Julia Sweeney's Discussion Forum

Yes, it is indeed a mystery... and a switch on Capitalism that poor,simple Marx and Engels, could never have imagined... the 19th century having been so pleasantly simple that theorizing was sufficient unto the day..
Now we have reality to deal with on a daily basis...and a mind-boggling reality it is turning out to be.
Because, have you considered that the very rich, which is to say those for whom money has meant the acquiring of power, rather than merely the appurtenances of what money can by. are to NOT coin a phrase "very different from you and me?"
And who's to say how they got that way except for the obvious response: the got where they were headed (at least) by ruthlessly piling up the bodies of the rest of us to stand?
How can it be understood... except perhaps by buying the complete "Godfather" boxed set and studying it carefully?
Including the much maligned third one, that tried to address the role of religion (in that case the Vatican) in the tying of itself to the coattails of criminals in the acquiring of both money and the connection to power that will allow it to survive.
The common criminal, fool that he is, robs old ladies of their welfare checks, or knocks over the Korean fruit stand vendor...his mind is small, but we put enormous energy into bringing him to justice..and even a fair amount studying the how and why of his modus vivendi..
A really SMART and successful criminal has higher aspirationss..much, much higher.
If we spent as much time analyzing the thievery of the Ford Motor Company or the Oil Barons... as we do the guy who mugged the random by-passer, we might be on our way to answer your question of the mystery of the Bear Stearn's buyout.
It isn't an accident.
The accident is that you know about it.

Norma Manna Blum

I think the problem with this thread is that the issue isn't weather we NEED poor people or not but rather, weather those poor people are good, happy, contributing people in our society. As for those that aren't I think we must focus on societal education as well as scholastic. That is, to instill a want and desire in them to find a fulfilling existance. At that point the job maket will adjust itself, at least I think so.

I'd say this has been a pretty good thread, and I'm never picky about the specific wording of the subject line that starts off a topic thread -- whatever it takes to get the discussion going. I'm all too happy to deliberately misconstrue the question or turn it just so in order to shift the discussion subtly. For me, the issue has not been whether "we" as a society "need" people who are poor or poverty to exist, but what can be done about it, what can and should be done to help people who are "poor" (and also to people who may be materially well-off but who are "poor in spirit") to become better educated and happier, to flourish as human beings.

Oh, Jeff...
Now you've made me feel that my own aspirations as sooooo low: it has never occurred to me to try to help anyone's "spirit," poor in it or even totally without it.
Whatever it is... I am so hide bound, so prosaic in my belief that we have a body with which we operate in the temporal and only world, and a mind which propels that body, absorbs data, turns it into impulses, ideas.. ideas that might be high, could be low, and that are limited by the limits of the mind that conceived them.
While I don't (always) knock those who speak of the "spiritual" I usually remove myself from the conversation on the grounds that I have no idea what it is...or how you get it...
(The closest is that at this season, when the daffodils are in full bloom, the pear trees too, the magnolias in bud, and Washington's cherry trees about to burst into their full glory... there is a twinge of awareness of the ineffable.. which leads me to. "Damn.. this COULD be the best of all possible worlds ".. but then I have to remind myself that I am also viewing it all from the perspective of having a full tummy, and a few bucks in my pocket..it has always been my hangup that the only "spirituality " that accrues to the very poor are the hallucinations that come from being excessively hungry.
Yes, of course, I KNOW that I could be wrong, and that the homeless lady on my corner with her plastic bags of home appliances and toilet paper rolls, and empty McDonald's wrappers COULD be as "spiritual" as Nancy Reagan.
But of course if I really thought I MIGHT be wrong I wouldn't be writing this in the first place.

I don't know that education, real education makes anyone happier.
Or that spreading happiness (what IS it?) was a responsibility of mine... I am lacking the lingo, which I have always thought belonged to missionaries.."I have never been happier... now that Jesus (or keeping kosher) is in my life.. I'm sedated by happiness, so let me make YOU happy, too").
I think that the trade school administered effectively will help its students get jobs... and by TRADE SCHOOL, I mean either the teaching of cobbling, or carpentry, or the awarding of MBAs.
What is Wharton, and/ or the Harvard Business School if not a trade school?
The difference between one and the other is the amount of potential earnings, and of course status, and in no way suggests a well educated person.
Think Bush.
Think the graduates of our best law schools.
No Homer, no Virgil, no Dante.... and the kids in the shop classes in my high school weren't being introduced to them either ... just eye on the prize, get through the class even if in the bottom one percent... and get a job.
I am not knocking getting the job.. I have been trying to say that the creation of jobs that allow people the dignity of being self-supporting, and even, believe it or not to be paying money into the community coffers that should be what taxes represent.. should be the highest priority of leadership.
And that without them, all the rest of seeking to cure what ails us remains moot, talk, inconsequential
But I have also been trying to say that the best education... the general education level for our society should be one that emphasizes, first, critical thinking... the need to question everything (including what goes into the hot dog that is the symbol of American diet) and second all those elements that go into awareness that there is a world out there of which we are only a part and not the whole shebang... and THAT one gets from being exposed to, and thinking important, what others have contributed to a world that has been around.. no question.. for MILLIONS of years.
The classical Greeks, the Romans... to the philosophers of Revolution, to the travails of going from the Church Universal to a "Reformed" Europe, to the conquests of indigenous peoples of the New World by the Caucasians who laid them low...
How can we live, much less take it upon ourselves to lead the world..much less make other people "HAPPY," when a random inquiry on a CITY street (not an Alabama backwater) yields the astounding information that 9 out of 10 of the respondents either never heard of or are only vaguely aware of the name, not the work, of the arguably two greatest influences on the 20th Century, Marx and Freud?
So that we don't know why we live in economic and even military chaos, OR why we can so easily be manipulated into buy Brand A, versus Brand B.
We are, by and large deprived of those connections between the really great ideas which have determined how we live, and what has been interpreted FOR us, thrust upon us because we are helpless to negate it , or to challenge its veracity.
And it is that omission in our educations that has brought us to the sorry state we are in now: never before in the history of the world have a people, any people had so much and enjoyed it little, and so despised those who have less...and feared them to such an extent.
The net result of sadly narrow American education, including our caste and class encouraging higher education (What? You went to Bimbo University? Couldn't get into, afford, Harvard or Yale or Princeton?) is our devastating sense of exceptionalism... an exceptionalism that even taints our best works, our best selves.
The Peace Corps... that repository of high ideals.. and the shock of hearing people query us: "Who the HELL are you to tell us how to live, and why?"
I hope that makes sense....I can't reread it now because I have to get the cup of coffee that is the closest I can imagine to " spiritual" uplift as well as the trigger that gets my brain into gear...
But I do want to add something that just popped, willy-nilly into my head as random, irrational thoughts have a way of doing:
The wonderful film where an earth-bound Wallace Shawn (actor, playwright) is having dinner with the extraordinarily "spiritual" Andre Gregory and listening to Gregory describe his "spiritual" adventures, ends with Wally going home in the cab he could afford over the bus because Gregory paid for the elegant dinner ..
He can't wait to get home to Debby (Eisenberg, writer,waitress, girlfriend) to tell her about "My Dinner with Andre."
He is thinking of what it means to be Andre rather than Wally... Wally who never gamboled naked in a Polish forest while the meaning of life became manifest.
Wally who takes great joy from starting his day by finding when he gets up in the morning that no cockroach has drowned in the cup of coffee he left on the table and which he so looks forward to finish drinking.
As you may have gathered by now... my sympathies are with Wally..in fact I AM Wally...
I think the cup of coffee, cockroach aside, is what societies need, spiritual uplift whatever that is, is purely individual, has to come later, but it is NOT, NOT a valid SOCIETAL concern, anyway.


Norma

Oh, Norma, much as I really enjoy the richness of your posts, I didn't mean to get you kick-started with my idle allusion to "the poor in spirit." (But I don't regret being the accidental trigger for your reminiscence of that wonderful film My Dinner With Andre.)

As you might have guessed, I don't believe in the existence of something called "spirit" or "spiritualness." I am a thoroughgoing materialist who will allow that there are three types of things in this current universe of ours: matter, energy, and information. But in conversation, in casual writing, and in on-line posting, I'm willing to use the word "spirit" now and then in a context that I hope is clear, because references to "spirit" abound in human cultures, and not all of those references are empty-headed or pernicious.

By "poor in spirit" I meant depressed, discouraged, mentally depleted, short on courage and self-esteem. Each of us can do specific, fairly concrete things in our interactions with other people, to lift their "spirits" when they are feeling "down." Little favors, random acts of kindness, sharing knowledge or sharing a joke, or simple expressions of empathy. Practicing what William Blake wrote: He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. That means doing more than saying "Jesus loves you" or "Have a blessed day."

I don't think that human beings achieve "happiness" by pursuing it. In fact, I'm not sure I can identify what happiness is, except by maybe listing specific instances in which I have felt satisfaction or contentment. So I wouldn't propose to go out and try to directly help other people "be happy."

I'd rather speak and write of helping other human beings (if I can) achieve what some philosophers (borrowing a page or two from Aristotle's ethics) have called "human flourishing" -- the actions and accompanying or resulting mental states that involve the human being's improvement of skills and aptitudes and that put the human being's potential to work. Education of some kind is a necessary part of promoting human flourishing. I'm not sure what kind of education, exactly. Having the right kind of civil society (laws, rules of conduct and etiquette, social relations) is another part.

This is Tony L from the old forum. I have no idea why I changed my Username. I just discovered today that Julia's forum is back. I know that as of yet, I have not made myself part of the group here--in most your minds--but I 'd like to be and I'll keep on trying.

Started to read this thread and it made me realize how mush I missed everyone, including some who are still missing. I never have much time and so I can't address everyone right now.
But:

Jeff D: I have read most of the new post here and see that you tried to get into a Yahoo message Board discussion group which seems to have dulled and aggravated more that stimulated and enlightened. I was trying to get involved in the Oprah/Tolle New Earth Classes and message Boards and all I can say is OH My God! I also saw in one of your post, your definition of God. According to your definition, I am happy to declare that I am no longer a Deist.

Norma: You are the one that I have really missed! Your wit, your humor, and yes, even your crotchetiness really gets me going, you make me feel alive! But then again, so does Fox's so called News---for the very same reasons. Oh the polarity.

Sheldon: I know this was on a different thread, but I know you can love Norma the same as me. About the Hollywood Gay Actor matter. I think that it is much more important for Hollywood to have gay characters portrayed in a strong, likable, positive light---in other words as real to life as possible---the sexual preference of the actor doesn't really matter. If any of my kids come to realize that they are gay, I am going to do some research and get posters of several of the greatest gays in History and plaster the house with them. Socrates, Plato, Leonardo. Michelangelo, Alexander, Lincoln? Eleanor Roosevelt? and on and on and on. Of course, like Norma says, I haven't slept with any of these people, so I don't really know, but history seems to think so or imply. The main point is that my Kids will be Proud of who and what they are by being the best themselves they can be.

Josh/Adrael/Zelgadis: I hope you post/rant more. You have a witty, entertaining, original writing style. I always enjoy your post.

Bradster: Always the thoughtful, sensitive, balanced ,moderate. I'd feel safe flying anywhere in the world with you .

Well now I can see this was not a good idea, lots of Poster Buds to go and no more time. Anyway, I'm glad to see the forum back and I/m glad to be back--even if its just to read all your post and occasionally join in the banter.

Hey, triplehelix / Tony,

It's good to see you back here. As for the Yahoo! discussion forum, I suspect you may mean the special group that was started by a writer named Eric Maisel, who is writing a book called The Atheist Way (? ! ?) and who posted rather bizarre "challenges" in the form of questions that he'd ask atheists to answer. I found out about this group through a link on Skepchick, and although some of the questions were interesting, most of them seemed to me to be based on the false premise that there is something profoundly different in how atheists think or approach daily life.

Then, quite by accident, I found this Yahoo! Answers thingee at the bottom of the same page as Eric Maisel's group, and I saw this "Religion & Spirituality" section in which people (probably 60% Christian, 25% atheist, 5% agnostic, 3% Jewish, 2% Muslim, and 5% pagan or Wiccan or pantheist) post poorly-worded questions or non-questions, which elicit mostly short answers. After which the person who posted the "question" (most of the time) or the other responders (seldom) "vote" on which answer is best. The "best answer" usually is the one that most closely conforms to the Asker's preconceived notions and biases. Amazingly, I've managed to get a 15 to 16% "best answer" percentage with my verbose and rather nuanced responses. Real back-and-forth discussion is impossible with such a format. Unless one is fond of carnival sideshows, I don't recommend Yahoo! Answers / Religion & Spirituality.

Well, I couldn't possibly disagree more with your opinion, but thank you, that's very nice of you to say. Tony, Jeff and Thranil, glad to see you all back. I hope you change your mind and decide to post more than just ocassionally.

Josh/Adrael/Zelgadis ^_^