h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Az, my speciality is informal learning.

show people you like them, conduct your self in a way that engenders trust, encourage them to stretch their own abilities and congrtulate/support them when things arent going well to help them acheieve sucess.

Im a facillitator rather than a teacher. The old image of learning by rote is going out of the window. You could teach me to say a whole bunch of Spanish words, but I'd probably learn more if you took me out for a few

I'm sure if people from an earlier age were to look at this, they would be very encouraged.

People from times gone by might be encouraged by your list but it isolates the good and positive things being done.


* Universal charter of human rights

A geat leap forward in the way we think about things, but unfortunately it is currently being erroded by individual goverments who not only ignore it in their actions but also are busy enacting legislation which contravenes it.


* Intolerance towards the beating or abuse of children

Really? Im sure you are speaking for your self and some others you know but overall around the world the evidence is that certain levels of abuse of childre are enshrined in law.


* Compulsory education of children

One of the more sucessful things on your list. However what concerns me is not that children are going to school but what are hey being taught there. Creationism as science, jingoism, how to hold a gun?


* Abolition of the death penalty

Atleast those awaiting death in prison cells went through some sort of trial. If you happen to live next door to a *suspected* insurgent your neighbours death warrant may also be yours.


* Constutional democracy : A say in who runs your country

I cant argue with this one, I only wish it was used more effectively, damn, I'd be happy if it was just used more!


* Health care safety nets

Well if you happen to be from the right part of the world and only need treatment that is consistent with your nations moral preconceptions if you arent and dont tough.


* Social welfare safety nets

See above. If you come from a developing country you can still be denied assistance and at the same time be denied the right to support your self.


* Anti-racism movements

As long as it does not upset the majorities sensibilities and then you get told stop making a fuss, its not like we spit on you anymore, or words to that effect. What I call Anti-racism inaction.


* Humanitarian aid agencies

See Health care safety nets.


* Environmental pollution controls

More cars with bigger engines, that are slightly more fuel efficient, but that are carryin fewer pasengers because people are in their own vehicles clogging up the roads but while they sit there burning up fuel and going no where they can look around at the sea of people going nowhere fast and be happy that all the shiny new cars are slightly more fuel efficient.


* Clean water and food hygiene systems

Food when you can get it is now so prcessed that it is sometimes doing you more harm than good. Moreover overly clean food denies growing children the chance to develope important immunities. The pesticides and chemicals used to produce and package food is creepin into our clean water system and affecting our fertility even as we speak. (which might not be a bad thing as far as humans are concerned but will further endager species that are at risk of extinction.)

* The right to protest

and be totally ignored.


* The right to have a defence councel

Except if you are held under the new anti-terror laws.


* War crimes tribunals

If you happen to be on the losing side and then only if you dont have enough friends to get you off the hook completly. While at the same time the countries that are pushing for the use of more tribunals are selling arms to the next generation of bloody dictators.

one love

Blicky, I think we both agree that the progress I have pointed out has been unevenly applied in many parts of the world, sometime horrendously so. There are over 6 billion people on the planet, and to think that everything is hunky dory everywhere would be madness, and its not what I am saying. The point I was trying to make was from a purely historical perspective, when none of the safeguards I have mentioned below existed anywhere at all.

Not so long ago there were no such things as pressure groups like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch organisations keeping tabs on governments and other powerful institutions; and campaigning, often successfully, for change. Not so long ago there were no people shouting "stop" when kids were subjected to incredible abuse. Nobody cared if kids didn't get a day in school. There were no movements to stop the death penalty. It was tolerated everywhere that the king or the powerful b*st*rd with the gun should take power and use it for his own purposes. The poor and the sick starved, and if they were lucky, religious organisations looked after them with no accountability as to how they cared for them. Whites saw themselves as the superior race, and God help you if you tried to change the status quo. There was no Red Cross. If you found yourself without food, you starved and nobody cared. There were no lobby groups telling us that excessive burning of fossil fuels was bad for our health and the environment - no environmental awareness at all. Most people were dead at the age of forty. Protesting the status quo, or upsetting the powerful got you imprisoned, beaten up or killed - almost everywhere on the planet. And if you did kill off half the indigenous population of Latin America, well good for you. We'll put up a statue in your honour.

So, because there is a very large, and growing amount of people in the world who would be seriously annoyed if any of these rights and developments were taken away, and who want governments to do something about abuses and neglect, who do care and who want justice, and who have, in many instances, actually achieved change, then that's progress in my book.

Woodpigeon

<>

Not really, blicky. You would certainly learn a bit by coming out with me for a few glasses of vino but you'd still have to study Spanish grammar - and all those f**king verb conjugations! - in order to be able to actually use the language. So certain things do need to be learned by rote in order to be able to use them without racking one's brain each moment for the right verb tense (for example).

No one has yet called me on my comment that compassion *needs* to be learned. That we are not born having compassion.

Any thoughts or opinions about this? It seems rather straightforward to me, but it may not seem so to others.


az

Im no expert on Spanish like you, but what Ive been learning lately backs up what I say.

I could learn a whole page full of Spanish words, but not be able to form a useful sentence. Language is not grammar, grammar is just the rules for using words. Even if I mangaled the phrases I heard used as greetings people would recognise the greetin I had learned by example even though I had not learned or even learnt any grammatical rules.

Children learn language first and gramma later. They learn language by example. There is trial and error with guidance in the form of praise or correction from parents, teachers, carers ect....

I would imagine that there is a similar process for compassion. The childs learning would be severly restricted if the people around the child gave no importance to learning such things. So in a very real sense you are right, though children are born with the capacity and even a lust for learning that other people can help by facilitating learning experiences and offering explanations of the principles and rules involved.

Woody, I agree broadly speaking with everything in the initial post and your most recent one. What I was trying to do was temper the optomistic bent of your post with roughly corresponding instances of humanity doing its best to repeat mistakes of the past, grab everything it can at present and f***-up the future.


one love

i think that compassion is learned -- but people come with predispositions, so that some children learn math more easily, some learn sports, etc. i can easily imagine that some children will more readily learn compassion than others, and that's probably what makes the biggest difference between levels of compassion within any given culture.

but taking from the language example -- language is something that does NOT need to be taught, with classes or drinks or anything, as long as it is the right time. children have a "window" for learning language, at which point the learning takes place rapidly and easily, vocabulary and grammar both -- because of this, some argue that humans come with built-in language learning capabilities, but no need to get into that. all children learn language unless they are completely isolated from human contact. maybe compassion is one of these "human" things that any child will learn, but i'm afraid many children are not exposed to compassion -- raised by people who in turn didn't learn it -- can this change?

i think we could really stand for some educational reform

<>

I agree with you, Woodpigeon. Good points!

Della I agree with Woody too

one love

It wasn't *only* whites that considered themselves a superior race, and for the most part it was European nations believing that they were of a superior culture not ethnicity, the arabs did and still widely do believe in superior ethnicity, hell across East Africa balck people are still made to feel shame for there black heritage and claim arab decent. Zionism has only grown in power and the Japanese consider[ed] themselves decended of gods. Belief in superioriy of race and religion have and will continue to hand in hand around the entire globe.

and for the most part it was European nations believing that they were of a superior culture not ethnicity,

I wont argue that White Europeans widely believed that they were of a superior culture, but I wonder what makes you sure that this was put before ethnic superiority.

Aparthied, Slavery in the colonies, Aryan purity?

one love

Aryan purity was a Nazi concept of the last century... And something of a ridulous one given that real Aryans aren't even white.
The Boers and the Nazis did/do rank ethnic superiority above cultral superioty I suspect, but I believe earlier in Europe's history slavery began as simply a pragmatic solution to cheap labour rather than any sincere belief in a racial hierachy.
Racial segregation was grew with fears of the native peoples of colonised obtaining power and the Victorian social prejudice around sexuality amongst other things... The idea of European racial superiority was a 19th century concept ultimately culminating in Eugenics.

"i think that compassion is learned -- but people come with predispositions" - jeenius

I think it's nurtured through example but the capacity is there from the begining in varying degrees. Some children will cry when another is crying , some will stare and frown and others will turn away. They usually experience feelings of helplessness or confusion.

A *reaction to those feelings is what is taught.
Sometimes teachers(parents) do not know how to react so they do nothing. Doing nothing teaches apathy or denial by default.

Yes, abbi, I think you are right, that's exactly how it is - children do react differently... I remeber my baby niece (10 months old) crawling to get me when my son (6 weeks old) was crying. She was so cute, she looked like a retriever dog, pointing to the bedroom where he was, and galloping on hands and knees along the hallway, checking to see if I was following!