Maybe fix your mail client to attribute quotes?
Alas, the webmail client here doesn't seem to be that flexible.
Well, we all have shit like that going on, albeit far more subtle ;)
In _Foundations of Psychohistory_, Lloyd Demause discusses the evolution of child-rearing methods in recent centuries, and explores implications for economics, politics, etc. Behavior of societies collectively reflects their members' childhoods.
I haven't read that. Seems like it would be interesting, however. I stayed on a commune, some years back. I met a young woman, who was 19 when she moved to the commune, with her (at the time) new born son. She was 27, and finishing up a masters in biotech. She had decided that an unplanned pregnancy wasn't going to make her give up her dreams, and found a way to make it all work by having the commune help provide the day-care while she was at school, and helping to provide labor to the commune in the evenings. The boy was amazing. I often watched him, fascinated, at how he seemed perfectly nimble. He could play with children, be silly, and altogether a normal kid -- and take a break from running around to come talk to the adults and engage in quite sophisticated conversation for his age. I often think of them when people bring up such notions, that how people are raised at a micro-level will have macro-level effects. I tend to agree, but haven't seen a systematic treatment of the subject. I'll try to find that book. It would be interesting. I would add that 'educational' institutions play a large role, as well.. but in modern society, they are equally a part of the child-rearing. Some might say more so than parents.
We're all broken, in one way or another.
Well yes, and some to a 'greater' or 'lesser' degree.
Sometimes, when I'm finding myself disagreeing with others, I get that we're just using different language, or different frameworks, to say the same thing. Or maybe it's just that we don't have a clue, really ;)
I tend to take the later perspective. I find most human endeavor to be marked by the folly of believing it to be something other than human endeavor. So, the religious will claim its the truth of the spiritual world. So the mathematicians have some odd neo-Platonic view that they are "discovering" new things, rather than merely playing abstract word games to describe patterns. The pattern doesn't exist, things that (seem) to fit the pattern do.
To me, its rather like being the type of asshole that needs to get into bar fights and all that nonsense. Just a deeply frustrated person looking to prove themselves.
Some claim that it's all just good fun ;)
Yes, the assholes looking to prove themselves. I've never been sympathetic to that point of view, so much.
Right, and they don't harp on the damned goin' to Hell thing ;)
I can even deal with that, so long as they can deal with me joshing about rather spending time with strippers and rockstars in the basement than the boring pious doing bible study upstairs.
Hell, I like to THINK that I'd be OK with working with a Nazi who wanted to do something positive too.
Nazis are not uncommon in privacy/anonymity circles. Just sayin'.
Well, I wasn't even thinking just those circles. It's conceivable a Nazi might want to, say, I don't know.. honestly I've having trouble coming up with a realistic example because of the whole Nazi thing. But, I like to think I could set aside my distaste for that ideology and look at what the person does, practically, more so than what nonsense they "believe." Because, in my view, all belief is nonsense. Including the belief that belief is nonsense. I'm sure there are beliefs worthwhile, I'm just not convinced humans have a way to know for sure what they are. It's all just people talking out of their asses. I tend to look at, well on the average what does belief X encourage its adherents to DO. Nazism gets a low grade by that standard. But a Nazi who DOESN'T DO things I find egregious? I like to think I can not be prejudiced against nonsense at that point.
Well, Kissinger likes him ;)
Now that you mention it, that may be another useful metric for giving someone/something a low grade.