#ethics education

[min-autumnsky]

[ffcrazy15]

There's this way of doing female-ness in Christianity that I call "pastel flower journal Christianity." I've got nothing against pastel flower journals per se, but for some reason people believe it's the end all and be all of female spirituality, and I think it's a real disservice towards young Christian women.

One of these days I'd like to start a prayer-and-reading group or something for young women, but there would be no floral themes or over-focus on how "God thinks you're beautiful even if the world doesn't" (a true statement, but it's wayyyyy too often the focus in women's spiritual reading). Instead we would be reading:

Seneca's Letters from a Stoic

Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning

Sheed's A Map of Life

Portions of Pieper's book on leisure

Kreeft's Three Philosophies of Life

Guardini's The Lord (or something similar)

Therese's Story of a Soul

and some select portions of the Nicomachean Ethics.

(Also they're all getting the porn talk. I don't know why we give the porn talk to young men but not young women. There's this idea that women don't use porn and they only need the talk about "guarding their heart." Bullshit. There's porn on the YA shelves of Barnes and Nobles and before that there were bodice rippers. Young women need the porn talk too.)

Every young woman needs to be getting a basic grounding in virtue ethics, logic, natural law, scholastic philosophy and Biblical hermeneutics if they're going to get by in today's spiritual landscape. Enough faffery and emotionalism in young women's spiritual education! Give them real food to chew on, not pasty sentimentalism!

[freckleslikestars]

I never realize how much I like being home unless I've been somewhere really different for a while.

25 films for 25 years {9/25} JUNO (2007) dir. Jason Reitman

plot description from IMdB, [insp: ☆★☆★ ]

[los-plantalones]

I wanted to highlight this because I knew it would come up as SOON as I mention common milkweed (asclepias syriaca), which is a milkweed from the Eastern and Central US.

Indigenous peoples, respected ethnobotanists, and veteran foragers eat milkweed by the bucket! If other people knew how amazing of a plant it is – there is something edible and delicious about it at every stage of growth, it is very easy to plant / spread its seeds, and it grows almost like a weed – they would love and cherish it.

If more people were encouraged to utilize it, they would be less likely to get rid of it in their yards. They might even start growing a whole patch. It’s a sustainable food source. We would be helping its insect friends who are HARMLESS to our gardens but important for the environment.

It’s not like, say, ramps that are overharvested every year and have disappeared from huge stretches of land where they were once abundant. Ramps grown from seed take SEVEN years to mature. Milkweed grows and matures the same year.

People eating milkweed don’t contribute to monarch butterfly decline. The use of herbicides, Big Agro, cities just mowing down whatever the hell they want are to blame.

That said, it’s still important to forage in an ethical way. Never strip a plant of all its flowers, leaves, or fruit. Never harvest an entire patch of plants from a single area. Check for beneficial insects and leave them alone. If a native plant has gone to seed, help spread those around.

This is NOT a callout — this is important information that I want everyone to know. Eating milkweed will NOT harm the monarch butterflies.

Learn More:

The Forager’s Harvest

Learn Your Land

Part 1 | Common Milkweed

[ly0nstea]

Nothing makes me want to do evil science more than people who are like "STEM students have no moral compass unless you FORCE them to take ethics classes and humanities classes they're so base and culturally illiterate" like I will personally make the giant fucking space laser to zap you i swear to god

[edenfenixblogs]

New Pinned Post: How This Blog Approaches The Conflict

I am not normally a politically-focused blog. I am normally a personal blog that enjoys fandom and occasionally processes my own past trauma. As this war goes on, I am finding that it is against my personal ethics and morals to stay silent when I have the ability to educate and remain more patient than most. (My patience is not endless. I’m still human). So, while disinformation/misinformation, and propaganda abound on all sides. I feel like the best way I can help lower the temperature is to put my skills to use.

Primary Political Goals:

1. Emphasize humanity above all and use verifiable information and good faith education and discourse to reduce tension.

2. Do my absolute best to move the conversation away from polarizing, accusatory discourse that forces Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians to play a desperate game of defense and toward a shared mutually beneficial peace that honors each grouped indigeneity culture, and connection to their ancestral homeland.

3. Demonstrate and emphasize both Jewish-Muslim solidarity and Israeli-Palestinian solidarity.

Primary Blogging Goals:

As a diaspora Jew, my primary goal is threefold

1. Educate about antisemitism and Islamophobia—including calling it out and explaining it to the best of my ability.

2. Elevate responsible, verifiable voices—regardless of religion or nationality—and information to the best of my ability.

3. Demonstrate effective activism and provide insight and encouragement for other to find their most effective way to contribute to fostering peace.

Elaboration:

1. I have the most experience with an understanding of antisemitism. I am more of an expert in antisemitism and have more ability to identify and educate about it. That said: I will not tolerate any Islamophobia or racism and if I don’t have the ability to educate about it, you will be blocked. If I have the ability to educate about it, I will do so and give you the chance to read about it and adjust your behavior. If you do not do so, I will block you.

2. This does not mean equal representation of all nationalities and religions. It means the best informed and most reliable voices AND the voices I personally have the best ability to vet, verify, and substantiate. This will often mean Jewish voices and Israeli voices. This is me staying in my lane, not choosing to suppress any voice. I will not elevate purposefully divisive, tokenized, or uninformed voices. This does not mean that I won’t elevate Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab voices as well. I will. But my primary goal here is responsibility. To do that, I have to stay in my lane.

3. I am most effective as an educator on this matter, a guide to finding reliable peace-oriented voices, and an example of patience. There’s a great desire among many to protest or create videos detailing their opinions and stances. Not only is this primarily performative—especially among non-Muslim/non-Palestinian goyim—it has the potential to be extraordinarily damaging to Jews both in Israel and in Diaspora as well as to Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and South East Asians worldwide. If you truly desire to help and not just feel like you’re helping, the best thing you can do is follow the lead of much more experienced activists with a demonstrated track record of effectiveness and good faith in their areas of expertise. As I stated: mine is primarily education and greater than average (though not limitless) amounts of patience. If you want to donate money or engage in more direct action and aid, I suggest finding pro-Palestinian Israeli voices and peace oriented Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian voices as well as organizations with experience in this conflict that do not rely on eliminating any population or erasing anyone’s connection to the Levant. Follow their lead on that matter. If you are only just engaging in this conflict for the first time due to current events, you likely do not know nearly as much as you think you do about any of this. Being uninformed and spouting disinformation has actual dire consequences that can get Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, and Arabs killed. It is vital that you’re responsible in your engagement on this matter. Learning dogwhistles and how to spot bad faith arguments is a must. And to be effective, you should spend more of your time learning than you’re doing protesting or arguing. This is a 2000+ year old conflict. There is a lot to know and understand. And there are a lot of people willing to prey on your newcomer status and manipulate your existing beliefs to use you as a pawn to further their bad faith aims. The only consistent, trustworthy principal is to trust those who repeatedly affirm their goal as peace and shared prosperity and who reject any form of demonization based on ethnicity or religion. This is not a game. This is not the west’s fight. This is a conflict between two horribly oppressed, traumatized, and nearly exterminated ethnoreligous groups.

I am begging you to think, listen, and learn before joining the fray.

Note: I also don’t claim to be perfect. If I mess up or reblog something that causes unintended harm (which is very easy to do when engaging in discussions and activism about this conflict), I will say so and issue a correction. There’s no need to be hostile in informing me about this. Just message with your concern and I’ll evaluate from there.

Additionally, I will not interact with Hamas apologists. Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Anyone trying to make me feel like this is an Us vs. Them situation will be blocked.

[that-one-girls-blog-posts]

Nothing worse than getting into a new subject and having no one to discuss it with

[darkwood-sleddog]

When dogs in my breed have health/genetics issues I always feel the need to investigate. Like four month old puppy has elbow displaysia? Okay where did she come from? And when I find where she came from it’s just full of red flags. No health testing, no pedigrees, multiple families being one “breeder”, nice big payment options button on the website, etc.

Like, I do feel bad for people that fall for these things without knowing better, less bad for those that do but proceed anyways.

Remember. Health Testing is the BARE MINIMUM of ethical breeding.

[reality-detective]

[min-autumnsky]

[typhlonectes]

[philosophybits]

Gluttony is the vice of feeble minds. The gourmand has his brains in his palate, he can do nothing but eat...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Curiosity

The philosophy of curiosity explores the nature, origins, and implications of human curiosity, which drives individuals to seek knowledge, explore new experiences, and ask questions about the world around them. Curiosity has long been recognized as a fundamental aspect of human cognition and behavior, playing a central role in scientific inquiry, philosophical reflection, and everyday life. Here are some key aspects and theories within the philosophy of curiosity:

Epistemic Curiosity: Epistemic curiosity refers to the desire for knowledge and understanding, motivating individuals to seek information, explore new ideas, and engage in intellectual pursuits. Philosophers have debated the nature of epistemic curiosity, its origins in human cognition, and its role in shaping scientific progress and cultural development.

Aesthetic Curiosity: Aesthetic curiosity pertains to the exploration of beauty, art, and creativity, driving individuals to seek out new experiences, appreciate diverse forms of expression, and engage with works of literature, music, visual art, and other cultural artifacts. Aesthetic curiosity raises questions about the nature of artistic inspiration, cultural interpretation, and subjective experience.

Existential Curiosity: Existential curiosity concerns the exploration of existential questions about the nature of existence, meaning, and purpose, motivating individuals to reflect on their own lives, values, and beliefs. Existential curiosity encompasses inquiries into topics such as the nature of consciousness, the search for transcendence, and the quest for personal fulfillment.

Philosophical Curiosity: Philosophical curiosity involves the pursuit of philosophical inquiry, critical thinking, and self-reflection, prompting individuals to question assumptions, challenge conventional wisdom, and explore fundamental concepts such as truth, morality, justice, and reality. Philosophical curiosity underlies the practice of philosophy as a discipline and informs broader intellectual endeavors.

Ethical Curiosity: Ethical curiosity concerns the exploration of ethical questions and moral dilemmas, motivating individuals to consider the consequences of their actions, empathize with others, and strive for moral growth and development. Ethical curiosity raises questions about the nature of moral values, ethical principles, and the pursuit of the good life.

Cognitive Curiosity: Cognitive curiosity encompasses the exploration of cognitive processes, mental states, and psychological phenomena, driving individuals to understand how the mind works, how knowledge is acquired, and how beliefs are formed. Cognitive curiosity informs research in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.

Cultural Curiosity: Cultural curiosity involves the exploration of diverse cultures, traditions, and worldviews, prompting individuals to learn about different societies, languages, and customs, and to appreciate the richness of human diversity. Cultural curiosity fosters intercultural understanding, global awareness, and cross-cultural communication.

Metacognitive Curiosity: Metacognitive curiosity pertains to the exploration of one's own cognitive processes and learning strategies, motivating individuals to reflect on their own thinking, monitor their own understanding, and adapt their learning strategies to achieve greater intellectual growth and self-improvement.

Overall, the philosophy of curiosity explores the multifaceted nature of human curiosity and its profound influence on knowledge, creativity, personal growth, and the human condition.

[makluhr]

“a generation which ignores history has no past and no future” - Robert Heinlein

[kafkasapartment]

The Chinese Exclusion Act set a precedent for racially discriminatory laws in the U.S., reinforcing racial hierarchies that also oppressed African Americans. The "gatekeeping ideologies" established by the Act contributed to a broader environment of racial discrimination that affected multiple minority groups.

[exilley]

Public education is not actually about academia, it's about industry. The purpose of american schools, from day one, was to integrate members of the general people into a society that is nigh dependant on submission to the status quo. If you ask any teacher, student, parent, counselor, or any other person who is invested in public schooling, what the purpose of going to school is, they will respond with some variation on how it's meant to prepare kids for their future careers. What's important is not that one is in touch with their history, or able to perform basic mathematics, or that one can engage with literature and art in a meaningful way. The important part is that schoolchildren have a dispassionately earnest work ethic, an unyieldingly flexible standard of punctuality, and an uncompromising set of inordinate values about properness drilled into them. I don't think it's funny or ironic that school settings are commonly compared to prisons, and I don't think education should have to exist to serve the purpose of monetary and political benefit to be considered worthy of investment. Until public education as an institution is no longer viewed as an extension of industry, intellectualism will never thrive and no number of foundational reworks of the system will be effective at remedying the underlying cause of dysfunction and corruption.