Radicalization -

Politicians and media's current use of the word radicalization show how out of touch they are with the real world . The audience too are confused. Maybe we all need some help to sort this out
Radicalisation is not the problem .

The ideas you radicalize are the problem  .  ( These maybe examples but its the words in their books that you can criticize - not their radicalism )

 If you have

1. radical peace activists you have nice love ins with no violence expected 
2. radical secularists you have government keeping us in order - someone has to ?. 
3. radical materialists you will have constant reminders that only money matters in life 
4. radical secular materialists think that everyone will be happy if they have enough money and cushions supplied by government . 
5. radical pragmatists think we should not allow any idealism to enter our heads , we should all do what we like 
6. radical progressives trust the future to be better whatever the past .
7. radical anti Christian  says that morality is bunk self justification ; (very closely aligned with reactionary postmodernism which because it reacts to everything that is , doesn't know what is or is not - To be or not to be is not a question - one be's )
    Its says that all this stuff around us is just mind games and therefore we shouldn't think at all - just act on our natural feelings. Its a very quiet life  because as soon as you say something you could be accused , under your own idealism,  of word and value constructing to justify yourself .  
8. radical optimists usually have a good bank balance 
9. radical christians support much more grace ,love forgiveness and freedom  for everyone , 
10. radical greens think nature should rule and we should live in caves and eat berries 
11. radical racists solve all environmental problems by getting rid of the neighbours.
12. radical non idealists fit in wherever they like at the time ( read Susan Neiman) They make the false claim that you can still be human even if you do not have ideals.  Not sure I have met anyone who really lives that way - simple and appealing idea when you don't want to think ? . . 

Maybe you can add your own?
So where does all that leave most of us?. Its well known that many of us start radical and end up less so - is that a good thing ?
Would the world be a better place if we  abandoned idealism - If we saw ourselves as pure pragmatists . Would it say something about intellectual confusion ?  If we we were all just nice people , maudlin soft and pliable , forever elastic, if not resilient from home base.
I don't think so .

Let's be really clear about one thing ( the above list is indicative not complete )  . Its not just young people's problem, Older Australians Europeans  and Americans have a problem too in particular  - they may not be radical enough to resist the ideas they don't like  .
Kids just simply do not respect the wishy washy talk that can summarize those who talk radicalization without talking to the substance in each case .

Secular and secularism - not the same thing

Andrews Labor Victorian government have decided this August 2015 ,  despite one of the most honored social school experiments  and  a full history of over one hundred years of opportunity to engage , to put the subject of faith outside the curriculum and minds  of all state school children, forever.
Mr Daniel Andrews says its simply not important enough . For the first time in Australian schools ,  kids we will be told "its not important enough " to ever get mentioned ever.( spare us the window dressing)  Puts a new meaning to the idea of a dry area .
Most parents who used to send their children to state schools will disagree with him. 

Daniels  must change their minds - for the sake of the kids and the sharing of values and ideas .Elected leaders must face the shallow nonsense of those who advocate these changes - right now !

Confused are you -  well  join the club . Fairfax the man who set up our first papers wasn't confused ( his theology and practice sound) The State School system he helped set up has served Australia to socialize its children very well . So why in the world do we want to change what has worked so well in Australia?  Its probably not perfect  but it has worked well to keep us happy to participate in State Schools - up to now 


Whats the panic ? Islam? Probably ! The scardicats and woort warriors are busy - afraid to play the game in the playground! Why do we so easily take away schools independence and right to decide and give it to the secularist faith alone ? Would it not be better to have this fear dealt with out in the open like it has been for decades ,  A completely secular school would be a school for the mentally handicapped . 


What's the ideologues within the Education Department excuse for this change at this time ? What makes them so wise ?  is Parliament on the ball or just now an old folks home for sleepy sentimental stuff ?

Some dull witted Victorian ideologues think they can remove the old but real tensions, problems and threats  that faith drives , informs and motivates. Their magic wand ministrations is to take the factors out of the formula --  by  physically taking them away . "poof " and they are gone . No more problems
Normal thinking and mentally stable people face their fears and the reality that faith will motivate  ---- let all faiths compete for a space in the curriculum, as they could before. Out in the open

Defining secular is fine and helpful  but secularism says there is only one category for knowledge .   Secularism  simply limits the scope for knowledge

The result of this major historic change ,( if its not reversed ) The result will not be  a big frame for Victorian State schools but a holy huddle.   You can often tell a religious use of a word by the endearing love and pride with which the authors  entreat its wholeness. Secular helps us define the uncontroversial in education so teachers can get on with the job of training minds around facts and fomulae. When what we know from mere formulate starts to limit our appreciation of the possibility of more we limit our education to the mundane.

One is a category, the latter is a religion .  The former allows us to  argue productively about where the boundary is between the secular and the sacred.   Some think they will abolish the tension by dissolving the distinction in their favor . We all have different opinions about where that boundary is,  so,  how have schools involving a wide range of faith systems worked? On the current well tested principle of separation and respect  for both. The way it should stay
Better to have the boundary  than not having it , Gives us all a starting point for a good debate .

Not , please God , just another holy huddle ! read the lesson woodya  http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/health/pages/respectrel.aspx

Resilience -

ABC presenters and other wannabes who want to be taken seriously use this word because it's now popular and floating to the top as an idea of importance. They understand enough to know its valuable and why;  Would they know who to call ?

Equality Imperatives for thinking people - Where reactionaries went wrong is to rely on bookeeping

There is always more than one way to skin a cat . Nothing wrong with sharing , but lets not be really Marx dumb about how we do it.  Legislation is a blunt instrument, but it appears to be only one of the few available to reactionaries and so they sometimes get all fanatical about using it  . As many even non believers  point out about the tyrants of our own century, and the logic of goverance of evil they applied - this ideal is more than frightening in practice , as practiced ; The greatest evil was done in the name of good intention of making all equal - a process never complete; a tension of war not peace ,If the whole picture be put, its not even natural .
While progressives will often resist what's written below,  one party,at least,  seems bent on denying  themselves the opportunity to really move on  and thereby will fail to push for a fully matured debate about whats possible with the mixed material of mankind . .
In our own time, we have repeat bouts of same old same old solutions to the inequalities around us . Unequal treatment of women, aborigines and now gays .
The point is,  inequality occurs and its not all bad.  Some of it is " natural "; some of it  is perception based ( "poor me, poor them" ) and some self induced ( greed poor decisions, waste etc) .If we seek to reduce all of it, or say "it's the governments job to force it back to order" or call less "disadvantage "a sin ( which its not) we adopt an universal solution to a diverse origin and reality/myth . In funding these forced things amongst a free and diverse people, we insist on bankrupting our governments and productive sectors  ; we insist on an unsustainable authority and parenting style .

As stated in previous posts, those who reject the Creators promise of all equal ( God can do it because his knowledge is perfect,  His provision of manna  provided to the Hebrews was equitable even though the human accountants list suggested otherwise )  are destined to limit themselves, not only to the material and the bleeding obvious ,  but to blind others to the greater wonder of actual abundance,diversity of gifts , cooperation, co dependence , miracle and diversity . Such blinkered accounting will miss the way it has drawn our civilization to a glass half full view of what we can do together . Its not brilliant , but dumb to let what  we see dominate over what we  can't.  It is part of the big picture  blessing given to our culture that  we were taught  to not worry about what we haven't got , believing that our gifts / foods are different and the ledger obscure .


If we can't motivate the people , how can we hope, even with the toughest tyrant , ( some prospect always of another) to change the world . Neiman makes the telling point that its no good relying on reason in these matters either as full reasoning is "missing" .The argument that the people are sheep and need to be led is fine till you think about the wolves , whose nature is to get what they want out of the deal .


To quote in part from "George Bernard Shaw " By G K Chesterton  who made light of the Fabians now long standing fantasy with simple arguments and accountancy .

Bernard Shaw threw himself as thoroughly as any New Woman into the

cause of the emancipation of women. But while the New Woman praised

woman as a prophetess, the new man took the opportunity to curse her and kick her as a comrade. For the others sex equality meant the

emancipation of women, which allowed them to be equal to men. For Shawit mainly meant the emancipation of men, which allowed them to be rude to women. Indeed, almost every one of Bernard Shaw's earlier plays might be called an argument between a man and a woman, in which the woman is thumped and thrashed and outwitted until she admits that she is the equal of her conqueror. This is the first case of the Shavian trick of turning on the romantic rationalists with their own rationalism.  GKC

The law is an ass and those who love it too much bear the smell of its incompleteness. The West was blessed with less because the high cost of good governance increases exponentially with the words . Let every legislator "leave off and make it lean" . 
The rich in our culture have big responsibilities.  Only those rich enough to prosecute the law properly ( meaning in part our bureaus ) can be responsible to deal with the adjacent other wordy issues of liberty ,grace , offence, punitive , education  and right judgment  that are needed to sustain it in its context. 

The only inevitable thing about simple equality arguments is that they don't last long before people see through them . That;s why some insist we must push the cuurrent  legislation through.

Equality Imperatives for thinking people -Orwell

"The only inevitable thing about simple equality arguments is that they are shallow and unusustainable .  So the only inevitable thing about simple equality arguments is that they don't last long before people see through them . That;s why the  perpetrators seek to  rush this legislation through. 

No word has got old Westerners into more trouble than the ideal of equality. No word has or is likely to run riot with a audience of us armchair experts (in our internet age ) than this powerful and useful idea because the ideal is a super simple and punchy  one . The popularity of a simple idea needs no explanation to those who think deeply.
No idea better symbolizes the pedantic blinkered view of the natural order than this one . Not that nature is simple; Its beyond simplicity to uncanny . Unity in diversity is possible, but talk of making all things equal is to ignore diversity completely - in both product and function.  The modern western myth of legislating equality is thereby theoretically and practically unworkable.
While we are not alone in being tempted by this myth , our generation does not have the experience to know when and where the word works. George Orwell was no dill,  but we have become dull to his warnings on the word use .The greatest evil is still done in the name of misnaming this best intention . Equality is a  good word  to use in the right place ,
So why is the ideal so well held amongst us ?
Clearly this idea originates in the West from at least as far back as the Bible where God asserts His care for all his creation equally, We are , according to the good book,  all created equal .The God of the Bible GOB says its in "his DNA for men " even if we  don't wanna accept it in ours. What makes us unequal in life is , if you take a fantastic view of life , our doing;  either its what we do to ourselves or to others .   So there is a case that we have gone wrong in not accepting the latter bit of our freedom ; our freedom to set things right --That bit of biblical doctrine on personal responsibility is often left out of  modern Western dialogue between men ;God too has a bigger picture of how to hold equality and diversity together than we do . In providing for people He called into the desert he provided equally for the people so that those who had much had enough, while those who only collected a little had enough also( manna) .Take it or leave it its a faith thing expounded right through the book - GOB is no man's debtor .  God maybe the best mathematician in the Universe but he doesn't insist on always using the actuary's two columns ( there being a strong array if you think about it ) GOB doesn't insist that mere 2 column maths should rule when it comes to giving equal potential for satisfaction for his creatures, His gifts , according to those who trust him,are perfect .
. Maybe the consensus amongst many men is evidence that the Devil has no good ideas of his own and so has to distort the good and better concepts of the created order.....


George Orwell  was not an ignorant man. His writing, unlike that of journos of our generation,  was informed by harsh war experience of the human dilemma. Most pointedly, he came to realize that the focus on equality was an example in his own time of good intention producing great evil. Too easy

Equality - whatever happened to diversity

I don't see how any sane person can vote to change the definition of MARRIAGE when its clearly trying to change the substance of what it has meant for centuries and clearly cross culturally . This is just another overly ambititous, almost tyranical, claim by reactionaries who as Chesterton said over 100 years ago about his Fabian friends ; they don't want democracy to mean a parliament or a republic , but just want what they haven't got . What do they want ? Do they know ?" An improved sense of their status"? So much for depth and sustainability if its a feeling or even thats where its coming from !

Our society. like science, is only functional if we maintain definitions that mean something. This whole effort to simplify will only confuse and restrict as the feminist movement did before it . No longer will we feel free to have the full conversation about diversity because unity is the extremely dumb and constricting determinant .As the catholic paper points out "Only the conjugal view accounts for both facts." We could add "all the facts " needed to be considered here ; adoption , surrogacy, ideal marriage , disfunctional marriage , and civil marriage in an austrailian, christian or muslim context .

God help this country if we are no longer allowed our God given right to call things what we wanna call em =define things .

God help the government with their difficult decision about what civil marriage means if some smart arse legislation not only tells them how to do it , but doesn't help them find any clearer way of talking to it ; This is smartarse legislation that not only tries to tell people what love is, it but also wants to say what words we should use about all the different types of relationships existing . What will be a family for taxation purposes in ten years time ? .This is only one question for this very weak week in our history . Born Equal and equal before the law - but they are religiuos concepts ( see Neiman) This idea of equality contrasts with natures striving to maintain cooperation in diversity - equality is not a concept derived by deduction , peerreview or physiological or genetic drivers I pity the man . Looking for identity but expecting the driver behind to know where its all going

Guilt - just another area of confusion

Tony Delroy (ABC radio evenings) normally makes for interesting radio , allowing lots of time to cover the territory -relaxed informative . Last nights program on "guilt" with the clinical psychologist  Susan scared me -none of the people on the warm side of the microphone were prepared to get to the bottom of it .    So much for intelligent radio

1. "Its one of a number of bad feelings" -So instead of subdividing them we allowed all sorts of bad feelings to be  lumped together into one . Clearly this diversion prevented proper medicine being applied to anger , false guilt , denial and obfuscation-- the realities so rarely recognised - the very serious and substantial  issue of sin and offence . It clearly too reinforced the nonsense that we are happier if we ignore or deny the reality of the sin ? No wonder our children are in trouble --- they have so little basis for understanding " whats wrong "  
2. Both presenters were willing to allow denial on the subject  and try to wash away any substance to its positive role ( Susan ) . Moist callers were happy to smooth over .... but not all 
3. False guilt is not something to be dismissed......soem listeners would have got no help from this hiding 
4. The last caller was a symbol of the danger of just talking about it ( the only solution identified by moderns for the last few decades is talk --) Confession may have set the process of reconcialiation in train 20 years either with a different result ( Closer recognition of their weaknesses) 
5. Not once did either party talk to the issue of the moral values and how both false and true guilt are developed form them . If they had ,,,,at least the listeners would have had something more than ducking and weaving so evident in their  dealing with these issues
   
   It is not hard to see why Muslim families are more effective  than modern families because whatever you think of their moral values they at least have them
   
   Tony Delroy and others - talk about this properly . Our children need to to hear soemone other that poor lady confess to unresolved guilt over sexual matters . Half the girls in the country need more than your careless crap on the subject .
   
   Too bad if you have to ditch the progressives ( you know themn are they really?) rubbish about us being in some sort of progressive sexual revolution .
   
   Your choice----- to either represent us or to ignore us . To face guilt or ignore it !

How did we ever get to be so reactive ?

Simple - we have allowed ourselves to be confused .
Instead of no devil and no angel in the picture and on our shoulder ,   we only have our own dataset to rely on .

Frankly, with all the signals from physio , mind and video the central processing unit  is  confused .Stalled


There is something to be said for seeing how we got into this mess in the first place .
The Parliament today want to but up barriers against violent people ; they don't quite get that we use to be far more effective in reducing physical assault by putting up barriers against verbal assault .

Here is just one connection we have lost in the last 30 years . The connection between verbal and physical violence.


In our law ,verbal assault is similiar to physical assault because one is often a precursor to the other . Woosy leaders everywhere who do not understand or operate in a proactive manner.

More here http://ondewolf.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/jumping-at-shadows.html