My recent research has come across an MA thesis from 1979 by a former SSU student, Robin Mark Freeman. Here is my review of that MA thesis.
Review of Robin Mark Freeman's 1979 MA project: Creating Peace: Education Integrated Against Alienation
       The Author discussed the connection between emotional alienation and violence. His rationale is that young children are taught emotional alienation by modern technological society, and that alienation is also reinforced by the educational system.
       What I believe the author has added to the literature is his use of aesthetics theory to develop an ethics of the "Good", and use that in the same way, and in conjunction with, the scientific method. Both are necessary he says to create an environment conducive to integrating and balancing the child into society. He says the alienation is due, in part, to our over-reliance on the quantitative (hard) scientific method, and not enough on the qualitative social and behavioral (soft) sciences. He believes that emotions can be quantified, using aesthetic theory, and teaching children how to evaluate their emotional responses to their environment.
       Whether trauma causes alienation or alienation causes trauma is not really the point. It is probably a feedback loop anyway, each causing the other and being caused by in return. But I think the author is absolutely right in pointing out that social and emotional alienation contributes to violence and that our current "official" educational philosophy only perpetuates the problem.
       The author has done research on both quantitative and qualitative transformational education theory research (cited in his bibliography), showing that a curriculum for integrating the child into a peaceful society can be done. This MA project does not recommend integrating the child into modern society as it is, but helping children to deconstruct both society and its educational system and then growing up to create a different, more peaceful society as adults.
       The author also admits that education is not the only problem with our alienating society, but it can be one of the solutions. Return to my website
      

Critical Thinking vs. Muslim Bashing        Well, I see nobody posted any comments here yesterday to take me to task for Muslim bashing. Too bad, because if you had, I would have agreed with you. No matter, this is my follow up post to clarify that I was making two different, but equally important points. If you have been reading these blog posts all along you probably "got it", but I must explain it for those of you who came to class late. Anything I wrote that sounded like Muslim bashing came after the tragic deaths of those martyrs I dubbed "The Paris 12". The point of that was to voice solidarity with Charlie Hedbo or, as they say in France, "Je Suis Charlie". Muslim bashing is protected by free speech, but it is usually only practiced by bigoted jerks like myself. Satire is free speech, and critical thinking about philosophical concepts is also free speech, but do you know the difference between the two?
       That was a trick question. It is not always an Eith/Or option. Satire and insults are on a spectrum, and the point where each one falls on that spectrum is a matter of personal and/or social psychological construct. I will be posting my paper on SCA, Spectrum Construct Analysis, in the near future, but for now let's just say that the line between satire and constructive criticism is a fuzzy one.
       Calling myself a bigoted jerk is satire. Someone else calling me a bigoted jerk may also be satire, or it may be an insult. Obviously it is easier to tell the difference in person, face-to-face, with facial expressions, tone of voice, and other body language clues. But in the print media it is much more difficult. Another factor is cultural differences. Those murderous criminals who call themselves Jihadists and believe that death to the infidels is the appropriate response to criticism, have their own point-of-view, their own social construct. It is a localized cultural point-of-view that they were indoctrinated into by the culture in which they were raised. Sadly, they also control their cultures in a feed-back loop that perpetuates their stupidity and forces it, by threat of violence, on everybody around them. We have localized pockets of cultural stupidity here in the West too, but we also have both freedom of speech and protection against violence as safeguards. No matter whether some idiots take criticism as an insult, criticism and insults are both protected by freedom of speech, precisely because the line between them is so fine. Both satire and insult are in the ear of the beholder. If the shoe does not fit, do not wear it. And violent responses to criticism and insult are not protected, they are prohibited. Okay, I got that off my chest.
       My Muslim bashing, by the way, was accompanied by Christian bashing and Zionist bashing, so you can call me an equal opportunity bigot. I already posted a link to my essay on religion last week. Enough said about that.
       The big question we have to ask, here in the West, is why do so many Muslims want to migrate to Western countries? Do they really want to assimilate and/or escape the violence and repression they faced in their home countries? Or are they here as sleeper cell terrorists? Those are important questions, but you cannot begin to answer them without some serious and complicated research. An important rule of critical thinking is "you cannot generalize from a limited sample". What makes it complicated is that both questions, Assimilation & Terrorism, only have anecdotal, insufficient answers. My answer to the above questions is: do not assume anything. When in doubt, ask a Muslim. Better yet, ask as many Muslims as you can find. You may be surprised at what they have to say.
       This blog is not the venue for a whole sociology research paper on that subject so I am going to just list, randomly, some anecdotal evidence that you may, or may not, have read about, and let you, the critical thinker, figure out what it may, or may not, mean. Of course some of you may not be able to stifle your confirmation bias, but, oh well.

• Islamic State Executed Scores in Iraq This Month. From the New York Times, Wed. Jan. 21, 2015, by Nick Cumming-Bruce.
• From the Associated Press, Paris, Wed. Jan. 21, 2015. A story about a Muslim, Lassana Bathily, who was awarded French citizenship for heroism when he saved lives at a kosher supermarket that was attacked by terrorists.
• A French TV satire, Le Petit Journal, mocks Fox News for its false reporting that there are "no-go" pockets of neighborhoods in France and England where police and non-Muslims cannot go, and where Muslims enforce Shariah law. Officials in both countries testified that there is no credible evidence that these neighborhoods exist, and Fox News later admitted that their report was wrong and apologized. Story by Doreen Carvajal of The New York Times, Wed. Jan. 21, 2015.
• From the Associated Press, Cairo, by Jon Gambrell and Mari Yamaguchi, Wed. Jan 21, 2015. Story about Islamic State criminals taking two Japanese hostages and demanding $200M.
• Leonard Pitts, in the Miami Herald, Sun. Jan. 11, 2015, claims that terrorists have won the war against satire. His evidence? "Jon Stewart is quitting 'The Daily Show' to host a program on the Food Network, specializing in New Jersey cuisine. Mad magazine is going out of business and its famed mascot, the infidel Alfred E. Newman just became the latest journalist beheaded by ISIS. Bill Maher is teaching religious studies in Mississippi, Lewis Black is practicing Zen Buddhism and Stephen Colbert now claims that 'Stephen Colbert' was nothing more than a character he played."
• Yasmine Bahrani, professor of journalism at American University in Dubai, in the Washington Post, Sun. Jan. 18, 2015 makes several observations about the deteriorating relations between Muslims and the West.
  1. Why do we make a big deal about the Paris 12 but not about the thousands killed in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, etc. and countless Muslims murdered by drone strikes, or the 132 Schoolchildren slaughtered in Pakistan in December?
  2. Right-wing political groups like Britain's UKIP, Germany's Pegida and France's National Front gain popularity and Middle Easterners feel threatened and become defensive.
  3. Nobody in Bahrani's classroom believes Boston bombing suspect Dzhosker Tsarnev is guilty: they believe he was set up. The United States government has a serious credibility problem. Saddam Hussein did not have the WMDs that G.W.Bush used as an excuse for the Iraq war, the U.S. organized a fake vaccination drive in Pakistan to get to Osama Bin Laden, and the U.S. told Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, that the use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" but they did not enforce it.
  4. Bahrani explained that part of the reason some of the students didn't "get it" that even tasteless or offensive cartoonists should have the right to freedom of expression, is because "In Middle Eastern Society, we deny ourselves comfort to make some one else comfortable".
• Can my readers detect any logical problems in that last item? I have some, but I'm not telling. You figure them out.
• Okay, Readers, now it's your turn to go out and research more of these items. I've done my work today, I need a beer.

Coming soon:       Spectrum Construct Analysis (SCA); Thought, Speech, and Action; A rant on Immigration; A rant on Pre-emptive Self-Defense; and my ongoing research on peace through education.
Also see: www.peacemoon.org
      

Martin Luther King, Cops vs. the Military, and violent-self-defense        The World Peace Algorithm does not deny the right of both society and individuals to self-defense. The World Peace Algorithm also recognizes the duty of governments to protect their citizens from violence. In a civilized and democratic nation, both these rights and duties must be carefully regulated to insure against abuse of power. For instance, in civilized countries, police are not allowed to go into neighborhoods and start shooting at everybody in sight, just because a few violent criminals are hiding there and taking hostages. This should be taken for granted, and when the police step over that line, which they sometimes do, they should face severe legal penalties.
       This so-called "war against terrorism" is an example of that abuse of power. In the first place, it is not, and should not be, a "war". A war is violent action between countries. Also, terrorists should not be granted the status of a political entity. Terrorists are criminals, plain and simple. I don't think they should even be called "terrorists" as long as that word still implies political legitimacy. So what does that have to do with Cops vs. the Military?
       Governments have been using their military forces for police actions. This would not be so bad if they had to abide by the same strictures as domestic police agencies. If the police cannot go into a neighborhood and shoot everybody in this country, why can they get away with that on foreign soil? That right-wing motto: "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is just plain stupid. It doesn't even work, because the more troops we send "over there" the more criminals feel justified in coming over here. A surgical strike by a drone missile sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice too many mistakes are made and innocent civilians become collateral damage. That sends the wrong message: that we really are waging a war on foreign territory. I repeat: we would not allow that kind of action here, so why do we allow it over there? Foreigners are not stupid just because they live in a different country. (They may be stupid for cultural reasons, but that is another subject altogether.) They know that we cannot treat our own people that way and they are righteously outraged that we think it's okay to treat them that way. Oh, yes, and that other right-wing slogan, "Preemptive self defense" is also morally indefensible. (More about that another day.)
       If we withdrew all of our troops from foreign territories, those foreigners would not be so inclined to travel to our country where our homeland security police can track them, capture them, and put them on trial as the criminals that they are. Remember, our current strategy has cost many more American and foreign civilian lives than were killed on September 11, 2001. Does that make any sense? If we had no troops over there, the locals could all go back to killing each other. That is not a good thing, but at least it would be contained. If we were no longer causing problems for them. they would have to admit to, and deal with, the fact that it is their own culture that is causing their problems, not ours.
       Yesterday was the day that we honored Martin Luther King, and I am wondering why the so-called "peaceful" religion of Islam has never produced any leaders of King's, or of Gandhi's, greatness. Do Muslims ever wonder about that? If so, what are they doing about it?
       Last week the Pope stated that religion was above criticism, so he wants the Catholics to be as bad as Muslims in that regard. I have no respect for either Islam, Christianity, or Zionism, but at least many Jews, Christians and Muslims in this country can engage in critical introspection without fearing for their lives. The Muslim attitude that they can command respect by threats of violence has just the opposite effect. And just as our own policy of waging violence over there has its opposite effect, so does the Muslim policy of allowing criminals the honor of calling themselves Jihadists has the opposite effect. Every violent action committed in the name of Islam only dishonors Islam.
       A word of warning to those right-wing Christian and Zionist shit-heads among us: All peaceful American citizens are protected by law from violence by home-grown terrorists, vigilantes, and other criminals. That includes Muslims! We cannot guarantee the protection of peaceful Muslims on foreign soil, but we can protect those here at home who really and truly want peace. Yes, we also have freedom of speech, so Muslims, as with any other religion, are not above critical discourse. So the violent Muslim hater's beware; you can talk shit all you want, but violence against peaceful Muslims cannot be tolerated. When the people in Muslim countries realize that, by law, we treat Muslims better here than they do over there, maybe they might, maybe, begin to question the values of their own culture. Many of my friends point out that the Muslim culture is so permanently ingrained in them that they will never "get it". That may well be true, but that is not really the point anyway. We have to be who we are and true to our peaceful and intellectual values. We have to deal with the bad apples in our own society. We have no time for another culture's bad apples as long as they keep them over there. (Yes, that brings up the subject of immigration, but I'll tackle that another time.)
       The Spanish Inquisition was a long time ago, and the free-thinkers of the Renaissance period gradually put the brakes on the Catholic Church's abuse of power. Ironically, during the time Christianity brought Western Civilization down into the Dark Ages, the Muslim controlled Byzantine Civilization, and Spain before Isabella and Ferdinand, were in their height of intellectual and scientific inquiry. Jews and Christians were respected and protected as "People of The Book". The ancient Greek and Roman philosophy that was lost to the West, was saved and preserved by the secular Muslim culture. What the hell happened to them!? They are now run by criminal gangsters calling themselves "religious" leaders, just as Christianity was in the middle-ages.
       We do not need to be over there, and we cannot afford to continue feeding into that sick violent, bullshit. I would like to see a mass protest against our present foreign policy by the families of our troops over there(Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, sisters, cousins, next-door neighbors, etc.). Bring our troops home, and let us spend our tax money on the Veteran's Administration to treat our own victims of war for post traumatic stress disorder. Coming Soon: A Rant on Immigration, a Rant on Pre-emptive Self-Defense, and Another Rant on Thought, Speech, and Action
      

The Art Of Mark Bryan       I know some of my readers are already familiar with the great art of Mark Bryan, but for those of you who are not yet, here is a link to his website. The Art of Mark Bryan.
      Also, you might want to know about the Sonoma County Peace and Justice Center. They publish the Sonoma County Peace Press in hard copy, but also have an online presence at Peace & Justice Center.
      As long as I'm doing social networking here, let me remind you about my siblings, Christopher K. Moon, photographer, and Carol Louise Moon, poet. Their combined efforts can be seen at Moonerisms

My Short Stories        A few years ago one of my short stories, "The Night of the Madness," was published in Twilite Times Ezine. I have also posted it on my website.
      My website also contains three other short stories in a mixture of genres. By that I don't mean that some stories are mysteries and some stories are science fiction, I mean that some stories are both mysteries and science fiction.
      Here is a link to the FICTION page on my website. Buck Moon's Short Stories.

My last word on Religion        My upcoming blog posts are going to be about the role of education in the world peace algorithm. I have wasted too much time talking about religion. I said that in yesterday's blog post, and I gave you a link to my last word on the subject on my website: "Nailed to the Door of Faith."
       Back in my undergraduate days, I wrote a paper on the Clifford - James Debate. As many of you know, William James and William K. Clifford had different views on religion. Since I do not want to talk about it anymore, you can read what I have already written on my website at "Clifford - James Debate" That paper also has a reference page at the end so you can research my research on Clifford and James, and also John Dewey.
       Race is another module (subroutine) in the world peace algorithm, and I also don't want to talk about that anymore. I posted "My Last Word on Race" on my website. Remember The Paris 12!!!        They cannot kill us all!!! If every journalist and cartoonist in the world just spent one day publishing a diatribes, offensive or not, against a stupid religious belief, maybe a clear message will be sent that those Paris 12 were real martyrs, not just for freedom of speech but for intellectual and cultural progress through mutual dialogue and non-violent action.

Empiricism and Spirituality        As a philosopher, I understand that logic alone cannot give us all the answers. Empirical experience has its limits, and so many philosophers have looked beyond scientific empiricism for answers. The 17th Century philosopher, Rene Descartes left us with the mind/body conundrum, the idea that the material and the immaterial worlds can never connect. This has caused the cognitive extremes of religious metaphysics and scientific reductionism to bookend the middle majority of people who want to believe in both, but cannot figure out how that would would work. Some so-called intellectuals are even saying that philosophy has come to an end, or is just irrelevant. Philosophy is being attacked from both sides and, if you will look at the budgets of most colleges and universities, the Philosophy Departments are getting the most severe cuts.
       However, philosophy is now more important than ever, because the relatively new subject of process philosophy, a subject on which I have written a textbook, has shown that the immaterial and the material are not mutually exclusive. (Hint: check out quantum mechanics.)
       Yesterday I ended my blog with the question: "So, who am I to criticize other people's religious beliefs?" My religious policy is "Don't ask, don't tell." And if everybody did that we wouldn't have so many problems with conflicting religious beliefs. It is nobody's business what my spiritual beliefs are, That is between me and my higher power, and I would not care about other people's beliefs if they were not violently stuffing it in our faces by their actions. Case in point: Today's Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran a story about two Mississippi state legislators, Tom Miles and Michael Evans, who are trying to make the Bible the official book of Mississippi. What? Nobody in Mississippi has ever read Kant, Kierkegaard, or Whitehead?
       The freedom to believe stupid ideas does not logically translate into the "right" to freedom of action. But more about that tomorrow.
       Religion is only one of many modules in the World Peace Algorithm and, using a calculus of economic opportunity costs, I find I cannot afford to waste anymore time on it. For those interested in my previous writings on Religion, here is a link to an article I wrote many years ago, Nailed To The Door of Faith. Stay tuned for more rants        In an upcoming blog, I will explore the differences between thought, speech, and action, and discuss the relationships among them. In my future blogs I will also be discussing my current research on the relationship of education and world peace that I have doing for MA in ED at SSU. Remember The Paris 12!!!        They cannot kill us all!!! If every journalist and cartoonist in the world just spent one week publishing diatribes,offensive or not, against stupid religious beliefs, maybe a clear message will be sent that those Paris 12 were real martyrs, not just for freedom of speech but for intellectual and cultural progress through mutual dialogue and non-violent action.