Finished "Joshua"

Wars and genocide, taking over the land that God promised Hid people. Ick. I really don't like reading these stories. It's as if the God I know from the New Testament and my personal relationship is totally different than the one I read about here. It's always been a sticking point for me. Luckily, I found this very awesome author recently that wrote a book about these very same problems, and I'm not alone here. His explanations seem plausible but I'm praying for guidance while I read them. I'll write a post specifically about THAT book later!

Finished "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

I finished the book in about a week. It's an easy read, as in there aren't a lot of big words or difficult sentence structures to worry over. But the ideas in it aren't simple!

This is the first time I've read the book. A friend said she has read it several times in her life and each time it worries her that our society gets closer and closer to the world written in it. As I read it, I loved the story. I got sucked in. I could see some things that were similar to our current culture but I see what the big deal about the book was. I just didn't get it. Then this morning I watched something and it changed my perspective. It was like a curtain was lifted. Let me see if I can get this across here.

Conditioning. That is the word that has been going through my mind all morning. The society in the book has done away with the individual and family. Children are created in factories and raised in institutions until they are adults. When released into the world they are fully conditioned by the controllers to behave a certain way according to their class and the needs of the society. They are conditioned from conception to like certain things, wear certain colors, and thinks certain way. They are also fully aware that they have been conditioned. It isn't a secret. They believe (because of their conditioning) that they need this system to be ultimately happy and productive. That is what bugged me. If they know they are conditioned, why do they continue to condition others? Why do they perpetuate a system like this? Because they are conditioned to do so!

This morning I was watching one of the videos from my constitution class. It was about a public school in a national park getting a bill passed to fund it by the national parks system instead of the state like other public schools. The first part illustrated the problem the people had. The people that work in the park, live in the park while they work, so their children have a public school to attend. That school only has about ten students and state funding goes by number of students. It wasn't enough money to operate the school. The rest of the video explained the process of presenting a bill to congress and how that bill becomes a law. I'm already pretty familiar with that process, but what got me was something entirely different. Maybe because, for some reason, I was not conditioned properly?

I saw a small school with a problem that the people themselves could solve. There may be several solutions for those families that don't include making a federal law, but no one even went that way. They spent six years getting a bill passed to make the national park system pay for the schools that their workers wanted for their children. But why not do something different?

Conditioning. Those people are doing the same thing that the people in "Brave New World" were doing. It's like when I say to someone, "We homeschool.", the answer I get nine times out of ten is, "What about socialization?" What they mean is "Your kids aren't going to have the conditioning that all the other kids have. How will they be happy?"

We have been conditioned that the only way to be educated is to go through a grade system like the one our public/government schools are providing. If you look back through history, only up until about one hundred years ago, this was not the case. People educated their own children in the way they saw fit, be it books bought at home, apprenticeships, or private tutors. The government had nothing to do with it. Yes, as representative democracy we need an educated population, but is that what we have now after one hundred years of institutionalized learning? What we have are conditioning centers that teach our children the ways of a society that almost everyone can see is not healthy. But yet we continue to send our children there and we are expected to do so at a younger and younger age every generation.

I love that I can read, that I have given myself time to read and reflect. It's one thing wish more people would do. My ideas about this book may change through time due my personal experience and other things I've read or watched. But the ideas are mine. They are my links in my own life. I wish I could have started linking these things earlier. It's one of the big reasons I didn't send my kids to school. They were too busy learning and linking their own experiences to bogged down by that system.

Taking a Class on Coursera

I signed up for this a month ago and it started last week, "Introduction to Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases". So far so good!

I finished the first weeks lectures and reading in time for this weeks stuff. That makes me feel good because I wasn't sure I could keep up. We homeschool our kids and so there is a lot of noise all day. I can't really focus on watching a video or writing well when there is much of a distraction. I can do it while video games are being played, but not during TV shows.

Reading is different. I need to do that when everything is quiet and still. I only have about two hours in the morning with that kind of an atmosphere. That would be plenty of time for the reading for this class, but I already read my Bible first, then a few pages of my current part of "The Great Books of Western Civilization". And then my husband is working on remodeling our bathroom in the morning before he goes to his room to work (he works from home), so the boys hear that and wake up a little earlier. They have been very helpful by keeping the TV off until at least 8am for me.

As for the class, I like it. I took a Constitution class through Hillsdale last year and it was not to my liking. It was more about worshiping the Founding Fathers and treated the Constitution as a holy document instead of a legal one. This class is a bit more objective so far.

The first lecture talked about how the Constitution that we have could have been construed as treason since they went to amend the Articles of Confederation and ended up scrapping them all together.

The other thing I never really understood was Originalism vs. Evolutionism regarding the Constitution and judicial activism. That has been fascinating. I have leaned toward keeping true to the original intent of the authors, but hearing the evolutionist side, I can see where they got their ideas. What bothers me about it is that it seems like one of those "slippery slopes" you hear about.

"Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals" by Kant

I'll admit that this book was pretty hard. I could read it but most of it went right over my head. At times there would be a line that would stand out to me and I could connect with it, but then the next sentence would lose me. Luckily, there is YouTube! I found a video series by a philosophy teacher, Gregory B. Sadler. His lectures gave me a basic understanding and when I read the text, I got more from it.

 I'm sitting here trying to put into a few words the basic idea of this book. I guess I would say it's the idea of duty and whether or not there is an innate idea of duty in humans. Kant seems to think there is. I think there is because we are rational beings and that rationality (or free will) is what makes us in the "image of God". We have the power to choose one way or another and that is what creates a duty to do certain things.

What makes us a rational human is the fact that we can use our free will to create laws for ourselves. We can make a goal for ourselves as individuals or groups. These ends can be subjective, or personal and shape our rules for our own impulses and desires. Or they can be objective ends, universal for all humans and absolute. 

There are strict duties and meritorious duties. Strict duties are things you should do because it is right to do so, not because you will get something from it. Meritorious duties are things they are good and you may get something out of it.

Like I said, I didn't fully grasp this text. I felt like he was talking over me, like another language you kind of understand so you only pick up words and phrases.

Here is something that really resonated with me though. The idea that each person has his own value. Each person is worth something, his being here on this earth is an end of itself. Even if that person were a lump on the floor that never chose to do anything, or couldn't, just them being here makes them have worth, dignity. He has an absolute value.

"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own or that of another person, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end."

Wow. People are not tools. This includes yourself. Can you use yourself? Yes! If you refuse to use your free will to control desires or inclinations that are beneath you or lessen your dignity.

Everyone should be treated with dignity because they have free will and will be more likely to choose good if they are treated with respect. This is the idea behind Radical Unschooling. I always find it fascinating to read these philosophical texts and find ideas people consider "radical" even today. Everyone includes children. They aren't monsters.. How will they learn to respect others and act in a civilized manner, if they are never treated that way?

"Philemon"

I have no quotes from this letter. It seems so personal and I'm not sure why they would have this in the canon at all. Maybe I'll find more in it next time around.

In the beginning...

I thought that would be a funny start to a new blog!

I've decided to start posting about the books I've read and my thoughts on another blog linked to my family adventures blog.

Writing things down helps me organize my thoughts and remember what I've read. Sometimes I have thoughts that I'd like to publish and find some feedback on. I don't have a lot of followers online, but that's fine with me. I'm not trying to be a published author, just trying to move my own thinking forward and maybe take a few people along with me for the journey.

Who knows? Maybe I'll inspire others to read some of the books I do, or start their own learning journey. I wish I had started mine a LONG time ago!