Quotes by Plato

 

“People are like soil. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a being or they can stunt your growth and let you wither and die.”

 

"The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to participate in government, is to live under the government of worse men."

 

“It doesn't matter if reincarnation exists and is true. The important thing is to make the people believe that they rerincarnate. Then they will be more willing to take responsibility for ensuring that the state will be better in the future.”

 

“Nothing can be more absurd than the practice which prevails in our country when men and women do not follow the same occupations with all their strength and with one mind. Then the state, instead of being whole, is reduced to half.”

 

“The first and greatest victory is to reclaim your true self. To allow your true self to be conquered by your inferior self (human nature) is the most shameful and abominable thing.”

 

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something.”

 

"A good decision is based on knowledge and not numbers."

 

"Opinion is between knowledge and ignorance."

 

Also check:

https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2024/07/citat-av-platon-folk-ar-som-jord.html

and:

Plato on Democracy (youtube.com)

 

Interview | Philippe Nemo

Ignorance is spreading in schools

 Philippe Nemo is a French philosopher who has written a series of works on Western philosophy and about how French education has come to decline in quality. He is now writing a book in which he compares the education systems in different countries and has recently visited Sweden and Lund to meet principals and teachers at several schools. His views are interesting in Sweden because he points to organization, pedagogy and teacher training as the problems in the school - not the profits of independent schools.

 He also underlines that there is no guarantee of quality with schools run under public auspices. In other words, he gives different perspectives than those we hear in Swedish debate, when he answers my questions.

 Nemo first wants to say that France has a very old and very rich intellectual, scientific and cultural tradition, which is not easily destroyed. Now, however, for three or four decades, the french educational system has been down graded.

 The young are the first victims. There are a couple of famous schools that can be seen as islands of resistance, but they can be overwhelmed by the spreading ignorance.

 It is not the wishes of parents and employers that the politicians followed when they introduced the French primary school, but a desire to have control, says Nemo. Primary school in France means, as in Sweden, that all students read according to the same curriculum at the same pace until the age of 16, and despite criticism similar to that heard in Sweden, no change takes place.

 In France, the Ministry of Education manages 1.3 million employees, most of whom are teachers. These have a strong position as state employees and they are represented by strong trade unions. The huge education bureaucracy is almost impossible to control.

 Ministers have no real authority over the school. If he or she takes the slightest initiative that the unions don't like, the minister will be short-lived. The state's monopoly is also combined with the "school map", which means that students are referred to the nearest school. Parents thus have very little say.

 You can say that the teachers are stuck in the state's net. The state trains them, recruits them, pays them and insists on its type of pedagogy. Teachers cannot get a better job by doing a good job. It is a situation similar to the one that led to stagnation in the Soviet Union. There are idealistic teachers who are passionately interested in their subject and who do their utmost for the students, but they have no influence on the education policy of the country. Is there an equivalent to Swedish independent schools?

 Yes, says Nemo, and the equivalent is called “contract schools”, and these are mainly Catholic. They are called that because they have a contract with the state. In France as in Sweden, schools are paid for with public funds. Contract schools have been a safety valve, and without them there would have been an explosion. They are now superior to the public schools in everything. They have more effective pedagogy, more order and order and offer physical and psychological security for the students. Even most socialist ministers and MPs want to send their children to contract schools, and yet it is they who have created today's state school. The French left, if it were honest, should immediately include in its program that there should be more contract schools.

 According to a survey, 40 percent of all French families want to send their children to such schools, but the unions do not allow the number of contract schools to exceed 18 percent. Thus long waiting lists arise to get a place in such a school. The big difference between contract schools and independent schools is that in France it is the school that receives support, while in Sweden the support follows the student.

 In France, there is no predetermined amount either. The fact that contract schools are popular does not mean that money is taken from state schools. However, each contract school is an additional cost, so there is an economic argument for keeping the number low. The French unions would call a giant strike if France adopted Sweden's rule that funding follows the student, a rule based on common sense, says Nemo.

 Why is pedagogy so political? According to Nemo, the official pedagogy, the one supported by the Ministry of Education, is not a science. It consists of a number of procedures invented to make elementary school work. When you put all young people of a certain age in the same class, intellectually "heterogeneous" groups arise. In such groups you cannot give regular lessons. One therefore needs to come up with different methods such as group work, discussions, video viewing and study visits so that everyone can participate and no one feels excluded.

 This is a hope that is ideological in the sense that the intention is to enable the equal school and has been given the name pedagogy. The idea of ​​using the school to transform society is a left-wing project and has become a kind of religion.

 In France, there is no other official pedagogy. Nemo is worried about the future of Europe. He sees that the quality of public education systems has declined in several countries in Europe. In today's world, non-European countries are becoming increasingly important, especially the Asian ones. He has had the opportunity to visit schools in Japan and South Korea and has been able to observe that education there is treated much more serious. It is clear that Europe needs to become more ambitious in its school and university policy. Nemo warns: If we do not accept that challenge, China and other superpowers will sooner or later gain power over us.

Philippe Nemo Professor who teaches philosophy and history of ideas at the ESCP-EAP European School of Management in Paris

Todde

Also check: 

https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2023/05/overpopulation-and-future-of-mankind.html

 We Europeans are becoming a tiny minority

A hundred years ago, a quarter of the world's population was European - today it looks completely different. "Demographic anxiety" casts a shadow over the upcoming EU elections.

Do you know what percentage of the world's population is European? For my own part, it wasn't that long ago that I opened my eyes to how relatively few we are - and how few we are about to become. 

 A hundred years ago, we made up a quarter of the world's population. Today, Europe's inhabitants make up only one tenth of the world's population, and the EU's only 6 percent. Towards the end of the century, EU citizens are expected to be just 4 percent. It's a pretty tiny minority.

 This week Europe Day is celebrated. We are moving towards EU elections. Climate, defence, the euro (and yes, a lot of domestic political issues) are discussed. But if you look further ahead, as the European Commission does in its strategy work, it becomes clear that demographic changes will have great significance for our societies. 

* In 2022, the birth rate was below 1.5 children per woman. ªAs early as 2050, 30 percent of the EU's population is expected to be over 65, compared to 20 percent today.

* The EU's share of the world's GDP is expected to decrease from a quarter in 2020 to a seventh in 2050. Eastern and Central Europe in particular is experiencing population decline – in the last three decades they have lost the equivalent of the entire population of Hungary and the Czech Republic combined.

This is pointed out by the political scientist Ivan Krastev, who has drawn attention to the political significance of the "demographic anxiety". According to him, this is a reason for populist electoral successes in Eastern Europe. "The fear that the nation's population is decreasing goes hand in hand with the fear that within the nation it is the wrong classes and ethnic groups that have higher fertility," he writes in an essay on democracy and demography (2022).

 Anxiety or not - it is a fact that the greatness of Europeans is, quite literally, diminishing. This in turn affects the EU's role in the world, economically and in terms of values. Or, as the European Commission puts it: "demographic change has a profound impact on everyday life".

PS. Please note that the figures do not  mention how many of the "immigrants" are muslim  and how many are adapting to the norms of the country they are arriving to. Also there is no mention of the percentage of the immigrants from outside Europe.

Also Check: 

https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2023/05/overpopulation-and-future-of-mankind.html

  We are the "good guys"

 It is excellent to examine yourself to become a better person. But if humility veers into self-loathing, which stains the whole good cause you are fighting for, there is danger on the way.

 The Western population has suffered from such self-hatred towards its own culture. It has led to many either lapsing into nihilism ("there is no good or evil") or into an inverted morality, where good is seen as evil.

 Of course, Westerners have done a lot of horrible things historically. All kingdoms and peoples have done so throughout the ages. But unlike other cultures, we have also succeeded in creating a social system that is markedly more good and righteous than anything in earlier history. With the democratic rule of law that began to emerge at the end of the 18th century in Europe and North America (with roots in antiquity, Judeo-Christian ethics, and humanism), state formations that were not ruled by a diabolical dictator (C2) finally emerged.

 There instead, power is shared and the people get to decide; they are countries that do not start wars of aggression with endless suffering as a consequence, and where corruption is not the normal state. The modern, Western democracies (C2) are the highest moral state formations in human history. Its inhabitants are closer to a paradisiacal existence than humanity has ever been. It is, of course, difficult to realize, as people have always transferred their dream realms of happiness to other times or places.

 But despite all the negativity we experience, it is actually much better here and now than in other times and places. We have a social system that we should celebrate, want to spread around the world and fight for. Since the rise of modern democracies, it has never been under such threats as today - hardly even during the Second World War.

 From inside, with Donald Trump who says he wants to leave Europe to its fate and despises democracy. From the outside, with the new world order China and Russia are trying to create, where they tie up India, South Africa and Brazil in the BRICS cooperation and draw countries from former democratic aspirations into their dark sphere of interest.

 Therefore, we must stop inflating China and other dictatorships into economic and military superpowers and bring back industrial production. We must fight for our ideals in the UN. We must strengthen our defenses and economies.

 But above all, we must stop believing that our societies are bad and unjust. We should not turn a blind eye to our shortcomings, but neither should we exaggerate.

 We need to do more for the environment, but the worst emissions occur in dictatorships. We must continue to support vulnerable groups here, but at the same time realize how far we have come.

 How are women treated in the Arab states, the homosexuals in Russia, the Muslims in China, the miners in Zimbabwe?

 There are degrees of hell, but living in a dictatorship always means being more or less enslaved. For our own sake, and for humanity as a whole, the population of the West must become ideological again: without becoming naive and losing respect for other cultures, passionate about the democratic rule of law as an idea (C2). Understand that we are "the good guys".

 

 Or as Winston Churchill said: Our modern Western democracy is the least bad social system that has existed on our planet.

 

Todde

 

 Also check: https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2023/05/friendship-quotes-through-thick-and.html

 

And: https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2023/01/takeresponsibility-be-optimistic.html

 The earth's nature is being ravaged by population growth

 Man's rapid expansion leads to environmental destruction, starvation and despoiled biodiversity. Population growth needs to be slowed as soon as possible for sustainability, write professors Malte Andersson and Frank Götmark

 In 1800, the world's population was 1 billion. Last autumn we exceeded 8 billion and are now growing by around 80 million per year. At the same time, species and ecosystems are declining and disappearing through our overexploitation: more than one in four of the 150,000 reviewed species is threatened, of which one in two is a vascular plant. Among 71,000 animal species studied, almost half are decreasing, only 3 percent are increasing. And it goes fast. Since 1970, populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish have declined by an average of approximately 70 percent. The reasons are many. Overexploitation in forestry, hunting and fishing. Agriculture and livestock farming over increasing areas. Infrastructure and buildings such as housing, industries, roads and mines. Our spread of invasive organisms.

 Species usually decline because we take over and wipe out their habitats – natural ecosystems and environments to which species have long adapted through evolution. Habitat destruction is the main reason why animal populations disappear. This happens mainly in the tropics, but also in Europe.

 Plants and animals are decreasing in pace with increased population density and consumption, as the ecologist Trevor Beebee shows in his current book "Impacts of Human Population on Wildlife" (2023).

 Another threat to biological diversity is climate change, where the two main driving forces are increasing population and consumption, according to the IPCC's major report 2022. The rich world's high consumption of course needs to be reduced, which is often highlighted in the environmental debate (see for example wwf.se, Sustainable consumption).

 On the other hand, the extremely destructive consequences of population growth for biological diversity and sustainability are rarely or never discussed, whether by media such as Radio or TV, by politicians, the UN or the environmental movement (for example WWF and the Nature Conservation Association).

 Has the topic become taboo? In 2017, thousands of international researchers pointed out in "Scientists' Warning" the need to stabilize our population. In his solid overview, Beebee (2023) shows that "overpopulation is at least as much a rich as a poor country problem". Efforts are required from all countries. A new report shows that we wiped out most of the Earth's large land mammals, reducing them to a tiny fraction of the wealth before our increase accelerated (through fossil fuels, medical advances, better food and longer lives). In biomass, we now completely dominate among Earth's remaining land mammals.

 Is our massive expansion, to the detriment of other species, ethically reasonable? We (humans) make up 390 million tonnes. Our domesticated mammals – cows, pigs, sheep and companion animals such as horses, dogs and more – 630 million tonnes. A total of just over a billion tons, fifty times more than all the world's remaining wild land mammals, which we reduced to a mere 20 million tons!

 A few thousand years ago, before we became farmers, the proportions were more than reversed. We were only a few million people, less than a thousandth of today's population, and had no livestock. In parts of Western Asia and especially in Africa, where the population is expected to grow by 2.5 billion by 2088 according to the UN, birth rates remain high. The number of malnourished in Africa is now close to 300 million and increases every year according to the FAO.

 The earth's nature is being ravaged by population growth

 Population growth is about to lead to disaster for both Africa's people and its biodiversity. Hundreds of millions of women lack contraception, and social norms influenced by patriarchy, religion, and ethnic competition foster large litters of children. Despite the huge population increase's negative consequences, there is no population target among the UN's 17 global goals for 2030.

 But independent researchers point out that an ecologically sustainable population is rather around 2-3 billion than the 10.4 we are heading towards according to the UN. If everyone is to reach the European standard of living, a sustainable human world population probably cannot exceed approximately 3 billion. Even less if the conditions of other species are to be improved.

 The UN Conference on Biodiversity, Cop15, proposed last year the protection of 30 percent of the planet's biodiversity, and the recent UN Conference in Nairobi proposes concrete actions for the needs seen at Cop15. As we explained countries with high birth rates need to lower them significantly in order to contribute to a sustainable world population. On a positive note, voluntary family planning programs in, for example, Bangladesh, Thailand and South Korea have worked well and quickly reduced birth rates. Unfortunately, many programs for family planning disappeared after 1995, when SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) replaced family planning. But research shows that longer education for sub-Saharan girls only significantly increases contraceptive use if longer education is combined with family planning programs.

 Overall, there is strong evidence for the importance of assistance to family planning and women's empowerment and education. The right to education in family planning was emphasized by the UN as early as 1968. When governments now reconsiders, it can learn from previous mistakes and provide much-needed support for family planning programs.

 Especially new programs that also take the environment and nature into account, and increase the possibility of preserving the earth's biological diversity.

 Malte Andersson ecologist, professor emeritus, University of Gothenburg Frank Götmark professor of ecology and nature conservation, University of Gothenburg

 

Also check: https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2023/05/overpopulation-and-future-of-mankind.html