Education is limited to things we know. It's a knowledge transfer. In areas where there is no prior knowledge, education isn't a fix. Also, prior knowledge can be contested with new knowledge and then change to a hopefully more correct version. It is this process that gets exploited by fake news. Take the example of Napoleons height. In school I learned that he was of a small stature. In recent years I've heard (read on Wikipedias list of common misconceptions) that this was in fact false, he was average height and only appeared small because he was often seen next to someone who was unusually large. So now what am I going to make of Napoleons height? I can't easily confirm the truth and it doesn't really matter anyway, so suddenly I realize that I never had true knowledge about his height. It's the same with other things that I were thought. I realize most of it is just what someone told me and not real knowledge. This reflects pretty much the majority of my education and I think I now understand Socrates a little better: "I know that I know nothing".
So no, education isn't a silver bullet. It's just a nice sounding word for "things I've been told by other people". It doesn't really help me differentiate between what's the truth and what isn't. So once there are two ideas, like "Napoleon was a short person" and "Napoleon was of average height" I'm lost. Either could be true and I don't have the free time to get to the bottom of every single thing I once thought I knew.
That seems to be the case. Everyone is talking about context, without establishing the context, as if it just exists and everyone should know it. How am I supposed to know all that context, when it's written nowhere and nearly nobody makes an attempt to establish it?
Maybe all the context is part of being human and I just don't get it. It's not the first time people suspected me of trolling, when all I'm trying to do is to make sense of the world and asking questions when I don't get something. Unfortunately, in this case it was a fruitless endeavor.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that a sites legitimacy is questioned because the site isn't crippled by ads to the point of being nearly unusable? That's a really unfortunate state of affairs. Especially since I don't think small sites trying to build an audience can afford to cripple themselves to the same degree with ads as bigger sites can.
One reason I can think of for increased Republican content is because of outrage economics. They tend to generate more clicks. It's also something that isn't catered to by the big news networks. Smaller sites I'm regularly visiting for over ten years have also shifted in this direction and those type of articles always generate more comments than other ones, so the tactic seemingly works.
It's easy to hit because the incentives work out that way. If the incentives were adjusted through higher tax for higher weight, I wonder if this trend could be reverted.
If there was a fair competition over who gets to live, it can hardly be characterized as unfair. Also, did you already forget that China had a one-child policy? You can look up how that turned out.
There's no difference between your own children and white children, if you are white, is there? Generally speaking, the future is something that needs securing. If you don't secure your future, you might not have any. One way to secure your future is by learning a valuable skill another one is to marry into a wealthy family. There doesn't have to be a boogeyman threatening your future. Just missing out on opportunities or wasting your life away in idleness can be a big enough blow to ruin your future.
And how do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people? That's a pretty big non-sequitur. The quote is about securing a future, not to "kill all infidels".
I don't think you can construct "It's okay to be white" as something wrong, because it's just inherently correct. It worries me, that you even try to find something wrong the the slogan.
That work sets you free is an unsubstantiated claim. I'm working and I don't think that this set me free. On the contrary, I think it's pretty shackling.
What would be a not naive understanding of the quote? I think it is reasonable to want a future for your own children. How are we living in a world where this is controversial?
I lived my entire live frugally. I enjoy that. Working 40h weeks on the other hand isn't all that fun, even though now I have thousands of dollars to blow every month. If I had the choice I'd live frugally and not work.
I'm eating the same thing everyday, like to stay at home and hate to buy things. I'm working because I know it's necessary.
Post-scarcity doesn't solve the fundamental problem of earth being unable to sustain infinite humans. Even with infinite resources, there will still be finite space.
Historically, human populations that did grow beyond sustainable had to starve to death back to sustainable. If you prevent this by giving everyone free food, that's not really a good thing.
I do not think such a world is desirable. It would just distort markets. Everyone will charge more for everything, starting with rent.
If you cover the basic needs of "everyone", the number of everyone will just go up and up and up until you can't cover the basic needs anymore. Do you think earth can sustain infinite people? There has to be a mechanism preventing people to increase their number to unsustainable levels. The current world already does a really bad job at that, I don't think we have to make this worse.
I think the most desirable world is one with a build-in pruning process, where only the most adapted people survive, thus preventing the number of humans to reach unsustainable levels, while still progressing to greater heights. After all, if you just put a cap on the number of children people are allowed to have you're just going to stagnate. It's better to have a large pool to select the fittest and prune the rest, resulting in the same number at the end, only with much better quality. Historically, war was such a pruning process. But I don't think it was an especially good one.
Ever since I've looked up what the fourteen words are, I'm both struggling to understand why they are controversial and associated with the far right. They seem pretty reasonable and on par with the "It's okay to be white" campaign.
So no, education isn't a silver bullet. It's just a nice sounding word for "things I've been told by other people". It doesn't really help me differentiate between what's the truth and what isn't. So once there are two ideas, like "Napoleon was a short person" and "Napoleon was of average height" I'm lost. Either could be true and I don't have the free time to get to the bottom of every single thing I once thought I knew.