I Don't Know the Future.

I prefer that my knowledge of the past more closely approach truth and reality that it does lies and falsehoods.

By piling up specific, communally shared information children learn to effectively participate in cooperative activities with other members of the community; me too.
I'd rather that the information I shared in be fairly true and real.

If we are in this together I'd like the information we share to be honest and true. I certainly don't it to be a web of falsehoods and lies or even just a lot of mistaken ideas.
I'd like the adults in my group to be able to transmit high quality information to the youth and children who depend upon us.

Isn't a group better off sharing high quality truthful information among its members?

We don't have to fool ourselves, or lie, in order to choose and promote our best traditions.

Honesty is the best policy about what I do know.

Is this a conversation starter?

More Hyperborean Education

In this education dietary suggestions were made. For example millet was recommended for its nutritious qualities. This disciple was urged to avoid foods which acted counter to illumination, purity, and chastity of the soul or which got in the way of temperance or virtue.

Music and poetry were taught. Music was taught as a 'medicine' and an instrument of purification. Music was used to help develop and support mental states of readiness and fitness. Dancing to string instruments was included. Homer and Hesiod were important poets in his teaching.
The theory of music which lead to number and computation, was thought of as coming from sailors, merchants, and astronomers.

Cooperative politics were taught.

Divinity was taught. Nothing real need be hopeless. God first and then my promised word. An oath should be taken as sacred. Things divine can be learned even from the Celt and the Iberian.

Short sayings of the teacher are fine seeds for meditation.

The teacher called philosophy not only a desire for, and a love of, wisdom, but also the science of objectified truth.

The Hyperborian's Education

He was compendiously taught even though his teachers communicated to each only that part of wisdom which was appropriate to him.

There were psychological requirements. One was an easy, perhaps natural, gentleness called culture.

There was a daily program that began with a solitary walk to an appropriately quiet place. The most sacred place handily available was considered the best choice.

Friendship was practiced. The removal of strife from relationships was advised and taught. The younger were taught to subdue their anger when with elders. Elders were taught to correct or admonish the younger softly and cautiously.

Symbols were used in instruction. Their significance and arcane intentions, mostly aimed toward morality and reality, were freed from their enigmatic form.

MORE TO COME.

Education

Louis L'Amour seems to have been pleased that his education provided him with:
~ breadth of view
~ ease of understanding
~ tolerance of others
~ a background from which his mind could explore in any direction
~ honesty
~ a grounding in history

Twitter

I have not discovered how Twitter might be useful to me.
So far, I have not found it useful for teaching, learning, or developing a satisfying relationship. How are relating, learning, and teaching accomplished on Twitter?

Learning!

Education is the efficient, effective defence of a people.

Let's make it safe, satisfying, ongoing, and a bit of fun.

It's a vital matter of national security and cheaper than bombs.

It empowers child, youth, woman, and man.

So Willing

Why, fellow citizen, do we seem to be so willing to .......
~ keep ourselves ignorant
~ be okay with a professional military more and more supplemented with mercenaries
~ be at war
~ make war
~ kill children, women, and other forms of life
~ kill in the name of Christ
~ support the hate and mistrust in Senate bill One and the Patriot Act
~ abdicate responsibility for our prisons, schools, military, health care, welfare, parenting
~ go on being fearful of talking to one another about the things important to us
~ teach our children to kill without clearly understanding why
~ think that it is fine for us to back out of or ignore our treaty obligations
~ why do we contemplate killing those who honor theirs
~ fear people who have attacked no one when we have attacked so many
~ to be proud of our many violent attacks on others
~ be so careless of 'collateral damage'
~ be so careless about killing civilians
~ support wasting mercury in the ocean when we know it threatens all life
~ avoid teaching our children
~ avoid caring for the health of our children?

What other question might we ask ourselves?

One World

I've heard that about 1/4 of the air pollution in L. A. comes from China.
How much of the air pollution in China comes from L. A.?


As a people we need to: train people; organize exchanges of information, personal, and technology; aerate issues by discussion.
The Chinese and others have similar needs.
Seems like a opportunity to make a buck.
Perhaps, well motivated diplomatic corps and organizations of higher learning may find opportunities in those needs to move us toward a safer more stable world.

If you find that safety and stability is not your thing, perhaps attention to such needs by those prepared to do something about them can move us to a more interesting world of greater abundance.

Little National Dialogue, but some Discussion

I note with pleasure some of the issues being discussed a bit in this campaign season:
Some think it important to:
1. Realize that Congress needs to delegate, not abdicate.
2. Decide how we will monitor the quality of our food supply and who has the primary responsibility of overseeing that monitoring. Seems the thought is that deregulation has been over done.
3. Decide what basic public health research will be supported in our universities.
4. Decide what seem to be our best near term steps toward taking better care of our planet and our resources.
5. Decide on three or four areas in which to best support basic energy research.
6. Decide how we will better provide for veterans' housing, health, and education.
7. Decide on a monetary policy that supports housing for Americans.
8. Decide how we will create better employment for veterans and for the very many men and women who have been pushed so far out of the work force that they are no longer counted.
9. Create a policy which we and others can understand about when we will kill others in their own lands and how we will do the cost benefit analysis for that killing.
10. Consider making national decisions based on our values rather than on our fears.

What has pleased you in our national politics of late.