Monthly Archives: June 2017

Ed-u-ca-tion.

Ah, the sound of the word alone evokes feelings of hope, prosperity, success andwhats that?money, you say? Ah, yes. And money.

We grow up believing that education can defeat all circumstance, transcend social classes, and pave a 24 carat, solid gold nugget path to upward mobility blissdom. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! (No, that was not a scream, people, those were the angels harmonizing. Clearly.)

And, isnt that the case?

Dont we go to school and get an education to learn, think independently, develop our interests and become all-around badasses? Dont we praise, worship and promote education as the be-all, end-all solution to the worlds worries? Dont we embark on philanthropic missions to spread the good word of education to those that dont have access? Doesnt education equal opportunity? Dont I ask a lot of rhetorical questions?

Were constantly talking about what education can do for us.

Sure, theres plenty that education can do for all of us. But in our flurry of excitement, we fail to recognize that tiny little detail called the law of reciprocity. What, exactly, are we doing for education in return?

The answer: A hell of a lot more than we realize.

Why do you suppose presidents go out of their way to make education a priority? And I quote, from President Obamas website:

Preparing our children to compete in the global economy is one of the most urgent challenges we face.

Sounds noble enough, doesnt it? (Note: This is not a political statement for or against President Obama. Just an example.) As much as wed like to believe that those in power are petitioning for education because theyre good people, or because theyre looking out for our personal well-being, or because they want social equality, or maybe just so we dont look like big, fumbling, sloppy idiots next to the Chineseits a happy little love story, but it isnt the real reason. The real reason is tucked nicely right into that quote up there. See it there? Look closely. See it now?

Economy.

Economy is a fun little word, especially right now. Our economy happens to be based on capitalism. This means that goods, or capital, is traded for profit, and profit is the name of the game. The term capital can encompass many things, but theres one form of capital in particular thats the most important form of all, and guess what?

That capital is YOU.

You probably think of yourself as far more than a mere factor of production,but human beings in a capitalist society are exactly thathuman capital. (Worse, what really stings is that economists refer to human capital as a fungible resource, which basically means that youre interchangeable. Ouch.) Basically, your knowledge contributes to your ability to perform labor, in order to produce economic value. Therefore, more knowledge = more labor = more economic value.

And how do you get more knowledge? Ed-u-ca-tion. (Cue angels.)

This is why education is promoted. And Im sure it comes as no surprise, the link between education and economic value. Weve always grasped that concept on on the surface, but the question is, do we understand what that means? For example, what if its the case that the only education youre receiving is that which contributes to your economic value? Some might argue that it is.

We educate people to perform the functions that are needed, so that they can be productive members of society. Youve heard that phrase before, right? In this sense, within the education system we are essentially a bunch of giant pawns that are manipulated, shaped and formed into what is needed in order to produce, AKA, what is needed in order to make a profit. We arent gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge; we are gaining specific knowledgethat which is dictated by the elite, with their goals in mind, since they run the education system in the first placein order to perform certain functions later in life. Were being prepared for the work force. Were being primed to produce.

Were being used, in the deepest sense.

From this perspective, the economy doesnt exist to support its people; its people exist to support the economy. The term wage slave has never held more truth.

Lets say a school curriculum emphasizes mathematics over history. (It isnt too often you hear of AP History, do you?) Its highly probable that the students that attend that school will rank mathematics as more important than history. In turn, those people are going to regard jobs that require specialized skills in mathematics as more important than those that require specialized skills in history.

Students are told that jobs in mathematics will mean greater economic opportunities, which may be partly true, but what society gets out of promoting mathematics through the education system is a greater supply of math geniuses. A greater supply of math genius human capital. And a greater supply of math genius human capital translates into a more competitive society. And a more competitive society translates into a more profitable society. And a more profitable societyyou guessed ittranslates into a better economy.

Was the connection clear there?

So lets skip past all the wordy explanations and get down to itbasically, youre busting your ass to learn math so someone at the top can get even richer. Its a hidden curriculum, if you will. Its a case of those in power manipulating schooling to serve their own agenda. The opinions of the majority are formed mainly through education, and the government decides whats taught in an educational setting.

Coincidence? I think not.

The education system is the perfect way to transmit fundamental values necessary for capitalism to be successfulcompetition, individualism, consumerismbecause it has access to children right from the beginning, and for a really, really (really) long time. Its socialization by education. Education is a tool to wield power.

If you need more proof, think back to when schooling first became widespread, when Western nations tried to colonize indigenous peoples, providing them with moral guidance in an attempt to convert them to Western values and norms.

Why?

So Westerners could exploit them by extracting taxes and getting cheap labor, as well as encourage the spread of Western culture and language. Doesnt sound so much like an institution with your best interests in mind, does it? It was about power and money then, and its about power and money now.

But, its pretty hard to reject a piece of the status quo when youve spent your whole life unconsciously perpetuating it.

In school, too often we are taught what to think, not how to think, and theres a fundamental difference. Its crucial to acquire the latter if you want to do big things. Critical thinking skills are lacking, and thats why I blogto encourage it.

Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, but thats the point. By inspiring critical thought, the hope is to nudge the human race forward, if only just a little bit. Critical thinking leads to action. And if we ever want to shake up the status quo, were going to have to act.

Am I rebelling against capitalism? No. But I am calling for a more conscious awareness of how the world works around usand how it affects us, in turn? Yes.

Am I rebelling against education? No. But am I calling for a broader base of knowledge within the education system? Hell yes.

I get capitalism, but heres the thing:

I dont like being someone elses capitalI want to be my own.

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Education & Wage Slavery | The Middle Finger Project

BY SOFO ARCHON

Get a job. Go to work. Get married. Have children. Follow fashion. Act normal. Walk on the pavement. Watch TV. Obey the law. Save for your old age. Now repeat after me: I am free. ~Unknown

Most of us understand how horrible the practice of literal slavery is. But theres another form of slavery that we dont seem to notice and are barely concerned about wage slavery.

We have the technologicalcapacity to feed, shelter, and provide for the basic needs and wants of all humanity. However, oureconomic system prevents us from livingin a world of abundance that we could easily create, if we wanted to, for the simple reason that money is scarce and hence not all people can afford to live a decent life.

In thissystem, mostpeople have to submit to wage slavery, whether they like it or not,competingwith one anotherfor jobs that will allow them to merely survive, and always feeling financially insecure,which is causing them tremendous stress.

If youve been wondering whether you are a slave to your job, these 5 signswill reveal you the truth:

1. You feel compelled towork.Work is immensely beautiful when done out of love to contribute to the well-being of the world. However, the majority of people dont work because they love what they are doing orout of their desire to share their gifts to the world. On the contrary, they hate their job, and they do it only because they feel compelled to do it. They submit to their job, just so they canearn money, something that they would never choose to do, if given the chance to live wellwithout having to doso.

2. Youhave a boss.Since most peoples wagedepends on their employers, they have to see them as bosses and yieldto their will. A clear sign that most peopleare slaves to theirjobis that they cannot have a say and express themselves creatively when carrying out a task. They just have obey tothe orders given to them by thoseabove them in the work hierarchy.

3. Your job wastes your time. The standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 8hours per day,which means that about ahalfof most peopleswaking lifeis owned by their employers, and they waste it doing things they hate doing! If by freedom we meanthe choiceto spend ourtime the way weenjoy spending it, then this clearlymeans that everyone who has a normal job is nothing but a slave.

4. Your job wastes your energy.Other than wasting your time, a job is also veryenergy consuming. After having worked for about 8 hours in conditions of stress, most people return to their home feeling utterly exhausted, not having the energy anymore to do anything creative that gives them joy and improves the quality of their life. All their energy has been wasted during their work, leaving them physically, emotionally and mentally drained.

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?~Charles Bukowski

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4 Signs You are a Slave to Your Job | The Unbounded Spirit

ERIK S. LESSER/EPA/NewscomU.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a gathering of more than 1,500 federal, state, and local law enforcement agents that he was ready to follow President Donald Trump's orders and "make our country safe again." For Sessions, that entails "mak[ing] the fight against child exploitation and human trafficking a top priority."

Both were major priorities for the Obama-era Department of Justice and FBI too, so Sessions' bluster is based on a bit of a false premise. But what difference does it makeprioritizing the protection of children and trafficking-victims can't be a bad thing, right?

Alas: When it's done by the likes of the Justice Department, it can be. Beyond all the big talk about saving kids, the agency actually allocates most of its anti-exploitation agenda to arresting adult sex workers and snagging people in stings that involve no actual victims. That is, when it's not aiding in the arrests of exploited children themselves. If Sessions' June 6 speechclosing the National Law Enforcement Training on Child Exploitation meeting in Atlantasignals greater federal investment in status-quo solutions, expect to see even more "human trafficking stings" targeting adults engaged in prostitution, immigrants eligible for deportation, and asset-heavy escort-advertising sites, as well as any broader civil liberties they can plausibly grab along the way.

In Atlanta, Sessions warned of the dangers of "emerging technologies," encrypted-communication platforms, social-networking sites, and "the so-called Darknet." These, he declared, are the tools of such "depraved people" as "child pornographers, sextortionists, and human traffickers."

"We need to help our fellow citizens know what to watch for, and encourage them to tell us when they see something troubling," Sessions urged. "Nothing less than a united effort will be enough to keep our children from becoming victims of exploitation."

Sessions finished his speech by presenting a video on "the importance of recognizing the signs of child sex-trafficking and reporting suspected crimes." It featured the tagline: "Modern day slavery exists. If you see it, report it." Even the aggressively neutral Politico couldn't avoid making drug war comparisons, describing the video as "hearkening back to the D.A.R.E era" with its "hyperbolic language" and its portrait of "a slippery slope of behavior leading to irrevocable consequences."

The idea that every American child is just one smartphone app away from being snatched into sex slavery is absurd, and it bears no relationship to what both anecdotes and data tell us about such matters. But it does make a nice narrative if you want to wage war on pesky encrypted technologies that thwart all sorts of investigators; or to insert more Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security, and FBI agents into community policing; or to get everyone from flight attendants to truck drivers telling federal agents about anyone "suspicious"; or to ensure the continued relevance of an agency whose drug-war glory days are behind it.

As Reason's Matt Welch pointed out in January, the Sessions confirmation hearing featured no lack of hysteria about human trafficking. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) began her interrogation by asking about sex trafficking, which she called the second-largest criminal industry in Americaa "factually insane claim that will probably give [Sessions] more power," Welch noted:

In order for "human sex trafficking" to be the second largest criminal industry in the United States, it would at minimum need to supplant illegal narcotics (roughly $100 billion a year, according to a 2014 Rand Corp. estimate), or Medicare fraud (in the ballpark of $60 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office in 2015). So distant is reality from those numbers that even the commonly cited figure of $9.8 billion a year for all trafficking and keep in mind that human smuggling dwarfs sex trafficking was given "four Pinocchios" by Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler.

Senators at the confirmation hearing also grilled Sessions on whether pornography is a public health crisis and how open he is to aggressive use of obscenity laws.

See more here:

Jeff Sessions Says Social Media, Encrypted Apps Hamper War on 'Modern Slavery' - Reason (blog)

For most of the first century following the American Civil War, histories of the wars legacy particularly the Reconstruction era tended to suffer from the myopia of considering only the relationship between white Northerners and white Southerners. As the war neared its end, some in the Union (like Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, though in very different ways) stressed the need for reconciliation between the Union and the defeated Confederates; other Radical Republicans wanted a more vigorous demonstration of vengeance towards the rebels and their leaders for their treason. The result of looking at the war and its aftermath solely through this framework is that waves of revisionism swung back and forth between views sympathetic to the Radicals desire to remake the South and liberal-sounding histories that condemned them as hard-hearted zealots insistent on prolonging the nations divisions, and that painted Reconstruction as a cesspool of corruption. The latter type of history was largely responsible for the bad historical reputation of Ulysses S. Grants Radical-friendly presidency. It also colored denunciations of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (although Johnson, who was wrong about Reconstruction, was right about the specific dispute at issue in the impeachment.) You can still catch a whiff of this latter view in the chapters on that era in John F. Kennedys Profiles in Courage.

The problem with the how hard should we have been on the Confederates debate is simple: it leaves black people out of the picture. Thats a rather large omission. The Civil War was not, as some would have you believe, fought only over the issue of slavery; it was the culmination of a series of disputes over ideas and policies, and seeing the war as a crusade to free the slaves was never more than the view of a sizeable minority faction in the North. Even Lincoln was willing, all the way to 1865, to make some concessions on the pace of abolition in order to end the war and preserve the Union. But slavery was unquestionably the main cause of the rupture between North and South, without which there would have been no war. The debates and resolutions adopted by Southern states when they seceded made it extraordinarily clear that the South was leaving mainly to protect the institution of slavery. (Moreover, many of the secondary disputes between the two sides were connected to the nature of the Southern slave economy). And in the debates over Reconstruction, the civil and economic rights of the freed slaves were a crucial battleground, one on which Northern Republicans fought long and hard for a decade before exhaustedly surrendering in 1876 in exchange for control of the White House.

If you have only ever read treatments of the life of Robert E. Lee that suffer from the myopic exclusion of black people, Adam Serwers latest piece in The Atlantic could offer you a useful corrective. But Serwer suffers from his own myopia.

Lee was widely revered in his own day even by his adversaries partly for being a great general, and partly as a paragon of a great many virtues valued by the (white) American society of his time. Serwer offers to add to that picture both a reminder that Lee shared the retrograde racial attitudes of his time and that the cause Lee fought for was inseparable in every particular from slavery. (He offers as one example the fact that Lee would not engage in prisoner of war exchanges that treated captured black Union soldiers as prisoners of war rather than escaped property). He also notes that Lees role as a postwar conciliator must be balanced against his continuing opposition to black civil rights, a movement that would mature into the full horror of Jim Crow within a few years of Lees 1870 death. If Serwer stopped there, hed be on solid enough ground.

But intent on attacking every aspect of Lees memory, Serwer keeps going. First, he berates Lee for the grand-strategic decision to wage a conventional war against the Union:

Despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

This echoes a May 19 op-ed by Michael Rosenwald in the Washington Post, tendentiously titled The truth about Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: He wasnt very good at his job, which chose to level the same charge at the same time, probably for the same reason:

Outmanned, Lee should have taken a more defensive posture, drawing the North into difficult Southern terrain. Instead, he was constantly on the offensive, which resulted in heavy casualties and broken spirits.

Its true that the Confederacys grand strategy in the war was badly flawed. Indeed, the decision to wage the war at all was insane: the Confederacy was far less of a match in manpower or industry for the Union than the Thirteen Colonies had been relative to Great Britain in 1775, and unlike the colonists, the Confederacy didnt have an ocean between themselves and their adversaries. The Confederate cause could succeed only if it was vastly better-led than the Union, and thanks in large part to Lee, it managed to pull that off for the first two and a half years of the war.

However, Serwers attack on Lee as a strategist completely ignores two vital points. One, Lee wasnt in charge of grand strategy, and in reality wasnt even a theater commander until June of 1862, when he was put in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia in time to halt a Union advance on the Confederate capital of Richmond. Lee had spent the year before that fighting relatively peripheral battles and supervising the construction of defensive trenches around Richmond. The Confederacy was a democracy, and its elected government was headed by Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate, former Secretary of War and a colonel in the Mexican War who took an active role in military strategy. It wasnt Lee who decided to locate the new capital so close to the Union lines, necessitating the commitment of extensive resources to defend Eastern Virginia. It was Davis and his government, not Lee, who imposed the political imperatives that drove Confederate strategy.

More broadly, Serwer wholly fails to consider the moral consequences of a purely defensive war of Fabian retreats and guerilla fighting on Confederate turf. Such a war which Lee never wanted during the war, and which he rejected as a path of insurgency after Appomattox would have been one of scorched earth and embitterment, not only wrecking the South even in victory but making any permanent reconciliation vastly more difficult in defeat. The human toll of such a war could be seen from the places where it had erupted during the Revolution, like North Carolina. Sherman would ultimately bring scorched earth to Georgia, and the results hardly recommend a deliberate strategy to invite that for the entire war.

Related to this is how little credit he gives Lees eminence and gentlemanly surrender for preventing a long-term insurgency, avoiding an aftermath like the French Revolution, and enabling the country to return to being a single, functional political whole in time enough to see the vast rise in American prosperity and power between 1870 and 1945. If the old histories of Reconstruction were myopic in forgetting African-Americans, Serwers view is myopic in considering no one else, not even the majority of the population. Looking back at Jim Crow, he cannot see how anything could have been worse, why national reconciliation after the war had any value, or why anyone would have wanted peace in the America of 1865-76. We can use the distance of history to judge the national decision to fight no further, but we should have some understanding of what costs the people of the day had paid already, and what they spared by laying down the sword.

In fact, Lees willingness after the war to subordinate the interests of freed slaves to the cause of union and peace was not so radically different from the view that Lincoln himself took during the war. All the way up to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Lincoln had held onto the view that some concessions on slavery (albeit fewer as the war wore on) could be exchanged for restoring the nation. That doesnt make Lee the moral equal of Lincoln, but the Americans of that day did not see things in the same terms we do now.

Lee was no hero; he fought for an unjust cause, and he lost. Unlike the Founding Fathers (even the slaveholders among them), he failed the basic test of history: leaving the world better and freer than he found it. And while he was not responsible for the Souths strategic failures, his lack of strategic vision places him below Grant, Sherman and Winfield Scott in any assessment of the wars greatest generals. We should not be building new monuments to him, but if we fail to understand why the men of his day revered him, we are likelier to fail to understand who people revere today, and why. And tearing down statues of Lee today is less about understanding the past than it is a contest to divide the people of todays America, and see who holds more power. Thats no better an attitude today than it was in Lees day.

As much as I value history understanding it is essential to understanding our own world today one should be suspicious of people looking to make a contemporary political cause out of the American Civil War, the most bloody and divisive episode in our nations past. The results are often more racial division and less understanding of history. Serwers interest in attacking General Lee is transparently about the present, not the past. That myopia is how he ends up down a blind alley.

Original post:

A Myopic View Of Robert E. Lee - National Review