BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance

Subject: BS: How can we restore a reason renaisance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 08:36 AM

Trumpism, Q Anon and proud boys will have a generational lifetime similar to the 3rd Riech. How can nearly half the population of the USA be disuaded of conspiracy and brought back into the fold of a shared reality of evidence?

We have to rip up the rule book and conventional notions in dealing with Covid and likewise we will have to make some big changes in communication and transparancy to advance trustin government.
For Biden (an old fogey) to accomplish this feat he may have to do some unconventional disclosres for the unwashed public to believe or follow him. At the same time he has to proceed conventionally. Thats one neat trick.

In this light it is not crazy to begin a wide disclosure project regarding UFO evidence, just as Ronald Reagan suggested a unification of purpose in an address to the UN about UFOs.

Even if you think this fighting lies with lies is like fighting fire with fire is merely politically motivated it is a real game changer.
As for the 1/3 of the people having a belief the government knows more there are more people who see this as a good first step to trusting government. polls

Naturally there will have to be many other strategies that clever people could suggest.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaisance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 08:41 AM

...other srategies like prominate evangelicals denounce Trumpisk to curb fanaticism.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaisance
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 10:12 AM

Well, at the height of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, my mantra was "you have to talk". The problem being that some folks shout, and that ain't communicating. Well only to yourself**. It takes courage and intelligence to read the other side and if all they do is shout, there isn't much to read. Show empathy and they read it as weakness, so you don't. Families can't always agree, the Everly Brothers took different stances, Phil was Republican just to take the opposing side in some sort of sibling rivalry!

Donuel - it is an observed consequence of financial recessions that: a move to the right follows - among the masses. And COVID (or Brexshit) will ensure the next one.
Have a nice day, y'all.

**individuals or groups.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaisance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 10:36 AM

This not just a move to the right it is a non sensical fanaticism as in the biggest supernatural lies of the 3rd Reich. I have been hiding some of these facts in the weather thread where the boring and disasterous are mentioned.

79% of Repubs still believe in the stolen conspiracy lies. 20% of Trumpists believe God put Trump in power anda holy war will unsue.

I would use the tactic of distract and reveal for the good.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaisance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 11:32 AM

The first age of reason and enlightenment didn't make much difference...???

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaisance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 11:59 AM

Stay away from internet forums.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 01:02 PM

Facebook yes.

pfr Do you mean in terms of holy wars continuing or what? Secular thought and science did advance without blinding the astronomer or skinning the cosmologist alive.

My point is that we have evidence of several regimes using lies that eventually destroyed government and even killed millions. We have learned enough to defend against such psychological infections just as we have learned to fight virus so lets study and give a vaccine.

If a wound has been opened by Facebook abuse surely we can close it.
And don't call me Shirley.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 01:13 PM

The question is, Is a Biden victory of being rational enough for folks to wise up..
Maybe yes maybe no.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 01:26 PM

Too many American brains are now permanently hard-wired to 'stupid'...

Problem for the rest of the world is all these dangerous fukwit yanks
speak English, and have easy access to, and dominance, of social media...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 04:19 PM

How? First we install a sane Sec. of Education. Then we carefully institute programs in school curricula that teach 'thinking'... gently in lower grades, gradually getting more explicit as kids grow up, until by high school they are learning basic logic and reasoning and application of those to government.

Why no, I don't know how to get all that past the right-wing naysayers who will condemn it as attempts to control minds. They already HAVE their preferred methods, largely infused with religious influences and exhortations about 'states rights'.

Oh... and in the process, we begin limiting and reversing population growth!

   No.. I won't hold my breath... I don't look good in blue...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 04:39 PM

It has to start with public education. Start teaching content, stop putting beliefs before knowledge, stop respecting ignorance even if heartfelt, stop denigrating knowing things.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 04:43 PM

Yep. Mrrz.. that's the way. Of course, that means getting teachers who can and will promote those ideas. Slow process.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 04:44 PM

Also pedantically peevy: restore reason, or start/foment/encourage a reason renaissance. Restoring the renaissance means we had a renaissance already, which faded.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 05:37 PM

5 years ago I would have thought the Mrrzy solution was enough. Now I'm not so sure.
Faith and trust in government is broken probably beyond a competant performance by the next administration.
Social engineering sounds like grasping at straws but if nothing is done besides the usual, all there is - is a benign hope.
Good people doing the right thing for a change, should be enough and perhaps my worry is unfounded. The 20th century tells me otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 07:21 PM

Mr. Red:

You reminded me when talking of the Troubles of an excellent, informative, and sobering book I read last year, and its title relates to your position on talk:

"Say Nothing" by Patrick Radden Keefe.

It does apply to some of Donuel's points, but the outlook to say the least is not cheery.

I used to link The Troubles, The Middle East, and possibly the Communist v Free World split as the greatest threats to human long term happiness (Symbolized by the notion of a World Federation a la Star Trek). I still believe that paying attention to the rest of the world is necessary to our ultimate, if not happiness, survival.

Theme Song: "Land of Confusion" by Genesis

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 08:43 PM

"Restoring the renaissance means we had a renaissance already, which faded."
Now you've done it, Mrrzy.. pushed my button...

Well, yes..there was THE renaissance..: "The Renaissance... was a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It occurred after the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a long Renaissance put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the Middle Ages"

That was followed by 'enlightenment' in which the ideas that developed actually made some serious difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#Significant_people_and_publications
.... thus we defined and 'codified' the principles of reason...

https://www.quora.com/What-is-philosophical-reasoning-What-purpose-does-it-serve?

   In many ways, those principles are still here and being kept alive, much as the Library of Alexandra kept much knowledge alive and monks as scribes in the Dark Ages kept manuscripts until it was safe...

   Because of technology and the WWW..etc.. almost everything we need IS still there. But the pressures of politics, population and that very WWW that supports divergent attitudes, some people see only the ideas that make them comfortable... or that they can comprehend.

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."


"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."
Educator Laurence J. Peter

So.. (if anyone is still reading).. pedantically qualifying: The renaissance did not exactly 'fade', but rather was 'diluted' by non-reason... which is a basic problem with the human mind: i.e., the ability to deny or ignore facts and reason..etc.

Sorry, but any serious attempt(s) at clarification takes much longer than whatever short comment it attempts to clarify... "I don't have time to write a short paper."

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Dec 20 - 09:34 PM

Very nice.

A thousand little things and a few big things got us here and some of the same things can be used to reverse it and advance a new paradigm.
For example Bannon used and sold video games that glorified fascism. We could make computer games for the young which can bring the war against the planet to an end enviormentally and politically.

Again as a former hypnotist I am sensitized to the mind body connection and have been amazed at the extent and effect of a post hypnotic suggestion. Its possible I am over sensitized.

The fault is not in the stars but within us.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 08:45 AM

I think most teachers *are* willing to teach. They aren't allowed to.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 09:00 AM

The far right are yet again stirring up hatred against teachers...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 10:57 AM

In my freshman year in college, long long ago in a galaxy...(you get the idea), I had to take a course in practical reasoning (alias "critical thinking"), which was easily the single most important course I ever took.

Boy, was I dumb! Like most of my classmates, I was ready to fall for anything, as long as it was neatly packaged, superficially plausible, and/or appealed to my prejudices. Syllogisms were a little beyond me.
Who on earth wouldn't instinctively affirm the consequent or deny the antecedent or do any of that other stuff I was warned against?

Eventually I saw just how gullible I'd been. I had a "protective glow" against a certain amount of bamboozlement, mendacity, and self-deception.

Years later, I was the teacher. Boy, were they dumb! But by the end of the semester, most of them (I think!) were developing a similar glow.

Now to answer the question.

I really believe the biggest problem, though not the only one, is the failure of the educational system (public and private) to emphasize reasoning skills from the start.

Just consider. I and my classmates and later students were all high-school graduates. We'd learned very little about logic. And we were among those young Americans who, first of all, got into college and, second of all, wanted to go.

Which leaves almost everybody else continuing to affirm the consequent, argue ad hominem, and believe 90% of appealing baloney instead of only the 5% or 10% or that I now believe.

Critical thinking has got to become a required course in every high school in the land.

You can't have a "reason renaissance" without teaching people how to reason.

Period.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 11:46 AM

Lighter you are quite the writer

What about whataboutism

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 12:02 PM

Teachers in most states are expected to follow the established curriculum..... this in different depending on whether they are in Mass., Idaho, or Texas... etc. The curriculum includes certain textbooks, which often are determined by the Texas system because Texas buys so many.... which influences what publishers will offer. Texas choices strongly reflect the prejudices of religions *read: Christian*.
   See the problem? Thus, what teachers WANT to teach is not the same everywhere. Individual teachers may sneak in ideas even where the curriculum is fairly conservative... but *shrug*

Lighter added to MY opinion about the necessity of starting early and teaching **reasoning**. I presume he doesn't live in Texas... *wry smile*
I never had an actual course in logic until college, but a few teachers in 8th grade and in high school used reason without actually calling it that, and I sorta picked up the habit, so that college courses just clarified the formal rules.

It's gonna be a long process, and I'm not gonna be here much longer. I was a graduate teaching asst. in Philosophy for 2 years and tried to get the basic attitude across to a few... just as I have done at Mudcat for 20+ years... with..ummm.. varying success... ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 12:17 PM

1981, the moral philosophy module of my Humanities degree introduced the concept;

"Moral Education - Moral Maturity"

There was one key textbook, which was a fairly profound influence for me..

But I've not read it since, and can't remember the author...

.. anyway.. I obviously turned out to be a reasonably rational kinda person...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 12:20 PM

I'll bet it wasn't Kant's "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals".

Lots of books on the subject... as long as you got the basics, it helps.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: John P
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 12:23 PM

I keep hoping that Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg will buy Fox News and either put it out of business or turn it into a real news organization. And then buy the internet service providers of all the right-wing conspiracy/hate/falsehood sites and cancel them all. A really big part of the problem is that people who get all their "news" from right-wing sites never hear about the real world. Everyone they listen to lies to them, and since that's all they hear, they believe it.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 03:53 PM

John P... you hit a very crucial point in today's information gap. Right-wing media distort reality, and are the source of much of the nonsense.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 03:58 PM

A agree that kids should be taught to think. I just think they should learn content, so they have knowledge to think *about* - too.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 04:06 PM

In a dysfunctional America polarised between proud boys and antifa,
"content" will be violently contested as propaganda for the oposing side..

Not easy for sensible compromise...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 04:45 PM

I bet Bill Gates knows the Sinclair group bought most of the local radio and TV news services in the country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 06:01 PM

Too many American brains are now permanently hard-wired to 'stupid'...

But the US don't have a monopoly. I give you 'king Boris

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 06:13 PM

Mr Red - agreed, absolutely..

But, It's reasonable to assert that the internet/social media
has enabled the far faster and much wider exporting of USA far right hate propaganda and influence...


It's no surprise UK neo fascists wholeheartedly ape USA hate ideas and slang...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 06:37 PM

Um, the Murricans got it from Europe, dude.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 06:46 PM

Well, dude - it's 2020, nearly 2021..

not 1939..

The world has deteriorated very significantly since trump won...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 06:51 PM

.. of course, if h1tler had the benefit of lightning fast internet social media back then..

Who knows, any yanks and brits allowed to live and breed
might be happily speaking german by now...???

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 08:57 PM

Platitudinous statements that children should be "taught reasoning" or "logic" or "how to think" are utter bullshit. The first principle of education (as opposed to instruction) is to enthuse. To make curious. To get children to want to learn stuff for themselves, to go out there and make connections. To question everything you tell them. To demand evidence. That way, the reasoning, the thinking and the logic will look after themselves. What we need to recognise, of course, is that the establishment doesn't want any of this. The establishment would far rather bore children into submission, via content-stuffed syllabuses full of disconnected "facts" and via repressive testing and assessment regimes. That's how they mould the citizens of the future that they want. If you don't believe me, cast your mind back to the very few really great teachers you had who really inspired you. They ticked all the boxes I've mentioned. As for your lessons on logic/reasoning/how to think, I think I might have fallen asleep at the back of your classroom...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 11:49 PM

Critical awareness and curiosity..

.. not conformity and hostility..

Dream on..

Such progressive ideals don't stand a chance.

The internet has been taken over as a means of indoctrinating international children with far right ideology..

The organised right know what they are doing,
and how to most effectively achieve their long term objectives..

This is not conspiracy theory, but objective demonstrable fact.

Dip randomly into popular comic book/movie/toys superhero oriented youtube channels,
and you will immediately discover pernicious anti-left,
and anti-feminist dogma being constantly pushed
by mostly American youth influencers..
Under cover evangelicals disguised as hip dudes...

They make being reactionary libertarians sound cool and the desirable 'norm'..

.. and that's only the tip of the iceberg...

The entry drug to the harder supremacist neo n@zi addictions...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 05:49 AM

Absolutely.

What I posted is indeed a dream. Notions about "teaching" logic, thinking and reasoning are pipe dreams, and I find vacuous statements along those lines irritating and feel that they are ultimately damaging in that they divert us from confronting the real issues, as you describe. It's fine words buttering no parsnips. It's a bit like believing that God created everything, genuine enquiry about the origin and nature of things thereby staunched. Real knowledge is all about brushing the dross aside and going out to grab it for yourself. Instead of that, we have content-laden curriculums, drawn up by middle-class establishment apparatchiks, or untrammelled nasty pieces of work on social media or in the tabloids, telling us what they think we need to know...And if that's too hard for the plebs, you can always have programmes about beautifully-airbrushed celebs shagging each other on an island or eating grubs in a jungle...

(...Removes cynic's hat..)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 06:44 AM

That is all well and good but it has been known a long time that the hand that rocks the cradle...

The right has used Social Engineering based on their belief that Perception Is Reality which can cause many to believe anything.
It is time the left realizes this and use social enigneering for rational benefit.

I am using the term social engineering in a manner you may not be accustomed. Brain training/washing, Hypnotized, propogandized, creating belief...

Buying back local news and teaching people that 'perception is reality' is an evil outdated idea that is the enemy of the people, religion, science, government, civilization etc.

If you go back 20 years you will see I have railed agaibst PIR, the perception is reality paradigm in my posts. It was my point of contention with the CIA years ago. It is still dangerous tuday as we have seen. PIR works in the short run (generationally)

True reality is more complex and variable and must be understood prior to reaction when possible. Yes science is the key.

For anyone who understands what I am saying you may see that I am saying we must use the same tools/strategy of the right to defeat the right. Yes its a bit hypocritical but its the best I can can think of that actually works.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 06:52 AM

I won't even begin to ask you to run that by me again.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 07:01 AM

Democracy is argument and freedom is the right to argue instead of being told what to believe authoritatively.
The UK representatives here seem to be more democratically minded than Americans by their propensity to argue imo.

Those who create lieing perceptions to create a reality of authoritarianism is the true enemy of the people. This is what people here need to learn.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 07:17 AM

Give us some fr'instances.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 07:36 AM

A Trump or a Hitler clearly lie for their own agenda.

I am getting into the weeds of psychology when I dicuss HOW to change minds by exposing not only the lie but repeating the rational obvious truth. Where I naturally go from my experience is a Neuro Political Science.
(I rejected the name Political Psycho Science) :^!

Deprograming an indoctrinated cult mind is a tough nut to crack but it has been done. We at least have to try.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 08:05 AM

My idea is cheaper and more humane than another civil or world war.
Population control by another means would be best.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 08:36 AM

"Deprograming an indoctrinated cult mind is a tough nut to crack but it has been done. We at least have to try."

Especially when we cannot agree which one of us has an indoctrinated cult mind.

We live in an age of intolerance for people who hold different views to our own. I am a member of what seems to be that diminishing group of people who goes to a pub (not that I can go to pubs now) and does not choke on my beer when someone has the temerity to disagree with my views.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 08:54 AM

Internet forums, especially the ones allowing anonymity, have a lot to answer for in that regard, as do social media sites.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 09:21 AM

Indeed they do.The internet allows all of us access to so much but has a tendency to narrow our views. That tendency to visit sites that support/echo our views rather than challenge them.

In the pub I engage in conversation with people whose names I do not know. If they do tell me their names I do not ask for documentary proof.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 09:32 AM

"Especially when we cannot agree which one of us has an indoctrinated cult mind."

Thats where we have to tolerate an hypocrisy.

Tolerence and diversity was admired as little as 15 years ago.
A deliberate campaign was waged against tolerance.
Lets get it back.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 09:34 AM

We all could use a little R&R. (Reason Renaissance)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 09:52 AM

But here, Rain Dog, you can neither see their faces nor know their name. And it's free here. I won't be spoiling an expensive night down the boozer flaming someone!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 10:01 AM

Free abuse does not entice everyone Steve. Try a little TOLERANCE

OR TENDERNESS its up to you.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 10:09 AM

I forgot to mention internet 'virtual world' gaming and associated chat rooms..

Research is clearly demonstrating the extent to which very young children
are being subjected to targeted far right hate propaganda;
being indoctrinated and recruited for the rest of their lives..

.. if the h!tler youth had access to "world wide web" 80 - 90 years ago,

imagine the outcome...???

Well. it's happening every second, all around the world, right now...!!!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 10:56 AM

Like in Dr. Strangelove...'We must not allow a virtual digital fascist world gap'.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:07 AM

that's still a brilliantly good funny prescient movie..

hardly at all dated and redundant...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:13 AM

Another aspect of online exchanges, apart from the ability to hide behind anonymity and the fact that you can't see faces with all their gamut of expression, is that you don't hear nuance in people's voices. Most people seem far clumsier in expressing nuance in the typed word than they do face to face. Misunderstanding online can take a day or two to clear up, by which time the offendee may have decided to set their umbrage in stone. Face to face, it's cleared up in seconds if there's anything to clear up at all (or, rarely, there'll be wigs on the green). And, on top of all that, there's the ability to set up a false persona for yourself. Recognise that, Donuel? Never mind try a little tenderness, etc. Try a little straightforwardness, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:36 AM

Steve Shaw, the idea that teaching *little kids* requires making them want to learn is possibly the major problem. Kids can't *help* learning. They are little knowledge sponges. If you give them info, they will learn it. The idea that they have to be *entertained* even robs them of the sense of accomplishment one gets from making efforts. Effortful learning is intrinsically rewarding. School should require industry so kids develop into adults with industry. What we have instead is adults who require entertainment. Sigh.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:40 AM

And older kids who are an international disgrace in math, science, language, arts and humanities.

But we sure can shoot guns.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:53 AM

More platitudes. I didn't say that "kids" need to be entertained. Entertainment can turn you into a passive recipient. True learning requires you to be an active collaborator in the process, not a mute copier-downer sitting on your arse sucking in "facts." A good classroom with a skilled and enthusiastic teacher provides the context. And that "classroom" isn't four walls either. Reason and logic have making connections as their sine qua non. You have to do that for yourself, you have to be enthused, and it's hard but pleasant work. Society's resource-poor prescription for what should be taught and how makes even the keenest teacher's job ten times more difficult. That's what's up. Suggesting lessons on thinking, reason and logic are suggesting sticking plasters.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 12:37 PM

What do we think that a young adult should know after they have completed 13 years of compulsory education here in the UK?

Over the years we have seen different governments bemoan the state of education and saying how far behind the rest of the world that we are. They raise the school leaving age (handy sometimes if you want to keep the unemployment figures down) but little seems to change until the next education minister arrives.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 12:38 PM

Mrrzy, you're speaking the truth.

Steve in an effort to prove that it is needless to take umbridge online and ego is foolish, I started a pseudo arguement with you in your joke thread. Your refusal to see that, was probably due to your argumentative nature which is not a bad thing. It progressed all the way to legal threats, for that I am sorry. For years you argued about who I am not which could go on forever. Who I am is all that matters and it only matters to me.
In almost all other respects I admire and respect you as a person.
I will always have little interest in 'a pecking order'. Even Stilly became concerned that we had an actual animosity, well I don't anyway, so Peace.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 12:39 PM

Ok class, look forward at the white board.. this list is how you must think and reason for yourselves..

The list underneath, is all the things you must not do and know.

Copy it all down and memorise the points for a test later...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 12:55 PM

Guess which list will be more popular.

but I got the point

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 01:13 PM

My joke thread? Legal threats??

I don't do grudgy feelings towards people online, pal. This little world is far too two-dimensional for that. But you either can't or won't speak plainly in clear English and you frequently deal in convoluted cod science. It's in my nature to not mind telling you that when you do it. It's no more than you deserve in view of your daft and pointless little prods and pokes. You could help me to ignore you if you'd stop doing that.

"What do we think that a young adult should know after they have completed 13 years of compulsory education here in the UK?"

Well, as they have followed different paths through school, have different talents and abilities (or disabilities) and all progress at different rates, there's no answer to that, is there? I could say a basic level of numeracy and literacy, but one student's good is another student's bog-standard is another student's impossible. I could say they should have a well-rounded, intelligent and sociable outlook on life, but, grand though that sounds, it's just waffle. I could say sympathy and tolerance for all other humans, and a high level of environmental consciousness, but ditto. I could say that the generations above them have the responsibility to pass on all the best of what they themselves have learned, so that the young 'uns can stand on the shoulders of giants, but gosh, that's mired in all sorts of murk, innit...


And, dammit, I haven't mentioned a brace or more of 'A' Levels under the belt yet...or that they should believe in God, like we've told 'em to...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 01:16 PM

I nearly said that my Donuel is like pfr's Dick, but thought better of it... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 01:49 PM

My wife is an MA, from a good Uni, in Early Learning..

She's got 35 years experience teaching nursery/infants
in schools in 'disadvantaged' areas.
Parents with poor education and low aspirations.
Crime and drug related social and mental issues.
Cultural attitudes hostile to self-discipline and learning
Social media political brainwashing that teachers are marxist feminist enemy
who are plotting to demasculate boys..etc ..etc.. etc..

The kids are not blank slates by the time they start school..

As a caring dedicated [so far, not burnt out..] teacher,
she does as best she can to start them off in education...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 01:54 PM

I admit to not having read this thread. I'm not likely to, either.
But somebody wants to restore a re-birth. My question is, how do we teach people English? Or French? Or Frenglish?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 01:55 PM

Or is it Fremeriglish?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 04:18 PM

Ha who else would complain about not complaining :^)

This thread is supposedly about my exhortation to bring truth, science and sanity back after recent losses.

PFR you're lucky to have such a wonderful partner, but that was your plan I bet, you lucky bastard.
My wife is a Phd and one of many in charge of what medical research to undertake and how to afford it for the NIH and others.

In the meantime I will take the advice about being more straight forward and not get my tinsel in a twist this holiday. I'm celebrating with old projects.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 04:29 PM

The divorced wife of Jeff Bezos is giving nearly 4 billion dollars to higher education, colleges and HPCU's.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 04:59 PM

I knew her before she was a teacher,
when she was a care free student
with a lusty eye for the cool good looking bad boy
who played guitar in a punk band...

Who'd have thought he'd have grown up to look like me...!!!???

That's the first time I experienced someone stalking me..

..though I didn't know it at the time...

She's turned out of greater value to humanity,
than a lot of us will ever be...

She can't entirely predict an infants future.
But she tries her best against the odds
to give them a chance of having some slightly more positive options...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 07:11 PM

Pfr, my missus was also a special needs teacher (SENCO or summat, was it?) for many years in both primary and secondary. Before that she was a classroom teacher in an East End junior school (which had the most amazing head teacher, Doreen Clery, who is now a freeman of the city of London, qualified to drive a flock of sheep over London Bridge, only she ain't got no sheep...). We are still dear friends. I was a bog standard secondary science/biology teacher, first in the East End, then in Walthamstow (God help me), then in Holsworthy, Devon. My little sis, up in Yorkshire, is the head teacher of an infant school in a deprived area. Between us we saw the whole gamut of our education system (bar the parasitic private sector). Remembering about all that now, which is in our past apart from my sis, keeps us well grounded. You never lose that. Kudos to your missus (and mine too). What a sterling and largely unappreciated job they do...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 08:58 PM

A law against flagrant lieing in Congress should be equivalent to manslaughter.

After all Republicans passed a law to make lieing legal for financial institutions.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:50 PM

i was married to a dedicated primary school teacher and have known other caring dedicated teachers, many of them end up defeated by the system and the adherence to the curriculum,to be succesful it would help if they had smaller classes, too often the government regards them as merely child minders, right now they are frontline workers, which is totally unnecessary. with a vaccine on the horizon schools should be closed, extra school term should be extended in the summer. the truth has surfaced the government regards them as child minders

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Dec 20 - 04:35 PM

In the US there is a lot of treating teachers like babysitters too. I tried to sub in the public schools but they [school admins] refused to let me *teach* anything. I would sign up only for classes I could teach, and in those the students were willing to learn, but admin stopped them. And half the time they [admin] would switch me to classes whose content I couldn't teach, but if I complained, was told to stop trying to teach content.

I don't sub in public schools any more.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Dec 20 - 05:59 PM

Yeah, the first thing that news bulletins do here, when schools are closed or classes are sent home because of coronavirus, is to wheel out parents whingeing about how inconvenient it is for them. We don't run schools for the convenience of parents offloading their precious offspring...do we??

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Dec 20 - 06:13 PM

Yeah, without "content," there's nothing much to reason about.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Dec 20 - 07:05 PM

Que?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 10:09 AM

The recently divorced wife of Amazon's Jeff Bezos has given 4.15 BILLION to higher educationand universities.
thats a healthy start.   https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/12/15/22176710/mackenzie-scott-bezos-philanthropy-speed-four-billion

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 02:00 PM

From: Steve Shaw - PM
Date: 15 Dec 20 - 08:57 PM
and |From: Steve Shaw - PM
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 11:53 AM

Steve: regarding your dismissal of "teaching kids to think"... I don't disagree at all with what you say about what SHOULD be done, but I think it's mostly details about 'how' to go about it. I certainly don't advocate spelling out any 'Here's how to think' rules to kids of any age... that soon looks like 'WHAT to think'. If "...question everything you tell them. To demand evidence." etc. are done well, yes.. logic WILL take care of itself.
At some point..perhaps in college ... some will, as I did, look for the basis and historical concepts behind what they already know.
   Also, there will always be pressure from some quarters (yes, fundamentalist religion) to NOT think and question. This pressure is very strong in many families and causes parents to complain about school and books differing from the 'truth' they get in church. I'm not sure what can be done about that except to hope that something will 'rub off' from others in their school.
Thousands of years of the very idea of 'divine knowledge' will not be overcome quickly.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 03:25 PM

Teaching people to question authority will be helpful during repressive and progressive times. If one has ever experienced Magic mushrooms, lsd or Akashic knowledge, the exerience of God can be a valuable experience even for your average Joe athiest.

There have been martyrs to the mind body connection revolution since the 60's. Today things are on the path of becoming better.
Education, transendence, independence and freedom are all quite appealing and necessary for a reason renaissance. It seems obvious but needs to be said aloud.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 03:59 PM

Proposing everyone should take magic mushrooms
is dangerous bollox...

I grew up as a teenager in the magical mushroomy kingdom of South West England..
So do know this from experience, mine and local fried brain psilocybin casualty mates and acquaintances...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 06:23 PM

I do my bit by dropping in on devious websites and making sensible remarks. For example, a recent video about a piddling 3.1 earthquake near Wichita was illustrated with a pic of a fractured highway.

I posted, "A weak 3.0 earthquake would not crack a highway like that, and the plants on the verge do not grow in Wichita. This picture was taken in a western desert."

When so-called Christians post landslides and floods, saying that they portend the end of the world, I post a post saying that these are normal, if not common, events on our dynamic planet.

A security video from an eastern country purported to show a mother abandoning her baby. I studied it closely and said, Look closely. I think that's a man.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 06:42 PM

Good perspective there, Bill. We do generally agree...

As for "questioning authority", I'm not too happy with that concept. It can get your head cut off or get you thrown in jail, or lose you your job, depending on where you live. You're not much use to anyone in either case. As I'm no anarchist, I prefer to think that challenging ideas and asking for evidence is the way to go. Or, at least, a start. Those questions can be addressed to the bloke in the pub or the man on the Clapham omnibus as well as those "in authority." Before you do any of it, it pays to check your facts and make sure you're on solid ground. And have friends.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 08:52 PM

I can question authority of a judge, teacher or a politician. A policeman is a different animal usually unconcerned with your civil rights so come on and be real. A politician, not to be confused with a crook, is someone like ourselves who is willing to stick their neck out.
Kids aren't interested in what they are told as much as what they see. If there is one thing you could repeat is that evil is caused by ignorance. A better way to convey 'question authority' is to say "Don't look up at people. Don't look down on people. See them evenly and you will see life fairly".

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 08:57 PM

My excuse is I live too far away from London,
out in the arse end of SW England,
but I've only just discovered James O'Brien...

..intelligence, education, and reason versus conformist stupidity and ignorance...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 09:44 PM

Yep.. 'questioning authority' requires knowing when to do it directly or quietly in your mind.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 10:02 PM

"or quietly in your mind."

.. yes.. that's the tricky one..

.. the mouth might stay sealed, but body language and attitude is a dead giveaway..

.. over time, a bolshie bloke gets used to being unemployable...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 08:26 AM

"As I'm no anarchist, I prefer to think that challenging ideas and asking for evidence is the way to go."

Those are very consistent with Anarchist ways of thinking and behaving. But it needs a lot of patience.

The frightening thing about the Trump followers is that most of them actually appear to find him someone to admire. For people to line up behind a leader much of the time means making a warts and all decision to put up with the less pleasant stuff they because on balance that seems a better choice.

But what's sick is when the attraction is to the warts themselves rather than the balancing factors. It's one thing when people put up with a leader being responsible for doing terrible things, or mean and nasty things, along with perhaps lowering unemployment, or building great enterprises - but it's something else when the terrible or nasty things are seen as admirable in themselves. "Evil, be thou my good."

If that's actually how it is in the States with Trump followers it's a sad prospect. It'll take a lot of patient work at an individual level to talk them down from the edge of the cliff, because they are clearly a very frightened bunch, and all the more dangerous for that.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 11:19 AM

It has always been my belief that 'most' Trumpites support him for what he does...or claims to be doing... and not for himself.
Polls have supported this, often showing that more people intend to vote for him than actually approve of him personally.

Recently, some religious fundamentalists have begun to pull back, after realizing that he didn't really 'believe' what they did, but was merely using them by giving lip-service to them.
But white nationalists, gun nuts and far-right Libertarians saw in his policies exactly what they needed to become more pushy.

   Yes, McGrath.. the warts are exactly what they like. Many of them know he was an incompetent fool... but they milked him for what they could get.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 12:53 PM

"It has always been my belief that 'most' Trumpites support him for what he does...or claims to be doing... and not for himself."

That has been my general assumption - the alternative, that half the population of the USA needed to be exorcised, was too depressing, and intrinsically improbable. But polls that indicate something like 80% of his voters believing his crazy claims about a massive voting fraud conspiracy, has threatened that optimistic assumption.

I'm hoping that after January 20 things might quieten down, and there'll be a return to sanity. There's a hymn, taken from a poem by the Quaker poet Whittier that expresses what I'd hope:

"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise."

Perhaps they might try singing that in those evangelical churches, and reflecting on the words.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 12:58 PM

I've skimmed through this topic and searched this page - re: teaching kids to think, I think the concept some of you were looking for is the teaching of critical thinking skills. This is not teaching kids what to think, but to question the sources and arrive at what appears to be The Truth, or a part of the truth, at any rate.

It's something a lot of students don't come across until they're in college, and even there don't necessarily learn how to apply those skills, but once learned, you are forever a skeptic and looking behind statements to see if the sources are reasonable or not. To see if it makes sense.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 01:49 PM

Stilly - when I weas a teenager in the 1970s,
we had the benefit of hippy and punk counter-culture
informing the music we listened to,
and the youth media magazine articles we read..

This was entirely outside of straight establishment school education.
That's how a lot of us acquired such positive life long skills..

sceptisism, cynicism, iconoclasm, mistrust of authority..

It was because I'd already acquired these skills.
which lead me to go back into education at 22,
specifically choosing a Humanities degree subject
which would further hone that skill set...

Sadly, since I was a student in the early 80s.
Society has become far more conservative,
deliberately combatting and mostly defeating counter culture influences on young minds.

Replacing it with conformism, irrational fear of 'the different',
and hostility towards any humanist progressive idealism...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 02:23 PM

"..teaching of critical thinking skills" is pretty similar to 'sneakily teaching how to think' that I'd like to see. I made a specific point that directly teaching **what to think** was to be avoided.
Stilly... since you are in Texas, I'm sure you are aware of both techniques being used in different ways and circumstances. I know that in Kansas both could be found in the same school. I once ended up in Mr. William's 6th period science class in the 8th grade, which every year got the 'honor' of parroting the biblical narrative in the Christmas program... "And there were in those days, shepherds.." etc...
   We got no option to opt out... I'm not sure what would have happened if anyone tried. I was still a couple of years from even worrying about it.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 02:28 PM

"sceptisism, cynicism, iconoclasm, mistrust of authority.."

No wonder they don't want the vaccine.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 02:46 PM

Maybe...???

Such skills can unfortunately be appropriated and misdirected for evil purposes...

Weird reversals and inversions have been occurring in the last few years,
thanks to the sinister agendas of the libertarian right...

Not helped by a new generation of young lefties,
and identity politics militants,
now becoming the puritanical control freak authoritarian establishment,
for libertarians to rail against...

..the left version of the Victorian morality Mary Whitehouse brigade...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 03:41 PM

I liked the sound of the new deal. Succinct, a new start and honest.

New Deal 2? naw
Make middle class rich again? naw
Proof and Truth ? meh
People over Corps.   mmm no
4th quarter win? absolutely not
Beer and TV? been there like bread and circus.
Victory for Truth?
The Better Idea
Do your best
Back to the people.
A new start

What ever. names matter

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 03:58 PM

This is an interesting thread, provoking all kinds of related thought, to the extent that I can follow it.

I had to go look up a line that I like in a book by Brenda Wineapple quoting Thomas Wentworth Higginson, abolitionist and activist, in reference to the necessity or efficacy of compromise; I will paraphrase: There are those who have been insisting that 2 plus 2 equals 6 but will now offer a compromise and concede that 2 plus 2 equals 5.

This discussion brings to mind what I used to consider while hanging over the crib of my sleeping baby: What do I want for this child? Do I want her to be smart and prosperous and beautiful and rich? Or is my wish for her to be a person who is curious, who has a questioning mind, is empathetic, one who balances justice with mercy, someone who is intelligent and clear minded, someone who needs people but at the same time is aware that the most essential things are in her own head...

I got lucky. My daughter is most of those things.


Steve Shaw's

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 04:56 PM

I am reminded of a song from a book, relating a version of Sleeping Beauty, when the last fairy comes and says You have not given this baby any actual gifts. Beauty, a pleasant singing voice etc are for *others* so that they will love her. But my gift [of enchanted sleep with marvelous dreams] is for her and her alone.

The song is a lament: I am the one called Sleeping Beauty / I never answer to that name / for I am a slave to love and duty / it was the kiss that brought the chain.

Basically the prince's kiss "for which I did not ask" woke her to pain and childbirth and other earthly sorrows, ah if only she could have stayed in her gifted sleep.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 05:05 PM

Mrrzy, you bring to mind a short story I once wrote where the protagonist is a fairy who, as a result of an unfortunate encounter with a caterpillar and loses her wings, wakes up and finds herself a human being. She is informed by a used-to-be fairy that there is a way to return to fairydom if she wishes, and she has to decide.

For a long time I didn't finish the story because I literally couldn't make the decision for her. Until the day I discovered that I had written an analogy.

Fairydom was/is childhood. Humandom is adulthood.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 05:50 PM

Sorry, guys. Please continue.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 06:03 PM

Ebbie, great story!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 07:09 PM

A surprising number of people seem unable to understand that people differ greatly in the way they learn. Yes, we need to learn to think when we think, and to ask questions and examine whether the answers we are given stand up to examination. We need to have some understanding of how governments are supposed to work, and how change can happen.

But straightforward classes in how to reason, and about civics aren't ever going to be the way to learn those things for a lot of people. I don't just mean some people aren't clever enough to understand those lessons, or don't have the attention span expected, though that's part of it. But also there a radical difference in how even the most intelligent and committed people learn. Some of us do it by learning the rules in theory, and then applying it, some of us do it the other way, and the rules and theory come later, if at all. Some of us learn the scales and then how to build the chords, some of us learn the chords and later (maybe) find out about the scales and how the chords are built.

Use the wrong strategy and you risk shutting people out from ever learning. (As happens to most people when it comes to mathematics, just for an example.)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 07:10 PM

"Fairydom was/is childhood. Humandom is adulthood."

In so many ways...
I barely knew about Christmas and Santa until I was about 5, as we traveled and didn't have any local celebration around that time. We finally had a tree when I was in 2nd grade and a 'Santa' came to our school and I still like believing... and there were presents and milk & cookies left out for Santa, but the next year, in a different house, I 'think' I knew all the presents were from my parents... it just isn't clear. Then another move.. from New Orleans to Wichita in 1947 meant the Winter was spent in a rented basement. Then another move to our first house and that year, I was in 4th grade by Dec. and Christmas with Santa was mainly for my brother who was 4. He wanted my opinion about Santa.. I kinda let him believe for one year.

Fairies? Very briefly... There were ideas between my childhood and adulthood... and "The Wonder Book of Myths & Legends". Maybe that's where my history of preferring reason began.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 08:03 PM

I don't care how they learn critical thinking, so long as they learn it.

But very few are going to learn much of it outside of a classroom.

And, incredible as it may seem to others, it is now unusual in the U.S. for students to learn civics before college.

Thus the widespread belief - propounded by the President of the United States - that Article 2 of the Constitution gives him the "right to do anything" he wants.

It doesn't, but tens of millions seem not to care that he thinks that way.

Meanwhile, he's talking about declaring martial law to "re-run" the election in swing states till we get it right.

And disgraced-but-pardoned General Michael Flynn is urging him to do it.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Dec 20 - 10:37 PM

someone needs to remind trump about Nicolae Ceau?escu...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: BobL
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 04:21 AM

And, possibly, about Charles I of England (although the similarities are a bit more nebulous)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 04:40 AM

so Kevin is saying, as i understand it, that individual children and aduklts need different approaxches all the more reason for smaller classes and more teachers

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 05:43 AM

"But very few are going to learn much of it outside of a classroom."

I'd say that pretty well nothing of that I learned in a classroom, and that would have been true of all my contemporaries. The very idea of learning that kind of stuff would have been pretty well unheard of when I was at school - or indeed since schooling had been in existence.

That doesn't mean that trying to deal with those things in schools isn't worth it. There,s an appalling level of ignorance (and indeed in some ways it seems to be growing - "knowing" things that are false is the worst kind of ignorance.) But there are real limits to how far that can ever be done through classroom learning. The crucial thing really isn't providing factual information, it's preserving curiosity and helping children improve their ability to satisfy that curiosity, and recognise when the answers they get don't make sense.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 09:10 AM

It's certainly true of me, too. The trouble with schooling (especially secondary) is that we are hidebound by the Victorian concept of discrete "subjects." When it comes to the issues we are discussing here (logic, reason, thinking, and I'd add personal relationships to those), they are issues that don't need "specialists" at all. Every teacher should be alerted in their training to the need to integrate all these areas into their everyday "subject" teaching. The days of drafting in the school nurse or the vicar to regale the poor little mites with their notions of love and sex should have been well and truly numbered decades ago, for example. It's all ALL our responsibility to the next generation, and if we take it on board it will make better people of us too.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 11:59 AM

So far as notions about using your brain, and questioning and so forth there was a fair bit of that in many classes, Steve, though we never got round to political stuff, which is as well.

The danger with school when it tries too hard is that it can inoculate kids against what's being promoted.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 01:02 PM

You never got round to political stuff because anyone trying it would have immediately been branded rabid commies by Tories. I know. I did try it. As a matter of fact, I think that a good deal of what's wrong with this country is the upshot of the lack of political education. In the last ten years we've elected Tory idiots four times and voted to leave the EU. I rest my case.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 01:15 PM

My formal political education in a SW England 6th form College
between age 16 - 18..

"British Constitution and Govt &Politics"..

Basically polished us up to a default 'safe' starting position as young Liberals...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 01:56 PM

And yet we have no compunction about sitting the children under a classroom crucifix, making them chant brainless "prayers" and telling them a pack of lies about non-existent deities in which they're supposed to believe...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 02:55 PM

I'm lucky my parents were post war young Labour idealists..

They enjoyed several years of carefree married life,
until a motorbike crash made them settle down and have me..

Then decided right from the start not to have me or my younger sibling christened,
or bring any talk of religion into our home..

That must have helped me keep an arms length perspective on all the jesus and god propaganda
drilled in at C of E infant and junior school..

[Parents never even revealed I had Jewish blood in me,
until I was about 21..]

When I was 15, at start of the new school year,
our ex ww2 army / metal work form teacher,
had us all line up in a queue,
while he ticked off our religion box on a form..

My turn, I said I had no religion,
as I'd not been chritened..

He responded "Don't be silly boy, you are christian.."
while ticking the required box...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 04:22 PM

They were Jesuits, Steve, and by no means Tories generally, when you talked about stuff like that, but not in class.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 04:34 PM

Blimey, Kevin. The man in the Salford pulpit (the Catholic one) more or less ordered my grandma and grandad to vote Tory...

Give me the names of any commie Jesuits you ever encountered... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 04:49 PM

There are a good few who've been saddled with that name over the years. One being Pope Francis, who certainly isn't one, but who was quoted as saying of the accusation "My response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians".

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 05:55 PM

He didn't mean it, did he. That's popes for you.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Dec 20 - 05:57 PM

Well, he's a Green really, but some people get a bit confused about the difference.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 04:57 AM

My eldest grandson (11) was worrying about photos of 'demons' and unexplained holes appearing somewhere. My daughter came up with one of the best bits of education for him I have seen. Abridged version for clarity of message -

I'm a huge fan of finding weird stories and photos on the internet and trying to find the origin of them!
...
I recommend you get in to internet sleuthing (trying to find things out!) of alleged paranormal photos as well, you'd be very good at it and it might help put anxieties to rest!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 05:46 AM

Precisely so, Dave. I think if there's a silver bullet it would be encouraging people to be curious, and to do use that appetite intelligently and persistently..

Kid's start out almost always being intensely curious. (If they aren't that's a reason to be concerned.) All too often that seems to get shut down as they grow.

The appetite for conspiracy has its positive side, it's an indication that the appetite to find out things is still alive. There's nothing wrong with being suspicious and chasing up conspiracy theories. The trouble is when people get satisfied with those theories uncritically. There should be ways of working on that.

The crazy conspiracy theories that people latch on to so often are precisely that - they are themselves conspiracies, and need to be exposed as such.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 06:33 AM

I mentioned fighting fire with fire with an inside job.
For example; releasing a conspiracy theory inside a conspiracy organization. "The Corpus Hermeticus is the 2nd century book used as a Bible for Q-Anon himself". It is the source of all his power.

-true believers will begin to snooze. Others will suspect black magic and devil worship. Some will follow the innocuous teachings back into the woodwork.
But its early and I could ne wrong.

When th 26th level of Scientology was exposed some remained true believers.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissancet
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 09:12 AM

Good for your parents, pfr. Mine were similar. I put None for religion on a form amd had a French school admin change it to Protestant because "All Americans are Protestant" [!].

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 09:32 AM

When you look at the history of humans... the LONG history of several million years... it is obvious why our remote ancestors , as they developed the ability TO reason, wanted to know why 'things happened as they did'.
Storms, fire, death, seasons, stars...etc... all were bewildering, and needed answers. Enquiring minds came up with answers, and who would be surprised that the most interesting answers got the most adherents?

   Fast forward a couple of million years and many answers..in many areas... are now ingrained. Unfortunately, they are not always the same answers.... and not all humans have, or want, the answers that seem less interesting, especially when following all the varying trains of thought is simply too hard!

A reason renaissance? First there needs to be some standard of what counts AS reason... and that must overcome those millions of years of just believing what 'feels' good.

You think **Sisyphus** had a problem!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 01:07 PM

Most of the time people are interested in solutions to problems they've come up against, ideas that, not so much because they are interesting. Of course that's no guarantee they'll be true, but that's a separate matter. But an awful lot of the time if it works it'll be pretty much true.

The more I think about it the more it seems to me that awakening curiosity actually is as near as we can get to a Silver Bullet.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 02:20 PM

I am mortally hyper curious and I'm no paragon of intellect, but its better than alternative facts and interesting/truthiness combined.

There are drugs for curiosity. The Ancient Greeks had their drug rave. I vote for magic mushroom day for everyone when they reach 21, graduate, enter gov service and thier marriage day. [;^])
Just ask Aaron Sorkin or see his work.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 04:26 PM

Like Ralph Nader, that idea would get some votes. Mushroom day for 'everyone' is not in the cards.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 08:46 PM

Well I WAS KIDDING but its legal in many states now. EVEN AFTER 20 years there is no craving. It is the only safe organic means of expanding consciousness I know of. Those who abuse alkeyhall and pot are drowning their consciousness imo.
The drug recipe for public injestion by the ancient Greeks seems to have been lost. Popular demand was so great it required secrecy back then.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 09:14 PM

The problem is, kidding and oblique references don't parse well in text based discussion. You have a wide range of interests, Don, but you often embed good points within language that needs a bit of explication. Sometimes an interesting offhand remark needs context and/or details to see how it is relevant.
   The legality of various drugs is only peripherally related to what it means to expand consciousness. It has been many, many years since *I* imbibed any beyond an occasional sip of some form of 'alkeyhall' and I can't tell you whether it did more than make me feel good and relaxed.
   I do know that my reasoning seems better without it... ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 09:35 PM

Hear hear! In the mangled (probably) word of the Lord, let our speech be yea yea, nay nay!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 09:41 PM

"It is the only safe organic means of expanding consciousness I know of

Said it before, say it again..

bollox is it safe...!!!!!

I've seen what it did to friends and acquaintances in my teen years social circle...

It also f@cked my head up more negatively, than any positives you are irresponsibly celebrating...

Experiences at 17 - 19 were still causing flashbacks and anxiety attacks into my early 20s...

Teenage experimental years are the worse possible time
to be messing up adolescent underdeveloped brain chemistry and electrical circuits
with hallucinogenic drugs..

Maybe, when an adult brain is properly fully grown and developed.
Then, and only then, might mushrooms be 'safer' to experiment with...???

If anything, mushrooms are more likely to destroy an intelligent teenager's
ability to develop independent mature reasoning...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Dec 20 - 11:26 PM

the biggest culprit was the irresponsible timothy leary.
the best way to expand consciousness is through transcendental meditation,.
the problem with fly agaric even more so than magic mushrooms is not being able to determine its strength,it is a bit like culinary russian roulette,
the lapps used to dilute the strength by taking it at second hand by drinking reindeer urine after the reindeers had been eating fly agaric apparently as i understand it, habitual use of magic mushrooms destroys the pineal gland

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Dec 20 - 04:33 AM

A very safe and healthy way of expanding your consciousness is to leave your headphones at home and go for walk in the fresh air to take in the sights, sounds, smells and feel of the natural world (you can do that even in a busy town street). It can be done if you open your mind, take a deep breath and banish your troubled thoughts for a few minutes. The idea that you can "expand your consciousness" by consuming a poisonous fungus is ludicrous and dangerous, and I'd gently suggest that the major promoter of such notions in these threads often shows signs that he'd have been better advised not to do it.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Dec 20 - 04:46 AM

I've sometimes thought that the best way to demystify drugs for young people would be to have a age limit above which things get legal. Like 65. Then getting stoned might start like being seen as akin to Dad Dancing, Young people would be likely to scorn it. (Though with Bill Bailey winning Strictly Come Dancing, Dad Dancing might get a bit more respect now.)

But I can't see any of that as relevant to the matter of finding ways of getting out of the hole our societies seem to be in.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Dec 20 - 05:06 PM

In my life I don't know what a flash back is and only tried psylocybin as an adult experiment. Its a Wonderful Life was on the TV as I began to fare right, you can't hear that in text.eel the effects. The experience made regular consciousness seem ridiculous and very funny.
Agaric is poison although I witnessed a friend become nauseus from Psylocybin.______________



Character is a combination of a healthy or sick psychology and one's morals.
In choosing leaders we should be more careful and wary of the candidate's psychology in the future. However there are problems with testing.


Bill you're right, I used to say people should read more carefully. I know I should actually write more carefully. I dislike a dry and stuffy approach. Tone of speech changes in my mind when I try to be clever but it can't always be heard in the text.
Its my angular gyrus region of language processing in my brain and would take alot of effort to change at this late date.
My wife would have to make a gigantic effort to see and think in 3D but she could if she worked on it. If we miss a critical stage of learning when young we carry on and make allowances. The brain is plastic but the training demands diligence and disipline.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Dec 20 - 06:19 PM

Here are some changes in law enforcement and how it fell short
https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/states-in-2020/#policing

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 02:55 AM

I think the people might revolt

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 09:12 AM

I don't promote any hope for a provoked revolt.
At the most you grab ghosts by the throat
and choke dopes who boast of cloaked votes.

Birds of a feather flock together
Cross species friendships are rare
Peace doesn't seem to last forever
War soars when good folks don't care

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 09:15 AM

Doggerel.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 10:39 AM

woof woof
stay tuned for a verse by the cursed Steve Shaw.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 10:52 AM

I'm expecting Steve to have an unholy inspiration such as;

The tragedy of the commons happens all the time
No food for children is not a despicable crime
But a tragedy of corporations is the worst on Earth
Thank god my investments peaked and aren't cursed
++Desolate death, evictions, addictions and pests
are glorious for the unequivical masters of lies
Mercy is the power to avenge as sweet revenge crests
The most beautiful music comes from anguish and cries
__Killing blacks is even better when its done by slow knee
Calling me racist or Nazi is fake news and simply phony
They say God called upon me to cure these times of evil
That is hysterically funny to those who know I'm the DEVIL
SS

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 11:22 AM

it is difficult trying to talk reason with the unreasonable

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 11:30 AM

Of all the people to start a thread on reason. Weird.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 05:03 PM

Drive sober or get pulled over like Steve.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 05:38 PM

Nice slur. Have another batch of mushrooms.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 10:10 PM

We have to stop meeting like this.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Dec 20 - 02:48 PM

Maybe the title of this thread deserves to be asked of this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Dec 20 - 02:52 PM

Many people already *are* revolting.

[Sorry, I could not help myself.]

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Dec 20 - 03:57 PM

.. can narcissists be truly reasonable people...???

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Dec 20 - 06:03 PM

Narcissists do not generally listen to others, so they cannot be reasoned with because they are only listening to themselves

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 08:34 AM

Typical narcissist remarks:
You crossed me, I will NEVER forget.
Look what you made me do.
You are second rate.
I am all powerful.

Not all psychopaths or narcissists are evil but some are.
-------






As an advocate of mental health I do believe mushrooms deserve a second or third look. They are impressive even after a 20 year hiatus.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 01:41 PM

"Not all psychopaths or narcissists are evil but some are."

But all can be a persistent pain in the arse...!!!


When I was young and misguided I protested at repressive new UK legislation
criminalizing nature's own freely growing magic mushrooms..

Now I'm older and a little bit wiser, I accept and support this law..

Teenage curiosity and experimentation is a prerequisite for development of reason,

But teenagers need to be protected from the darker dangerous extremes,
where their curiosity and experimentation can lead them

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 06:14 PM

"As an advocate of mental health I do believe mushrooms deserve a second or third look. They are impressive even after a 20 year hiatus."

There is no way, in that case, that you can be any kind of advocate of mental health.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 07:49 PM

It's understandable if someone isn't aware of recent developments. One article on psilocybin: Clinical potential of psilocybin as a treatment for mental health conditions There are loads more.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 07:53 PM

But taking into consideration what PFR said, the use of psilocybin is generally administered in a controlled, supervised environment, not buying a bag of 'shrooms off your friend's cousin.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 08:10 PM

Well aware of claims for "Clinical potential of psilocybin as a treatment for mental health conditions "

.. under specialist professional controlled clinical conditions...

But reality for mass majority of UK youth hallucinogenic substance experimentation
is too far removed from this ideal safe legal clinical supervised drug treatment..

Drug crime gangs love this kind of academic legitimisation for their business promotion
to impressionable teenagers...

Yeah.. 40 odd years ago we were also easily convinced
by older cooler clever student peers
that cannabis and mushrooms were safer than alchohol and tobacco...

Some of my old mates from those days, the ones not dead, still remain fucked in the head...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 08:12 PM

Jeri - didn't see your second post while I was writing...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 08:55 PM

You didn't need to. Your brilliant post cut right through.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Dec 20 - 08:56 PM

Happens to me all the time.
I remember hearing this on NPR last year, I believe: Fresh Air, on psychedelics.

Anything that works, can be abused. I think psychogenic drugs have a greater potential than others.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 01:21 AM

Without clicking on it I can guess that is her interview with Michael Pollan - it was very interesting and I heard it repeat recently.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 06:21 AM

The other issue that has come to the fore is racism, or as a person I know calls it the REAL religion of Whiteyanity. Its the Trump base that has been around calling itself born again, evangelist and prosperty faith by REAL Americans. Catholics have their share of Whiteyics but are in a different sub set imho. Of course racism exists in a tribal mentality outside of the confines of most world Re-Ledgends. Through my eyes Jews are not immune from rascim.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 07:02 AM

FaceBook somehow makes money on nazi forums discussing the real reasons for safely blowing up Nashville with a broken down motor home for the fascist cause...
not to be confused with fact-cious causes.
A Fact-cious cause: Racism today has the same prime mover as it did in the days of slavery -MONEY SAVED-

The anemic response by a few sport teams postponing a game in protest of racial murders are hailed as wonderful but I find it pathetic.
Its not fuuny that money is often the bottom line.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 07:13 AM

my remarks about narcissm were not aimed at anyone on this forum, as i understand it magic mushrooms are generally weaker than fly agaric, and yes aldous huxley experiments were under contreolled consditions . ithink that the way to achieve spirituality is not thougha mushroom or a pill . i also think that aristic creativity is not achieved through a pill or a mushroom.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 11:34 AM

To get back to Donuel's question: how can we restore reason? I suggest the following. There can be other ideas I haven't thought of.

Restore the science requirement for high school graduation.

Have English and social-science classes teach students how to recognize propaganda and manipulation.

I have read that common sense is learned at home, from the family. Get parents to put their phones down & get away from their screens and start teaching their children how to think.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: gillymor
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 02:30 PM

Start teaching Civics again as well. People need to learn how to be a good citizen, how government functions and that it's not a GD reality TV show.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 04:46 PM

start teaching children to think ahead to question to anticipate what other people might be doing to solve problems , there is a game that does this it is called chess

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 09:15 PM

Well, the concept of teaching children how to be good citizens sounds fraught. When you consider all the undemocratic nonsense that goes on, from Trumpist lying, populism, multinationals ruling the roost, unelected lobby groups having a stranglehold on elected politicians, mass media totally screwing/skewing national debate... So where do you pitch your citizenship teaching? Look out, you're being watched...

As for teaching children how to think, we've been there before. It's a grand aspiration but begod does it need a fair bit of fleshing out. The people who are currently teaching children to think are teaching children to think their way (see above paragraph). And I include organised religion in that. If you insist to children that almighty God created them and everything around, that they're miserable wretches who needed a "saviour," and that you may well be ostracised if you demur (and think beyond Christianity there), whilst at the same time wondering how you're going to confront all the bollix they pick up from social media and porn websites, well I think we may be in a little trouble. The simple message that believing anything you're told without evidence (no matter how plausible it sounds), is a dangerous path to take, and that you really should know the difference between evidence and bullshit, would be a good start. But, if you're a teacher, you'd better put that across furtively. Watch your back!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 09:28 PM

Incidentally, if citizenship "education" involves telling children to be loyal and patriotic, I'm not with you. Patriotism is fine as long as it's sentimental and no more. I'm a patriotic Englishman who loves his country of birth, etc., but ask me to point a gun at a foreigner, unless he's directly threatening me or my loved ones, and I'll soon tell you where to get off, whatever the cost to myself. Loyalty, to me, must be earned, never imposed as of right or tradition. You're not educating children if you make them salute a flag, chant a patriotic verse, sing the anthem or pray for God to bless the fatherland. That's the very opposite of education.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 09:33 PM

"Restore...have.. teach... get... start..." etc.

Indeed, all good ideas. Missing, of course, is the ubiquitous "How".

I tried...back up there somewhere... to suggest some sneaky ways to work in the beginnings of changed attitudes and practices without seriously disturbing the set-in-stone recalcitrant patterns of the fundamentalists in religion, politics and culture. I hope that some steps will be taken when Betsy DeVos leaves office in 2021.... not holding my breath.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Dec 20 - 09:41 PM

That's it Bill. Easy words to say, valiant aspirations...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 07:26 AM

Yeah, Bill. If there was a "how," it would have happened long ago.

If a school board told parents that it wanted to teach their kids to reason effectively, most would be outraged that you were trying to "indoctrinate" children into "what to think" about their the parents' hot-button issues.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 11:06 AM

i was taught that life is shaped by the books you read and the people you meet. Having a reading difficulty associated with migraine I chose 'the people you meet'. It became a hobby to meet scientist pioneers, spiritual (civil rights) people and musicians.

Meeting remarkable people was far more rewarding and inspirational than any museum FIELD TRIP I ever had.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 11:23 AM

The most fruitful cities to meet remarkable people for me was Boston NYC Chicago SF and Rochester NY.
Wash DC has been a bust.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 11:33 AM

I must say that I like the idea that teaching kids to play chess will solve the problems of fake news and alt truth. It has a unique irony to it :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 11:38 AM

Thinking ahead is critical. To have an honest conversation about the future you have to have an honest conversation about the past.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 11:50 AM

If, to think ahead, you need to look at the past then surely retrospective vision is the critical element, Donuel. I think you may need to put more thought into that idea. Maybe I am just too forward thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 12:11 PM

re: remarkable people.

I met some in Kansas and once I moved here, I met more. 'Remarkable'. of course, doesn't necessarily mean famous, but some were quite well known. Because of folk music, I met some of the best folk musicians... from the Seegers (all 3 of the 'kids'), Jean Ritchie, Bob Beers, Bryan Bowers... and a dozen more.
Because of my civil rights involvement, I met many amazing people.
Because of my environmental concerns, I met several heads of the EPA...like Ruckleshaus.. and other 'remarkable' people.
And gee.. because of Mudcat, I have met many dozens more..including one Donuel, who has more interests than I can keep track of.. ;>)
   Why, I even 'met' and shook hands with Marion Berry at a street festival... though he barely acknowledged I was there.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 02:19 PM

Wanna teach somebody to think? Talk to them and use the subordinating conjunctions.

When I was in high school, I was required to memorize the list of subordinating conjunctions, even though my teacher acknowledged that requiring students to memorize was considered old hat. That list was of enormous help when I got to college and really had to think and write.

Years later I realized that the conjunctions, co-ordinating and subordinate, are the result of thousands of years of humans codifying events on our dynamic planet and within our complex societies.

Yes, there are kids who hardly ever hear thought-provoking sentences - kids who only get yelled at. They are not learning to think.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 03:12 PM

well i wished you a happy and healthy new yeqr.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 03:27 PM

Thqnk you

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 04:02 PM

I probably never mentioned my philosophy since it is a work in progress.
I never met Gurdjeiff but I met his wife on opening night of his dramaticized biography. Gurdjieff believed that people cannot perceive reality in their current condition because they do not possess a unified consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep". "Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies."
In an ironic twist I used hypnosis to wake people up. (metaphoricly)
Gurdjeiff had practices to wake up consciousness such as stopping what ever you re doing and examining the moment, he called it the 4th way.

Nowadays we have an awareness of a probable unified conciousness as well as the internet. We are making progress...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 05:55 PM

I remember before the movie a devout Gurdjeiffian was telling his young sons it was sacriledge for them to have popcorn since it would distract their consciousness.
I enjoyed my popcorn.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 08:07 PM

All those interests... they are not concurrent. Most are historic.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Dec 20 - 10:21 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff

Well.. that's one I missed! From a brief perusal, I probably would have moved right on by like I did when presented with Benjamin Creme and Edgar Cayce
...or even George Hammond, who is in a class by himself.

"It takes all kinds."

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 05:11 AM

Its too bad George G's esoteric branch of Islam did'nt catch on.
It was a non violent form of Islam like the magical Cabalistic form of Judaism.

Whacko groups like QAnon could also use someone to do an inside job and defuse the worst tendancies of dangerous irrational extremists.

Ah Oh It sounds like I'm thinking like the CIA. oh well Social Engineering has its manipulative side

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 10:28 AM

Islam already has 3-4-5.. depending on how you count... branches. I can see why his branch floundered. (I wonder how 'traditional' Islam considered Malcolm X's?)
   Anyone can name their belief system in a way similar to some already established system, but capitalizing it...or even filing papers... doesn't somehow make it popular and/or influential.

Qanon seems to be merely a group. I doubt they are formally organized anywhere, any more than Ammon Bundy's bunch are.

Maybe I'll claim to the the founder of "T-anon" for "think-anon".

We could use a few million adherents.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 11:30 AM

Agreement.
The ethics pickle is lying for a well intentioned purpose, is still lying. What the CIA considered a well intentioned purpose is not my idea. (I don't know where this is going)

I can only suspect that other languaged species like Dolphin do not lie. Is lying a man made invention? If so we can uninvent it with law.

I thought this was settled by accepting 'white lies' and condemning the the dark fraudulent lies. Its out of control in the lying universe.

We oughtta...i dunno

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 11:36 AM

"To the living we owe respect, to the dead we owe the truth".
Quote: Voltaire

He got it wrong, the truth is wasted on the dead.
If you can't handle the truth by 21 you may as well be dead.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 11:45 AM

The only thing we have to fear is the lie itself.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 28 Dec 20 - 01:19 PM

Now, Donuel. We have lots to fear - Covid, tornadoes, gun fire, bombers, hurricanes...

Talk sense.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 05:56 AM

Free association sometimes helps me think. Yesterday was a low energy day.
Free speech almost establishes the lie as a permanent feature. I am trying to find a way to villify the lie.
Perhaps it can not be done or wouldn't help if it could, but a guy can dream.
LIES
Pros: can fool an enemy.
Cons: can empower domestic evil.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 06:31 AM

I hate the way that the concept of free speech has been usurped by scoundrels who claim that it means you can say what you like, however threatening and hurtful. If we can't accept that freedom comes hand in glove with responsibility, we will eventually lose our freedoms altogether. Whilst we should be free to express the most ludicrous notions (such as my dad insisting that he could prove that the moon landings were filmed in Nevada), we shouldn't claim to be free to express notions that whip up hatred or prejudice, or which make people fearful or insecure. There's been plenty of wrangling over the First Amendment down the centuries (see mucho stuff on wiki), and, just as with the "bear arms" clause in the Second Amendment, the text has been pounced on and stripped of nuance by people of ill intent.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 06:45 AM

I liked that post!

Allow another real time poem

We tend to print all of the legends and lies and ignore the ugly truth.
The truth of our beauty is brief and the lifetime of lies is long.
The truth need not demand incontravertible proof.
Nor are all lies necessarily wrong.
It is because we are all mortal
That time is a locked portal.

Subject: RE:Bumper Sticker Wisdom by donuel
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 07:43 AM

Villify the lie
Magnify the truth


The New Deal
Help is Real         (winner)


Austeriity
gave prosperity
to the rich

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 11:40 AM

Forget "War and Peace", set aside a day or two, or burn some midnight oil, put one's feet up and click through "WalkaboutsVerse"

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 11:48 AM

You'd think we like lying to each other starting with Santa Claus and his proposterous flying reindeer. What about fire bottomed chimney's?
Why do we do that to children?
Are we gauging their age of reason?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 12:03 PM

If I were you I would pay google the money to have WAV to be the first appearing result for searches for Travel guide books, poetry and Europe UK photography. Make $ on the ads that would attach and they might pay for more exotic trips. Mudcat is a dry hole in comparison.

Pay for the international plan and expect a loss for 3 months.
Make the site a guidepost to other sites and maks some of your 'poems' X rated if they are or not :^/

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 01:13 PM

A lot of poetry is trite,
a lot of poetry is shite,
occasionally a poem might be quite alright,
sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bit,
good night...

pfr - best poet in primary school aged 11...

He held such promise and potential,
when did it all go so wrong.
How do kids turn out as adults ?
There is no rhyme or reason...

Funnily enough, when I was in my early 20s
I was on a long night time train journey
reading a 'modern' poem,
words which triggered a mushroom flashback..
A sensation of time standing still, and dislocation from reality..
Strange but not too frightening..

I think that was one of the last before my brain chemistry repaired sufficiently,
and recovered from teenage misadventures...

I'm worried America's brain chemistry will never heal,
All the rest of us poor buggers
are at the mercy of the biggest most dangerous nutcase in the world...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 01:47 PM

So Donuel -
The wise poet,
Who does know it -
We now can tell
Is quite a P.A...
And all without pay!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 01:56 PM

walkabout you remind me of mcgonagle
Welcome, sweet Christmas, blest be the morn
That Christ our Saviour was born!
Earth's Redeemer, to save us from all danger,
And, as the Holy Record tells, born in a manger.

Chorus --

Then ring, ring, Christmas bells,
Till your sweet music o'er the kingdom swells,
To warn the people to respect the morn
That Christ their Saviour was born.

The snow was on the ground when Christ was born,
And the Virgin Mary His mother felt very forlorn
As she lay in a horse's stall at a roadside inn,
Till Christ our Saviour was born to free us from sin.

Oh! think of the Virgin Mary as she lay
In a lowly stable on a bed of hay,
And angels watching O'er her till Christ was born,
Therefore all the people should respect Christmas morn.

The way to respect Christmas time
Is not by drinking whisky or wine,
But to sing praises to God on Christmas morn,
The time that Jesus Christ His Son was born;

Whom He sent into the world to save sinners from hell
And by believing in Him in heaven we'll dwell;
Then blest be the morn that Christ was born,
Who can save us from hell, death, and scorn.

Then he warned, and respect the Saviour dear,
And treat with less respect the New Year,
And respect always the blessed morn
That Christ our Saviour was born.

For each new morn to the Christian is dear,
As well as the morn of the New Year,
And he thanks God for the light of each new morn.
Especially the morn that Christ was born.

Therefore, good people, be warned in time,
And on Christmas morn don't get drunk with wine
But praise God above on Christmas morn,
Who sent His Son to save us from hell and scorn.

There the heavenly babe He lay
In a stall among a lot of hay,
While the Angel Host by Bethlehem
Sang a beautiful and heavenly anthem.

Christmas time ought to be held most dear,
Much more so than the New Year,
Because that's the time that Christ was born,
Therefore respect Christmas morn.

And let the rich be kind to the poor,
And think of the hardships they do endure,
Who are neither clothed nor fed,
And Many without a blanket to their bed.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 02:01 PM

...for comparison (I'm not allowed to copy/paste here): "Christmas Sung Simply"

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 02:05 PM

Bloody brilliant, Dick. I've just intoned it out very loud to Mrs Steve, who has now forgotten all the cares of the day!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 02:20 PM

Wouldn't it be great if WAV and Donuel got together and wrote a poem?
Imagine the possiblitiies if they were both not alone!
Clever rhymes abd scansion diverse-
How many syllables in one verse?
Or even in a single line
Don't worry, all will soon be pretty much ok.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 02:32 PM

Ass holes in castles
aren't golden and wise
In fact they're fascile
and fools in disguise

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 03:25 PM

A ditty I write be it a poem, lyric or rhyme is written right here in the spur of the moment . I don't use Word and edit for days or weeks.
What can be called real time rhymes are not tortured creations but instant manifestations. For that alone I am proud of each one. Afterall Jesus only wrote in the sand and brushed it away with his foot. It will take a mod or an EMP to erase my words. Social media is ephemeral and like a footprint in the sand. I wish I could improvise musicaly as easily.
such as;


In the sperm of the moment Jesus was fertilized
It was 3 wise men who later realized
His life would never be told by attribution
and the baby Jesus would be penalized
from the start by cleft pallett mallocution

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 03:29 PM

Who said they all should be great
Most of them make me ache
so for gad sakes
see them as clouds of odd shapes.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 03:32 PM

With vision oft blurred
By stars in their eyes!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 03:53 PM

They say in time all bad things will pass,
But I'm sat here with one lodged half way out my arse...

If you don't want such a problem with your kyber,
Follow wise advice and eat more fibre.

Whatever this has to do with the subject of Reason,
It at least sounds reasonable
To eat your meals with plenty of peas on...

pfr - poetry for reason...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 03:57 PM

...or the trad English rhyme -

Here I sat broken hearted -
Paid a penny and only farted.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 05:12 PM

Pfr don't eat much wholegrain pasta
So now he's had a turtle-head disaster...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 05:40 PM

If he started to drink beer
Maybe he'd get diarrhea

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 05:41 PM

Reason is not a luxury but is a necessity for an advanced society. You there, you are living a more luxurious life than people in the court of the pharoh if not more than the pharoh himself. All this and we see so little.
How little do we see? This will explain it a bit.

here and now

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 06:07 PM

Drinking cider increases the chance
of an explosive catastrophe in your pants...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 06:33 PM

pfr get well soon. Your body is depending on you and vice versa.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 06:58 PM

Steve Shaw, well said about responsibilities.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 07:11 PM

it's another reason why I packed in drinking two years ago..

I didn't want to become that elderly gentleman
sat in the corner of the pub
with a swarm flies hovering around his pants..

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 08:12 PM

a reason renaissance stands little chance in a swarm of dubious poetry.

I can't keep up. Maybe I've said all I have, anyway.

Y'all have fun...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 09:00 PM

There's nowt dubious about the "poetry" here, Bill. It's all total doggerel! Some may be proud but know what crap they're penning. Others may be penning crap but think they're Wordsworth...that's the trouble...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 01:27 AM

ahh.. there's one for the 'masterpiece poetry not yet written' notebook..

"crap" and "mishap" rhyme a treat...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 06:47 AM

Here is my take on the WAV format


All the world is a BULL SHIT thread and all the players upon the stage have fault within themselves. The fault is from the stars in violent gamma ray Nova storms. From chaos the threads of life in the most violent regions, must reproduce ferociously and often. Where calm, near imortality may reign. To burn twice as bright and hot or cool and still is the ancient response of life. We can not choose our region of birth. Feel fortunate if it is Earth.

cosmic pond

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 07:45 AM

pfr crept into
this crypt
- CRAPPED -
and crept out again.
That's the contribution
of he and Steve who have left
no evidence of any creativity here
Thats OK . They're not cut out to be artists
After this moment of comic relief
I respect Freedom of Speech
from the delicate delicious
to the scatological

So perhaps we can not restore reason tolerence empathy diversity and truth

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 08:14 AM

To restore implies a previous existence. What would that have been?
Rome? ugh
Only a few individuals are icons, heros, martyrs and paragons of virtue.
There are precious few who have reason tolerence empathy diversity and truth.
Perhaps a leader exists but for even half of all people to posess reason tolerence empathy diversity and truth, is asking too much.

Asking "how" is preumptuous.


can we reason at all


We may stay trapped in lies at the push of a button.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 09:28 AM

small fish, one mouth
no bigger than another
nobody has room
to eat his brother

medium sized fish
medium sized pond
most are happy
just swimming along

one day, one fish
begins to figure
he'd like others
to think he's bigger

but whether scientist,
or internet bard
there's nothing sadder
than trying too hard.

Now, THERE'S some doggerel for ya! (It likely joins the other crap as whatever level lives below "doggerel".)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 10:34 AM

Doggerel that satirizes doggerel is 'hot-doggerel'. ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 10:54 AM

One thing us Brits can't stand is a pretentions supercilious pillock..

They set themselves up on high to be mocked..

Whether the mockery is gentle and friendly,
or unfriendly and cruel,
is up to how insufferably vain and pompous that self indulgent attention-seeking pillock may be...

We consider that is fairly reasonable...

Hence 'knowingly' shit poetry...!!!

.. doggerel shit versus pure undiluted Bullshit...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 11:32 AM

Cheers for that, pfr.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 12:38 PM

I salute you Jeri. You are skilled. You have the makings of an iconic children's book.

Dealing with Steve below the line is like a never ending episode of 'South Park". I'm Stan and Steve is a well behaved Cartman.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 12:49 PM

Nothin like teaching kids to stop tryin.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 01:06 PM

Donny - you started a potentially interesting thread,
some of us enjoyed getting involved in a stimulating debate.

But you couldn't resist buggering it up with your usual lack of self restraint...

That is definitely unreasonable...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 01:07 PM

btw.. Happy new year...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 03:47 PM

Nonsense, thread drift is old hat, in fact it is a time honored tradition.
HAPPY NEW YEAR

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 06:54 PM

Nothing to do with thread drift, Donuel, old chap. It's to do with your utterly weird obsession with riling other people, for psychological reasons of your own that we can't begin to understand. You can't help it. Examine your conscience, mate. This post is a substitute for the post you should be getting from the mods but which you are not getting. Just stick to your cosmological bollix is what I suggest. Happy new year.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 08:07 AM

I know who I am after a lifetime of examinaton. You should try it. I'm no Robin Williams. But I do have an obcession with his free association dialog, share his only child status and exact birthday. I do have a few talents but too few to my liking. The abject silliness and barbs do not translate well in text for example, "good morning viet nam", see what i mean.
I never had his riches so I could not help people the way he did.
None of his influence would help me get a job at the state department.
I never met Robin but I met his friends from Chris Reeves to Steven Wright. Yes I have had fun with your personnae from my point of view but I am definately not obcessed with you. That you are obcessed with me is part of the inside joke. I think you want to be the boss. If I could I would knight you Grand Poohbah of mudcat BS. I may as well poke fun at Mitch McConnel, whose sense of humor you share. Your criticism and ad hominum comments over jokes is where much of your bruhaha started. I presume insight has not helped, so back to the same questions posed by religionists and scientists s alike, How can we restore a renaissance of reason and morality?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 12:01 PM

Mork for a role model...??? hmmmm...

Robin Williams didn't amuse us Brits much..

To our tastes he was one of the most irritating unfunny 'comedians' ever..

An accolade shared unfunnily enough
with other notable American self-indulgent motor-mouth babbling stream of shite unfunny men...

Fortunately American Comedy has recovered from that phase of tedious annoying drivel,
and is far more universally entertaining for intelligent adults these days...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 12:10 PM

"As unfunny as Bob Hope at Miss World 1970." :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 04:35 PM

When Robin Williams was really 'on' and tuned in, he was amazing.
His problem was he could seldom turn it off, and automatically went into fast-forward at the slightest provocation.

There many examples on Youtube.. some very funny.. some just irritating. You sort to suit.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 07:13 PM

It has become obvious my other dark and morose influence was my neighbor, Rod Serling.

Now being quite open what or who influenced you?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 07:36 PM

Me? Walter Kaufmann... former Philosophy professor at Princeton. Heard him speak in St. Louis in 1959 and bought every book by him I could find.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kaufmann_(philosopher)

... and many Sci-fi authors with creative themes... and a few friends who showed me new ways to approach problems...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 07:39 PM

To go back to the original OP theme:

'' The average IQ of the world's population, which has steadily risen from the post-war to the late 90 s, has decreased over the last twenty years...
This is the flipping of the Flynn effect.
It seems that the level of intelligence measured by testing is decreasing in the most developed countries.
Many can be the causes of this phenomenon.
One of them could be the impoverishment of language.
Several studies show that lexical knowledge and language impoverishment are decreasing: it is not just about reducing the vocabulary used, but also the linguistic subtleties that help to develop and formulate complex thinking.
The progressive disappearance of times (subjunctive, imperfect, compound forms of the future, participant past) gives rise to a thought almost always to the present, currently limited: unable to projections in time.
Simplifying tutorials, disappearing capitals and punctuation are examples of '' deadly blows '' to the accuracy and variety of expression.
Just an example: deleting the word '' young girl '' (now obsolete) does not only mean abandoning the aesthetics of a word, but also unintentionally promoting the idea that there are no intermediate stages between a child and a woman.
Fewer words and fewer conjugated verbs involve less ability to express emotions and fewer possibilities for thought development.
Studies have shown that violence in the public and private spheres comes directly from the inability to describe one's emotions through words.
No words to build a reasoning, complex thinking is made impossible.
The poorer the language, the more thought disappears.
The story is rich in examples and many books (Georges Orwell - '' 1984 "; Ray Bradbury - '' Fahrenheit 451 '') told how all totalitarian regimes have always hindered thought, by reducing the number and the number meaning of words.
If there are no thoughts, there are no critical thoughts. And there is no speechless thinking.
How can you build hypothetical deductive thought without conditional?
How can you look at the future without conjugation with the future?
How can you capture a storm, a succession of elements in time, whether past or future, and their relative duration, without a language that distinguishes what could have been, what was, what is, what? could be, and what will be after what could have happened, did it really happen?
Dear parents and teachers: let's talk, read and write our children, our students. Teaching and practicing language in its most different forms. Even if it seems complicated. Especially if it's complicated.
Because in this effort there is freedom.
Those who claim the need to simplify spelling, purge the tongue of one's ' flaw s', abolish genres, times, nuances, anything that creates complexity, are the real artisans of impoverishing the human mind .....
There is no freedom without necessity.
There is no beauty without the thought of beauty
Sources:
Christophe Clavé
Graduated Sciences-Po Paris, MBA holder, professional coach, Christophe Clavé spent 25 years in business, as a HRD then Executive Director. He was also in charge of the Corporate Strategy and Policies course at HEC Paris for 5 years.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 08:51 PM

The theory of an ongoing erosion of language skill is sound and probable. There are of course ancillary causes such as political policy of limiting education to the wealthy class.

Less likely causes could include genetics and disease (parasite or infectious). What if there is an explosion of dyslexia for example.

Changes in my language skill in 20 years is like night and day simply due to practice.

Beauty depends on culture. For some in the USA beauty is money or hotness. In the Pentagon it is more bang for the buck

For the Navaho:
Walking in Beauty: Closing Prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
Hózhóogo naasháa doo?Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo?Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo?Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo?T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo?Hózhó náhásdlíí’?Hózhó náhásdlíí’?Hózhó náhásdlíí’?Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful…

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 08:51 PM

Sorry to have to tell you and Christophe, Bill, but the "average" IQ will always be 100, even if we all turn into Mr Spock. The best bet is ignore "IQ" altogether. The guy who invented the notion was a bit of a fascist, after all.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 08:57 PM

My IQ was 88. (there were sections I refused to answer like stringing beads)
My EQ is 100

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 09:19 PM

The last time my IQ was measured, it was 178. It means absolutely nothing, and this from a bloke who could be crowing about it. Ignore.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 10:00 PM

I've got a fairly high IQ, but what Steve said.
It doesn't measure how effectively a person could use it. It doesn't measure (and I'm commpletely with you on this) whether a person just stopped wanting to answer questions. I had disgraphia as a kid, so my first test was oral. I scored a bunch higher on that one than the one I took when I could write. And then, there was ADD, and getting to the point of "Aw, forget it. This is stupid". Some of the dumbest people I've known were doctors, who I'd guess, were good at memorizing stuff. Some of us just would rather figure things out than remember stuff.

And average IQ is ALWAYS 100. If we dumbed down, then possibly one would be able to score 100 if they could correctly spell "the", and count to 10. THAT is what can change, but 100 is always the average.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 10:12 PM

When I was in 7th grade, I saw a test score that said 155. The thing is, I was better then at taking tests than I was at 'processing knowledge'. That was what I remember as the Stanford Binet test that students were given. I took it 5 times... twice in the 3rd grade when we moved. I always got high scores, but I had never learned **how to study** and had breezed thru school easily until I hit high school and and college where it was more than just collecting facts and faking it. I had to really work to deal with higher education.
   I agree that IQ numbers are not a great indication of any basic competence. They always reflect culture, genetics, peer acceptance..etc. ...but many points in that long article about language skills being important really resonated...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 31 Dec 20 - 10:21 PM

Bill, it's about grades, not IQ tests, but I got As and Bs in classes I liked, without studying (I paid attention in class), and Cs and Ds in classes I didn't like - even when I studied. If my brain didn't give a shit, I couldn't force it to work.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Jan 21 - 10:40 AM

The big problem is with those who don't even try to force it to work.

And some are proud of it.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 01 Jan 21 - 12:23 PM

They don't need brains when they got faith, guns, and social media...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Jan 21 - 12:50 PM

Yeah. I guess I forgot.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 08:57 AM

When a culture normally rewards competance and respondsibility then suddenly an incompetant irrespondsible populist leader comes along the incompetant people are overjoyed and of course hired.

I am dismayed that there are so many incompetants.
It sounds arrogant but With effort we could help at least half of them.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Jeri
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 09:50 AM

"Respondsibility" - I'm not sure that isn't a great misspelling.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 10:17 AM

There is neo funding of police duties such as having professionals respond to calls regarding the mentally ill or autistic. It even saves money and lives.

I call for the 22 Congressmen and 1 Senator who will vote against counting electoral votes for Biden next week to be charged with insurrection and treason next week. Yes that includes Barry Loudermilk, Barry Moore, Guy Reschenthaler, Diane Harshbarger, Mo Brooks and Josh Hawley.
As measured and forgiving as I try to be...
Some days I am for cruel and unusual punishment for right wingnuts.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 11:43 AM

Trouble is, is that half the epople in the world are below average intelligence...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 12:09 PM

I'm the product of a working class family who valued education and intelligence,
who aspired for their children to acquire the intellectual skills for social mobility...

Thatcher's reign saw to that 'undesirable' ideal
being stripped from the ambitions of the British underclass...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 11:37 AM

There is policy by the rich and for the rich to keep their servants in their place. Be it Republicans or Tories they want much of that government money for themselves. To do that you simply deactivate government agencies and hand those duties over to privatly owned busineses. You slowly dissolve schools and leave private schools for the priviledged. Close libraries. etc.

The biggest prize for privatization beasts is to sink their teeth into the Post Office. After Hurricane Katrina early attempts were made for Walmart to take care of the victims. It didn't work.
Today Wallmart/Walgreens is to dispense the vaccines and do all the testing. That is failing or never got off the ground.

The beauty of privitization -beyond failure- is that it is not accountable to anyone but themselves. 'They' define the argument of privatization as Socialism verses Capitalism. In socialism you will be taxed to death and you don't want that.
All I know is that it works and grievences are addressed.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 05:06 PM

Hi, Donuel. We one example of privatization in Missouri, where driver's licensing and vehicle licensing centers are run privately. Most of the centers are not open due to Covid, and the signs on the offices don't say when they will be open again.

They don't answer the phone, and their mailboxes are full. The DH called the Department of Revenue, and the Department doesn't even know which offices are open or closed.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 05:29 PM

Missouri? i thot you were british. The up right walker looks straight forward but you need a personal test.

I still have not perfected my sky hook.

The white house phone operator doesn't answer like it used to either.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 03:40 PM

Demonizing government has been popularied with the oft repeated Reagan phrase "Im from the government and I'm here to help - is the most dreaded thing ever said"
A wingnut said "I want government so small I can drown it in a bathtub"

Well we can see what the result is locally and nationally.
We have been attacked by a virus. If China attacked would we leave it to State govenors?

We have had Presidents who only helped robber barons and not the people from Hayes to Coolidge and beyond.

Government trust transparency and truth is needed to clear its reputation. I think even the need to know paradigm needs reform.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 11:38 PM

Today reason took another vacation.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 01:17 AM

trump, the man who put the "T" in reason...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 05:57 AM

That was good. I laughed when I thought I saw an I.
When I saw the T I was more impressed. Oscar Wilde move over.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 06:32 AM

Yesterday was either the high water mark for intolerence and will be met by law, arrest and prosecution OR
This is the modern day Fort Sumpter of a new hot civil war as Trump desires.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 06:26 PM

The Trump insurgents are beyond reason, "renaissance" or not.

They have brainwashed and radicalized each other under the beaming smile of Donald Trump.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 07:22 AM

Now 5 people have died frpm the mob violence trashing the Capitol..
because people refused to tell citizens the truth. Like leaving a cult hey were afraid to tell the truth.
Honesty is the best policy is the simple lsson Washington needs to learn.
I am in favor of disclosure of the truth'

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: gillymor
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:05 AM

Whoops, posted to this thread by accident. Oh well.

---

Transferred to appropriate thread. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:07 AM

It will take a while for this country to tell the truth.
I shall begin by admitting that I post particular topics in a particular order like playing chess; Cults, Reason, Truth, Psychology, Bio war etc.
When I see trends and certain things coming I try to shape thought about these events in stages. It is not scatter brained however temperature lowering and raising topics can be random.
Honesty is the best policy is represented by Law and Justice.

22 years ago I spooked myself by painting a 16 square fot picture of twin towers on fire with planes in the sky. Cassandra kike events are common with me as it was with my grandmother. (twillight zone music plays) Be that as it may, I feel a respondsibility to speak of these trends.
So telling the truth has its costs but as we all can see so does lieing. In the first post of this thread I hoped that the new administration tell the truth about all 'sorts' of things.
You may disagree with the truth as I know it, fine, just think for yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:20 AM

During my brief exposure to American education I was astonished by tests of knowledge relying on multiple-choice questions rather than essays, and by languages taught (by people who didn't speak them) from tourist phrasebooks. Later, watching from the distance, I watched Phonics (teach children to read words as they sound, before revealing to them the horrid truth that words aren't actually spelled like that…)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 09:23 AM

For many years I was an examiner with an 'A' level board, rising eventually to the dizzy rank of team leader of a group of assistant examiners. My specialism was marking and moderating the marking of biology essay papers. It is the hardest damn thing on earth. Right up to the time that the results were announced we were in the back room checking each other's marking, and even secretly checking the marking of our own chief examiners. After the results we had to re-mark appealed results too. I saw it all. Many an injustice must have crept through, and I have sympathy with exam boards backing away from essays and embracing both structured and multiple-choice questions. It may sound like a drop in standards, but it can be done and it's fairer all round. People who can get an extensive marking scheme into their heads and objectively mark the infinite variety of long essays to an acceptable standard are like hens' teeth. If we thought we were getting to within five percentage points of the correct mark for a paper with five essay questions we thought we were doing well. Examinations are unfair as it is, so stripping away at least one layer of that unfairness is creditable (in m'humble).

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 10:08 AM

Exams are really no more than a test of how young people may cope under pressure and stress...

In that respect it shows how prepared they are for survival and progress in the real adult world..

Also "cheating, and getting away with it".. which is also a respected adult business skill...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 11:39 AM

Truth, education... what other hiways are there to reason?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:01 PM

Multiple-choice exams can be brutal - if the distinctions among the choices are subtle enough.

In my experience, however, a common method is to make one of the four choices intentionally ludicrous, and the other three distinct enough so that someone with only a vague notion of what's required has a good chance of guessing the answer.

But not even the hardest multiple-choice test (which, by the way, even some instructors call "multiple guess," as though that's the proper term) demands the organizational skills and clarity of thought required by essay questions.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:27 PM

Truth is not a road.. it's a feature of a good road.

A sane political system is one way reason can be inserted into education. If dozens of variations of education continue, narrow views of 'truth' will always confuse things. Of course, in order to establish common ways to conduct education, political sanity needs to prevail... but that seems to need common education....

Do I detect a circular flaw in progress?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:48 PM

I think there are times when you avoid essay answers. As Steve has mentioned the fair posing, evaluation, and grading of them requires considerable energy and is subject to multiple tiers of correction. And what if the question is technical and the answer is graded on grammar?

My father recalled a math teacher who downmarked you if you didn't put a period at the end of an equation.

Meanwhile multiple choice can be good or bad depending on the nature of the subject and the quality of the test preparer. In school they varied with the teacher. On the SAT* I thought they were pretty good at getting your level of knowledge although it hurt to feel rushed. In the working world one runs into them in proving that you have familiarity with various tasks and licensing criteria. The official ones have been good, the trades ones have been ludicrously easy, because the people who put the tests together were probably not paid to make a good test and the test itself was mainly to show that you showed up for the presentation. I have been surprised on occasion.

As to the larger question of reason and renaissance, the recognition of reason is somewhat elusive. The actual Renaissance may have been a result of plague tearing apart a population that was educated to dark ages standards. Your village started dying, so you prayed, put poultices on the sores, burned a witch or a Jew or two, and possibly went to self-flagellation. I'll never forget a short story I read: "The Plague Comes to Bergamo".

At some point, a critical number of people start saying: "Enough is enough is enough."

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 01:31 PM

How about a required Presidential SAT as a candidate?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 01:42 PM

In my experience (of marking tens of thousands of 'A' Level biology essays, and of assessing the marking standards of examiners in my teams), yes it's grand to be able to demonstrate your skilful martialling of relevant facts, expressing them clearly and in context and putting everything together into a persuasive and well-balanced and well-structured whole. The problem is how to fairly assess those efforts. We would typically mark an essay out of 20. Each tick represented a well-made point which was relevant and in context. But our marking scheme for each question (ironed out for the paper over a whole two days of meetings), which typically covered two sides of A4, contained upwards of forty or fifty potential marking points. Three of the questions selected by the candidate typically had a part A/part B structure requiring long answers, and the other two were of the "Discuss the theories on the origin of life" type. In addition, the essay had to be balanced across that scheme (you couldn't score all 20 points by leaving out a whole area of discussion that you hadn't thought relevant/hadn't revised/had forgotten about). There was the question of overall quality of the answer (which we assessed somewhat subjectively according to several criteria, such as writing in clear and concise English, diagram accuracy, the avoidance of irrelevancies and blatant errors and giving the essay a cohesive structure), to which we allocated a maximum of three "quality" marks out of the 20. No marks were allocated for neatness, nice handwriting or effort, though we were allowed to dock a mark for sheer bloody unreadability, whilst retaining the brief that we somehow still had to process the damn thing...

Now each of the poor souls who did the marking had to carry all those caveats in their heads, as well as effectively "learning" the marking scheme - and have that sorted for all nine essay questions on the paper (the candidate had to choose five to answer). In a typical summer exam, I would personally mark about four or five hundred scripts and each member of the team about half that number. Almost all of us were working teachers, doing the marking in the evening and at weekends in term time, working to an extremely tight deadline. Essay setting is a grand idea, but, as you can see, there is another side to that coin. We have to be fair to candidates, whose careers or university entrance depends on our getting this right. Setting tasks that only superhumans could assess accurately doesn't serve them at all well.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 02:27 PM

Bill, I consider Truth fundamental while nebulus. I do not relegate truth to an adjective status.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 02:44 PM

Your essay on correcting essay tests reminded me of our far simpler method of evaluating job interviewees. On our best days several of us employed persons ran identical questions to the subjects, then scored them personally, then met and decided if we agreed with each other and if not, why not. I think we based our method on how we saw Olympics judges score performance athletics that couldn't be timed. Not a good model now that I rethink about it.

I meant to *explain the SAT
in my previous posting. For those of you not in USA "SAT" is an abbreviation for what used to be "Scholastic Aptitude Test". They were everpresent when I was a high school student. They were given at the end of American elementary education so about when the average student was 17 or 18 and were supposed to indicate how well prepared one was for post-secondary education, but not paid for by the state. Possibly subsidized, but I don't think totally. There were two separate sections to be done, one that verbal and another that was mathematical. Predominantly multiple choice. Possibly there were essays required for the verbal.

It might be a good idea to have some set of standard requirements that can be posed as an exam and must be passed to go into public service, but that would certainly indicate a society prejudice against mental infirmity or personality defects. I doubt that can work in the U.S. because it departs from the 'everyman' nature of our Democracy. Also, I believe the French have a quite elaborate system of schooling their public officials and how has that worked out? (Seriously, I'm asking, how has that worked out? I sure don't know).

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 03:05 PM

The word truth can be used several ways, just as 'folk'. But it often involves an equivocation when just tossed about. When capitalized and put in quotes, it is usually meant as dressed up word for 'fact'.

If 'facts' are known in some matter, 'truth' means honestly and accurately acknowledging facts.
A lot of what people like to wave about as truth is merely some subjective opinion on some abstraction. It gets kinda slippery.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 03:21 PM

True, and a lie is a swift WMD
Trumps election lies are years old but Mark Twain was also right
"A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its socks on".

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 04:59 PM

According to multiple sources on the internet, that quote pre-dates Mark Twain considerably. And the quote is not socks but shoes. Shoes is what people go halfway around the world in, socks optional.

Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 11:55 AM

Irish proverb: Is fearr a bheith coslom ná cosnoctaithe - it is better to be barefoot than in shoes with no socks, ie better honest poverty than a pretence at wealth.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 12:02 PM

Thompson:

Great quote!
I peddled a bicycle through the Gaeltacht in the 80s with a kid who was learning Irish Gaelic and we would stop and he'd interpret the signs. Are you fluent?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 07:16 PM

Well I think it would be better to be wearing shoes without socks rather than traipsing around the west of Ireland barefoot.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 09:04 PM

I can't bear socks. I wear them for weddings and funerals only, and even then I whip them off in the car afterwards as soon as is decently possible. For thirty years I have had just the one pair of black shoes and they are still in very good condition. All my other footwear is sandals, and I never wear footwear of any kind in the house. So if you knocked on my door and saw me, you'd think I was in a state of honest poverty. Trouble is, I also wear shorts all the time and all my shirts are short-sleeve and extremely colourful, mainly of the Hawaiian type. I wonder if that makes me non-povera...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 09:58 PM

OK when I was younger and even more irritating than I remain at present, my parents told me to put my shoes and socks on. I gleefully returned to them with my feet in my shoes, and my socks pressed onto them as far as they'd go.
In more than one way I am lucky to be alive!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 06:14 AM

One of the reasons I decided to eschew socks for ever was the dreaded phenomenon of sock-slip. I always hated those grooves that normal socks left around the bottom on my calves, so used to wear those loose-top ones. After a short while they generally ended up scrunched under my foot inside my shoe with an unbesocked bare heel to show for it. I found this to be an intensely crippling experience. I regard socks, along with the boob apron, to be among the worst sartorial inventions ever.

Subject: Is this how to restore reason ?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 08:08 AM

I have no idea what it must be like to be sock blocked.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 01:53 PM

The first ammndment has always had lilits. When radio arrived the government got involved, same with TV. The Internet revolution is in its wild west age and has proven toxic in the wrong hands. This technology is too advanced for humans? The next one will be a doozy if unregulaed. Th first ammendment is not as sancrosanct as we mightthink.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 05:28 PM

Robomatic who bought the bike?

Hahaha. Peddled vs Pedaled. Never mind. It has been a long week.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:06 PM

re:socks....

I spent most of my life in jobs which required shoes.. and often work boots... with good socks, to be both safe and comfortable. In the few years when I might have worn sandals, my feet had no protective callouses. I now, in my 'declining' years, have several pair of sandals and 3 pair of shorts.
It is interesting how people differ so much in their sartorial display. I feel gaudy in a shirt with any red or yellow in it. My favorites, both short and long-sleeved are black & while checked. My 'party' shirt is a green & gray checked thing my wife gave me several years ago. I also have a blue-gray shirt with a small wold embroidered on it. My ONLY suit is a brown corduroy with matching vest I bought for my wedding 40 years ago. I have worn it to a couple of weddings and a few other events since, including my son's wedding 2½ years ago! (I think I always wore the same leaf-green with white outlining tie).

   I think I'll put a link to me in it on my Dropbox or Google drive.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:17 PM

Ok folks.. here's me with my wife, when that suit was 'only' about 30 years old.
at a friend's wedding

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:19 PM

Maybe... it shows the file name, but slow loading.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:33 PM

Great pic, Bill.

I still have the suit, the shoes and the underpants I got married in 44 years ago. Unfortunately, due to 44 years' good living, there's no way I can get any of them on now. Well, maybe the shoes, but even they look doubtful. And just a bit mildewy ...:-(

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 08:54 PM

Mrrzy. I pedal corrected....in athletic socks.

I understand that Russian soldiers wore not socks, but portyanki throughout WWII. These were fabric foot-wraps. Cotton in summer, flannel in winter. The official word to shift to socks came relatively recent according to The New York Times.

Apparently they are similar to what the British call puttees.

I don't know how far back socks go, actually. I've got a recording of George Bernard Shaw stating that he had his socks made left and right, and I ran into that recently in Alaska, but I forget just where.

The town I used to live in in Massachusetts had an underwear factory, and I still think I have some t-shirts made in Needham. Apparently that was so the unwed mothers could have jobs!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 06:59 AM

Lovely picture, Bill. You would be at home as lord of the manor in any English stately home in that :-) Glad to see that you are keeping Edward V11 company by leaving the bottom button of the waistcoat undone :-D

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:16 AM

I was unaware that I was in such elite company.. but I have so many ancestors who inhabited various English manors that I'd not know where to claim residence. (Some of them, unfortunately, did not follow the example of the Vicar of Bray)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:33 AM

Robo, portyanki are not like puttees, except in that they are flat pieces of cloth.

Oblong in shape, portyanki are wrapped around the bare feet and ankles, and are worn inside the soldier's boots and trousers. They work best with the felt-lined knee-high boots that are the Russian equivalent of mukluks. Puttees are long strips of cotton webbing that are wound around the leg on top of the trousers, socks and the top two inches of the British ammo boot. Infantry soldiers wind them from the ankle up to the knee, and gunners and troopers wind from the knee down to the ankle, so they don't come undone from friction against stirrup leathers.

After the invention of knitting machines and the arrival on the Russian market of affordable knitted socks, the true purpose of portyanki -- apart from saving the state money -- was as an initiation experience for recruits. Learning to wrap their feet correctly was one of the first things taught to Soviet soldiers, and the Russian army abandoned them only very recently. Puttees were adapted from clothing worn by tribal fighters in India during the 18th and 19th centuries, and were kept in wear until the 1960s because they provided easily adjustable support to soldiers' legs, they were very distinctively military, and they were cheap.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:35 AM

The photo also looks like a poster for a movie
about a nice friendly couple running a rural folksie hotel
where guests mysteriously disappear..

The hotel kitchen serves the tastiest meat pies in the county...

We want to see this film, why aint mudcat in the movie business ...!!!???

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:49 AM

pfr.. No family recipes for 'long pig'. Many years ago, Max did videos. You'd have to ask him. ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 02:23 PM

pfr I will second your nomination to the NYSFTTS. The licensing is up to you.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 08:06 PM

Thanks Charmion. That was a big help! Better knowledge of portyankis AND puttees! Now Kipling will make more sense!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 10:46 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-uncertain-times-make-us-susceptible-to-conspiracy-theories--and-how-to-pro

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 11:04 AM

portion

Practice critical thinking. People often believe in conspiracy theories because of “lazy thinking,” says Nadia Brashier, a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who studies why people fall for fake news and misinformation. “We need to be nudged to consider whether the claims in front of us are accurate. So, slowing down and asking yourself, ‘Is this information biased or unlikely to be true,’ can be really helpful.”

Although many conspiracy-theory believers consider themselves to be critical thinkers, closely examining their evidence might help them see otherwise, Douglas adds. For example, does all the conspiracy-theory-related material come from one type of source, while non-conspiracy-theory information comes from different sources? That can be a clue that something is off.

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Change your perspective. Try thinking about a situation that triggers negative feelings in a way that will change its emotional impact. For example, parents might point out to a child who’s struggling with staying at home for an extended period of time that isolation is often part of an adventure; in fact, astronauts train for it. That new perspective can help reframe the experience into something more positive.

This approach is called cognitive reappraisal, says Nicole Giuliani, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon who has expertise in health behaviors, emotions and self-regulation. Research suggests that those who use the technique are more likely to have closer relationships, fewer depression symptoms and greater life satisfaction. It can also diffuse the strong emotions linked with conspiracy theories.

Giuliani has been using cognitive reappraisal often, she says, as she juggles working full time from home with two young kids. Rather than focusing on the difficulties, “I’m trying to remember that they aren’t little for very long, and we’ve had a lot more time together than we would have otherwise,” she says. “I do find that it’s helping me snuggle them closer while we read ‘Jamberry’ for what feels like the millionth time, and that can’t be bad.”

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Connect — and consult. Feeling isolated and disconnected — emotions plenty of people have struggled with during the pandemic — are primary reasons people fall for conspiracy theories, Rathus says.

Make an effort to remain connected, and remember that social distancing doesn’t have to mean social isolation. Watch the same movie as a friend, even if you’re in different places, or schedule a Zoom book club meeting. Make plans to meet outdoors — at a park, for example.

If you do become intrigued by a conspiracy theory, talk to others before you decide it’s valid, as TeGrotenhuis’s client did. “Think through all the wise and sound people you know and trust,” TeGrotenhuis says. “Think about your peers and mentors. Are they following this conspiracy theory? Check it out and see if they’re thinking along those lines as well.”

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Try guided imagery. Visualizing positive outcomes can help clamp down on the intense emotions that might make you more vulnerable to harmful conspiracy theories. Picture yourself in a happier time — at the beach during a vacation or visiting a relative you haven’t seen in months, Rathus suggests. Or imagine what you’ll do once it’s safe to resume old routines.

Then, challenge your brain to counter all the “what ifs.” Replace, “What if the worst happens?” with something such as, “What if we have a safe, effective vaccine, and life returns to normal?”

“Our brains are wired to pick up threat,” Rathus says. “There’s no incentive to get stuck on what could go well, because evolutionarily, that kept us safe. But in times like this, when there’s so much threat to pick up, it bombards us quite painfully.”

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Do one task a day that makes you feel in control. It can be big or small: searching for a new job or washing that days-old tower of dishes. “Keeping in charge of your space and feeling more in control of your life makes you less prone to feeling like other people are pulling the strings,” says Nathaniel Herr, an associate professor of psychology at American University.

Working on a project, such as growing a window herb garden or decluttering your house, can also help decrease feelings of powerlessness. Rathus refers to it as building mastery. Doing something every day that helps us feel more competent and in control of our lives is “an incredible lift to our emotions.”

Take good care of yourself. Eat well, exercise every day, get enough sleep — you’ve heard it before. But “sometimes, it’s the seemingly simple things that are really hard,” Herr says, such as taking medications as prescribed and keeping an eye on alcohol consumption. Just as not getting enough sleep can make us overwhelmed and snappy the next day, it can also leave us with spiraling thoughts. “Trying to keep your equilibrium on that level is a good way of protecting yourself from feeling strong emotions,” Herr says.

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Accept the circumstances. “There’s not a lot we can control about the pandemic or wildfires or other major stressors these days, so it can be freeing to stop trying to fight these negative feelings and just accept them,” Giuliani says. Calming strategies such as deep breathing and meditation can help. Or consider acceptance and commitment therapy, she suggests — a therapeutic approach to learning to make peace with your circumstances.

Angela Haupt is a writer and editor based in the District. Follow her on Twitter @angelaha

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 12:26 PM

So, boris now seems to be competing to kill at least as many British civilians than even h1tler ever did...???

Well done, tories..

Persistently striving to make Britain world beaters...!!!

2020 saw most excess deaths since World War Two

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 12:30 PM

oops.. wrong thread..

but.. does highlight lack of good reason in UK govt thinking...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 04:42 PM

fits, were averaging 3,500 deaths everyday.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Jan 21 - 06:42 AM

Democratsunderstanding th cultlike indoctrinationof trumps bse has asked how do we DEPROGRAM THEM.

Now the repubs object to deprograming llke in the book 1984

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Jan 21 - 07:35 AM

Aha I found my reading glasses.
No one wants to be deprogramed. People know whats its like to be tricked by a lie, starting with Santa Claus. Change should come with definitions people can more easily understand. Deprogramed is a poor choice of words, although it is true.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 13 Jan 21 - 01:22 PM

Donuel, thanks for those insights from angelaha. There are some excellent points there.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jan 21 - 12:19 PM

In an effort to further destabilize the US and engrandize their own countries Both Russia and China are publishing that Antifa,'hippies' and BLM stormed the US capitol.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Jan 21 - 12:41 PM

We can safely presume any mercenaries being hired as agent provocateurs,
have both antifa and maga costumes in their wardrobe of disguises...

.. though it's entertaining fun and games guessing who is hiring their services...????????????????

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 09:56 AM

Rap calls it
camoflage

There are pharmaceutical solutions for the lack of empathy.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 10:07 AM

Hippies? Really?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 10:58 AM

Chinese translations have their glitches

The most practical way to stop radicalizing the religious and supremacist right is to STOP ALGORHYMICLY REINFORCING USERS OF FACEBOOK and youtube. It creates an echo chamber that people drown in.

The nazi right have had to go to a internet platform telegraph, the same platform used by ISSIS.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 11:52 AM

In the context of this thread and it's relevance to the real world,
I'm regaining an appreciation of the term "Half wit"...

Social media is becoming dominated by basically well educated articulate people, the + half of their wit;

but who have been convinced they are a superior elite of better informed experts than scientists and higher academics.

Their egotistical dogmatic belief in conspiracy theories is the - half of their wit.

These people are easily convinced and manipulated conformists,
who have been deeply programmed with an arrogant conviction
that it is the rest of sensible society who are the brainwashed sheeples..,!!!???

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 11:55 AM

oops.. "sensible rest of society"...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 01:08 PM

I suppose there is wit, half wit and no wit like pfr.
If Einstein lived in the time of twitter and became concerned about how many likes he had on Twitter we would have no General or Special relativity.
BE YOURSELF and avoid ENTROPY. Einstein said "As humans we have the ability to move against the current or tide of spacetime.
My perspective/bias is Psychology and Physics.
Entropy in psychology is FORGETTING , it is loss of consciousness: it is when we forget who we are and wrongly identify ourselves with a false (or game-playing) self. Being one of the boys replaces our innate uniquness. The reverse of entropy is consciousness, or ‘self-remembering’ – which is when we see through the game and remember what we forgot. Esoteric psychology has long acknowledged this principle of Self-forgetting, which lies behind so much of what we do. When we do not acknowledge this principle, then everything we do tends to become part of the on-going endeavour to avoid the truth, and even love itself ends up as a means of forgetting. Love ought to wake us up, but it slides over imperceptibly into sentimentality, attachment and pain.
FORGETTING ALLOWS LIES TO LIVE and stalls invention and discovery..........I am using novelty in a way that is not entertainmnt. We can entertain ourselves to death but novelty in the way I mean is a much bigger paradigm shaking event and thinking process. I have seen glimpses of novelty in MOAB over the years while it is mostly absent in the rest of threads here. (Certain bright members excluded)

Yet, this pre-occupation with ‘game’ rules (for this is what evolutionary psychology comes down to) is a manifestation of a curious and unacknowledged one-sidedness. Physics, as we all know, is a search for fundamental laws, laws that apply across the board, laws that are intrinsic to the nature of the universe itself. Why do we assume that there are no such equivalent laws to be found in psychology? Contemporary psychology thinks only in terms of extrinsic laws, - rules that are arbitrarily imposed. One reason that immediately comes to mind is that we do not see mind / consciousness as being fundamental in the same way that we see matter as being. We are, as professor of physics Amit Goswami (1993) says, as confirmed material realists – we believe that only matter is real. BULLSHIT without the Higgs there is no matter/masss. The truth of the matter (pun intended) is that we have chosen to go down this road a long time ago, and we certainly aren’t showing any signs of wanting to question that choice now. Our predisposition to see the universe we live in this way leads to some rather peculiar, if not down-right contradictory conclusions, however. The inevitable conclusion of material realism is that the only meaning to be found in life is that meaning which is conditioned by natural selection, i.e. we only find stuff meaningful because it suits the game of ‘survival of the fittest’ that we do. Philosophically, this is the same as saying that, in the final analysis, everything is meaningless, which is in keeping with the important Western tradition of philosophical pessimism. The problem with this conclusion has been pointed out quite often, however: if everything is meaningless, then so too is our assertion that ‘everything is meaningless’ meaningless; it is a null-statement. We think that when we make this statement we are saying something meaningful, but if that meaningfulness is ‘meaningful’ only because of the way in which the arbitrary rules of natural selection have caused our brains to be designed, then it is not meaningful at all, in any real sense of the word. If such is the case, then it is inescapable that anything we say must be tautological, i.e. incapable of referring to anything outside itself. This notion of ‘tautological meaning’ is, as we shall shortly see, central to our understanding of psychological entropy. Extremofiles to humans beings are not extrmeophiles to Nature. Even the Overlords of antiquity are extremophiles compared to us. The thing is that the O's are now dumbed down and are suffering from a condition I call PSYCHOLOGICAL ENTROPY.

Jung, writing in the first half of the twentieth century, had no recourse to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and had to apply classical thermodynamic theory to the dynamic, self-organizing system of the psyche, which it is not able to model. He did the best he could, Capra argues, with the limited understanding that was available. Science has moved on along with psychology.

There are people smarter than us and the opposite. I am in good company when I say there are extraterrestrial intellegences that exceed our own who also can not see the whole of reality.
We have seen how science shapes society in good nd bad ways. In the 20th century 'survival of the fittest' caused much fascist harm. Now the Higgs can do some unifying good in society.
We should move beyond Carl Jung since science has moved beyond where we were. Abraham Maslow’s assertion that neurosis is, at root, the rejection of novelty, i.e. the unknown. This would mean that ‘laziness’ (in Scott Peck’s particular usage of the word) corresponds to neurosis, or ‘sticking to the known’. Within the mainstream of contemporary psychological thinking, however, there is no place for concepts such as mental entropy as a result we are in the curious position of trying to describe mental functioning without admitting the existence of any law of energetics and special senses.This makes us EXCEPTIONALLY prone to lies. Rather than looking into the possibility that the psychic domain may be subject to universal laws in the same way that the physical domain is subject to, say, the law of gravitation (be it emergent or fundamental), it seems that we want to see everything that goes on in the mind as being due to conditioned laws only. Conditioned laws are rules that are arbitrarily set up, much like the law that prohibits driving a car when under the influence of alcohol; Thhe law can save lives so that we can survive and reproduce as successfully as possible. Both biological drives and ‘environmental selection on the basis of reproductive performance’ come down to evolution in the end of course, and it is evolutionary psychology that makes the major claim on our attention at the present moment. That this is generally considered to be ‘the way to go’ is clearly demonstrated by our interest in such endeavours as the Human Genome Project, and the popularity of academics such as Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker, who have (separately) articulated the principles of evolutionary psychology in a number of high profile books.
The loss of novelty in humans is an entropy that has serious aspects of pschological Entropy as it applies to Society and the smartest and dumbest of us who never learned to think in the first place.
Or simply put it seems some of us are forgetting to defend ouselves
against the dark art of lies.

Qui bono? The criminals, thats who.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 01:30 PM

Nature has an imagination greater than its secondary life forms including us. You have thought about how art imitates life or mused how sometimes life imitates art as in a movie but more truthful - is that life imitates and obeys nature. Entropy is a powerful force in nature.
It is a powerful force in political psychology. I believe we can resist it and restore/advance reason.

Lies may rain down forever but we need to create an enviorment like a hot dessert so that the snowflakes of lies melt before they hit anyone or thing.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 01:39 PM

PS I did not intend to say pfr has no wit but rather that he tells it as it is. I however believe we the sensible and the 'other' are BOTH susceptable to lies which are intrinsicly inherent in the way we are taught to think inside the lines and rules.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 06:04 PM

Pfr, good catch, there.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 06:28 PM

If that huge long post has anything to do with reason, well stone me.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Feb 21 - 06:31 PM

Well consider yourself stoned you ol coot.
I'm not.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 08:07 AM

I remember how I fell for the fear factor after 9-11 but never again.
I ain't afraid of no white supremist ghosts.
Yeah they are just militia lovin ghosts from the civil war.
The USA chant doesn't belong to them.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 04:01 PM

I'm far too busy with family concerns at the moment
to be indulging in recreational time wasting with mudcat..

But right now just hiding away in the bog for 10-minutes having a refreshing clear out..

I thought, a perfect opportunity to have a quick look in and catch up on mudcat..

Then I arrived in this thread and see Donny's post...!!!!!!!!!!

F*** that.. life's too short even at the best of times.

Talk about unreasonable...!!!!!

I think I'll catch up on emails instead...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Mar 21 - 09:07 AM

I enjoy my recreational time here, so that makes it spent, rather than wasted, right [grin]?