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i have not yet read the lengthy dialogue (i am printing a copy now) but i want you to know that yes i understand "if you please the masses they will conform" but i think it a deeper matter and my own bias in the conversation is that i work towards valuable conclusions. when you say what i have quoted above it dismisses the topic. great please and conform. but what does it mean and how can we use that. i am of the opinion that we have to work on self discipline and growth, as we do so other s around us will fall away or join in. confucious said something to the effect of, "make positive change in yourself to benefit your family, benefit your family to benefit your community, benfit your community to benefit your state, etc" now that is a terrible paraphrase but it conveys the message good comes from the self and daily interactions and spreads out. you cannot force change on a group of people especially if you yourself have not actualized such a change. so you say people will conform if they are pampered, well so what. how do you inspire people to become better humans? thats what i really want to know, not how to make them conform.

YES!!! grade inflation and making classes easier is the dumbest thing i've ever heard of...

i applaud you for your depth of thought but i think it is a little short sighted. your example of pleasing the masses is free health care. the money has to come from somewhere, unless we stop paying doctors so much(which is a good idea), so how have European countries who offer free health care dealt with this? very high income taxes, do you think that that will please the masses? no they would rather be sick and be voluntarily robbed by the insurance company than think that the government is taking their money to pay for other people's health care. and besides, giving people free health care will make them conform to what? do you think that giving people things will make them change? will they become more interested in being better people or listening to you? only if you promise more things that they like, so now you are stuck you have to continue to give the people what they want. what happens when you give them something that they do not want, tell them something that they do not want to hear. what you say is true, "please the masses and they will conform." that is half of modern politics or capitalistic agenda, the other half is to make people think that what you are giving them is what they want. do you think that our people, the american people wanted to fight a war on the other side of the world? after 9-11 sure, people wanted justice, revenge and the possibility of a sense of security. so we invaded Afghanistan and outed the taliban. but thats not all, those people in charge convinced "the people" that Iraq was a danger, perhaps they were or are. they made us think that what they are selling is what we want, what have the american people decided since? support of the war is down, because we were lied to.

the country that you are referring to is Singapore, i hear it is very beautiful and all citizens no matter where in the world that they live must return for two or three weeks to serve in the reserve army.

and you are speaking of education, one of our countries biggest problems. raising or lowering the standards is a simple problem, the deeper problem is, what are the standards by which we judge our education. i believe that unless a person chooses to learn, actively engages in the learning process then all they are doing is cramming for the next test and will forget anything that they could have learned. the current standards for judging if education is working in schools is now reading and math, so the schools feel pressure to teach reading and math at the cost of a real education.

yes we do need leaders who represent good values but instead we have hypocrites who preach values. compare a layman such as Mahatma Gandhi with any one of our senators or politicians. there is no comparison.
and communism, while a good concept for examination of society, it is not possible on a large scale. the political concept of communism, the ideal is a static state of reciprocation, where all things are equal. but people, though they have equal possibilities, are not equal. a man with strength and skill is not equal to a child, or a man of the same age with no skills or who is crippled. i recently read something about the caste system of India and while it has deteriorated over the millennia into a hereditary based system and caste is demonized in our modern age it started out as something valid and utilitarian. a person in thier life was studied from an early age and thier best skills determined thier caste. a strong, competitive, atheletic man might be best suited for a warrior caste, while a quiet introspective person might be better suited for a brahmin, contemplative scholarly caste. but that is something else.
good day

there is an assumption inherent in this topics as which is the same in many of the topics in this guild, that assumption is that there is an answer. for many questions there are answers, for many questions there as more than one answer. when it comes to those tough questions, the ones that man kind has pondered perhaps as long as we have been able to ponder them, having an answer may not be the proper course of action. you get on me because i preach a lot yet have not outlined exactly what i believe, i do not tell you what you should do but speak "vaguely" of what we could do. though i say much i do not have answer nor do i claim to have answers and for many question i feel that it would be a failure to come to a final conclusion. i feel that i would miss out on deeper understanding if i decided once and for all, for example, what the meaning of life is. i take it as it comes, i work with what i have and i start where i am. i cannot foresee a time or condition in which i will feel that i have reached the end nor will i ever become bored with exploration of my self and my world. final answers for tough questions are for people who are tired of thinking and want to move on. i have met a number of older people who had studied philosophy in college and decided on a particular branch or theory and studied it exclusively and once they had read all of the books they felt themselves to be experts and they can quote on the spot the words of wise men with the intention to be wise themselves. though they have changed, their lives have changed, their worlds have changed but their beliefs remain static, as old and dusty as the books from which they came. you are on the verge of knowing what i mean, you know that we have to be fluid, there will not be a "once and for all" in any field, especially a field dominated by something as subtle as thoughts.

this assumption of a final answer is why everyone has such a hard time understanding absolute truth, they think that truth must be one static thing which can be captured in words, but absolute truth is not something which we can make up or compose, it is something that is there despite all that we say about it and we have to see that we are a part of it and through that we can find experience of it.

the problem here is that none of us are really sure what the original poster of this topic intended for us to discuss, and we have just kind of taken it off in our own direction... or rather, several directions, without having a set topic to come back to...

i dont watch tv. my news comes from my computer, which only complies with my wishes to get online about 30% of the time... i didn't know about the writers' strike til a month after it'd started. perhaps i'm not the best to settle on a topic

reform and conform only address superficial issues. it is the core which needs attention. change your self inside and it will be reflected in your life and through such it will spread to those who have contact with you and so on.

formless