Responsibilities of a CitizenNext week is Election Day. We will be voting on everything from President of the United States to US Senators and Representatives, state representatives, school board and county commissioners and a number of amendments to state constitutions. In order to know what you are voting on and for whom you are voting, you have to take some time to do your research. This isn’t something you can cram for and do well on.
Socratic Method and KidsI’ve been asked about this as a Humanistic Parenting topic. As a Humanist parent, I want my child to learn how to think through problems and figure out how to solve them effectively and compassionately. I want him to learn how to make the correct choices for himself without having to be told what the correct choice is. I have taught him this by using the Socratic Method. And I’ve been asking him these sorts of questions since he has been old enough to talk.
I now have a kid who self regulates his emotions fairly well and who is courageous in his morality and who doesn’t argue with me too much, mostly because there is no point, he’s going to lose. The thing is, there are so many benefits to how your child behaves when you raise them with Socratic reasoning. It goes well beyond just helping them learn how to think.
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They are ProjectingI came to a realization the other day. The GOP are projecting onto the Democrats their fears about themselves. It would explain a whole lot. For those of you who are Republican, I apologize for this in advance, but the GOP as a party is behaving weirdly. They are accusing Democrats of doing what they themselves are proposing to do. Except that in their world, they are the defenders of the very things they are attacking and the Democrats are the evil others who are doing all the harm. It’s really bizarre.
Using Humanistic Psychology to win the culture warsI am a Humanist. At the moment, the non-religious segment of our population is growing rapidly. I view this overall as a good thing. It means that the public discussion about what is right and what is wrong and what is moral and what is not now has a really cool secular voice in the mix that can no longer be ignored. Morality is now not the sole purview of religion.
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Cybertrolls, Freethought Blogs and Operant ConditioningIt turns out that freethinkers aren’t any more wonderful than any other group of people. We have the same foibles, the same inability to think straight when angry, the same inability to curtail our anger to work more productively and… we also have trolls.
If you don’t follow the gossip within the larger Freethought community, you are lucky. I don’t except when something big happens. And some big things have been happening for a while. Here’s the long short of it. Some women complained of sexist behavior by some (not all) men who go to Freethought conferences. For pointing out this behavior these women have been subjected to quite a bit of online harassment. And when I say quite a bit, it’s like mob trolling is taking place.
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