Re: teaching appropriate values to the young: singularity

From: Stirling Westrup (sti@cam.org)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 17:53:49 MST


Spike Jones wrote:

> How can we avoid passing on similarly inappropriate values
> to the next generation?

Speaking as a guy with no children, I've always thought that the lessons I
would try hard to impart with respect to coping with the world are:

1) Change is inevitable. It is sometimes terrible, it is sometimes wonderful,
   but it is always an opportunity.

2) Your best hope of surviving in a changing world, and grabbing at the
   opportunities that come is to think, and to understand. Learn to think
   in the broad sense, to sense the similarities between investment patterns,
   ecological webs, sociological pecking orders, physical systems and others.
   Cast your net wide in the search for knowledge, since everything is related
   to everything else, and the more you can integrate information from diverse
   areas, the better you will do.

3) An enemy is someone you don't understand. Once you know an "enemy's"
   motivations, their loves, their hates, their demons and their hopes, they
   are an ally. You may not like them, and they may be trying to harm you, but
   once you understand them, you can turn their ill will to your own benefit.
   You may even discover that you can help them, and turn an enemy into a
   friend.

4) None of the above is easy.

-- 
 Stirling Westrup  |  Use of the Internet by this poster
 sti@cam.org       |  is not to be construed as a tacit
                   |  endorsement of Western Technological
                   |  Civilization or its appurtenances.



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