Every day I get online, and every day I’m inundated with context-less arguments. My jobs require sifting through dozens of articles and hundreds of tweets every day. And I know that the quality of our public discussion has been suffering for some time, but every day I come across discourse after discourse, dialogue after dialogue where conservsatives are demanding one simple thing of us:
I've been accused of changing the subject when I bring up context. Things don't happen in a vacuum, and it's crucial that we consider the context to problems in order to solve them.
We also need visions of the future and values that guide us through life. Without context, a vision of the kind of future we want and well thought out values, we'll go any way the wind blows.
Another great one! My current -- and for the past decade or so -- way of adding context is whenever I hear people say, [whomever] "can't find enough workers." I say, "You're leaving out the important part: can't find workers willing to work for the amount they want to pay them. If they doubled the wage, do you think they still wouldn't find workers?"
And then when they say, "That might put them out of business!" I say, "Good! We shouldn't have businesses that don't pay people well." Turns out this is a foreign concept even to liberals who would never support a business that polluted or used child labor. This capitalist indoctrination stuff is pretty powerful.
Great analysis. We are currently at the point of a disease where symptoms have been addressed as they emerge without any attempt to find their source. On the death of the suffering patient an autopsy reveals internal organs decimated by cancerous rot.
As you say, context is incredibly important. We talk a lot about critical thinking and teaching critical thinking skills, but it is so much harder to think critically if you don't know the historical context of our current conditions. That lack of knowledge leads people to "be skeptical of everything" as a bad faith excuse to not change their minds.
I became an educator 34 years ago because I saw education as you outline it here--as the foundation for a healthy society, a healthy democracy. (Coming of age in Reagan's America did that to/for me.) Yes, we are further down that road than most realize. I appreciate your work here. Thank you.
But don’t you think that mainstream schooling itself is in some ways (not all) designed to teach compliance rather than resistance? The context of mass schooling is to help prevent child labor (obviously a good thing) but also to shape children into a certain kind of adult who will quietly take their place in our capitalist system. Most schools ask children to obey and comply, they solidify a hierarchy rooted in power over, and promote capitalist values of competition, comparison, metrics - I fail to see how this is the liberatory education we would like our young people to have. While i support publicly funded education and absolutely am not a libertarian or conservative, I also question whether our current model is actually educating our children or whether it’s partly responsible for the adults it creates. And I don’t think putting more money into education is going to somehow magically reform it, in the same way I don’t believe a well-funded police force is a better one. I think it needs radical change AND funding. But first, change.
"...we collectively risk entering a negative feedback loop."
N.B.: A negative feedback loop is self-limiting, like a thermostat. A positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing, like the audio feedback screech of a microphone picking up its own speakers. You're better off describing self-amplifying systems as virtuous or vicious cycles, since that captures the intuition better in everyday English.
I’m very excited to read your earthseed series. I read Parable of the Sower 6 months ago and am reading Talents now. I’m finding their theology/spirituality so compelling and helpful. I’m deeply interested in spiritualities that actually work in the actual world, so I look forward to reading your analysis (which I’ll do after I finish Talents).
Fully agree about the critical necessity of framing context and fully agree about how capitalism's ideologues frame crime as not an inevitable consequence of the capitalist systems's private appropriation of the means of production and its exploitation of the working class that structurally reproduces unemployment and a subaltern "lumpen proletariat; however, is there really a capitalist "right" and "left" in the real, or is it a tactical division of ideological labor for dividing the international working class - especially separating & inoculating the "western" imperialist working classes from the Global South working, peasant & subaltern classes lest that "western" working class become infected with the "spectre" of international solidarity with the Global South working masses and begin opposing its own capitalist ruling class instead a la "revolutionary defeatism? Rhetorical leading question of course. To this end, our US empire unions have been completely usurped by the "aristocracy of labor" sell-out leaders of the AFL-CIO who have suborned and transformed our unions into serving the "left" capitalists in the Democratic Party as campaign contribution fundraising banks while also functioning as the "left" capitalists labor ontractors & labor police. Evidence abounds: the AFL-CIO unions with the exception of the Teamsters all endorsed Biden even before the Democratic primaries even began and all the recent strikes were carefully orchestrated sell-outs that were apriori arranged before the "strikes" even began between the corporations and the sell-out, union bureacrat leaders esp. evident in the Railrooad union-busting by Biden & Congres and quite evident in the UAW & Teamsters "strikes" with Biden even supervising UAW leader Fain's "negotiations" while the UAW's diversionary token "Stand-Up" strikes struck only 3 plants while the great majority of UAW workers continued working during the "strike" in hundreds of plants making profits for the auto corps which is why 'in-the-know' Wall Street investors approved of this "strike" during the "negotiations" by not massively selling the auto corps stocks & with their substantial buy orders upon the "strike's" consummation. Since the deal, many of the temporary workers who were promised full-time employment per the deal have been permanently laid-off with no severance pay to my knowledge and even full-time workers have lost their shift because of the plummeting sales of EVs and new cars in general from the inflation spike caused by the energy inflationary spike from Sullivan's & Nulands successful provoking of their long-planned proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Wall Street, Biden and Fain knew that the auto corporations were going to sack these temporary workers and reduce full-time working shifts resulting in a lower labor costs would undercut the contract's purported gains (still net losses given that lost purchasing power from the inflationary spike and from the long wave net income loss/purchasing power loss to inflation over the last 50 years since the high water mark of US working class purchasing power in 1973). More evidence of this orchestration between the auto corps, Biden and Fain is the fact that the UAW hasn't murmured even 1 peep in protest to the abrupt termination of its temporary worker members and laying off of some its full-time workers in violation of the spirit of the just negotiated new contract. Not 1 word in protest to my knowledge from the UAW. Returning to the question I alluded to earlier of the role of the "left" in this capitalist division of labor we have the entire leadership of the AFL-CIO proudly backing Acting President Sullivan's (not sic) proxy war against Russia in Ukraine with all of these "left" union bureacrats subsequently also publicly approving of Biden's rebooting of Reagan era military Keynesian rhetoric about how this colossal Biden war spending creates jobs and economic growth in the US as if the Cold War & "The Russian Are Coming" & "Who Lost China" (soon to be Ukraine) never ended and lest we forget that the AFL-CIO executive committee voted 4-1 against a cease-fire resolution on Israel's genocidal war with only the Postal Worker President voting for a cease-fire. Yes of course, the UAW & the AFT were finally forced to call for a cease-fire as a CYA move lest it lose the allegiance of its new UAW's graduate worker teacher union affiliates, and in the AFT's case, it tailed the Biden Admnistration fictional split with Netanyahu that made it necessary to stop its public support for Israel's war against "Hamas" and then impossible to continue defending Israel/USA's genocidal murder of Palestinian kids like its President Weingarten did when she voted NO for a ceasefire in that AFL-CIO exec. committee vote in late October/early Nov. The AFT has $200,000 of its union members' funds invested in Israel's government bonds and opposes any Dem primary candidate like Sanders surrogate Turner who doesn't fully back the apartheid genocidal US empire settler colony. Moreover, Weingarten is one of the US empire's "left" agents patrolling and policing the empire's satellite puppet labor unions across the globe just like the AFL-CIO AIFLD once did in a previous era before it was replaced by the empire's new union "Solidarity Center" instrument of neocolonizing satellite labor unions for US imperialism. See this recent panel exposing the AFL-CIO's past support for South African Apartheid and its past and present support for Apartheid Israel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VioS5r1SAw&t=48s and recent ILWU union held Bay Area Pal solidarity labor conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiPs6lccJM0 .
Rank and file union members must break out of this capitalist right/left straitjacket by either ejecting these pro-US imperial labor agents from our unions or abandon them to form new independent unions that dont' serve as labor contractors of the "left" capitalists and ideological promoters of US imperialist foreign policy just like South Africa's teachers did when they broke out and formed a brand new independent union - the Educators Union of South Africa has done: https://eusaunion.co.za/
Thank you Josh for your excellent work and my sincere goal in responding is for stimulating debate about the road forward out of this US dystopia overwhelming us all right now. Solidarity Norm Koerner
Thanks for making this crucial point.
I've been accused of changing the subject when I bring up context. Things don't happen in a vacuum, and it's crucial that we consider the context to problems in order to solve them.
We also need visions of the future and values that guide us through life. Without context, a vision of the kind of future we want and well thought out values, we'll go any way the wind blows.
Excellent, thank you.
Another great one! My current -- and for the past decade or so -- way of adding context is whenever I hear people say, [whomever] "can't find enough workers." I say, "You're leaving out the important part: can't find workers willing to work for the amount they want to pay them. If they doubled the wage, do you think they still wouldn't find workers?"
And then when they say, "That might put them out of business!" I say, "Good! We shouldn't have businesses that don't pay people well." Turns out this is a foreign concept even to liberals who would never support a business that polluted or used child labor. This capitalist indoctrination stuff is pretty powerful.
Bloody beautiful. And thanks for the links to further action and ideas. We need both words and action. (Thanks for you doing that as well, Diana)
Great analysis. We are currently at the point of a disease where symptoms have been addressed as they emerge without any attempt to find their source. On the death of the suffering patient an autopsy reveals internal organs decimated by cancerous rot.
As you say, context is incredibly important. We talk a lot about critical thinking and teaching critical thinking skills, but it is so much harder to think critically if you don't know the historical context of our current conditions. That lack of knowledge leads people to "be skeptical of everything" as a bad faith excuse to not change their minds.
I became an educator 34 years ago because I saw education as you outline it here--as the foundation for a healthy society, a healthy democracy. (Coming of age in Reagan's America did that to/for me.) Yes, we are further down that road than most realize. I appreciate your work here. Thank you.
But don’t you think that mainstream schooling itself is in some ways (not all) designed to teach compliance rather than resistance? The context of mass schooling is to help prevent child labor (obviously a good thing) but also to shape children into a certain kind of adult who will quietly take their place in our capitalist system. Most schools ask children to obey and comply, they solidify a hierarchy rooted in power over, and promote capitalist values of competition, comparison, metrics - I fail to see how this is the liberatory education we would like our young people to have. While i support publicly funded education and absolutely am not a libertarian or conservative, I also question whether our current model is actually educating our children or whether it’s partly responsible for the adults it creates. And I don’t think putting more money into education is going to somehow magically reform it, in the same way I don’t believe a well-funded police force is a better one. I think it needs radical change AND funding. But first, change.
"...we collectively risk entering a negative feedback loop."
N.B.: A negative feedback loop is self-limiting, like a thermostat. A positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing, like the audio feedback screech of a microphone picking up its own speakers. You're better off describing self-amplifying systems as virtuous or vicious cycles, since that captures the intuition better in everyday English.
The right also has a relentless ongoing attack on women whom they view as property.
I’m very excited to read your earthseed series. I read Parable of the Sower 6 months ago and am reading Talents now. I’m finding their theology/spirituality so compelling and helpful. I’m deeply interested in spiritualities that actually work in the actual world, so I look forward to reading your analysis (which I’ll do after I finish Talents).
Stunning. Thank you.
Angela Davis, I mean damn... She is so unbelievably inspiring.
I think both is needed. Context less Argument would be the General Human rights.
Fully agree about the critical necessity of framing context and fully agree about how capitalism's ideologues frame crime as not an inevitable consequence of the capitalist systems's private appropriation of the means of production and its exploitation of the working class that structurally reproduces unemployment and a subaltern "lumpen proletariat; however, is there really a capitalist "right" and "left" in the real, or is it a tactical division of ideological labor for dividing the international working class - especially separating & inoculating the "western" imperialist working classes from the Global South working, peasant & subaltern classes lest that "western" working class become infected with the "spectre" of international solidarity with the Global South working masses and begin opposing its own capitalist ruling class instead a la "revolutionary defeatism? Rhetorical leading question of course. To this end, our US empire unions have been completely usurped by the "aristocracy of labor" sell-out leaders of the AFL-CIO who have suborned and transformed our unions into serving the "left" capitalists in the Democratic Party as campaign contribution fundraising banks while also functioning as the "left" capitalists labor ontractors & labor police. Evidence abounds: the AFL-CIO unions with the exception of the Teamsters all endorsed Biden even before the Democratic primaries even began and all the recent strikes were carefully orchestrated sell-outs that were apriori arranged before the "strikes" even began between the corporations and the sell-out, union bureacrat leaders esp. evident in the Railrooad union-busting by Biden & Congres and quite evident in the UAW & Teamsters "strikes" with Biden even supervising UAW leader Fain's "negotiations" while the UAW's diversionary token "Stand-Up" strikes struck only 3 plants while the great majority of UAW workers continued working during the "strike" in hundreds of plants making profits for the auto corps which is why 'in-the-know' Wall Street investors approved of this "strike" during the "negotiations" by not massively selling the auto corps stocks & with their substantial buy orders upon the "strike's" consummation. Since the deal, many of the temporary workers who were promised full-time employment per the deal have been permanently laid-off with no severance pay to my knowledge and even full-time workers have lost their shift because of the plummeting sales of EVs and new cars in general from the inflation spike caused by the energy inflationary spike from Sullivan's & Nulands successful provoking of their long-planned proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Wall Street, Biden and Fain knew that the auto corporations were going to sack these temporary workers and reduce full-time working shifts resulting in a lower labor costs would undercut the contract's purported gains (still net losses given that lost purchasing power from the inflationary spike and from the long wave net income loss/purchasing power loss to inflation over the last 50 years since the high water mark of US working class purchasing power in 1973). More evidence of this orchestration between the auto corps, Biden and Fain is the fact that the UAW hasn't murmured even 1 peep in protest to the abrupt termination of its temporary worker members and laying off of some its full-time workers in violation of the spirit of the just negotiated new contract. Not 1 word in protest to my knowledge from the UAW. Returning to the question I alluded to earlier of the role of the "left" in this capitalist division of labor we have the entire leadership of the AFL-CIO proudly backing Acting President Sullivan's (not sic) proxy war against Russia in Ukraine with all of these "left" union bureacrats subsequently also publicly approving of Biden's rebooting of Reagan era military Keynesian rhetoric about how this colossal Biden war spending creates jobs and economic growth in the US as if the Cold War & "The Russian Are Coming" & "Who Lost China" (soon to be Ukraine) never ended and lest we forget that the AFL-CIO executive committee voted 4-1 against a cease-fire resolution on Israel's genocidal war with only the Postal Worker President voting for a cease-fire. Yes of course, the UAW & the AFT were finally forced to call for a cease-fire as a CYA move lest it lose the allegiance of its new UAW's graduate worker teacher union affiliates, and in the AFT's case, it tailed the Biden Admnistration fictional split with Netanyahu that made it necessary to stop its public support for Israel's war against "Hamas" and then impossible to continue defending Israel/USA's genocidal murder of Palestinian kids like its President Weingarten did when she voted NO for a ceasefire in that AFL-CIO exec. committee vote in late October/early Nov. The AFT has $200,000 of its union members' funds invested in Israel's government bonds and opposes any Dem primary candidate like Sanders surrogate Turner who doesn't fully back the apartheid genocidal US empire settler colony. Moreover, Weingarten is one of the US empire's "left" agents patrolling and policing the empire's satellite puppet labor unions across the globe just like the AFL-CIO AIFLD once did in a previous era before it was replaced by the empire's new union "Solidarity Center" instrument of neocolonizing satellite labor unions for US imperialism. See this recent panel exposing the AFL-CIO's past support for South African Apartheid and its past and present support for Apartheid Israel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VioS5r1SAw&t=48s and recent ILWU union held Bay Area Pal solidarity labor conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiPs6lccJM0 .
See the Labor Educational Committee for more : https://aflcio-int.education/
Rank and file union members must break out of this capitalist right/left straitjacket by either ejecting these pro-US imperial labor agents from our unions or abandon them to form new independent unions that dont' serve as labor contractors of the "left" capitalists and ideological promoters of US imperialist foreign policy just like South Africa's teachers did when they broke out and formed a brand new independent union - the Educators Union of South Africa has done: https://eusaunion.co.za/
Thank you Josh for your excellent work and my sincere goal in responding is for stimulating debate about the road forward out of this US dystopia overwhelming us all right now. Solidarity Norm Koerner