- 14 Mar 2017 03:10
#14785561
[quote="QatzelOk"]Having time to think is absolutely essential, but so is having a disposition to think in terms of collective well-being and Big Picture.[/quote]
Agreed.
[quote]If you spend your youth watching a lot of media and buying a lot of status objects, you are not being trained to think this way. You end up retiring and consuming "old people" products and services the way that young TV-watching children are trained to consume young person products and services. Rather than "wise," you become a prodigious consumer of pre-packaged travel and pain killers.[/quote]
I disagree.
Kids under 12 can't really think in terms of the abstract, but they can and do become accustomed to them, if they hear them being discussed around the dinner table. It doesn't require hours of time. When they're older, they can discuss them in detail as we (meaning my friends and I) did at University.
[quote]if you grow up in a socially-dead societies like most of North America, your "thinking" is retarded by a lack of opportunity to discuss Big Picture with a wide variety of human being types all your life. Lack of wisdom starts very young, and is caused by lack of wisdom-developing habits and social expectations.
Suburbia cuts off the variety of experiences, as do income inequality and mass media consumption. You need to get away from these things if you want to be wise, but if you do, you will be socially rejected - which most people find hellish.[/quote]
You've advance this position for as long as I can remember.
It isn't socially dead. People don't stop talking or thinking anywhere. Anywhere.
[quote]With no disposition to think in general terms, old people just become snickering old fools - clever enough to get away with cheating on their diets and excercise routines, but not wise enough to help anyone with accrued knowledge or interesting perspectives.[/quote]
Not everyone reads Socrates. Not everyone jogs into their 90s. Doesn't mean they can't think.
The original inhabitants of North America were extremely reverent of their seniors. And also, of nature. There's a link.
Note: Citing a few posters on pofo as proof of a general theory... is very weak methodology. My use of "most" already accounts for outliers (if they are outliers, which you haven't proven).
I agree, but they're the only ones we have in common, and that's four more then you've supplied of those who revered their seniors or the seniors themselves. How about a little evidence to support your claims?
How about defining terms like "big picture" thinking
How about starting a few threads?
[usermention=16462]@Godstud[/usermention]
Qatz has been stuck on this meme for years. North America sucks, it's culturally dead, cars are satanic, etc. One minute he's telly us farmers were the great thinker, next he wants us to move into the cities. I have no idea what he means by big picture thinking, but I would argue that many of the issues Socrates grappled with are still being debated.
Boomers and Gen Xers have advanced technology and science, giving us a peak into some of the more obscure elements, ie, seeing so far back time to almost the big bang.
As to this stuff about the collective well being, Dr Lee pointed out the Canadian health care system. I'd add our education system, still affordable, our pension, still available etc. Socially, we've become one of the most egalitarian on the planet. Most of this is since WWII, some because of boomers and Gen Xers.
“There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true" - Winston Churchill