SES then and now - what has changed?

Discussion of the SES, particularly in the UK.
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bella
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Postby bella » Sat Jul 23, 2005 1:37 am

Plato suggests that reason ought to ultimately govern emotion for a human being to be just, wise and all that good stuff that effective statesmen should display. He doesn't suggest that emotion has no place in our responses to the world, only that it shouldn't be the final arbiter. This pretty much concurs with my view, and what I gather is the shool's view.

I think emotion has its place (tough luck if it doesn't, hey?) in terms of decision-making and acting justly, mainly because it can be a good indicator of other things that need to be looked at. In other areas, I reckon it helps to develop meaningful connections with people and things, which is why it's something worth cultivating.

When I say "I never equated reason and logic", I mean that I didn't say they were one and the same.

In other news, I knew what to expect when I went to the first night of "practical philosophy", and was happy enough with it because studying philosophy at university was interesting but pretty dry. I did enjoy it though, and the practice at taking stances I didn't agree with and arguing them has come in handy with a lot of other uni subjects, particularly education theory. :)

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Postby a different guest » Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:38 am

But bella - are you happy that your female children will be taught to "obey" males and, I guess, your male children to be taught that females should obey them?? It's one thing for an adult to take so much on board with the teachings and how literally they are taking them - but what about kids????

As to emotions - you mention education. Let me tell you that choosing the right school or childcare situation for your kids maybe much better guided by "emotion" than "reason". I have seen situations where pure "reason" would have guided people to the wrong institution. In fact, is not the whole "st james" experience, as reported here by ex-pupils, a classic case of "reason" being wrong? The school crossed the t's and dotted the i's and the parents "reason" dictated to them it was a good school.

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Keir
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Postby Keir » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:13 pm

Point of information Ross,

Keir is not female. More yin than yang perhaps, but definately the correct genitalia and social conditioning to be called a man. I can confess to be heterosexual too, though maybe I would bring more to the debate were I to be indeterminate in my sexual preferences, thus proving that in SES terms that I am actually a woman and have lost my capacity to make a decision.
:black:

To All,

Surely the truth of it is that we can grow out of the conditioning we received through culture and education and parental example by exploring unfamiliar ideas and cultures and challenging our original assumptions to survive the transition. The difficulty with doing that whilst a member of the SES/ST J is that new experience comes through the filter of the organisation, and students put themselves/are put in the position of obedient student, not of free thinking adult.

It seems to me that whilst people with more yang than yin (whatever their genitalia) will approach this role with more independence than those of a more yin character, it is a role that is essentially a yin role. Given the insistence on obedience and the ultimate sanction of witholding debate you could argue that the organisation is happy to employ both yin and yang strategies to further its end of supressing challenging debate.

By artificially stimulating and enforcing the yin role in women and the yang role in men, the SES management is imposing its expectation/desire on what is actually there. Whilst this might be soothing for people who are too yin for their masculine stereotype or vice versa, it doesnt encourage them to explore why they feel different to what is perceived to be the norm. They do not then gain encouragement to work towards resolving this conflict between an individual and society, instead being encouraged to conform and thus suppress the individuality that they were born with. (The film 'Brazil' comes to mind as a humourous example of the individual's struggle with suppression).

Suppresing the individual for the greater benefit of society is ok as an excercise and can help us to understand what we are, but as a lifestyle it can lead to serious ill health and ultimately sadness for society.

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bella
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Postby bella » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:21 pm

ADG, I don't have a problem with any (hypothetical) female children I may have hearing me say what I've said on this board. Likewise the (non-hypothetical) male child, when he's old enough to process it as given. My children won't be attending SOP schools, primarily because we don't have one here and I'm not moving. I also give credence to people's descriptions of their time at the St James schools, and while the people I know who were educated in the Aust. schools don't share those experiences, I'm aware of how an individual's interpretation (an individual with power) can shape a child's life. That applies in any school. I'll say here, though, that if I still lived in Sydney, I'd probably be sending my son to the SOP school, at least for awhile.

As to your second paragraph, it's sort of speculation. I also know of instances where choosing a school based on emotional responses would have been a mistake. Are you using "pure reason" in the way that NYC used it? Logic/crossing t's and dotting i's? I see it as more of an intuitive thing, with more than a purely intellectual base. I suspect we agree more closely on this than you think. The "St James experience" is something we don't know. What we have are accounts from some ex-students in pain - they know their experience, and how it relates to their life now. We can share in what they tell us, but we can't reasonably extrapolate that to call it "The St James Experience".

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Postby NYC » Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:59 pm

Hello all,

Bella, if you are not using ?reason? to mean logic but ?sound judgment? then the argument looks like this:

?Men have greater access to reason [sound judgment] but need to cultivate emotion.?
?Women have greater access to emotion, but need to cultivate reason [sound judgment].?
?Final decisions should be made based on reason [sound judgment].?
?Therefore, men should be the final authority since men have greater access to reason [sound judgment].?

It?s consistent but the first premise does assume that men?s access to sound judgment is unimpaired by their need to cultivate emotion?which I don?t think is true. The level of emotional control that adult men are expected to have often creates emotional repression, and I definitely see that repression interfering with men?s ability to reason. I have noticed a certain tendency for adult men to express any strong negative emotion they might feel, whether it is fear or hurt or pain, as anger?to almost consciously turn the original emotional impulse into fury, in an effort to avoid crying, or looking weak or vulnerable, etc. and often that anger is completely unreasonable.

And if it were true that women need to cultivate reason/sound judgment more than men, it doesn?t really help them do it by giving the final word to men. The way to learn something is to do it.

But I can?t really believe that I?m seriously engaged in a discussion over whether or not this is a logical argument. It seems like a pretty transparent rationalization for men getting their way.

Bella wrote:this really is a sticking point, and it stays as mostly an ideal for quite a few people, quite a bit of the time.

I just wonder why anyone accepts it as an ideal, when I can?t believe that most of the tutors repeating it really do think it?s a good idea?most of the School?s ideals I agree with, and just see the history of the School as a failure to live up to them. In this case, the actual ideal is ridiculous.

Bella wrote:I suppose it comes down to whether someone is prepared to accept, fully, that they may not always know what the best course of action is, all of the time.

The only ?someones? in the above formulation who need to accept they may not always know what?s best are women.

Well this thread was to address ?what has changed,? and while some things have, the sexist core remains.

Regarding
Are you using "pure reason" in the way that NYC used it? Logic/crossing t's and dotting i's? I see it as more of an intuitive thing, with more than a purely intellectual base.

I don?t think logic or Rationality has much to do with crossing t?s and dotting i?s ? to me, it sounded like ADG used the phrase to describe how much EFFORT St James/St Vedast put into ?molding? the students into what the school officials believed to be the ideal; the poor education & abuse so many former students describe did not arise from a lackadaisical approach but from an overemphasis on discipline that the adult school seems to have as well.

ADG wrote:NYC - from what I understand (not having studied Plato myself) but the SES "take" on Plato would generally be considered somewhat errornous?Is that how you see it or have you not gone far enough in the SES's version?

flipping through The Republic looking for the bit about the three parts of the soul/psyche, I came across this gem ?

?Socrates: Can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which the male sex does not have all these gifts and qualities in a higher degree than the female? Need I waste time in speaking of the art of weaving, and the management of pancakes and preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all things the most absurd?

Glaucon: You are quite right in maintaining the general inferiority of the female sex: although many women are in many things superior to many men, yet on the whole what you say is true?

Socrates: all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man.?

Nice, huh? Just from the bit of Plato I?ve read, it doesn?t seem to me that the SES would NEED to interpret him in an idiosyncratic way; he is quite the SES man. It seems he has provided the org with the rationale for many of the other ideals that seem strangest to outsiders?for example, that parents are the worst judge of what?s best for their kids, as the parents are too emotionally involved to tell what?s right. Plato advocated a ?community of women and children? where nobody had a monogamous sexual relationship and the children were raised without knowing who their biological parents were. Maclaren didn't get that far with it, but seems he did try to dissolve the familial bonds in favor of the community.

Here?s a last bit from Plato?s Laws ?The strongest principle is that everybody, whether they are male or female, should have a leader. Likewise, no one should get into the habit of doing anything at all on his own initiative ? either in earnest or in jest...He should look up to his leader and follow his guidance in even the smallest matters. For example, he should get up, move around, wash, and have his meals?only at such times as he has been ordered to do so. In other words, he should get into the habit, by a long process of training, of never even dreaming of acting independently, and thus becoming utterly incapable of such action. In this way the life of all is spent in total community?in peacetime, and from earliest childhood, this should remain the highest law ? the need to rule others and be ruled by others. All trace of independence or anarchistic spirit must be completely eradicated from the life of all men, and even the wild beasts which are kept by these men.?

I think there is a Plato group meeting for each level, but I don?t really know what the levels are, beyond Parts 1- 4, the ?Lower School.? I?d imagine it would be important to keep the strong stuff away from us newbies, until we had invested enough in the org to accept what we would have previously rejected as a dealbreaker before.

No one has taught or even intimated to me so far that women should obey men; if they came out with that in Part 1 obviously nobody but a few cranks would stick around for Part 2. Wonder when they get around to using the Eve story to justify male leadership & female obedience. I can tell it?s coming, but not for years.

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Postby Free Thinker » Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:11 am

And the thread-killer award goes to............

NYC!!!!!

Not even Ross has posted since you wrote this!

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Postby a different guest » Tue Aug 09, 2005 11:17 am

well I guess NYC should get a virtual packet of Tim Tams as a prize! LOL

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Postby Free Thinker » Tue Aug 09, 2005 10:41 pm

What are Tim Tams? Are they a sort of candy?

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Postby a different guest » Wed Aug 10, 2005 12:04 am

tim tams are chocolate biscuits (cookies?). They are absolutely delicious and anyone who tries one is instantly hooked. Australia's secret weapon :)
Image

You can buy them mail order in the US - here is one site but a google search should give you plenty more.
http://about-australia-shop.com/advance ... o=&x=0&y=0

I recomend the double choc or chew chocolate fudge.

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Postby Free Thinker » Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:22 am

OOOO - sounds good. I'll ask my Aussie friend if she likes them. I know her favorite are Jaffa candies. But it doesn't sound like they are dairy-free so I guess the temptation won't be able to get me!

hehehe - we are soo OT! And I remember complaining in my first post about how things seemed to go OT here too often and someone, probably you, replied to me about it. Of course know that I have begun to "know" people here, it doesn't seem bad. And what I was complaining about before was mostly OT that was arguing or snarky.

Oh, and I sent ya a nice fat e-mail.

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Postby a different guest » Thu Aug 11, 2005 11:44 am

sometimes the fun of a topic IS being OT.

tim tams are SO delicious we are under orders to make a kosher version for import to Israel.

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"not even Ross" etc

Postby ross nolan » Thu Aug 11, 2005 1:02 pm

Hi there ,I couldn't ignore the "not even Ross" bit so I thought I'd rear my ugly head again .

I found NYC's little dissertation quite interesting and trying hard to refute the obvious fact that MOST men are characteristically better at certain kinds of abstract thinking than MOST women and do in fact have hard wiring for unemotional judgements -- probably those ancestor men that agonized over the emotional consequences of spearing a wooly mammoth got squashed and so removed themselves from the gene pool leading to a general tendency to pragmatic decision making by men (who alas do most of the hunting whilst the ladies did the gathering side of things )

There is a fascinating thesis by the doctor who 'diagnosed' stomach ulcers to be due to a bacterial infection (heliobacter) contrary to all orthodox medicine (and went on to prove his thesis by deliberately infecting himself,developing ulcers then curing them with antibiotics ) that there is a much higher average intelligence amongst Ashkenazi jews than any other "race" due to such inadvertent selection effects -- these also result in unique genetic diseases amongst these people .

Why SHOULD"NT "differences" or in other words "inequalities" exist between the sexes after millions of years of selective pressures ?
Are men as good as women at childbirth? Why not ?

Was Plato an idiot? Not all truths are palatable or politicaly correct .

Returning to NYC's posting and Plato quotes -- Are not the best cooks (chefs) nearly always men ? (chef derives from chief and is German for "boss" -- masculine gender )
Is raising children with other influences than their parents neccesarily a bad thing ? Do not normal schools acheive exactly this effect ?
"It takes a village to raise a child " -- wise saying . How much damage have Israeli Kibbutz schools or boarding schools inflicted if any ?

Is it neccesary to condemn or oppose any and every principle espoused by the SES just to prove the black and white , right versus wrong thing ?
Just about every bad thing has to have some degree of right to it and this is almost essential to getting initial support and to raise a smokescreen for the later wrongs Eg. Adolf Hitler got everyone a job and the trains ran on time....... ("apart from ....... what else have the Romans done for us?)

Everyone agrees that the opening gambit of the SES is to look like they are standing for principles and discipline in a world of moral decay etc etc and some of the ratbag fringe of feminism (Germaine Greer etc) only helps strengthen their arm on this -- anyone take note of Greer's latest ravings about Aboriginal culture and Western values ? quite SES .

If the point of the SES is to try to restructure society as a whole then following the logical consequences of their ideas does not seem to be too "OT" ..
Go easy on the TimTams lest we get on to a "fat is beautiful" topic.

Back to the barricade, Ross.
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Postby Free Thinker » Thu Aug 11, 2005 4:02 pm

Oh man, I'm sorry I said it! I'll just give your post a big fat WHATEVER!!!!


(Gee white people MUST be smarter than black people because there are not that many black people in college compared to their population!)

I'll eat as many TimTams as I want, thankyouverymuch!

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Postby a different guest » Fri Aug 12, 2005 3:53 am

Well FT - stats here show that women are smarter than men cos women make up over 55% of enrolment at universities. Note the gender gap in the following fields of study

Medicine (74% female), Vet science (67% female) Business/economics (76%female) Education (76% female)

So statistics show that women are smarter than men

ergo the few fields of study where men are in the majority must, of course, be areas of study where the not so bright enrol.

I note that Engineering is 85% male.

Now, pass the tim tams :)

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statistics, lies and damned lies......

Postby ross nolan » Sat Aug 13, 2005 1:30 pm

More male bashing from ADG -- is there something in those TimTams ?

How about justifying your statistical "facts" ? -- what universities, whose figures etc etc ( even the Tarot,Belly Dancing and Astrology courses at local universities have a significant male fraction -- your figures do not look consistent to my experience of university enrolments and anyway Australia is atypical of most higher education compositions due to the numbers of foreign students and the relative avoidance of "hard" courses like mathematics and engineering in favour of the 'soft' options overall.

Whilst you obviously enjoy belittling the efforts of engineers you should at least keep in mind the facts that it is they who produce your Tim Tams and the television that one settles in front of to watch "days of our lives" or 'young doctors" etc .

Do you think 74% of surgeons are female ? Is "medicine" a catch all for nursing , research, lab technicians etc ? Likewise Vet science etc . How many more economists, business"leaders" etc does the world really need and what will they do to feed,house,clothe, sewer, transport, heal ..etc future generations if there are no engineers around ? A preponderance of female primary school teachers is recognized as a weakness of the school system and it's adverse effects on male students (matriarchy by stealth?)

The X ray machine, CAT scanner, magnetic resonance imager etc that reveals dietary caused tumors,obesity related internal disorders or other medical problems and the ultrafine needles,surgical tubing,peristaltic pumps ,etc etc that treat "Tim Tam syndrome" are all products of those stupid patriarchial engineers and technicians ,tradespeople etc -- bloody good thing that they are not as judgemental as you are when it comes to dispensing the solutions to irresponsible behaviour

Having spent more time than I would have liked in hospitals I never cease to be amazed at people just 'recovering' from major surgery like heart by pass or leg amputation continuing to smoke like chimneys (even some nurses who surely should know better )

This whole syndrome of repudiating the very basis of your own prosperity and standard of living in favour of some backward,non scientific mumbo jumbo is at the heart of the whole SES and general anti western thing .

The ADG mindset is perilously close to the SES philosophy in actual fact .

The sort of feminism that denies obvious fact in favour of wishful dogma is not really about building up womankind but rather about trying to denigrate mankind so as to appear (to itself) to be superior.

The arch feminist Germaine Greer, in her recent diatribe against Western,patriarchial, culture proposing that Australia should return to an "aboriginal republic" based on hunter gatherer social organization --
"Whitefella Jump Up" -- talks about 'Whitefella spiritual desolation' and how the solution to all our problems is to'adopt aboriginal wisdom' .

The Newstatesman review of her thesis included the results of the reporter asking a couple of genuine Aboriginal 'activists' in England what they thought of Greer's idea that 'whitefellas' should adopt the aboriginal dreaming culture -- they reacted angrily denouncing her fashionable idea as 'stealing' and debasing the only thing they had left after the white man stole their land .

Whilst superficially reasonably interesting to read in parts Greers' claims are not fact based (she even claimed to have arranged to be met by local aboriginal 'owners' at Australian airports to get their permission to enter our'stolen' land --- apart from eyewitness refutation of this I wonder how she goes about finding a representative of the Picts to 'permit' her to re enter the "United" kingdom stolen by force by the celts,romans,normans,saxons etc.)

(www.newstatesman.com/World/ 2004080020032 and others )

This malcontentment with the basic principles of western culture,science,technology and philosophy in favour of 'adopting' someone else's ancient pre industrial, prescientific worldview and belief system not only applies to the idealized "noble savage" aboriginal mythology but equally to the anti western, superstitious ,indian ,hindu mysticism espoused by the SES .

Same dissatisfaction with your own society and a yearning for some predigested long ago primitive religiosity to cling to to find some solace (or even the solace to be found from sucking on a TimTam -- I do not think this would be a particularly edifying spectacle and beggars the imagination -- some freudian explanation or delayed thumb sucking in times of stress perhaps)

Engineers and scientists find the world an endlessly fascinating and challenging place with great insights into the basic workings of the universe to be found even in the most mundane tasks ( for example a friend of mine had to analyze the flow of sewerage -shit in fact- through the Perth sewerage system using the engineering of aero and hydrodynamic flows with allowances for diurnal variations etc .

The discontents of modern western society are oblivious to the intellectual efforts and understandings that make their lives so easy and give them the time to bitch about 'how bad things are' and 'how much better it would be if we all went back to the nice ways of the aboriginals/ hindus/ guru of the month 'etc .

So, on topic, "what has changed in the SES schools"?

I would have thought that not much could be expected to have changed from a cult basing itself on 5000 year old superstitions. (that will inevitably include a few recognizable homilies like "be nice to your parents, the old, your teachers etc " but also includes loads of complete drivel and hate inspiring garbage that leads to events like September 11 or the London bombings (or rabid anti feminism per se )

Most people exposed to the SES/SOP will NOT be deeply embedded in their 'advanced' level classes or even their junior schools but will be amongst those who do one or two semesters of the "introductory" course and get just enough of an inkling of their anti western agenda to feel something is amiss and leave -- only those who feel that any threat to the edifice of western scientific thought should be countered not ignored and that rational western culture is worthy of defending against all threats will think action to be needed.

This is not unlike the present moves to give 'equal time' to biblical creationism in school curricula as against the 'unproven' theory of evolution -- following the consequences of opposing schools of thought through to their logical conclusions should show the dangers of letting lies masquerade as truth and particularly where young or impressionable minds are involved .

I do not think I would want any children of mine to be subject to the mind control of the SES but equally I would take steps to counter the pernicious teachings of rampant feminism (man hating in truth) to any daughters (or sons) and certainly to debunk the proposition that technology,science and rationality have failed the world and we must retreat back to stone age or ancient superstitions and religiosity.

Can I suggest that any exclusively feminist discussion could be moved to a seperate new thread so that misandrony can be indulged in without limit and the correlation to specific SES teachings can be ignored .

Likewise TimTam waffle could be the subject of another thread having as it's object the self aggrandizement of the contributors who engage in witty chit chat intended to show how smug or mutually appreciative they can be.

For now, R.
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