Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Can you see the blinders?


coberst

Recommended Posts

Can you see the blinders?

Quickie from wiki: “Blinders, also known as blinkers or winkers, are a piece of horse tack that restricts the horse's vision to the rear and, in some cases, to the side. They usually are made of leather or plastic cups that are placed on either side of the eyes, either attached to a bridle or to an independent hood. Many racehorse trainers believe this keeps the horse focused on what is in front of him, encouraging him to pay attention to the race rather than other distractions, such as crowds.”

Our culture and its associated educational system prepare young people for the work place so that as they reach adulthood they can easily assimilate into a work force that will help to maximize production and consumption, i.e. they will help maximize GDP. Our educational system graduates young people with a “set of winkers” sturdily attached to the cultural tack that will restrict the individual’s intellectual vision to those personal and community activities that will best enhance national GDP.

As a result our citizens are not prepared to deal with the complexities that result from our ingeniously developed high tech culture.

“Tradition” is a word for a complete set of blinders. Tradition provides us with sets of assumptions that we pick up, not through a process of contemplation, but through a process of social osmosis. Of course our family and our immediate community provide more provincial assumptions.

Our Western tradition is primarily forged from a Judeo-Christian heritage. Our idea of the universal moral status of each and every person is equal because we are created “in the image of God”. That which makes us equal is our essential human characteristic of reason. “That is, we all stand equally under the same moral laws, and so have the same duties toward ourselves and others. As rational, all are due equal respect as moral agents.”

“But the fact is that what we come to regard as this ‘universal’, ‘formal’, ‘limiting’ principle of reason (i.e. the principle of universal moral personhood) is only one among the many possible principles, values, goods, and ends we might reasonably come to embrace. It just happens to be the foundational principle for our moral tradition. But to say that it is foundational for our tradition does not make it a formal principle of reason itself.

Quotes from Moral Imagination by Mark Johnson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
  • Replies 4
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Virtual Particle

    2

  • coberst

    2

  • Mr Walker

    1

Top Posters In This Topic

There has also been much change in how individuals deal with tradition, the woman’s role, a soldier’s rite to refuse and order to take no prisoners and so many others.....Like in the movie Fiddler on the Roof the idea that ones father decides who one marries, is gone in western society.

Western society is what it is because of things like the American and French Revolution were essentially, the masses rose up against taxation without representation (the dawn of the guillotine) The third world never actually did that but in fact the Russians in recent history have and twice and China is similar in that respect as well. Now in that context on cannot forget that the first world would want to suppress the third world but realistically speaking that could not be accomplished realistically, unless the leaders of those third world countries were complicit.

What would constitute selling oneself to the devil coberst? Could it be selling out ones own kind?

In India women still expect a dower for them and there families, despite that India are in its own way becoming more progressive. There are hospitals in India that few if any Hindu, Moslem or Christian citizen will ever see the inside of. Despite that fact and despite things like what occurred with a chemical factory a while ago there has been no French Revolution type response. And then there is Tiananmen Square that man standing in front of his tank; those people were eventually run over by those tanks, still the Olympics go off without a hitch?

Tradition can vary world wide in respect to Tradition and one can consider, the response, in the US with respect to the above. Honestly if there was a Hospital that would refuse care and something bad happend, due to some status, in the US, it would first end up in the news and God forbid one of the plaintiffs family shoots someone over the matter. Those hospitals in India accept Cash perhaps Blue Cross and Sheild but no form of Indian insurance unless it belongs to the elite.

The US system may not be perfect but as far as traditional??

Any thoughts?

Edited by Triad
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am afraid that our educational system does no prepare us to be independent critical thinking individuals capable of questioning and adjusting our values that are enshrined within our tradition. Darwin informs us that the species that is not able to adjust to the changing environment will quickly become toast.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am afraid that our educational system does no prepare us to be independent critical thinking individuals capable of questioning and adjusting our values that are enshrined within our tradition. Darwin informs us that the species that is not able to adjust to the changing environment will quickly become toast.

In one of the legends I was taught....

Rome had entered Israel and as was the order of the day, the Israelites provided access to the Israeli library. In there of course was the Old Testament and the conclusion that one day, very soon, Jesus Christ was to be born. Now in the is Legend it is explained that, what the Old Testament described then and does not now is that, Abraham had the power to raise the dead. The Romans elected to take this seriously. You see to them

the power to raise the dead in Abraham was one thing you see, he was a member of a tribe and Rome was an Empire with cities and relations with other countries in the "Universe". The legend explains that Jesus

Christ was the first person like him who was killed in an attempt to deal with the issue of prophets which, when they showed up from time to time, the other leaders would have to surrender there power.

This legend presents that Rome manipulated the entire situation and for a lack of another term could be considered hostile to Judeo-Christian Ethic.

If it’s true that is really sad, but one of the issues of the legend is in relation to the fear of accepting evolution in whatever context it was represented prior to Darwin, which in fact, was and is still is a very real problem.

The ability to think critically is extremely important I mean today Rush Limbaugh announced that that the person who killed people the other day in Washington at the Jewish Memorial was a liberal on MSNBC. Personally I watch one hour of Keith Oberman, also Fox (Shepard Smith) for one hour and then I make sure I see John Daily and Colbert just to make sure I am current.

I feel that mans survival is dependent upon coming to terms with his and her evolution through time of course. Providing critical thinking skills to our young children is related to survival.

Any thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is true that the formalised compulsory and free educatio system which evolved in Australia in the 1870's was partly deigned to produce an educated wokforce for the growing industial base it reqiured artisans fitters and turners engineers etc. But even the it offered to som the oportunity for a further education which went beyond this need

And it was in itself a good and necedsary piece of social engineerin. How would a technological base advance without educated people?

But it was not even then as limiting as you would suggest My great grandfather was an inspector of schools in the late 1900s and when you rad his reports and articles in the education gazette you see an appreciation of the need for an holistic education and a wider purpose to education in itself. This may have been because he was a produc tof one of the finest education systems inthe world at hat time, the george Heriot schools in scotland Educated Sxcots went out all over the world in a diaspora that benefitted many countries.

Today (and for the 4 decades i have been associated with it,) the australian education system does much more than provide fodder for a post industrial society. In a technology based society, where people will need to change jobs and reskilll regularly, there is a need for a flexible and adaptable mind. Thus we teach children how to think, not facts and figures.

Education is also much more individualised and far reaching with; sexual, physical and mental health, values clarification, resilience, social justice, sustainability, and many other areas taught to children from the time they enter pre school. Actually there is a growing argument for a return to the basics and the teaching of maths, science, reading, writing etc, so far has the pendulum swung.

My personal experience indicates that, while it is a good idea to teach children as much as one can while their minds are flexible and most competent, the main thing is to teach them both many ways of thinking, and how to become self motivated independent and self sustaining learners. In the modern world the education of a person must, and will be, a life time thing, unlike the experience of many people in the 19th and 20th centuries, where an education, once gained at school, stood them in good stead for their whole lives, in a basically unchanging world(or one which changed very slowly)

Adaptability and flexibility are the most effective antidotes for "Future Shock"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.