Posts by Joseph Murphy10

Look, Volver, that would be the dream, but back then it was pure fantasy—and honestly, I don't think we're much closer today. Still, the core idea makes sense. Like Hekatonhir pointed out above, education is a necessity, whether you like it or not (those examples mentioned earlier are honestly revolting, even if I see them playing out all the time). But the system is just too "cookie-cutter." It’s designed to reject anyone who doesn't fit the mold—anyone who isn't just another brick in the wall. Kids might not realize it consciously, but they feel it—that pressure to be exactly like everyone else instead of being their own unique selves. And the worst part? You get these totally unrefined individuals who wouldn't know their head from their elbow, yet because they're hyper-focused on one tiny niche, they end up with PhDs. Talk about a bad look for both actual education and our precious scientific civilization. 🙂

Maybe we can take this further and talk about modern life. Most of us live in cities now, which are basically hubs for alienating people from their true nature. City life actually encourages that "one-size-fits-all" approach to learning. Realistically, the future isn't in the concrete jungles; it's in getting back to nature. I'm not the only one saying that, either. Especially when civilization eventually bites the dust. When that happens, the most vital skill will be knowing what's edible and what isn't. I've actually got a bit of an edge there, haha. I can catch a bird with a makeshift trap, hook a fish, grow potatoes, spot a few types of mushrooms, find wild greens, and even snack on snails. Maybe the younger crowd will actually live to see the day when those skills become the most important things you can know.

steelridge58 said:Well, maybe we should try to see a more positive side of things for once?

🙂)

What’s your take on the whole relationship between freedom and education—do you think they actually work together,
or does one inevitably end up stifling the other?

Oh, my dear Volver. 🙂
Volver Hekatonhir's got a point—I probably should've actually read the thread first...

Look, I don't think it *has* to be an either-or situation—it could go either way. But honestly? You’ve gotta look at this alongside everything else that’s gone wrong in modern life here in the West. We've basically built a society that runs totally contrary to actual human nature. Since we aren't exactly planning on reverting back to being cavemen anytime soon, our only real move is to dial back our freedom and bend it to fit what education requires—with a few rare exceptions, obviously. As for what those exceptions actually look like? Well, maybe this little story from my school days about 50 years ago will give you a hint.

Look, we gotta be real about how things used to work back in the day in American schools. Times were different—way different. You didn't question the teachers; you respected them, period. End of story. Back then, if a kid was acting up, teachers could actually discipline them—a quick slap to keep them in line or a few choice words here and there to set them straight. Nobody blinked an eye at it. But here’s the thing—it wasn't just about being a bully. Kids knew exactly which teachers actually earned that authority through actual presence and leadership, rather than just relying on raw force.

So, we had this student back in the day who was—to put it mildly—completely checked out from everything the school was teaching. It wasn’t that he couldn't keep up or anything; it just wasn't his vibe. His world was out in the fields, living off the land, dealing with livestock and ranching. Fast forward to today, and that’s exactly how he lives. From what I hear, he’s happy, healthy, and totally content without needing any of these modern digital distractions. If he ever decides he wants an iPhone 13, he'll just go out and buy it with cash like any other professional would. And hey, if having purchasing power and owning stuff matters—and Marks says it definitely does, arguably more than anything else in the world—then he's doing just fine.

Going to school every single day was a total nightmare for him. Honestly, he couldn't stand being away from his sheep and horses for even two hours—not that he actually learned a damn thing while he was there. Not that failing out of class meant much in the real world—thanks to the sheer power of the iPhone 13, he’s doing just fine surviving today—and since he’s still out there living his life, I guess he hasn't exactly found a "higher purpose" either.

So, there was this one time he went head-to-head with his teacher. It went down like this:

Teacher: Hey class, what was the last thing I said? You, quit messing around—pay attention. Repeat my last sentence back to me.
Student: I haven't got a clue—I'm not even listening to you guys.
Teacher: Seriously, how are you gonna survive out there? What’re you even gonna do for a living? You don't know jack—not a single thing! You don't even know what a verb is? Explain the Pythagorean theorem to me. Tell me the difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms. You've got zero clue! Who even let you make it to seventh grade?! HOW ARE YOU THIS STUPID!!!

So, this kid spent the whole time playing dumb—answering "I don't know" to basically everything. But then the teacher finally snaps and calls him stupid right to his face. Big mistake. Kid wasn't having it and decided to swing back.

Look, Teach, I get where you're coming from, but let me throw a curveball at you. Fine, you're the expert—so tell me this: if you're so damn smart, whose donkey just knocked up Marks' mare?
Whose? How the hell am I supposed to know that? What kind of nonsense is this?
Look, teach, you gotta listen—this matters to me. I mean, look at this mare she popped out for Frank—it’s a beast, straight from Mark. If you actually take a second to look at this filly, you'll see she's a total sweetheart—strong, huge, and perfect for pulling heavy loads.
And what does any of that have to do with me?
Look, it actually has everything to do with me—it’s vital to my life. It matters way more than all your nerdy nonsense. If we're talking about a beast that's actually calm, then I can load it up with firewood and gear without it kicking my teeth in or making my job a total nightmare. That's what I care about in this life—not your damn verbs or Pythagoras math. 😁

Eric Newman75 said:And why don't you just actually read everything that was posted before jumping in with a comment?

Fair point, man! My temper flared up there—definitely wasn't my finest moment. My bad.

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Eric Newman75 said:What exactly is an elementary school here? A restaurant? A swimming pool? No, it’s an educational institution. Period.

Fair point. You didn't actually say "it stifles creativity," or "they won't let them," or "making it conscious," or call anything "ridiculous," or mention "children's rights," etc. And you definitely didn't forget to use punctuation where it belongs—like when I intentionally played around with that inverted sentence structure.

Honestly, every single middle schooler—yeah, even the ones who have to be dragged there kicking and screaming—is more literate and sharper than you are.

Sure, you caught the grammar mistakes, but this comeback is pretty low blows.

Why not just engage with what the guy is actually saying? Why go straight for the throat? The author's point is legit and makes sense. You should really look into the ideas of philosopher Ivan Illich. He actually wrote a book called Deschooling Society.

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Megan Gray32 said:I want to emphasize that second paragraph. This is something that genuinely gets under my skin—I can't quite tell if what you've provided is meant to be an explanation, a personal stance, or merely a theory you're describing as we talk, but these are thoughts that a wild animal—say, a tiger—would express with equal clarity if it possessed the gift of human speech.

That is precisely part of what haunts me—something that develops within a person and has absolutely nothing to do with humanity or being civilized, even before this whole discussion even began.

It is something entirely primal and raw, which manages to find its way into the modern world, persisting even through our most complex linguistic terminology.

I was so stunned by that I practically froze.

Also, I totally disagree with the idea that people don't feel the weight of power when they grab it. Or that those who *don't* feel the burden are just rare exceptions. Marcus Aurelius wasn't some freak occurrence. There have been plenty of people like that throughout history.

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First off, huge shoutout to the Quinn group for breaking this down so perfectly. We're talking about those "proteins" hardwired right into our DNA. That’s what defines us—it's our genetic blueprint.

Look, it's simple. Freedom, when you just talk about it, is nothing but an abstraction. It exists as a concept in the void, sure. But it only actually becomes real—only materializes—through existence. Once you start acting on it, it stops being an abstract idea because every action taken for or against it proves its reality. Same goes for the idea of "goodness." You show it by giving someone a jacket, which is just a physical piece of clothing. But all the feelings tied to that? Those aren't material. You can't measure them. Even the act of giving itself is a physical thing. Legally or socially, it's just a transaction. But the stuff behind it—your motivation to give and my feeling of receiving—that isn't material. It can't be turned into a physical object. Not sure if I made sense there.

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ruggedraven36 said:Freedom is a spirit—pure and simple. It’s got nothing to do with physics.

Look, sure, freedom is spiritual—it's the highest kind of spirit—but actually living it is a physical reality, and taking it away? That's a concrete action. I'm a total advocate for liberty. To me, it's the ultimate value. Even God respects a person's freedom. Only absolute lowlife trash would even dare try to snatch someone else's liberty.

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Sandra Murphy33 said:How exactly?

I fail to see how that is logical or even remotely sensible within a paradigm where we operate under the assumption that we are separate entities fighting over finite resources just to survive as long as possible.
(And that’s the whole extent of it.)

Can you walk me through your reasoning?

(I’m also unclear on what "outside of a paradigm" actually means here. We are discussing human society, not some spiritual realm where things are accepted on faith. When dealing with belief systems whose truth cannot be verified through empirical methods, we have to judge them solely by their effects—both the psychological impact and the tangible, material consequences.)

I'm afraid I can't. It’s just one of those intuitive things—kind of like how you operate. See, I’m using plain old physics to describe how enslaving someone ruins the experience for the master (since their freedom gets hijacked by the obligation to care for the slave—that's a purely material thing), yet you keep trying to force some spiritual angle on me even though I haven't mentioned anything "spiritual" once. Twice, actually. You're just following your gut and projecting stuff onto me that I never even wrote. So, my gut tells me I can't explain it to you, so why bother?

Sam Martinez9 said:I can't speak for all types of systems, but an accounting system is really just a way to document what is happening within a corporation. In other words, it tracks processes from raw material sourcing and manufacturing all the way through to the final sale.

The same fundamental accounting principles were utilized during the era of socialism and are used today under capitalism; the mechanics haven't changed. You could even apply them to the structures of feudalism, slavery, or even primitive communal societies. You could use them to map out the behavior of early humans, from the moment they crafted an arrow to when they traded that arrow for something else, like a seashell.

Guess I’m just missing something here, huh?

Sandra Murphy33 said:The only way to wrap your head around this is to step outside the usual materialistic, hierarchical mindset. You have to believe we are spiritual beings, all tied together by invisible threads.

Nah. This makes perfect sense in any paradigm—inside or out. It’s just straight-up physics.

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Megan Gray32 said:jedrilicar@
I haven't actually spent much time digging through theoretical texts—honestly, almost none—aside from those first couple of years in college before I decided to walk away from philosophy and sociology. I have read a handful of novels, though, and Jean-Paul Sartre remains my absolute favorite because he manages to be perfectly lucid and genuinely engaging at the same time.

I wasn't presenting that as my own personal opinion, but rather as a historical fact which I was attempting to explain through logic. That entire document wouldn't even have been necessary if the circumstances I described hadn't already existed.

Not me either. Spent my education training for one thing and ended up doing something else entirely—life’s funny like that—but hey, it's never too late to start reading. Sartre was a solid writer, a sharp thinker, and a total jerk, but his take on existentialism offers zero hope. Still, glad you read him; he’s essential for the canon. Personally, I dig Camus way more than that whole French existentialist vibe. I respect Sartre as a thinker, but I don't like him. Existence isn't necessarily what Sartre claims it is, and life doesn't have to be this bleak, dark, hopeless mess. Dostoevsky articulates that much better. Sartre couldn't even fathom Dostoevsky's lived experience because he was always the darling of the intellectual elite—a complete hypocrite, kind of like how Hemingway was just a big shot playing at being deep. Dostoevsky finds a glimmer of light in every ounce of despair, and honestly, that's how it should be. That's what actual life teaches you. What you wrote about (in)freedom is spot on. Check out some Jordan Peterson, Murray, Eagleton, Illich, or Baudrillard. They break down reality in pretty fascinating ways.
Read *The Origins of Totalitarianism* by Hannah Arendt and draw some parallels to what people usually call "the system." Doesn't matter which one—political, tech, accounting, software, whatever. Just look at "the system" as a massive simulacrum designed to screw over the little guy through the lens of Arendt's focus on totalitarianism, and you'll see things for what they really are. That's what the common man lacked back then. He didn't have a "system." He broke the natural order to build his own. This is the fallout. We have to tear down the system if we want to survive. We need to restore the balance between the individual and whatever the ultimate authority happens to be, and then things will be fine.

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ruggedraven36 said:And what’s the alternative here? Less freedom?

There isn't an alternative to freedom—period. Freedom is an intrinsic value. It's about escaping from freedom, which is exactly what Freud wrote about. Maybe it'd be a smart move to actually sit down and read what he had to say for once. Even Paul of Tarsus said "Christ set us free." I think you were the one who brought that up earlier, so you clearly get the context behind his claim. If I had to boil my thoughts down to two points, they'd be this: first, we can't stop trying to teach people how to be free; and second, we have to face the fact that most people will never truly know how to handle their own inherent right to liberty. Of course, that leaves us—the ones who actually see the situation for what it is. Our job in this mess is to ensure, within our own capacity, that freedom isn't weaponized by those in power to screw over the people who don't even realize the massive asset they're losing. We could also just sit on our hands. We could even side with the people stripping rights away. Everyone gets to make their choice. Me? I'm pathetic.

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Amanda Jackson5 said:Of course not. At the end of the day, what's actually coded in our genes is just a set of biological instructions for protein synthesis.

And what about proteins? Egg whites, yolks... scrambled eggs? Yum.

Griffith, nice one! You really poked a hole in this. All that fighting and blood spilled for freedom—which, let’s face it, most people can’t even handle once they actually get it. I’m currently digging through some essays by Ivan Illich—a brilliant guy, though he doesn't get nearly enough credit here in the States. He writes beautifully about this stuff. Ever read him? That bit about printing things out in those stinky, crowded cities sounds like it was pulled straight from his "Vernacular Values." 🙂

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Megan Gray32 said:Is it actually possible that our genes carry the lasting imprints of old traumas and deep-seated fears—residual echoes that continue to shape and dictate how we behave even today?

Hell yeah.
I was just reading this recently—pretty sure it’s Bernie Sanders in Man or Bridle in a New Dark Age (or maybe someone else, I can't remember exactly, but I read it just the other day)—about how if you imagine history as a metaphorical clock, our whole tech era—from the first Industrial Revolution straight to now—is basically just a one-minute slice on a 12-hour clock face. That’s just a way to visualize it, obviously, to show how tiny our "enlightened" moment really is. There are 59 other intervals before this one. It's all right there in our genetic makeup.

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@Sam Martinez9, just giving you my two cents here—and yeah, I mentioned you because you definitely influenced how I see things. Specifically regarding that whole debate about human evolution from early hominids in the first part of book one. I tried to break it down better in my follow-up comment to Ethan Gomez82.

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Ethan Gomez82 said:I don't see any massive "quantum leap" here, just a long series of small steps. Humans certainly didn't suddenly become "human" because of the Holocene, even if that era acted as the catalyst for civilization. Even if you choose to view the rise of civilization as a major jump—which isn't a given—it has absolutely nothing to do with "self-awareness" or saying "I am." That happened a hell of a lot earlier.

Harrian is nothing more than a footnote, and his timeline is even worse. (Btw, word is Neanderthals were self-aware too—they just didn't stick around like us fake sapiens). And this whole "quantum leap" thing is just rhetorical fluff, so whatever you said stands—it doesn't bother me. But look, even the very first one of those little steps had its own magical moment where everything changed forever. What matters to me is that specific moment of self-realization triggered by that "I am" cry—and as for causality, I’ve got my own take on that, which shouldn't be hard to guess.

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Cyclical.
Even Lenin said it—history is just one step forward and two steps back.
This non-stop growth bullshit is straight-up destroying Earth's sustainability, and once we hit that wall, life—and society along with it—is toast.

Megan Gray32 said:Greetings—I originally opened this thread over in the "History" section, but I didn't have much luck there. Aside from a few dry facts, I wasn't particularly satisfied with the responses I received. The reality is that prehistory is essentially shrouded in mystery; because there is no written record to lean on, we are largely left with nothing but speculation. That is precisely what draws me in—the opportunity to exercise a bit of imagination within that context. Perhaps we might uncover some hidden, buried truth, much like stumbling upon a treasure chest. And it doesn't necessarily have to be gold; regardless, I would love to see it found.
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Something has been weighing on my mind lately. I caught myself falling down a Google rabbit hole reading about *Homo erectus*, and I found myself intrigued by the fact that they lived 200,000 years ago before eventually going extinct.

It’s a lot to process. I studied history back in high school, though I wasn't truly grasping the sheer scale of it all at the time. If we are looking at 200,000 years ago, and considering we are now in 2022—plus perhaps another 5,600 years since the dawn of civilization—we have a massive gap. What happened during those other 192,000 years? Are there any historical facts or specific studies regarding that era? What other subspecies, similar to *Homo erectus*, existed and subsequently vanished?

I am not strictly looking for hard facts; I would actually like to allow ourselves some room for speculation. I am fascinated by questions like: how many times were we on the precipice of progress, only to regress as a species? How many times throughout history was fire sparked, only to flicker out again? What were our greatest obstacles—assuming we had met our basic needs for warmth and food—who was our most formidable enemy? And what was it like to face those predators hand-to-hand in the early days? Which animals were we actually fighting?

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Could it be argued that *Homo sapiens* were somewhat rational 50,000 years ago, or at least driven by emotion? To say that we existed for 300,000 years—the final link in an evolutionary chain stretching back two billion years—only to finally stumble upon agriculture and animal domestication in the last 10,000 years... it feels a bit demoralizing for humanity, doesn't it?

If we have been around for roughly 100,000 to 150,000 years, there must have been culture, cave paintings, and a distinct sense of aesthetics. There must have been emotion, but surely there was also rational behavior—especially if they were hunting effectively. I realize language wouldn't have been fully developed—meaning a limited vocabulary made communication difficult, even when dealing with tribal hostilities—and, unfortunately, cannibalism was likely a reality.

But as you all suggest, we and they were biologically and physically similar. Could we say we were mentally similar as well? At least on a fundamental level—enough to conclude, "this is good," "this is wrong," or "this is necessary." Given all these circumstances, I find it hard to accept the thesis that we only turned to agriculture and domestication in the last 10,000 years.

Regarding the use of fire, some sources suggest it was being used 300,000 years ago, while others claim even longer. Initially, it might have been accidental—occurring during elemental storms—but later, it became a deliberate effort. This is where meat began to be cooked, which undoubtedly relieved some of our primal savagery and provided a sense of peace.

That is essentially what interests me: those small details, the nuances that helped us advance or caused us to regress as a species. Like a moment where fire might have spontaneously ignited, only to die out. One time, we cook meat and find peace, warmth, and protection from predators. But when the flame dies, do we simply return to the darkness?

Culture must have existed; I am curious about what propelled it forward or held it back. Animals—the larger ones certainly posed a problem. Especially the big cats. And which ones were the good ones—the ones we first befriended?

Since you moved this over to Philosophy, I’m guessing you’re looking for deep dives and actual debates based on your prompt rather than just raw data.

Look, we can start with the obvious—there were tons of different early human tribes out there. And honestly? The whole evolution from primitive hominids to modern humans wasn't nearly as straight line as those textbook historical materialism classes make it sound. Those courses present history as this neat, linear progression—which basically brainwashes students into thinking in one dimension unless they actually take the time to think deeper and look at the bigger picture for themselves.

If we assume what Harar said in his book is right—that we're the descendants of that specific group of Homo sapiens who made that massive leap forward—then, staying within the bounds of philosophy without acting like a know-it-all historian, we could argue that transition happened the exact moment a human became self-aware and finally thought, I am.

Courage is basically just virtue showing off once you step outside your comfort zone.

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