11-04-2016, 09:37 AM
(11-03-2016, 07:53 PM)taramarie Wrote:(11-03-2016, 07:27 PM)Copperfield Wrote:That is what reading and listening is for.(11-03-2016, 07:18 PM)taramarie Wrote:(11-03-2016, 06:41 PM)Copperfield Wrote:Check out Warren's post above and you will see what our problem is. If you actually are here to learn about generations you are not doing a very good job of it.(11-03-2016, 02:22 PM)taramarie Wrote: If you have ever been paying attention I ask a lot of questions. But I do prefer an answer that does not beat round the bush.
Your lack of patience is your own issue to deal with, not mine. You might want to unwind a bit. You are going to give yourself an ulcer at the rate you are going.
Actually Snowflake, you and I are from different generations. So what would you like to know about mine?
Bingo.
The etymology of the word intelligence implies "reading between (the lines)", recognizing that anything written or said may be uttered with intent to deceive. Someone minimally learned can read and write, but being able to recognize propaganda in official statements or those of well-connected people takes some more learning. Tyrants like Lenin, Mao, and Satan Hussein may promote basic literacy to make people able to obey orders; a tyrant like Hitler prefers to debase education so that people cannot think for themselves.
Contrast the reality of New England under the Puritans -- however authoritarian their religion might be they wanted people to be able to read the Bible and understand its full meaning. They found that there were some different possibilities in interpreting the ancient texts on theology -- but not on basic morality. But Massachusetts would have the first university in the American colonies (Harvard) even while Boston was a rough frontier town. Massachusetts would have the first freely-elected legislature in the world extant to this day.
The pattern would fit others who had similar attitudes toward the life of the mind. The Irish and other Catholic immigrants who supplanted the WASP element in New England as it moved west to better farmland or opportunities on a frontier that moved in turn to Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, and San Francisco found the Puritan institutions intact and took them over. If one was educated in a yeshiva one fit the intellectual pattern that fits some of the most rigorous universities in the world. One would also be well prepared for liberal democracy because one would know how subtle the realities of human existence are... and how dangerous tyranny is. So one acknowledges the authority of the Pope or rejects Jesus -- big deal!
Marxism-Leninism and fascism both have simple, crude appeals to people -- get economic growth fast, or salve one's perceived slights with anger. Liberal democracy is more subtle in its results and its demands. Recognize differences as richness instead of enmity? That takes
maturity that raw hatred denies.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.