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Edited on Thu Jul-21-11 05:41 PM by Peace Patriot
...I don't think it matters too much, and I would tackle the fascist infusion of religion into our secular society and other rightwing assaults on democracy from a different angle: Get rid of the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines and watch "miracles" of progressivism occur in our public life.
I was raised in the strictest of Catholic schools, and was taught things that would make many non-Catholics' hair stand on end, by methods that would see the teachers put in jail if today's standards regarding child abuse were applied. (Nope, not sex abuse--that I know of--just abuse: slapping, hitting, assaulting with a ruler and other implements, humiliation, scapegoating, etc.)
It took me about a month, in college, to shed most of what I was taught, but I retained some things, like good handwriting and how to analyze total bullcrap from "authorities."
The latter was an excellent lesson! There are many similarities between Catholic teaching (of that kind) and modern corporate propaganda, as there are many similarities between the monolithic, anti-democratic structure of the Roman Catholic Church and the structure of modern corporations, and between the power of the first across international borders during the early and middle ages and the power of transglobal corporations today.
If your mind gets honed to a sharp edge on items like Infant Baptism (non-baptized babies go to Limbo, if they die--forever removed from the presence of God) and the Trinity (a man and his son and the "holy spirit" are one and the same all-knowing, all-powerful deity, and created heaven and earth and all life without any useless females around to help out at all), you are ready for Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Urinal, or the New York Slimes, or Chevron-Texaco's innocence of the Rhode Island-sized toxic oil mess that they left behind in Ecuador, or BP getting more oil concessions from our government, or corporate "monitoring" programs of their slave labor shops in places like the Mariana Islands, or 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, etc. You are ready to recognize the bullcrap of the powerful on sight. Catholic school was excellent prep for this.
The thing is, they couldn't stop me from THINKING--and, indeed, they gave me much to think about that needed rejecting. The human mind is like that. It is inherently creative, rebellious and adventuresome and it really, really, REALLY does not like to be limited--caged, bound, imprisoned, forced to accept the unreasonable and the absurd. And, in the end, the rightwingers and their sponsors will pay, big time, for propagandizing young minds when those minds rebel against the brainwashing they have had to endure.
I KNOW that it is not an easy thing to see our public school system and our culture degraded like this--with flabby-brained nonsense from the loony right. And I honor and admire all those who are fighting it directly. I am just saying that--as with many current political problems--the operatives of the far right have been gifted with power and with a media trumpet far out of proportion to their numbers, and are impervious to the opinion of the majority because of this. And the best way to address this is to look at the actual mechanisms of power--in particular the counting of our votes--and the egregious takeover of that mechanism, in the case of our voting system, by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold, and which now controls EIGHTY PERCENT of the vote counting in the USA.
Whether these far right loonies on the Texas school board are (s)elected, or appointed by those who are (s)elected, THAT is the core problem. There are other problems, of course--media and money feeding into the system that (s)elects and props up unrepresentative public officials. But we can't even get to those problems if we can't elect half decent people to office, with half-decent commitments to public service and the "common good." Vote counting is the most fundamental element of democracy. Without vote counting that everyone can see and understand, we don't really have a democracy, and the corrective functions of democracy cannot work.
We are looking at a very ABNORMAL situation. It is NOT NORMAL for such weird elements of our society to have such power. We shouldn't have to be arguing with them, on their many idiotic "talking points," except perhaps in a minor way. They do NOT represent most of us. On the whole, they are a backwards movement, aimed at stupidity.
It might be good to consider some of their points--if it's possible to separate those out from the "talking points" of the billionaire "think tanks" that they come from. For instance, I think it's good to question ALL scientific theories and findings. A lot of "scientific findings" are corporate-funded these days and certainly need to be questioned--and it can be difficult to find scientists who are not interested parties.
But beyond that it's just good science to question everything, in very fundamental ways--constantly poking at "given wisdom" of any kind, and, if we are so inclined, seeking out evidence to disprove even the most fundamental of science's assertions. And I would go so far as to say that science class could be a good place to consider some of what the scientific community deems "woo-woo"--including the possible "intelligent design" of the universe (or maybe the tendency of matter to create intelligence and consciousness). Why does the universe SEEM "organized" and in such specific ways--for instance, most matter gathering into spiral galaxies, or, the clear progression in evolution from simple organisms to complex organisms to bigger brains and consciousness (at least in the one instance we know of--life on earth)? Does evolution tend to produce intelligence and consciousness? Why? What advantage are species' getting from increased brain size, intelligence and the ability to write poetry and wonder at the stars, and is it somehow a component of evolution to select for brains and eyes that understand (or try to understand) what they are looking at, when they look at the universe? Another question on this theme might be, has our apparent advantage as to intelligence, dexterity and engineering, turned into a disadvantage? Too much success, leading to the death of the planet and our own extinction? (That would not be a very intelligent design. Why didn't evolution evolve wisdom and sustainable economies along with our abilities to alter the planet? Or, are we now on our own, as to evolution--we have choices; we can direct evolution; WE are the "intelligent designers" we have been looking for! Ha!)
These are difficult questions and science is one place to look for answers. And they are exciting questions, like the ones kids asks. Also, science has been WRONG. Often! Science is basically an experimental frame of mind. It is not a religion. It is not a matter of faith or belief. But it did start out with--and was indeed born of--what science would now call "woo-woo." Astrology and astronomy were one, for instance, in the not so deep past. Astrology was the mother of astronomy. It was mainly human curiosity about how WE fit into the universe--our relationship to the stars, planets and sun and the influence of those bodies on us--as well as the practical matter of predicting the future (eclipses, harvest time, flooding of the Nile, etc.) from the movements of celestial objects--that prompted the development of observations and the creation of calendars. Altogether it was a religion with scientific data collected both to reinforce the beliefs of the religion and to understand the overall system that we are part of, in a practical way.
It may be that the separation of science and religion is a temporary development in the overall evolution of our consciousness and that some day people with a more comprehensive understanding of the universe will wed them once again--for instance, science (real science) undertaken as worship of Gaia and thus tempered with wisdom about our collective activities and impacts. In any case, I think that a good science class should be open to such questions and they should be discussed in terms of if and how science can investigate them. For if you look at children with open eyes, you will see early humans--tribal creatures who don't separate one thing from another, the way our standard curriculums do. Maybe we shouldn't inflict them with our notions of what science is, and what religion is, and what history is, and so forth, but leave our manic categorization of things for later, and let them sort it out--let them create their own curriculum around the questions they want answered--and, especially, don't put them at the stressful center of our political debate.
Whatever we decide to "teach" children, they will come up with their own read on things and create their own version of human civilization. They are equipped to do this--that is our evolutionary heritage--and they WILL do it, no matter what we tell them. My most fervent hope is that we are able to pass forward the fundamentals of democracy, as they were passed, by others, to us. Freedom. Equality. Self-rule. The sovereignty of the people. Human and civil rights for all. Collective decision-making for the common welfare. No monarchs, popes, preacher-men, presidents or corporate executives dictating to us. Individual and collective creativity. Government truly 'of, by and for the people." It is in great peril in this country--not from the "Mad Tea Party" but from those behind them and from our own indolence.
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(minor edits)
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