WGU -p.234. Rec: FL 37-38. Reports:
1. What mixed messages keep us in states of immaturity?
2. The older you get, the more you know what?
3. What does the U-bend tell us about aging?
4. Growing up means realizing what?
5. Philosophy is an attempt to wrestle with what three questions, according to Kant?
6. The young have only vague and erroneous notions of what, according to de Beauvoir?
7. Shakespeare's As You Like It is a gloss on what modern message?
8. Philosophers seek answers to children's questions such as what?
FL
1. What was the message of The Courage to Heal?
2. What happened in Bakesfield CA in the early '80s?
3. A line of "consequential synergy" extends from flying saucers to what?
4. What's important to recognize about the Branch Davidian cult in Texas in the '90s?
5. What tv-radio"symbiosis" stoked conspiracism in the '90s?
Discussion Questions:
- "Children make more compliant subjects and consumers." 193 Are we a nation of children, in this sense?
- Do you know any adults who never grew up, or who say they admire Peter Pan, or who are "young at heart" and "open to the world"? 194 Or any young people who missed out on the joys of childhood?
- Do you wish you looked older than you do? Why?
- Is life like a journey in Neurath's boat? 196
- "Maturity cannot be commanded, it must be desired." 198 Do you desire it?
- "I wish I'd known enough to ask my teachers the right questions before they died." 198 Do you (now) have questions for people it's too late to ask?
- "Most people grow happier as they grow older." 198 Does this surprise you?
- "Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one," just as each season of the year brings its own unique joys. 202 "To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." (George Santayana) Do you agree?
- Do you understand what Kant meant by saying you have duties to yourself? 203
- Have you yet discovered the pleasures of generativity and generosity? 204
- Do you know anyone who treats people as means to their own ends? 206 Do you want to?
- Did you grow up in "a home filled with good books and articulate people"? 209 Do you intend to provide such a home for your children?
- If musicians and bilingual speakers have more neural connections than others, why aren't music and languages more heavily emphasized in our schools? 210
- Do you see college as an opportunity to "expand your judgment and enlarge your mind"? 213
- Is "think for yourself" necessarily vague? 215
- Are you glad you didn't live before the Enlightenment, when your life would have been largely determined by your father's (and his, and his...)? 216
- Do you agree with Leibniz, that most people would choose on their deathbed to live their lives again only on the condition that they would be different next time?
- Do you prefer Nietzsche's version of eternal recurrence (220), or Bill Murray's in Groundhog Day, or Hume's preference for the next ten years and not the last (221), or none of the above?
- Do you enjoy the music of any older popular musicians (Dylan, Springsteen...)? 225
- "The fear of growing up is less a fear of dying than a fear of life itself." 230 Agree?
- Was Shakespeare really saying life sucks and then you die? Or was he mocking that view?
FL
- If/when you become a parent, will you be "anxious, frightened, overprotective" and constantly worried about the threat of child-napping? 326
- What do you think of "the message of The Courage to Heal"? 328
- What accounts for the "rising chorus of panicky Christian crazy talk"? 330
- Do you know any real "Devil worshippers"? Do you believe devils exist? Why? 334
- What do you think of Bakersfield's "big outbreak" and LA County's "Satanic Panic"? 337
- "Younger people know nothing about [our Satanic Panic of just a generation ago], and almost nobody is aware of its scale and duration and damage." True? 340
- What's the harm of obsessing about flying saucers etc.? 345
- Do you know anyone who believes that "everybody has been in on" a one-world government conspiracy orchestrated by space aliens? 347-8
- Were the Branch Davidians fundamentally different from mainstream Protestantism? 350
- What do you think of The X-Files? 354
Nicholas Schionning
ReplyDeleteWGU 1: Urging to get serious, and accept the world as it is, and suggestions that are meant to keep us young.
WGU 2: That "plateaus" of life aren't endless and that "plunges" are rarely fatal.
FL
ReplyDelete1. What was the message of The Courage to Heal? The message of 'The Courage to Heal' was that if you have ever inexplicably felt down about your life or self, it was most likely due to having suppressed memories of molestation or rape. The book encouraged counselors and therapists to steadily maintain this theory to clients which resulted in patients forming fictional memories of abuse.
2. What happened in Bakersfield CA in the early '80s? In the early 80s in Bakersfield, California a new county prosecutor was elected who created a ritual abuse task force. County social workers began working to get allegedly abused children out of homes of those accused of Satanic crimes. 28 people went to prison, and another dozen took plea deals where they were required to give up their children.