In some agreement with Keith, I don't see the increase of opportunities for the young as being a matter of political ideology or politics or even a matter of what the modern human sciences are telling us. The thing that has generated opportunities that enable young people to get ahead and transcend the barriers that prevented their parents from doing so are massive changes in the socio-economic world. I was a depression baby, born in western Canada to immigrant parents in the early 1930's. I remember adults talking about how gloomy things were. One of my cousins, ten years older than me, wanted to go to university or at least get some form of higher education. He was told to forget about it, that's for rich kids.
Then came the war and the postwar years. There was an explosion of opportunities, even a kid like me, born poor and without much hope, wound up at university with ever so many kids from similar backgrounds. My major regret at the time was that the wide open world I was now in came at the cost of the lives of some six million Jews and millions of other people. There is another, a more pervasive regret that has dogged me and I'm sure many other depression babies. The fact that my earliest growing up took place in a word of almost zero hope has made me a rather gloomy person -- expect the worst; there is no best. I would disagree with Keith on his view that the plight of the African child in the diamond or gold mine is a product of bad luck. I'd argue that his or her plight is a product of centuries of colonialism and capitalist repression which at some point has to be, and hopefully will, be swept into the dust bin of history, though right now I can't say how that might happen. I would, however, totally agree that political parties, whether right or left wing, will have very little to with it. I see political parties as corporate entities looking after their own interests and not those of the public, though there are large exceptions. It will likely take some major conflagration, a major war perhaps, to enable the African child to walk out of the gold or diamond mine, get an education, and become something other than a socio-political causality. If we can do it, he or she can do it, though I have to admit it will be much harder for them. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 11:22 PM Subject: [Futurework] A Plague on Both Houses The rapidly accumulating evidence of the modern human sciences is now telling us with increasing clarity that the fundamental assumptions of both left- and right-politics are fallacious. Even the wonders of a "mixed economy" or a "third way" -- as individually promoted by both Labour and Conservative prime ministers in this country in the last 20 years -- have proved to be risible. Differences of poverty, opportunity and political power remain much the same as always in any advanced country whatever type of government, sometimes slightly reducing when great effort and spending is made under a socialist government, more usually expanding when eyes are taken off the ball in so-called free-enterprise government.. The whole debate can be reduced to a simple example in which the observations, large-scale surveys and lab researches of educationalists, psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, geneticists and evolutionary biologists are all in almost total agreement. It is that, at the time of puberty, the adolescent is the recipient of his or her personality and potential skills. He or she is hardly at all the creator of those specifications. The individual has had very little to do with laying down those specifications nor, apart from luck, the way that those specifications subsequently play themselves out and largely determine the experiences and happiness in the remainder of his or her lifetime. Excluding the luck of a lottery draw or inheriting a million from an unknown relative, there are three main lucks in life. They're all interlinked but are sufficiently different in their effects that they can be discussed separately. The first is the emotional, informational and cultural environments mainly imparted by parents but also influenced by school-teachers in the early years of childhood. By the age of puberty, any social or intellectual skills not laid down by then will never be fully recoverable in later life, no matter how hard one tries. The second luck is the nature and abilities of one's post-puberty peer group to whom the individual now devotes much more attention as, together, they approach adulthood. It is in this period that the individual can now develop and enhance the comparative advantage of his or her best skills, testing them against others in the peer group and finding a role within it. As the prospect of adult life draws closer, friends made in this period are usually friends for life. The third luck is the nature and abilities of, usually, just one or two patrons (often one's parents) who have a sufficient span of like social contacts which enable a young adult to finally find an initial lodgement in an adult group which, to a greater or lesser extent, is normally protective of entry by any young hopeful. This third luck also includes the size of the income made available in a particular group, or the intrinsic interest of a job, and also whether that particular specialization continues to be favoured by the changing economic environment. To summarize: 1. Unless a socialist government interferes in the intimate family life of every child from his or her earliest months and years in the hope of equalizing opportunities then inequalities of personalities and abilities are broadly set by the age of puberty. No amount of good intent by governments can change this. 2. A right-wing government cannot make claims of virtue for its apparent heroes. Those individuals are the product of good luck just as an African child working and dying in a diamond or gold mine is the product of bad luck. Politics is already in a bad way. It's not likely to get any better in the coming years as we try to work off the immense private, corporate and governmental debts that the policies of both left-wing and right-wing governments have lumbered us with. The modern human sciences are telling us quite radical things about what we really are like. The new politics will probably be concerned with how power can be confined within groups -- where it is more accessible to be pulled down if necessary -- rather than between groups as now. I can take this no further. For now, until the findings of the human sciences spread around for a generation or two, I would join the refrain of an increasing number of the young. It's not very constructive, I'm afraid: A Plague on Both Houses! Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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