Recently, I sent an email out to a couple of friends that I often discuss things with one of them is Sid who also happens to be my brother and by recently I mean today. Sid was kind enough to allow me a blog space to post my email diatribe of the current political system and potentially continue my lengthy string of thoughts on the subject. I hope you enjoy my endless rambling:

I just finished reading an article by Lou Dobbs, not that I often read Dobbs but a co-worker sent it to me. Anyways, the article focused on the public education system or lack of a public education system. He threw out some “scare” statistics about graduation rate, eluded to what he believes the problem is (which I think he said it was outsourcing) and he concluded by saying something needs to be done. I know we all have very strong opinions about public education and I don’t really want this to turn into a discussion about that because I also believe we are, for the most part, on the same page.

The article got me thinking, our public education system has been failing for a long time and yet no one has done anything about it except for standardized testing and some other bs. Nothing radical has been done to restructure and obviously flawed system. I also started thinking about why nothing has been done and what other things are failing that we are ignoring (we being the government). I thought about unemployment and social and public funding and what politicians do in these areas and realized we do ALL the wrong things. Ohio politicians are trying to keep the Ford plant here that is closing next year because thousands of people will lose their jobs. They are offering tax breaks, public money etc… and that is all completely wrong! We should be walking them out the door, kicking them in the ass on the way out and then turn around and court new technology companies and giving them the tax breaks. We should be offering training, education and job placement assistance to those that will lose their jobs when the plant closes. Why would we want to hang onto a dying industry? Bringing in new blood is the only way to revitalize the dying cities (Detroit, Cleveland, Philedephia and so on) but yet our politicians are hanging on to the automotive manufacturers in light of increasing oil prices and a public move to more efficient and longer lasting automobiles we are giving money to a company that made its living off of manufacturing trucks and SUVs!

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Common knowledge is sometimes wrong. That is one reason why empirical science is so important; it gives us a method to verify or reject any claim, including those tagged as ‘common knowledge’. The classic example is the formally common knowledge that all heavenly objects circle the earth. It was only through Galileo’s empirical observation of Jupiter’s moons and subsequent verification that this common knowledge was challenged. Repeated empirical observations later rejected the previously held common knowledge and replaced it with new knowledge, the knowledge that heavenly objects only appear to circle the earth because the earth, itself, is rotating.

One of our modern commonly-held beliefs appears to be false. Many, if not most, people believe that we have become much more violent in recent centuries or that humans are naturally peaceful that have been made violent by modern society and institutions. This belief is often based on the great wars of the last century and genocides in places like Dafur and Rowanda. But, as Dave would point out, this is only anecdotal evidence. The empirical data paints a very different picture.

In an article on Edge.org adapted from a a TED conference lecture, Steven Pinker claims that the empirical data points to the conclusion that, in general, we are less violent now than in any time in history. From the Article:

“The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon, visible at the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It applies over several orders of magnitude of violence, from genocide to war to rioting to homicide to the treatment of children and animals. And it appears to be a worldwide trend, though not a homogeneous one.”

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During my frequent debates on one of my favorite blogs, ReligiousFreaks.com, I entered into a metaphysical debate with Neando (and others) over the topic of Monism vs. Dualism. The original post was about the morality of the story of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his son on God’s command and it’s implications to modern insanity defense. Since the debate slowly drifted too far off-topic, we agreed to move our debate to my blog.

Our debate is about metaphysics. In particular, our debate is over monism versus dualism. I have tentatively taken up the position of a monist. I say tentatively because I am unsure of my own metaphysical assumptions. This is a shortcoming that I hope this debate will help shore up. Neando has taken up the position of a dualist.

To read excerpts from our original debate, please visit this dedicated page. The debate will continue in the comments and anyone is welcome to contribute.