A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. Also, I like to write and to sketch.
https://thefoolwithapen.com/
I saw that article about illiterate college kids too. Worrying.
Indeed. We have the same issues here in France, btw. It’s an absolute failure of our educational system (and of too many parents persisting in wanting that failure to be used) that will cost dear to all those kids, and then will cost to the society as a whole: that’s our future ‘elite’ that’s being uneducated.
Although I believe the Jewish minority was the only one that seriously dissented from the prevailing polytheism.
Edit: There were the Christians, a little later on. But I wouldn’t know that all religions would be polytheist back then except Jews. I’m really not an expert.
In this context, to inculcate irrational beliefs in children seems to me to be like playing with fire.
It sure can be. But, talking irrational beliefs, wouldn’t you agree that telling a child they’re a unique and amazing person and that all they do is perfect and amazing too, that they should not have to get bad grades at school because it’s infuriating, that they should not have to do their homework because it’s tiresome, that they should be allowed to do whatever they fancy the moment they fancy doing it, is also like playing with fire? Still, despite it containing not a single mention of god, religion or spiritual beliefs it’s something hordes of parents are telling their own kids every single day.
I do sincerely wonder what will do more harm to those kids but, once again, I’m not pro religion nor am I against it. I’m only pro taking nothing for granted—beginning with our very own certainties if they can’t be demonstrated ;)
Well, then I’m sorry but my suggestion is useless. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re old getting older (at 50+ I feel like a legit wreck, but I’m still in better shape than in my 30s: I mean my body is wrinkled everywhere, I’m bald like an eggshell and I have many health issues but I was a legit junkie back then and I was barely able to do any of the things I can do nowadays)
You’re welcome.
I wanted to bring a different point of view as I’m not a huge fan of over-simplification with such a complex question (no matter what I may or may not think about religions)
+1 because I see no reason for the downvotes, beside some people not liking what you say or think? To those persons: feel free to downvote me to oblivion if it helps you feel better and much ‘righter’ persons but do keep in mind that it may also not be the most efficient way to help me understand in what way you think I’m mistaken. Obviously, this matter only if you want to help me understand, not if you want to ‘punish’ me for disagreeing with you. But then, I would wonder in what way that is supposed to punish me? Have a nice day, whatever you decide.
Idk how you take that and say who’s to say if one’s better than the other. (…) hat’s what good parents who are religious should be doing.
On a more general note, may I advise you to be more cautious with your use of certain words. I mean, ‘good parents’ is a very strong expression nobody should use solely based on a first impression, a few words read, and certainly not as a way to demonstrate a point in a discussion because… doing so you’re only projecting your own personal values and ideals regarding what good parents should do (which could be 100% correct, or not, that’s not the point) and, well, in that specific case I can assure you you do not know who my parents were. Or if they were any good.
I will tell you they looked real nice people and most people meeting them liked them a lot. I will also tell you they’re long gone and that I did not shed a single tear when they passed away. What does that say about them and what does that say about me? Maybe that’s telling what an ungrateful asshole I’m, and I may very well be that. Or maybe it’s telling how appearance can be misleading and how much better and how much more intimately I knew my parents than anybody else. Who am I to tell?
Your story unironically proves that atheist parents are far and away better parents than religious ones. Idk how you take that and say who’s to say if one’s better than the other. (…) hat’s what good parents who are religious should be doing. Not teaching their children to do exactly as they do.
I think it unironically shows what you believe in, which is fine by me and which is something I may even 100% agree with. That’s not the point.
My point was only this: my atheist parents (so you know: they both were sent to a religious school as kids too. Therefore, they did with me exactly like their parents did with them save that their own parents did not call themselves atheists) forced their own personal opinions onto me, without me being given any real choice.
My point was that the question should not be limited to spiritual or religious matters. And also being religious does not make someone an asshole more nor less than being an atheist would make them an asshole. It’s the person that’s the issue.
Then, I went back to the OP question, saying this was an interesting and very old question with no simple answer, referring to that Plato dude writing about raising children somewhere in the 4th or 3rd century before that other dude, Jesus, was even born. Why mentioning Plato? Maybe because that bearded Greek dude wearing a dress and sandals realized that families in his time were already pushing what he considered way too much personal values and crap, not just religious craps, onto their own child and that the only crap a child should be fed is the crap that the city (aka the Nation) has deemed good for… the city? I would encourage anyone to go read Plato.
So, where does that leave us?
We will all agree that thinking they hold onto some indisputable truth will concern many religious persons, right? Where I seemingly disagree with a few around here, is that I also think it concerns way too many so-called atheists who I think would be much more accurately described as ‘anti-religious’ (because ‘a-theism’ is the idea that there is no god, not that one should hate on god or religion). So, unlike those anti-religious persons, I don’t consider what they call atheism as a de facto smarter/better choice than being ‘theist’, or religious. That’s way too simple… like I was saying.
think: Ancient Rome,
As far as I know, Ancient Rome (pre-christian) welcomed many and very different faiths.
Not wanting to put down their phone would rank high for me those days, even higher than smoking (which stinks and I know that for a fact, I was a smoker some 20 years ago ;)
Body starts aging at around 20 if I recall correctly.
Doctors said I’m fine btw.
One thing you might want to do is see another doctor and get another opinion of your physical condition? I almost lost my eyesight because of an incomp, I mean, with a doctor that was not that well informed. Had I not decided to check with another doctor…
Where do you think the line is between practicing your own religion faithfully and unethically forcing your beliefs on someone else?
That’s not just someone that’s a child, their child. So, the question should be: where do you think a parent should stop being a parent who has authority over their child? And where a child stop being a child (someone being taken care of and who is subject to the authority of their parents) to become a person (someone responsible for themselves).
Parents are responsible for their kids up until the child is reaching the ‘age of reason’ (sorry, not sure how to say that in English: when the is (legally) able to live and decide by themselves). How would anyone be able to raise (be responsible for) a child and make decision without pushing their own values on the kid? I mean, for me it’s almost impossible. You can give options, a lot of options, but there will still be limits. Heck, even the simplest ‘eat your veggies’, ‘brush your teeth’, or ‘you must do your homework before you can play your video game’ (or their exact opposites, aka ‘do whatever you want, I don’t care about you’) is already telling a lot about what values the parents are pushing onto their children.
My parents raised me as the atheists they were. That too is an ethical/philosophical/moral personal choice they pushed onto me without me being able to object anything, right? They never asked me if I was an atheist, or not.
The funny thing is that them being hardcore atheists did not prevent them to tweak the system so I could be send to a private catholic school because my father knew it was the best school. Another (unethical?) choice of them on which I had little to say as a child. And to be frank with you, now aged 50+ this is probably the second of only two reasons I feel gratitude towards my parents (the first one being that I had a roof and I was fed up until I was able to leave): the teaching there was demanding but it was also amazingly good.
Like mentioned already I would say: it’s the parent’s call. Because if christian or whatever else parents should not be allowed to share their faith with their own child, then logic mandates that no parent at all should be allowed to share no personal value at all with their child. Then, no parent should be allowed to raise their own child.
That may not be bad, though: Plato considered the idea in his Republic, suggesting kids should not be raised by parents but by city (the Ancient Greek ancestor of our modern States and Nations) operated and controlled institutions. But then, the question instantly becomes: who will decide what this city/state/nation controlled education should be about?
Real great question, with no simple answer I’m afraid.
My English is probably lacking (for that, I apologize), but I don’t think I treated like ‘anything’ special. I only shared my point of view on what you expressed which is, you know, the exact purpose of any discussion. Hopefully.
Not sure why you’re treating it like an attack on society.
I consider giving up on any word an attack on society, that’s true, for the reason I mentioned: language should be a common good, it should not be divided between groups or communities owing each a part of it. That’s all I wanted to say. By no mean I consider what you or what anyone else could say an attack on anything or on anyone.
Or are we already at that point of entrenchment where anyone disagreeing with an idea is considered an ‘attack’ against that idea?
I don’t think being ‘non-religious’ mean we should give up on words used religious people.
Believers in one god or another don’t own those words. Non of them. They belong to all of us. They’re words that belong to our common vocabulary and language. Nobody should be allowed to claim any ownership and exclusive usage.
If we start creating different vocabularies depending one’s own system of beliefs, if we start limiting the use of certain words to certain groups of people (religious or, say, related to this or that specific color), where will that end? And then what common ground will we have remaining? What common language? How will we be able to keep on discussing together if we don’t share the same language?
To use a Biblical reference, do we really want to create a new Tower of Babel and… are we that pretentious we think can act like if we were a god ourselves? God damn, I certainly don’t. Heck, no. Fuck that.
That’s just my 2 cents, obviously.
(50+ years old talking, so you know ;)
In France we have this saying “La bave du crapaud n’atteint pas la blanche colombe” (toad’s spit can’t reach the white dove), meaning no matter how naughty someone is they simply cannot hurt you, you’re so much above them and you’re so pure.
What kind of weaker person would they show that to? I don’t know, say, they may consider the dude that is dating their precious daughter is rather unlikely to punch them in the face, or to tell them they should learn to behave like adults and not brats (and, imho, that dude better not do any of that) ;)
You could probably very easily outplay them at their own stupid game but, imho, the best option is to completely ignore them. You’re dating their daughter, not her parents.
Don’t waste any more of your time with them. You’re still very young but, believe me, time is precious and it flies so fucking fast. That girl likes you? And you like her? Enjoy being together and forget about their parents being assholes (the world is literally filled with assholes, I’m sitting on one while I’m writing this ;). And maybe it’s time you start considering getting a small place of your own, so you can be together without any parents to ruin your time together? That could be worth it ;)
Honestly, I never considered the way to name it, but yes why not. That said, I tend to not judge people on their job nor on how much money they earn no matter what. For me, a job is what most people do to be able to afford what they need to live their live I’m much more interested to know what they do with their free time and how they think about things ;)
Market reflects uncertainty and fear (or their exact opposite: hope and confidence) it doesn’t cause them to begin with. So, no.
Could a poorly thought-out and poorly applied economical and radical geopolitical policy change bring the world closer to some kind of war(s)? Sure. It already did so in only 3 months.
For the first time in almost 80 years I see moderate people in my country, France, not radical anti-americans, real moderates, considering the USA as the real threat to our security and to world peace (and I may include myself in that count)… I would not be surprised the feeling was kinda similar, if not much worse, for Canadians, Greenlanders and, quite obviously, for Ukrainians.
Unskilled labor is unskilled not in the sense they don’t have any know-how or value but in the sense of the job itself not require a lot of qualification to be done.
An experienced manual worker has a lot value to any competent boss hiring them, or then the boss is rather incompetent, but the manual work required to the job is not comparable to, say, the skills required to be able to do brain surgery, or to write some marketing bullshit to convince million people that they need to buy a new car or phone, or that they should elect the most illiterate racist asshole candidate they could ever pick as their president. Those are all ‘skilled’ labor but, here again, that doesn’t mean they have any intrinsic better quality just that they required (a lot) more preparation/learning.
25+ years with my spouse, not married.
We’re ‘pacsed’ though which, here in France, is not like a civil wedding but merely a contract (it takes mere minutes to have it done). That ‘pacs’ helps protect the other in case something should happen to one of us since, not being officially married, we have no legal protection, no power of decision if the other was incapacitated, and no right to inherit from another at least not without having to pay a lot of taxes whereas it’s zero taxes if we’re pacsed and we’ve made a will.
This strikes me as abhorrent. But most of the people here call it necessary, preferable and even desirable.
I don’t and I won’t ‘call it necessary, preferable and even desirable’. That’s a nightmare that’s being build right before our eyes, with the (often unconscious) complicity of a lot of us (me included, for many years).
Here in France, certain ideas are literally outlawed from any public discussions (it’s in the law, what an impressive feat from a country so proud of its promotion of free speech). But it’s everywhere and at every level, even in the way we’ve learned to not use certain words in our everyday exchanges or to not try to understand something a little better before condemning it—we do like all the people around us, we hate what and who we’re being told to hate.
That’s why I steer away as much as I can from digital means of communication. And do as much as I can offline and the analog way.
Younger people have probably never experienced it but good old snail mail (as well as in-person talks) is still private by default (that too is in the law, at least here, doesn’t l mean it’s above the law, which is fine, but at least it’s private). Also, it’s not tracked or algorithmically quantified and validated by anyone.
Mandatory disclaimer (because we live in this absolute moronic age of ‘either you’re with us, or you’re against us’ angry crowds): me protesting against the growing (self-)censorship of any idea does not mean I endorse any of those censored ideas. It just means that I think censorship is a terrible way to fight any idea. As history have shown us countless times.
Don’t want to deal with admin/security stuff ;)
You need better air flow.
I had the same issue as a student, when I lived in that pocket-sized 1 room ‘apartment’ with barely any airflow coming through a single and tiny window. The only solution I found to be working was, each morning, to lift the mattress and store it on its side with the bottom/downside face part of it not facing the wall, and let it like that for the rest of the day. The air would do its magic.
I also raised the bed frame that was very close to the ground.
Indeed, it’s not. So many large US corps have been instantly shifting their so-called support like good little soldiers…
Unless one is Musk or one of his close friends, don’t we all need money?
It’s up to you to decide what to do. I mean, I know what I would do but I also know I’m not in your shoes and that would not be fair for me to push you one way or the other.
What I can say is that you have all my sympathy. That new US president has created some real mess. I imagine most US citizen won’t be aware of that but that US president also reached out to those foreign non-US owned private corps (like, here in France) that are doing business with the US gov telling them they should stop their local, non-US inclusive policy if they wanted to keep doing business with the US gov. That’s the new version of the ‘Land of the free as long as you agree with the boss’, I suppose?