Is serious business. I do not have a specific kind of goal with this thread, only to maybe get some new insights into what
you people think "good education" is. In a broad sense I think that all is learning in one way or another, but education in the sense of specific training is something every one of us has to deal with growing up in the modern world.

Say (just to maybe make it more interesting) that humans are socially constructed beings. That means you are being constructed by your environment through ideas on what is best for you as a persona. Eventually you get to choose ideas more freely, but still there are boundaries. Suddenly you are an adult, perfectly constructed to act as a social member of a society, which is dependent on your participation, or else it collapses.

Ok so far so good(bad?). If we then say that those people who planted those ideas in your mind while growing up, are also social constructs, who went through the same conditioning while they grew up, there seems to be a certain pattern here, which goes on and on.

If this concept has any truth to it, education really is serious business. It means that we literally can create any society we want, if we manage to break the patterns of repetitive conditioning, that only serves the status quo. I think that on a deeper human level, it is not enough only to "get a job" that again keeps the capitalist gangbang floating safely into an everlasting sunset of profits and greed.

I want to hear ideas of what you guys think can replace the ideas of profit, and even money as a concept at all?. Are we capable of breaking this extremely unhealthy circle, or do we even want to?

The idea of profit suits the single minded goal driven individual perfectly, but to what end?

What comes after money?, and what will "education" look like if we change course?

I am thinking mostly of his science fiction books, but any suggestion is welcome.

Any fans here?

Mostly known for his "2001 a space odyssey" I guess, but I was wondering if any of you have read his earlier works.
A friend recommends "Childhood`s end" and "The city and the stars".

Read this book the other day, and it raises some interesting questions. Some of you might be familiar with this, but I was not, so please enlighten
me if this has been proven wrong in some way.

In few words it says that research has shown that crime, violence and addictive behavior is not a social problem, but a biological one.

This researcher called Meaney started a series of studies on the biological impact of childhood trauma. He already knew of studies that showed that
victims of physical or sexual abuse are more likely to take their own lives as adults. He`d also read papers that described how childhood abuse can
damage a person`s ability to handle stress. These results could be explained away by emotional trauma, of course, but Meaney wanted to know if
any biology was involved. How does the toxic impact of childhood abuse live on in a person? Why does it cause some to commit suicide? The answer might be hidden in the brains of the suicide victims.

Meaney had his eye on one particular molecule. The glucocorticoid receptor is one of the basic building blocks of our stress response system. It is a
protein that helps us control the hormones that cause stress: the more we have of the receptor, the better we are able to respond to stressful
situations and vice versa.

Experiments have been done with rodents. By disrupting the maternal bond between a female rat and her young, researchers had already shown that poor parenting can cause young rats to have fewer glucocorticoid receptors. And when they grow up , those same rats coped badly with stress.
Could the same apply to humans?

When the analysis was complete, Meaney saw an intriguing pattern. For the most part, the brains of suicide victims had similar receptor levels to those of people who had died in accidents. But in the samples of victims of childhood abuse, receptor levels were lower, just as with the rats.
When he homed in on the cause of the difference, things got even more interesting. Meaney discovered that the gene for the receptor was covered
by a chemical blanket that effectively silenced it. Exactly the same silencing mechanism as seen in the rats that suffered poor maternal care. The
implication was significant: An abusive childhood might turn the volume down on this vital stress-response gene, leaving the abused vulnerable to stress and perhaps suicidal impulses, later in life.

His focus was suicide, but epigenetics is revealing that a slew of behaviours, from depression and other mental illnesses to aggression and perhaps
 even crime , may be shaped by chemical imprints laid down in the cells of people who suffer traumatic childhoods.

If this is true, you inherit destructive behaviour. We have all seen the pattern where the father beats the child, because his father did it to him, and his father to him again and so on.

Thoughts on this?

This is so dark,hopeless,misanthropic and nihilistic that it made me laugh.

It is based on the old heroic poem Beowulf,which is a very old "kvad"(the Norwegian word for very old texts derived from old Nordic oral traditions),only this novel is written from the perspective of the beast(or the bad guy if you watched the movie).

Everyone in here(who is obviously into dark stuff with depth) should read this.

It is short,and your brain will appreciate it very much.

Read the farseer trilogy awhile ago and liked it,and then I tried the liveship traders but that one didn`t really get to me.Has anyone here read some of her other works that might be worth picking up?

Anyone read this? you should

Love it or hate it kind of fantasy I guess,overwhelmingly dark and honest stuff