The Metaphysics Underlying The Sunset of the West

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

-Proverbs 16:25

 

The heart is deceitful above all things…

-Jeremiah 17:9

 

When small men cast big shadows, it means the sun is setting.

– Lin Yutang, Chinese philosopher

 

Upon the recommendation of a blog commenter, I recently read “The Crisis of Modernity”  by Italian professor and philosopher, Augusto Del Noce (1910 – 1989).  The book was published in 2014 and is a brilliant compilation of twentieth-century essays and speeches by Del Noce.  His philosophical insights are profound and his conclusions and societal predictions, especially regarding Scientism and the Technocracy, are eerily similar to those of English author and theologian C.S. Lewis  – see my previous posts entitled “The Abolition of Man Amid the Consequences of Reality”,  and “Gnostic Parasitism in the Post-Modern Simulacrum”, and “A Postmortem on Postmodernism”.

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Three Ways For States To Fix Education

Via Blue State Conservative

*Author’s note: No amount of public-service bandaids will ever replace proper parenting. At best, a school can only reflect the values of the community which it serves. Why are suburban schools so often called “good” schools and urban schools labeled as “bad” schools? We need only take a look at the type of communities in those areas. That being said, some reform is possible and indeed vital to the development of healthy young people.

The problem with public education is that it is public (i.e. government bureaucracy). In the history of government, it is hard to tell where private enterprise hasn’t done better, or wouldn’t do better, than its tax-payer subsidized counterpart. From a Constitutional standpoint, the government exists to protect its citizens natural rights and that’s about it. Somehow or other, though, this basic premise has been expanded to include mandatory education, income tax, social security, alphabet agencies, healthcare, welfare, and most recently, masks, lockdown, and vaccinations. If the Founders could talk, they would say little more than “To arms!”

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Get an Education

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas via International Man

Get an Education

Back in the ’60s, an interviewer asked the “King of Folk Music”, Bob Dylan, what his goal in life was. Bob answered something to the effect of:

“I want to make enough money to go to college, so one day I can be somebody.”

Bob had a good sense of irony. And certainly, he was always more inclined to think outside the box than to follow the well-trodden path. That was part of what made him so interesting and part of what made him so successful. A similar sentiment was expressed in a song by his peer, Paul Simon:

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

In those days, just like today, the customary idea of success was that you attended university for a number of years, you received a degree, and then you would be given a job where you could wear a necktie and receive a salary that had an extra zero behind it.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Bertrand Russell

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.

Agatha Christie

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another: and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

John Stuart Mill

Public Education’s Dirty Secret

Via Quillette

Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth. Aside from a few lemons who were notable for their rarity, the majority of teachers I worked with for nine years in New York City’s public school system were dedicated, talented professionals. Before joining the system I was mystified by the schools’ abysmal results. I too assumed there must be something wrong with the teaching. This could not have been farther from the truth.

Teaching French and Italian in NYC high schools I finally figured out why this was, although it took some time, because the real reason was so antithetical to the prevailing mindset. I worked at three very different high schools over the years, spanning a fairly representative sample. That was a while ago now, but the system has not improved since, as the fundamental problem has not been acknowledged, let alone addressed. It would not be hard, or expensive, to fix.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Any excuse will serve a tyrant.”

Aesop

“In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician’s major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success.”

Walter E. Williams

“The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly boot that fits nobody.”

John Taylor Gatto

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”

Charles Peguy

“People will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.”

Frank Zappa

“The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

Ludwig von Mises

“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.”

John Taylor Gatto

School Daze

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

Sunday night was Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s turn through the CBS 60-Minutes wringer of censure with a visibly frustrated inquisitor Lesley Stahl trying to hector her into self-incrimination. The sad truth about American schools is that they’re a mirror for the painful collapse of the society they supposedly serve — a process ongoing for decades before Ms. DeVos came on the scene.

The expectation that some uber-regent can or ought to fix public education is bound to disappoint a news media searching for saviors. The further we leave the 20th century behind, the more anomalous its organizing principles look, especially the idea of preparing masses of young people for mass, regimented work at the giant corporate scale.

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It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 2 (Unschooling)

Guest Post by Michael Krieger 

There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren’t embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just “get through” school. It’s easy to be lazy. The rewards of becoming an autodidact, though, include igniting inner fires, making new connections to knowledge atnd skills you already have, advancing in your career, meeting kindred spirits, and cultivating an overall zest for life and its riches.

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It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)

Guest Post by  Michael Krieger 

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
– Mark Twain

As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best schools in the area? Which option can provide the best environment in which to thrive? If the best options aren’t public, can we afford them? Is it worth the money? All these questions and more have filled the minds of my wife and I over the past couple of years, but lately we’ve started to ask even bigger questions; such as whether the compulsory education system as it exists in the U.S. in 2017 makes any sense in the first place. I’m increasingly starting to conclude that it doesn’t.

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Black Self-Sabotage

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

The educational achievement of white youngsters is nothing to write home about, but that achieved by blacks is nothing less than disgraceful. Let’s look at a recent example of an educational outcome all too common. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam. In six other high schools, only one percent tested proficient in math. In raw numbers, 3,804 Baltimore students took the state’s math test, and 14 tested proficient. Citywide, only 15 percent of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test.

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Education Scholarship Tax Credits Help Children and Advance Liberty

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Shutting down the Department of Education and returning control of the education dollar to the American people is the key to improving education. The best way to put the people in charge of education is by shutting down all unconstitutional bureaucracies, repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, and ending the Federal Reserve’s money monopoly.

Since Congress is unlikely to restore constitutional, limited government in the near future, supporters of quality education must advance policies aimed at giving Americans control over the education dollar so they can seek alternatives to the federally-controlled system. This is why I have always supported education tax credits and deductions.

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How Americans Differ by Age

Via Visual Capitalist

From the day of birth, most Americans are told by society that their life should follow a certain trajectory: go to school, get a higher education, get married, start a career, and retire as soon as they are gray and old.

For many people, their life story plays out exactly like this – but people actually do it at very different speeds, or people end up hitting these milestones in different orders. Meanwhile, some Americans deviate from the typical path altogether, forging their own unique stories.

Charting Life Events

Interestingly, all of these landmark life events can be viewed through the lens of demographics, and today’s charts from Overflow Data help to tell this tale. In the below charts, we’ll look at education, employment, and marital status all visualized based on a spectrum of age.

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THE ISRAELIS VALUE EDUCATION SO MUCH…

that apparently they believe nobody should have it but them.  This is your tax dollars at work….winning hearts and minds around the world.  Nice job.

Children learn in tent after Israel demolishes school

Brand new primary school in Jubbet adh-Dibh was razed just as the new school year was set to begin.

Students enter the solitary, makeshift classroom at the Jubbet adh-Dibh primary school [Nigel Wilson/Al Jazeera]

by 

Jubbet adh-Dibh, occupied West Bank – Early in the morning, dozens of students assembled in columns outside the Jubbet adh-Dibh primary school. Encouraged by their teachers, they launched into a rendition of the Palestinian national anthem, Fidai.

It appeared to be a typical Palestinian scene, a morning ritual repeated outside thousands of school buildings across the occupied West Bank before students begin classes.

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The Real Reason Zuckerberg Supports A Universal Basic Income

Via The Daily Bell

Every generation expands its definition of equality…

Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract. We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.

-Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO

Here we go. Get ready for the media to start hammering the basic income meme.

Why is someone worth $62 billion complaining about inequality? Why is the world’s 6th richest man lecturing the public on the wealth gap, and floating ideas like the government spreading OUR wealth around while hoarding his own?

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