Category: Community

Allies, Bad Ideas, Community, Cultural Change, Cultural Traits, Culture, Friends, Human Nature, Humanism, Life, Living, Lovers, Loyalty, Politics, Quality of Life, Relationships, Society, Values

How Most of Us Say, “Our Lives Have Broken”

Paul Sunstone

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  Paul offers his opinion that people today have all too often come to treat each other as interchangeable, faceless grains of polished rice.

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THE CRITICS EMOTE!  “De hunne of blogging, Paul Sunstone has excreted yet another one of his innumerable atrocities upon the world.  The immediate effect that ‘Our Lives Have Broken’ has upon the honest and orderly reader is to provoke him or her to yearn for the nearest body of water deep enough to drown in.  Sunstone is the refutation of the thesis that history is progressive.  He is the refutation of the dialectics of both Hegel and Marx.  A Spengler would see in Sunstone the decline of the West, and he would be correct.”    — Johanna Meyer, Der Blogkritiker, “Die Fussen-Welt”, Fussen, Germany.

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Abuse, Alienation From Self, Authenticity, Being True To Yourself, Community, Ethics, Eudaimonia, Human Nature, Life, Living, Morals, Oppression, Quality of Life, Relationships, Self-Flourishing, Society, Well Being

When It’s Cool to Try to Change Someone

Paul Sunstone

(About a 3 minute read)

In our world
Are things which should never be violated
That are violated.

–– A Death in the Spring

Is not the question a bit more complex than “to be or not to be”?  To live or to die?

For if we chose to live, then question becomes what is the good life, the best life our species of great ape is allowed by the gods to aspire to?

That’s one question no sane person wants to screw up when answering.  What is the best life we can live?

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Community, Fairness, Human Nature, Justice, Law, News and Current Events, Society

One Controversial Role of Juries

Paul Sunstone

(About a 5 minute read)

Some years ago, an enraged husband shot and killed a young man in my hometown who had been cheating on the husband with his wife.  To aggravate matters, the young man had thought it wise to write several letters to the husband mocking him in nearly every imaginable way.

The husband was a private in the army — stationed at a distant base — and quite unable to afford a lawyer.  His public defender was one of the best lawyers in town, albeit young, and this was his first murder case.

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Bad Ideas, Citizenship, Class War, Community, Competence, Cultural Change, Cultural Traits, Culture, Democracy, Education, Equality of Opportunity, Freedom and Liberty, Ideologies, Intellectual Honesty, Knowledge, Learning, Life, Living, Obligations to Society, People, Political Issues, Politics, Privilege, Quality of Life, Skeptical Thinking, Society, Talents and Skills, Teacher, Teaching, Thinking, Tomoko, Values

The Value of a Teacher

Paul Sunstone

SUMMARY: Teachers in the US are poorly compensated for the work in comparison to teachers in Japan.  Outside of the best public schools and elite private schools, students are educated to become loyal, obedient citizens with adequate job skills.  This contrasts sharply with earlier educational goals in America.

(About an 8 minute read)

My second wife, Tomoko, spent her early years in Tokyo, Japan.  She attended an elite school whose students were mainly the sons and daughters of government and corporate leaders.

Tomoko’s father, for instance, was an American on loan from Motorola to Sony who headed up Sony’s East Asian quality control during the years Japanese goods became synonymous with “quality”.   Her cousin, who tutored her growing up, was at one point the head of North American sales for Toyota.  His major accomplishment was taking Toyota products from about 6% of the car market in the US to over 22%.

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Abuse, Bad Ideas, Community, Cultural Change, Cultural Traits, Culture, Ethics, Family, Life, Living, Marriage, Memes, Morality, Morals, News and Current Events, Physical Abuse, Political Issues, Quality of Life, Relationships, Society, Thinking, Values, Verbal Abuse

Divorce

Paul Sunstone

(About a 4 minute read)

A few days ago, I was reading about a pastor from one of the Southern states who is of the angry opinion (why does everyone think they need to be angry to open their mouths on nearly any subject these days?) that divorce was far too easy in America.

He blamed no-fault divorce for breaking up the American family, and warned that it would soon lead to the collapse of the nation. Consequently he was calling for laws that would make it much harder to get divorced.

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Allies, Altruism, Anthropology, Bad Ideas, Behavioral Genetics, Community, Competence, Competition, Cultural Traits, Culture, Ethics, Evolution, Fairness, Human Nature, Hunter/Gatherers, Ideas, Justice, Life, Memes, Morality, Morals, Nature, Obligations to Society, Quality of Life, Science, Society, Values

Lessons About Human Nature Learned From a Spider

Paul Sunstone

(About a 6 minute read)

The spider had been stalking the fly for minutes.  There didn’t seem to be anything on the barren patch of ground to attract a fly.  I expected it to finish its investigations and leave.  But it would only buzz away a few inches when the spider approached it, then in a minute or two return.

Sometimes it would allow the spider to get very close before flying off.

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Belief, Citizenship, Community, Elections, Ethics, Freedom, Honesty, Idealism, Ideologies, Intellectual Honesty, Knowledge, Morality, Morals, News and Current Events, Obligations to Society, Political Ideologies, Politics, Reason, Skeptical Thinking, Society, Thinking, Truth, Values

“With Freedom Comes Responsibility”

Paul Sunstone

(About a 6 minute read)

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”  — Martin Luther King, jr.

 

In high school, I had a math teacher — who I blogged about here — who was something of a political outlaw back in his day.

He was a member of the John Birch society.  A political organization founded by a millionaire that espoused, among other things, the notion Eisenhower had been a communist agent of the Soviet Union, and that had even attacked the nation’s parent-teacher associations as somehow subversive of American values.

The Birchers had been cast out of mainstream American politics by William F. Buckley, the most influential right-wing political thinker and pundit of the time (They would not return to the mainstream until our own age, in 2010).  Buckley considered them dangerous fools and radicals.

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Abuse, Belief, Community, Cultural Traits, Culture, Ethics, Free Spirit, Hate, Human Nature, Late Night Thoughts, Life, Living, Logic, Love, Morality, Morals, Mysticism, News and Current Events, Observation, Oppression, Passion, Poetry, Reason, Self-Knowledge, Skeptical Thinking, Spirituality, Thinking, Truth, Unconditional Love

Late Night Thoughts: Belief, Love, Mysticism, Blaming, and More (September 4, 2018)

Paul Sunstone

(About a 7 minute read)

Almost immediately following World War II, and American firm was hired to poll the Japanese public on several issues, mostly — as I recall now — regarding the occupation and new constitution.  It was the first time the Japanese public had ever been polled.

The firm soon discovered an unexpected problem.  The Japanese people didn’t know how to answer questions about what they personally believed.

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Authenticity, Being True To Yourself, Community, Creativity, Culture, Environment, Ethics, Freedom, Goals, Happiness, Human Nature, Idealism, Ideas, Ideologies, Intelligence, Life, Living, Meaning, Morality, Morals, Obligations to Society, Political Ideologies, Purpose, Quality of Life, Reason, Self, Self-determination, Self-Integration, Self-Realization, Society, Spirituality, Talents and Skills, Values

My Ideal Adult Human

Paul Sunstone

(About a 9 minute read)

Now and then, I ask people on the internet what their ideal adult human is.  Almost inevitably, at least one or two people respond by asking me why there should be an ideal adult human.  It’s a good question.

There seem to be three major reasons — and possibly a fourth — for thinking about what one’s ideal adult human would be.  The first is to get a clearer and perhaps more insightful view of what one thinks would by the best possible society to live in — the good society, so to speak.

For instance, it would be inconsistent to hold optimizing personal freedoms as the hallmark of a good society if you also thought the ideal adult human was a mindless cog slaving away to support and grow the economy.  One of those would not lead to the other in any practical scheme of things.

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Bernie Sanders, Capitalism, Class War, Community, Democracy, Economics, Economy, Human Nature, Ideas, Ideologies, Political Ideologies, Political Issues, Politics, Quality of Life, Socialism, Society, Work

Socialism is a Dirty Word

Paul Sunstone

(About a 10 minute read)

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” — Anonymous, but often ascribed to Mark Twain.

 

At the least, most of us harbor a few ideas that we mostly, or even entirely, owe our understanding of to the popular media. That’s to say, we have not studied the ideas much beyond what we hear of them from media sources.

A good case in point is the concept of “socialism”.  Very few Americans, I’ll wager, have ever had the benefit of actually studying what socialism is — and isn’t.  I would base my wager on having spent nearly a lifetime listening to descriptions of it that simply don’t match up with the reality of it.

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Bad Ideas, Community, Cultural Traits, Culture, Death, Dying, Ethics, Human Nature, Ideas, John McCain, Life, Meaning, Morality, Morals, News and Current Events, Obligations to Society, Politics, Society, Values

“Speak No Ill of the Dead”

Paul Sunstone

(About a 3 minute read)

The recent death and funeral of John McCain has once again raised a debate about the propriety of speaking ill of the dead.  Naturally, the loudest voices have belonged to partisan pundits who can be expected to flip their opinions — pro and con — when the next prominent Democrat dies.

But I think a lot of common people are concerned with the issue too.  How fair is it to criticize the dead?  If it’s fair at all, then does our criticism have limits?  And if so, what should those limits be?

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Community, Human Nature, Intellectual Honesty, Intersubjective Verification, Knowledge, Logic, Philosophy, Reason, Science, Scientific Method(s), Skeptical Thinking, Teresums, Thinking, Truth

How Scientists Verify that Something is True

Paul Sunstone

 

A Special Guest Post by Boyd Stace Walters II

(About a 7 minute read)

Dear Ms. Teresums,

Boyd Stace-Walters here.  Worldly logician, savvy epistemologist, and frighteningly good philosopher of the sciences.  Mr. Sunstone has asked me to address you on a subject he says is “as near and dear to her as wanking.”  Whatever “wanking” means.  The subject in question being “How Scientists Verify that Something is True”.

I must dutifully warn you, Ms. Teresums, that the subject we are about to embark upon is thrilling, entirely thrilling.  It is fraught with ecstatic moments of discovery, and there are dangers, Ms. Teresums — dangerous moments when the least slip in reasoning can plunge the unwary student into the racing, whitewater current of a logical fallacy!

I must recommend you have you smelling salts handy at all times.

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