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: : Small-scale communes growing organic food (in greenhouses if necessary), using solar and geothermal and wind energy, taking care of the planet, people spending a lot of energy cleaning up the mess this generation has made of it. Naturally, I have only a few clues as to how we are all going to get from here to there.: Well that all sounds nice,but it's your last statement that explains the fear people have(rightly or wrongly) when the word socialism is used.
: How would we get there from here?
Well, there's planting urban gardens and riding bicycles and teaching kids and supporting autonomous communities and sustainable agriculture... it's kind of ineffectual if I'm the only one doing it, but these are baby steps... is that what you were afraid of? Seems to me that the concrete jungle of urban America is a much scarier thing than my vision of how things could be different, still don't know what you're thinking there...
: : My own concern with the all-around development of people, today, is that sleazy attitudes toward the capitalism of our day are being fostered by school systems, public and private, which are boring and joyless and which turn out boring and joyless graduates.
: I agree with your description of the type of graduates our schools are producing. They are boring and joyless. But rather than attributing this to capitalism,
I thought the implication of my message was that school was complicit with sleazy attitudes toward capitalism, the same sleazy attitudes one can see daily on commercial TV for that matter, and not that capitalism is the prime cause of our schooling practices. Read what I wrote, once again, and tell me what you think I said.
: I find fault with the general attacks on our children's individuality. In our efforts to be politically correct at all costs we are raising a generation of sheep. We don't want to offend a black child so Huck Finn is banned from schools, even though many black children who have read it easily pick up on Twain's message. Our children aren't being taught to think for themselves, but rather to think as a group. Individualism is being slowly stomped out. No wonder they turn out so boring.
I think that an interpretation of anti-individualistic practices in public schools that attributed them to "politically correct" practices, and not, for instance, to the fact that the model for schooling in America is largely borrowed from 19th-century Prussian schooling, would be ignorant of the history of American schooling. Read, for instance, Martin Wooster's book ANGRY CLASSROOMS, VACANT MINDS. Schools, both private and public, haven't really changed a whole lot over the decades, and the historical record bears this out.
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: : Now "democratic process" is a complex word. What did you have in mind? What would we get to vote on? How would votes be regarded? Would socialism be more likely with a process that used proportional representation, or a "none of the above" ballot option, or with a consensus process, or with straight majoritarianism? Now it's up to you to reveal your ideas about socialism.
: I think you know what I have in mind.
No, I'm not a mind-reader.
None.
