Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
Sometimes a society has symptoms, like a body. It coughs the cough of low wages or gets the headache of unaffordable schooling. We are empathetic, we want to help - so we say, give the cough drop of minimum wage! Take the asprin of government-funded schooling!
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
These are real, empathetic motivations trying to solve concrete problems - but the body is deeply complex. Cough drops and asprin might relieve the pain, but maybe the medicine over time will cause other problems. Maybe the problem is actually a deeper disease.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I am very hesitant to accept things like minimum wage and government funded schooling - not because I accept the symptoms, but because patching the symptoms might be worse for a the larger system - both in blinding us to the real issues, and causing more issues down the road.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And too often I feel people who get outraged about social issues are not thinking in terms of large systems - they're thinking in terms of, "this thing hurts, and we need to make it stop in the quickest and easiest way." Our body is ridden with pills and stitches.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This does not mean the symptoms are any less real or bad or motivating. Just because I don't agree with your choice of medication doesn't mean I approve of the disease. We are both fighting the same thing, just a little differently.
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James Moughan
@jamougha
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Interesting - are you struggling to accept *all* government funded schooling, from kindergarten on? If so that's pretty unusual. Do you think it wouldn't result in mass illiteracy or do you think that's not as bad as some outcomes of public education?
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@jamougha
If you remove the medication fixing a symptom, the symptom will usually return full force. I think if all we did was stop government funded schooling, then probably a lot of bad things would happen. But *why* are we structured in such a way that those bad things would happen?
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@realmrkimbell
I think you're probably right in that the deeper you go the harder it is to see clearly what's going on, and in that sense symptoms are more actionable. I still think that there's a spectrum between 'totally deep' and 'totally superficial,' and we should move towards the former.
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Snowie 1969
@1969Snowie
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I am always for finding the cause and correcting that. In the last 50 years, we have made great strides on how to give people insulin in their system, but we never directly tried to heal the cause of diabetes. Treating symptoms is more profitable as healing the cause
((( Jack Lincoln )))
@jackifus
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Great analogy Each body responds differently to stressors and medicines But, medicine that works in other bodies is a good place to start with treatment… The advent of public education correlates with increased prosperity elsewhere…
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Alan Hawk
@Alan_Hawk00
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
If you want to use the disease analogy then look at how other bodies have been treated. Does gov funded higher education work in other countries? What is the economic status of states that have raised the minimum wage without waiting for the feds to do it?
Chris Sawyer
@Behav_Inquiry
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Very interesting observation. I work in conjunction with education systems; public, private, and even homeschool. Funding is an issue, but here's the kicker: cash injections do not immediately improve performance or attendance. Funds can no longer fix the exact problem anymore.