Students shouldn't have to be rewarded for learning, they should be intrinsically motivated to learn. The fact the we need to bribe kids to learn is an indictment of our education system. We have stripped all the appeal of learning by presenting kids with theoretical knowledge that is not directly applicable in the real world.
Societies you think would be secret are not i.e the federal reserve, IMF, blackwater, the pentagon
Modern medicine has actually not yet figured out a way to treat mental illness through medication, merely the symptoms of mental illness.
ADD/ADHD for example, I dont really consider it a mental illness (I think it's the people who don't have it who are somehow mentally different to their advantage), however the stimulants used to treat ADD/ADHD are just that–stimulants. They do not curb one's hyperactivity (rather the opposite) or adress their attention deficiencies.
People who are treated for psychosis are given mild sedatives which put them in a somewhat lucid state. I have actually been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs by my doctor for sleep. This is normally for the benefit of the family and convenience of the caretakers. Though it may alleviate any physical or agressive abnormalities, it does not effectively treat psychosis.
These are just two examples I know, but how little we know about the causes of mental illness poorly equips pharmacists in their task of treating it. In the future, medication should ideally be able to fix the root cause of any neurological disorder, but currently it is used to prop us patients by hiding the apparent symptoms.
Pets are another species all together. Remember, the first tools were back 2.6 million years ago (which predates the recreational domestication of animals [pets]), we've come along way obviously. Also our opposable thumbs and large brains allowed for this to happen.
This is very true, other animals are preoccupied with just surviving. Our species has mastered that so well it's boring to only survive so we indulge in curiosity as well.
Soooo clearly you did not read past the first two sentences and the word sin has no meaning to me so try not to use it
Still not very clear on what it is you are saying but I think what your saying is that we need to provide free birth control and legalize abortion to alleviate this problem?
End of life care is very expensive and not effective at sustaining life, or any standard of life that is not extremely painful and unpleasant.
It's hard to argue with that because it's hard to understand that.
If you want the percentage of homeless children to go down, you should build more orphanages. If you want the percentage of children in orphanages to go down you should ban orphanages. Both of these solutions conflict with what you are trying to accomplish. You see vilifying mothers who put their children in orphanages is like adding insult to injury. This picture you have of some mother tossing her new born baby on the curb of an orphanage and yelling sayonara sucker is very distorted. Putting your child in an orphanage must be one of the hardest things a mother could do, so don't you think a lot of time was put into her decision? It's not hard to see that the child of a mother who only has enough money for two months of rent is better off in an orphanage than homeless.
This whole problem is why abortion exists. If a woman not even 20 gets pregnant, has no money saved, no education outside of highschool, and no family for support, what kind of life can she provide for a child? Yes, she could have not had sex or used birth control, but she didn't, and shifting the blame to sex is silly. Sex can be either purely recreational or for procreation. The need for orphanages would be virtually nil if condoms and other forms of birth control were free and easily available and if abortions were cheap and legal.
As long as it prevents a ground war. So long as this power isn't abused.
Thats fine, you can dismiss whoever you want, just know that the world dismisses you.
“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.”
“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.” – The Late, Great Christopher Hitchens
I see.... clever, the winking face was a nice (if not creepy) addition
Well murderers may have been through some devaluation of life so therefor they do not see the absolutism of murder and the gravity of their decisions. Rapist probably had a very distorted sexual past, many rapists have been victims of rape or of molestation themselves. Human traffickers are the worst of the worst however, not even going to approach them. But yeah these are all hypothetical obviously, it's surprising you couldn't think of these very simple and real examples on your own...
Very often people resort to crime because of a lack of inherent civil right at some point in their life.
I admit I didn't read all of your argument, I stopped after the first paragraph. Not only is god not tolerant of humanity's great inherent capacity for free will, he is what many would consider a benevolent dictator. A deity who presumably act in the interest of all their followers. Most western concepts to god, but Christianity's in particular, have a very monarchical connotation. We often hear of 'the kingdom of god' or the 'throne of god.'
The prove testament (no pun intended) of how dated a concept religion is, in this modern day and age I think we would all be against a monarchical society and look back at the times we were ruled under one as rather dark times. As (the late) Christopher Hitchens said "religion was our first and therefor our worst attempt at philosophy."
There tends to be a growing trend in this age gap I've noticed. Thats the standard of living has gone up considerably due to new technologies and slightly better government since the earlier part of this century. Some people are old enough to remember the bread lines during the great depression, but we don't have to do that anymore. What happens then is that older people tend to value their affluence more than their children who were born into it. Theres a great quote by Russell Ackoff: "Parents of affluence tend to take the poverty of other for granted but not their own affluence. Their children tend to take their affluence for granted but not the poverty of others. Affluent parents blame poverty on the deficiencies of the poor, while their children blame it on the deficiencies of the affluent."
Firstly, putting this argument of justice versus forgiveness in the context of religion is rather dated and somewhat misconstrues the point and should be avoided henceforth–no?
Secondly justice only adresses those wronged as right and those who have wronged as evil. It focuses mostly on making sure those wronged are compensated and that the general public are protected from the perpetrators. This is not just evident in our own justice systems but many western ones who follow the ideal "an eye for an eye," which is ancient Hammurabian rhetoric.
Not to romanticize the perpetrator of crimes, but in many cases they are themselves the victims of some non-apparent moral depravities. Yet justice does not recognize their laments outside of the apparent crime. Justice is only a healthy judgment only in the case of a healthy society (which our is far from).
We cannot adress the injustices we inflict on ourselves until we first adress the greater injustice inflicted on us by the societal circumstances which churns out these criminals in the first place.
I think we should stop incentivising the hiring of minorities in the workplace, but at the same time, we need to create better and more accessible educational institutions that will allow minorities to rise out of socioeconomic inequality. We also need to improve the ghettos. So many young lives are ruined by these forgotten and dehumanizing places. Finding and remedying the root of the problem is the best way to approach these societal issues.
In our 'democracy' (for lack of a better word), corporations can make undisclosed campaign contributions giving them a virtual veto power over elections. 92% of all presidents elected were the ones who spent the most on their campaign, most of that money comes after a lot of promises are made to these corporations that no matter what happens, business will continue on as usual. Take a look at the pentagon's huge budget. They don't want that huge of a budget, but policy makers who got where they are because of donations from defense contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, simply want to perpetuate the system and pocket a considerable amount of the profit they are producing for them. So I would argue that not only are some corporations are more powerful than countries, but that a few corporations make up our country.
Too often, justice becomes retribution and vengeance. The US justice system for instance believes it's primary role is to protect the general population from 'criminals' rather than rehabilitating them or making preventive changes to society so nobody develops criminality. If we simply focus on justice as a deterrent way for crimes, the crime rate will never drop. We must realize that no one is inherently criminal or unjust and that their actions are more an inditement of the society they were raised in rather than of their own moral deviances. So the answer isn't quite as black and white as forgiveness of justice, but is instead rehabilitation.
Many countries' foreign policy has been very linked with their economic growth from the time of the cold war and into today. Conflicts have actually been started–primarily during the cold war–in south American and Indochina due to CIA plotted coups of democratically elected leaders. The reason behind this was that their domestic economic policies would not cater to the rapid globalization undergoing in the US and other western nations' economies. This economic shift in many 3rd world countries devastated their populations. South Americans began only growing cash crops for export to the global markets leading to huge famine. In Chile the US actually installed the Fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet after a CIA involved military coup overthrew the democratically elected leader.
What this does to the workforce, both domestically and internationally is worse. Businesses who lobby for what is known as free trade agreements effectively allows them take the production jobs to countries overseas. This is why almost everything manufactured has a label of some kind saying it was made in Indochina or south America. The reason they would want to do this is that the US workforce have conditions. These being a certain number of hours worked a week, compensation for workplace accidents you get the picture. Now if these companies want to do business overseas? thats fine. If they want to take jobs away from their own country? Ok lets say thats fine. If they want to exploit the workforce over there too, ok lets for arguments say ok thats ok too. BUT AT LEAST the government should not subsidize after all this. But yet they do.
It would be somewhat redeeming if these businesses could sell their products there, but the population is generally too poor because of them that it would be unprofitable. Why can't south Americans make clothing and food for themselves, and eastern Asians raise their standard of living before manufacturing microchips and LCDs? The answer is that colonial empires may have fallen, but they were replaced by economic globalization.
We do in fact have a welfare nation, but it is not public welfare we have but rather corporate welfare. In essence, our government spends more subsidizing corporations than it does creating basic safety nets for the population. I think we can all agree that almost everyone in this nation should be afforded basic healthcare, job security, unemployment benefits, and an education, yet this hardly reflects the US' policy. Consider the pentagon. It is no secret that the US spends by far the most on defense, but what many don't know is that most pentagon officials don't ask for this gross overfunding. This money goes–for the most part–to corporations to conduct research and development on new technologies (a good deal of this money is mishandled and lost in the process, see the link to the article below for an example). This is quite beneficial to the upper and middle class who can afford the products these technologies yield such as computers and airplanes but not so much to the vast majority of Americans living below the poverty line.
Article: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/
Well I agree with your first two points but they are incongruent with the third. Your first two points raise money for the government, an endeavor I mostly agree with, but adopting flat tax along with your other two points is like taking two steps forward and about 20 steps back (unless that flat rate it 42% which would redic). Creating a progressive tax code is the only way to combat wealth inequality which in turn buys political power perpetuating the wealth gap. Tax codes are the only real way to adress this within the 'system.'
