Strega,

She was in a classroom around age twelve, and the class was required to write the one word they felt typified Americans. Everyone else wrote “Individuality”, and she wrote “Conformity” 🙂

This isn’t a country that celebrates individualism. We would be looking at the conformists to introduce new education programs promoting individua…

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Jake,

loaded question number one. Not gonna address the union secured and tenured part. I will just say in general our compulsory education generally fails in that regard. Occasionally a teacher of unusual perspicuity and concern makes a difference. In general however it is closer to all in all just another brick in the wall.

I wasn’t meaning…[Read more]

@_Robert_  Put you and her on an 8:30 AM train and it is a completely different picture…

I agree and it usually was. I had (have) no problem with anyone being a goth. I am all for people expressing their own individuality, especially with a subversive or non-conformist undertone towards “the system”.  I lived in a squat house with 12 people f…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
@strega – Everyone else wrote “Individuality”, and she wrote “Conformity”. I had a summer relationship with a goth girl in the mid 1980’s. My style at the time (if style is the word to use) was t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and a packet of Rizla. She was full goth, all the time. She was trying to persuade me to “change…

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@Strega – Everyone else wrote “Individuality”, and she wrote “Conformity”.

I had a summer relationship with a goth girl in the mid 1980’s. My style at the time (if style is the word to use) was t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and a packet of Rizla. She was full goth, all the time. She was trying to persuade me to “change my lifestyle choices” or whateve…[Read more]

I went for an end of term dinner in an Elementary School in the USA for some relations who were probably about ages 910  at the time. I don’t recall the menu but I will always remember the notice at the front entrance over the flowerbeds. It read “No firearms beyond this point”.

The most common reply I get from ChatGPT is “Great catch”. Then I wait for the next reply and check it too……..

Anyone tied to an ideology cannot think critically by definition. The rise of extreme right and left ideologies is why critical thinking is almost dead.

These extreme right billionaires like Musk and Bezos have given up on the Earth’s future and want to fortress the US and switch to crypto-gold while they devise their tech-bro extraplanetary…[Read more]

@strega – isn’t there a difference between individuality, and individualism?  Individualism can be a social situation, the opposite of communitarianism.  People rely on themselves and a small circle of people, while in communal societies, people rely on the whole community.  Community societies are “shame” cultures where the community governs th…[Read more]