Two points to follow up on what I said last Word Press post:
- Redistribution of wealth: This does not mean that we have to “rob” from the rich to feed the poor. What it means is that we simply no longer tolerate poverty, that anyone who works receives a decent wage, say a minimum of $40 or $50,000 dollars (much less than most of those with whom I have worked or shared coffee. This need not raise the price of things if the way for paying for such fairness was in reduced profits. Yes, stockholders might be hurt and highly paid bosses might “suffer,” but isn’t this a sensible kind of equalizing, a way to build a society in which more people than are now are content with their lives? Certainly people could make more, certain jobs than necessitate high levels of skill (auto mechanics, for instance) could be paid more and maybe there would be a revaluing of jobs such as policing, teaching, and public health (including people who take care of those who cannot take care of themselves—child care providers, those working in agencies and businesses that (should be) taking care of the elderly.
I realize that it is absurd to even begin talking about such a possibility because it is, in the minds of most, simply impossible. But, what if the problem is that what is sensible, in our society, has been made to be the absurd and, considering the current state of affairs, the absurd, the really absolutely without a doubt absurd, the sensible? Actually, I really do think this is the case and has been the case, something I began to suspect when I was told that good boys went of to places the did not know to kill people they did not know for reasons they could not grasp, were never told, because such behavior reflected behaviors and attitudes such as those to be found in the Boy Scout oath.
- Absurdity as good sense, accepting absurdity as good sense is, at a very early age, for a good number of children (who become what is considered adult at some point) when religion is introduced. How it is that acceptable practice says that indoctrination into a world view that is based in the fantastical tells one about what acceptable means in a society such as ours. When I hear people complaining about other people believing in things sensible people should not, when I hear these sensible people chiding those who will follow fools without question, I have to think, if brave enough say, that they got their start somewhere and a good number of the fools got their foolishness through exposure to religious dogma.
All of this, of course, brings me back to what I think to be the end all and be all of the good (and by this I mean the sensible society) is education. If education in a democratic society does not help people to develop the ability to parse the bullshit, if it does not help them develop the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that allow them to figure out what is true and what is not, the result is, well, IT IS THE AMERICAN SOCIETY IN WHICH WE CURRENTLY LIVE. Schools really do not do much of what they could to grow truly thoughtful students and this is because truly thoughtful citizens would not tolerate the garbage they are fed. This, if students were also taught that it is good to be humane, would not accept the economy number 1 is suggested to help resolve. They would not accept the absurdity that is religion—they might want to problematize it (as they should all issues of real importance) and work to discover what parts of it hold up to scrutiny (scrutiny of religion though, of course, being thought impolitic and downright impolite—this, of course, an absurdity itself). I have to believe (and I use the word believe in the sense of a hypothesis for which I have strong evidence to support its validity) that almost all who are truly being sensible would at least understand why someone who is sensible might come to believe that religion is hooey and of a most dangerous kind.
I do not expect to earn friends from statements such as this but I do wish things could be better.