritarians.org/ , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299483442_The_Henchman's_Brain_Neuropsychological_Implications_of_Authoritarianism_and_Prejudice ).
Or, as a dorm-mate of mine at UC, who was a nuclear physicist, used to say: "That's so profound it's obscure."
Hello chickens! Come roost beside me; I know why you're here.
If you have read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", you also know why. At least China gives their plan a name and does most of it out in the open.
Self-recrimination aside, what Thom talks about is sensible and do-able.
My friends and I fought a very destructive pipeline and gas export project for 15 years. We challenged every permit, our state did too for water and air; the owners failed and cancelled it. Most letters/emails I wrote ended with: "Sending fossil fuel from one end to the other of a tired, hot planet is insane!".
As we go green, we can make some amends, help ourselves, and do what is right for American generations to come.
To Biden's credit, he's actually doing something about the self-reliance issue. Trump made a big noise about it to get elected, then did nothing - a complete failure. Not an easy task, to turn such a big ship as free trade in a different direction. I wish nations would covet their own natural resources rather than ship them all around the world, but that boat has sailed. In Canada and the U.S., we're getting perilously close to exhausting our natural resources. But our young folks will say, as long as we have "weed" and some munchies, nothing to worry about.
It was easy to convince Americans to do those things: it made produce and menial work more economical (or so we were told) by providing cheap labor, for producer and consumer alike. Never mind that we are still paying for the loss of jobs and income for all but the richest Americans, and having to support most of Latin America.
We must move to a single world government and end nationalism. It's our only hope of preventing extinction. Humans have proven we won't even admit to the actual problem. I doubt we would do so as one world government, but at least we'd stop wasting 3/4 of our resources fighting each other for the benefit of a handful of old white men who never put THEMSELVES at risk.
How about if they gave a war and we didn't attend. How about we never attend any war again, none of us.
OK, time for the scare tactic. People, we have to end war because we are less than 10 years from combat robots who don't have Asimov's laws. As each cotton gin replaced 1,000 slaves, each combat robot will replace 1,000 soldiers with a conscience.
Something like 24 LNG terminals are being built or expanded so the USA can replace Russian methane sales to Europe. Forget environmental issues, which are eliminated if they simply remove the carbon, making methane hydrogen. Just looking at economics and politics, this will divide Europe and Russian ties while tightening US and European ties.
It will also drive up methane prices in the USA, and I suspect drive propane prices down.
I don't want America standing alone. I want every country on earth to shut down immediately if ONE country is attacked. Only then can we achieve peace.
One of the ways that makes this a timeless piece is by weaving together the narrower story of the individual with the wider story of us all. Really, it's the same story: I am the world; the world is me. For good or bad, the slightest flutter of our wing -- each word, action, thought, feeling (Other than for scholarly analysis, why do we insist on separating our whole consciousness into conflicting elements?) -- reverberates instantly, affecting those around us and, in turn, affecting so many others in wider and wider concentric circles, like pouring water into sand.
I think most would agree that the core of any structured and functioning society is the family unit, traditional or otherwise. More poignantly, of song and legend, it is: "Oh, what we teach our children!" ...Or, perhaps, what we DON'T teach them: our own severely limited biases and destructive misunderstandings!
To put it another way, the ugliness in society largely reflects bad parenting skills. Why not let the innocent remain innocent, at a fundamental level beyond the rote education of the meat mind (as necessary as that is to survive and fit in), to see the world anew as it is -- both astoundingly beautiful as well as utterly terrifying? Understanding the problem at its most basic cause is the key part of the solution. As obvious as it gets.
So the question becomes, can the purity and humility of innocence -- not naivete -- and natural curiosity be protected and allowed to flourish into adulthood? Isn't the "wisdom of a child" the thing sorely missing nowadays and throughout the sordid history of human civilization?
It's a fine mess we've made of things with all of our so-called "worldly knowledge" imparted to the children, ensuring that they grow up just like us, carbon copies repeating the same old mistakes over and over. Isn't it about time for a new approach? Is it truly possible to break the cycle and open our minds to the lessons nature is trying (and evidently failing) to teach us?
It seems that for our own individual survival as well as that of the whole planet, Mommy and Daddy have much to learn from their kids.
The wake up call that very few people are considering is the ruin of our US Public Education System for all our K-12 students. Practical classes such as Home Economy, Shop Classes and Debate have been replaced by Foreign Languages, Multi-Cultural Understanding, World Religions and Ghetto classes for our ESL children. In comparison, Germany has long been focused on getting their high school students to graduate with a completed apprenticeship program that assures non-college bound students a path to high quality jobs. https://www.froshcollegeconsulting.com/2020/05/germanys-successful-apprenticeship-system-finally-embraced-by-10-u-s-states/
US High school students are finishing their K-12 journey with abysmally low Math, Science and Reading Comprehension skills. And the boys can't change a tire on a car or fix much of anything. https://www.gopusa.com/oregon-gov-signed-bill-to-allow-students-to-graduate-hs-who-cant-read-or-do-math/
Our exploding ESL programs mire millions of new immigrant children for all of their K-12 classes in cultural programs instead of rapidly teaching them functional English and then replacing their support with Old-Fashioned Home-Room Study program to help them pass their 'hard' classes. We fund it at 150%, with 50% more monetary help than we give our poorest US born African American children. https://www.texastribune.org/2015/11/19/study-texas-students-exempt-state-exams/ and https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/rising-number-of-esl-students-poses-challenges-for-u-s-schools/2018/01
Teenage pregnancy is soaring, and drug use among our young people is creating a generation of sad, hopeless young people who know they have no job skills, no literacy skills and no future. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3229472/
In our national effort to keep wages and benefits low for our K-12 teachers, and in our efforts to turn our US schools into social-cultural propaganda systems we have failed all our children - and US employers do not have enough quality workers to staff current businesses- let alone new High tech Manufacturing jobs. In desperation employers are using thousands of Temp Agencies to fraudulently assure employers that their workers have US residency visas, Social Security Cards and a work permit. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/as-temp-agencies-grow-many-prey-on-undocumented-immigrants-for-cheap-labor-505c5b2f6231/
Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are refusing to adopt E-Verify that automatically determines whether a current and prospective employee is legally present in the US. Thus, the US has created a perpetual JOB MAGNET that signals to all the world's families and workers that America does not have enough workers, skilled or unskilled, to fill their employer demands https://www.fairus.org/issue/workforce-economy/illegal-aliens-taking-us-jobs. So, they come, and we continue to fund our US K-12 system lower than other developed countries, and we continue to replace functional and necessary classes with classes that won't help our students develop work and life skills. https://www.insperity.com/blog/what-is-e-verify/
Our young people can lift mountains if we give them Debate Classes where they learn to speak politely with each other, and explore how to disagree without name calling.
Our young people can build healthy families if they know how to cook, balance a check book and know the consequences of drug use and casual sex.
Our new immigrants will make America stronger if we quickly teach them English, and get them a Home Room Study class to pass their Math and Science, plus give them and their families an assured path to become US citizens.
America will NOT become self-reliant to any degree in the near future unless we shift our focus to make our K-12 educations system a world-class practical system that give all our young people the skills they need to get good jobs, build healthy families and learn to talk with each other https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education-spending-finland-south-korea. In part, America's males will need to re-consider and re-commit to become reliable role models as fathers and teachers - our K-12 schools have very few male teachers, and our exploding single family households headed by women clear show that fathers have not been present in our children's lives for a long time. https://www.thetrumpet.com/2844-the-case-for-male-teachers and https://thebaynet.com/the-rise-of-single-parent-households-in-america/
So, Mr. Hartman is correct: We are all in this together.
Mr. Hartman's citations:
The myth of individual self-reliance has fueled libertarian and Republican fantasies ever since high school kids started reading Atlas Shrugged. Nonetheless, we truly are all in this together, and the more the morbidly rich try to pull out of their societal obligations the poorer and more desperate our nation becomes.
But at the level of nations, self-reliance is not only good but essential. If China were to attack Taiwan and simultaneously cut off all ships carrying goods to America, our economy would be on its knees within weeks. If Saudi Arabia were to cut off oil to the US, inflation would eat us alive.
Americans can hold the same idea in two different contexts at the same time: we’ve done it for centuries. While embracing interdependence at home, we must also embrace self-reliance on the international stage.