Polarization and children
Pramod
for example) that the discussion is increasingly getting polarized.
This is true not just of the discussions on Usenet, but of the whole
world in general. The religious right wing the world over is becoming
more and more fascist and their opponents are simply responding in kind
by throwing at the right wing more of same stuff. This by itself
wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the indoctrination of young and
impressionable kids by the extremists on any side is.
A possible explanation of the polarization phenomenon would be that
people are less willing to make an attempt to understand the other
person's point of view, let alone consider changing their own.
Accepting this explanation would mean that there is something wrong
with the educational systems that produce people that think (or more
precisely don't think) in this manner. This is a serious problem and if
we are training 12 and 15 year olds to become dogmatic and opinionated
adults, there is disaster waiting for us all.
What prompted me to make this post was the flippant manner in which
people were talking of nuking whole cities on sci.skeptic. (Ironically
these people belong to the same faction as those who don't want stem
cell research as it violates the sanctity of human life.) Killing
people is not a solution to any problem and it seems to me that this
idea must be drilled in children's heads repeatedly and over and over
again until they get it. It is also important that children grow up to
be tolerant of other faiths and cultures. Mere acceptance is not
enough, people who believe that their religion is better than the other
man's religion, or that they belong to the "true religion" are only
going to adopt a confrontationist attitude - the consequences of which
are all around us.
This is where atheists come in. The believers are never going to accept
that the problem could lie with their rabid rhetoric, and atheists and
similar minded people should make a concerted effort to :
* Make children recognize the dangers of extremist religion.
* Help children understand that violence is never the solution to any
problem.
* Make an attempt to teach children to appreciate nuanced positions -
understand that reality is often complicated and has no easy answers.
I know this may sound a little pessimistic, but I believe that if these
asinine wars are not stopped, pretty soon those idiots are going to
kill themselves and take us along as well. And that we've got no chance
of the convincing the adults to stop, but if we get the children
there's hope left for all those who want to survive.
Steve Kelley
I agree that it is imperative that kids be taught how to think
critically. I too am concerned that the education systems are failing
badly in most cases to achieve this. The right leaning people want it
that way so that they can exercise more thought control. Some how we
have to wrest control of the schools back from the religious right (or
is that the religious wrong?)
I wonder if some of what is going on is part of a cycle where people get
fed up with violence, war, intolerance etc. and enter a period of
relative peace. As the period of relative peace lingers people forget
how bad things were when people did not make an effort to get along. As
we forget we get closer and closer to re-creating the conditions that
lead to a period of relative chaos.
--
Steve Kelley
Protean Instrument Corp.
Ben Axelrod
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization Only by being aware of
it, can we overcome it.
Larry
news:1126156940.8...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> I know this may sound a little pessimistic, but I believe that if these
> asinine wars are not stopped, pretty soon those idiots are going to
> kill themselves and take us along as well. And that we've got no chance
> of the convincing the adults to stop, but if we get the children
> there's hope left for all those who want to survive.
>
>
I'm in agreement 100%. The psychological child abuse begins at a very
early and impressionable age, far earlier than you can do anything about
unless you can infiltrate the family unit and separate the brainwashed
adults that spread the religious infection and the young victims.
Religions depend upon this early childhood indoctrination for their very
existence. That's why that have this gradiose "show" of huge buildings,
ornate furnishings and mysterious clerics all dressed up like Merlin in
drag to make a maximum impression upon the children.
.
Larry
$fq5...@bignews6.bellsouth.net:
> I wonder if some of what is going on is part of a cycle where people
get
> fed up with violence, war, intolerance etc. and enter a period of
> relative peace. As the period of relative peace lingers people forget
> how bad things were when people did not make an effort to get along. As
> we forget we get closer and closer to re-creating the conditions that
> lead to a period of relative chaos.
>
>
The 30-40 year cycle of war and peace is long overdue, again, kept at
bay, at least until now, by self-preservation in the face of the new
weapons-of-mass-extinction available to the religious nuts with their
fingers on the buttons.
How long can it be before those fingers start to get nervous and twitchy,
AGAIN, as they've been in the past? I'm terrified one of the
religiously-inclined politicians in power, here or there or wherever, is
going to take it upon himself to commit us to the Armagheddon the clerics
have brainwashed them with all their lives from that first Sunday School.
God might "tell" them they're doing what god "commanded"....blowing us
all to hell in the end.
Is this the reason no advanced civilization has never appeared from
outside our little planet? Is life self-terminating when the species at
the top of the food chain gains so much brain that brain starts
fantasizing about its own destruction and that brain's technology gives
it the tools to make that fantasy into reality....and the cycle repeats
itself in X thousand years until another species evolves with another
brain that can fantasize?
Just as with the religions being man-created, so, too, do I believe the
species' "end times" are man-created....at our own hands.
.