Seeds of progress
2023-07-05 13:05 Apart from its peninsula and island rich coast Europe also has an unusually fractured terrain.  This makes it virtually impossible to politically unify this part of the world.
Rare exceptions
2023-06-16 12:39 Not all agrarian state societies only had home-schooling and monastic orders.  Some had education of groups which did not just consist of siblings.
The unawareness of the upper class
2023-06-15 12:34 Ancient ideas of what is best for everyone have often been thought out by people in positions of power.  These did not have to use their children as manpower from a far too early age.
On monks and nuns
2023-06-14 11:32 Several myths on our evil nature has been thought out by monks and nuns.  Not only Christian monks and nuns but also Buddhist ones.  In the case of both religions, it was largely monks which have come up with these ideas.
The discontinued maturation of the lower classes
2023-06-13 13:27 Have you thought about why very small children put everything in their mouths?  It is not because they think everything can be eaten.  Instead, it is an instinct to teach them the properties of objects as fast as possible.
Why I don’t believe in “ancient wisdom”
2023-06-12 13:04 People older than us of cause have more social experience.  Some seem to extrapolate this long beyond a human lifetime.  It is like they believed people living hundreds of years ago had hundreds of years of life experience.
On social nit-pickers
2023-05-03 13:45 Some ones which can cause trouble to others is what I call social nit-pickers.  Not nit-pickers which are social, but people behaving as nit-pickers towards the private lives of others.
Why millennia old ideas still matter
2023-04-28 11:29 In the last blog posts, I have explained some thoughtless ideas.
The unexpanded circle
2023-04-26 11:35 “The expanding circle” is a concept coined by Peter Singer.  This is about people coming to care about more and more throughout history.  We have cared about our own clan since prehistorical times.
The myths of universal ability and homogenous evilness
2023-04-24 11:03 It is bad enough to grow up without being able to learn other points of view.  When state societies developed the situation became even worse.  Superiors could lose their direct contact with their own subordinates.