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Frank Ticheli’s *Earth Song* is a poignant a cappella choral work, born from a personal yearning for peace amid the disillusionment of the Iraq War. Composed for SATB chorus, it features Ticheli’s own text—a rare departure from his usual practice of setting existing poetry. The piece, rooted in his earlier wind ensemble work *Sanctuary*, weaves sweeping melodic lines with vivid dynamic contrasts, embodying a prayer for healing through music. Its text, beginning with “Sing, Be, Live, See,” laments war’s devastation while celebrating music as a refuge and a beacon of hope. A tonal analogue of emotional life, *Earth Song* resonates as an anthem for peace, its simplicity and vulnerability striking a universal chord.
Devon Eriksen can be counted on to write some thought provoking and challenging ideas.
This is the socialist worldview in a nutshell.
Socialists believe the following:
1. All progress is social. This means that all human problems are solved by rearranging collective human behavior.
2. How to rearrange human behavior to solve problems is already known.
3. Problems therefore exist because there are people who don’t want to behave in this known fashion.
4. Therefore, problems exist because certain people are in the way of progress. Socialist politicians may be grifters who believe in nothing, but their (living) voters, the socialist true believers, hate you, and this is why.
They believe you, your existence, your non-compliance with their plans, is all that stands between humanity and paradise. This is why they will always murder you if they have power. This is why unchecked socialism always leads to the censor, the secret policeman tapping your phone, the neighbors dragged away in the night, the torture chamber, the gulag, the mass grave. Because if you think that nothing stands between you and paradise but stubborn people, then you think you can murder your way to paradise.
When a socialist demands socialism, you either comply or you do not. If you do not comply, he wants to murder you. If you do not comply, then the socialist policy he enacts not only fails to bring about paradise, it makes things worse, so he demands a further socialist policy. If you do not comply, he wants to murder you. If you repeatedly comply, then eventually things get very bad indeed, and the socialist casts about for someone to blame. Surely there must be some non-compliant person around here somewhere. Some counter-revolutionary. He must be found and murdered, and then paradise will be attained.
This isn’t about religion. “Religion” is merely the label they paste on your non-compliance. If you were an atheist, they’d just use another label. That giant finger in the drawing isn’t your beliefs. It’s you. They think you are evil. Not wrong, evil. And they want to kill you. Not all of them think they do, of course. There’s a group called “democratic socialists”, who append the word “democratic” to the front, to mean “I don’t want to kill you, I only want to use the political process to force you to comply.” But when they do, your society enters the same downward spiral described above.
So they eventually decide to kill you.
They will always, eventually, reach the point where they decide to kill someone. Because they always think their utopian plans will work if they kill just one more person, and their utopian plans will never actually work no matter how many people they kill.
What actually works isn’t socialism, it’s technology. Here’s how:
1. All progress is technological. This means that all human problems are solved by figuring out a better understanding of the universe, and creating a piece of technology based on that understanding.
2. Creating new science and technology is hard, and requires a lot time, money, and effort.
3. Problems therefore exist because not enough time, money, and effort has yet been invested to produce the necessary technological breakthrough.
4. Therefore, there is absolutely, positively, 100% no way to solve all human problems right now by acting differently. But we can optimize society for technological progress.
In other words, the “star trek future” isn’t waiting for us to become atheists, because atheism doesn’t produce technology faster or better than any religion that isn’t anti-technology. That “star trek future” is instead waiting on us to invent warp drives, teleporters, and matter nanoassemblers. And every single piece of progress that humanity has achieved came not from social activism, but from technological advancement. The 40 hour work week was merely demanded by unions. It was actually enabled by industrial technology.
Democracy, republicanism, and other forms of populist government were merely demanded by revolutions and philosophies. They were enabled by the rifled firearm. And so on. For every positive change in society and civilization, there is one or more critical pieces of technology that allow it to happen. Once that technology exists, the change is trivial. When it does not exist, forcing that change is disastrous, not positive. A 40 hour work week would exterminate a civilization of bronze age agriculturalists. Democracy would destroy a medieval kingdom. Progress is technological progress.
This is why socialism must be stopped.
Because socialism interferes with technological progress, which is the real driving force behind progress of any kind.
You cannot murder your way to utopia.
It is really amazing the lengths people will go through to confirm their victimhood identities. And of course, the CBC will highlight how awesome it is to use AI to ‘make the internet a safer place for Indigenous people’.
Good lord. If the bad internet is hurting you…turn it off. But rather than make an adult decision, let’s do this:
“A new tool aims to use artificial intelligence to help make the internet a safer place for Indigenous people.
The project was given the name wâsikan kisewâtisiwin, which translates to “kind energy” in Cree.
“We’re trying to make the internet a kinder place. We’re trying to change the trajectory of the internet towards discriminated people,” Shani Gwin told CBC’s Radio Active.”
On the internet you are (with certain measures) essentially anonymous. What you say on the internet will be taken at face value (in theory).
“Being developed in collaboration with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMii), the tool is dual purpose, intended to help both Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadians reduce racism, hate speech, and online bias.
The first function of the program is to moderate online spaces like comment sections. While the internet has been a tool used by Indigenous people for advocacy, it also can frequently be an unsafe space for communities that are discriminated against, Gwin said.
Gwin said that all it takes is one comment for online spaces to fester.”
If people want to pillow-up a spot on the internet, they are more than welcome to do so. Usually though, this sort of anti-free speech mechanism escapes from its hug-box confines and is loosed into the wider ecosystem.
“The tool flags hateful comments, and then provides sample responses, while also documenting these instances for future reporting.
The second function of the tool is designed to serve as a writing plug-in for your computer — similar to Grammarly. Intended to help general Canadians understand their bias, it will flag any writing that may be biased against Indigenous people, provide an explanation, and a suggestion for how to reword the sentence.”
Wow! It is like having your own personal Big Brother making sure that you are engaged in ‘right-thinking’ at all times. Plus offering real time suggestions on how to neuter your speech as to not risk offence to others.
“AI right now is designed through the lens of Canada’s dominant culture. And I would say that across the world that without input from racialized communities, including Indigenous people, AI cannot analyze and produce culturally safe and respectful content,” Gwin said.
“Every piece of infrastructure in Canada has been developed from the white patriarchal lens,” she said. “So more racialized people, more women need to get involved in the development of AI so that it doesn’t continue to be built in a way that’s going to harm us again.”
Whoops! Did you catch the turn into Marxist Critical Theory? I certainly did – That damn AI developed through the lens of ‘dominant culture’. Beginning with a conclusion and then looking for evidence based on your assumptions almost always leads to bullshit results.
Just no. AI was developed by a diverse body of people from across the world, let’s not shoehorn your ‘critical perspective’ into this.
“AI bias revealed itself in training, Qroon said, adding that at times when experimenting with the AI, it would try to minimize the tragedies that Indigenous people went through.
“And that’s why it was very important for us to integrate the Indigenous community into this process and get their perspective and get the instructions from them.”
The AI making the decision to not follow a trauma informed narrative? Huh. Well that will need to be fixed ASAP.
“Gwin said that her hope for the project is that it helps take the emotional labour of education off Indigenous people — and free them up to do things besides moderating comment sections.
“I think there might be concerns that people think that this AI tool will take jobs away from Indigenous people, but it’s not, that’s not what it’s for. It’s there to do the work that we don’t want to do.”
Yes, censorship is such an emotional labour. Much better to let a machine – an entity with even less capacity for nuance – take the reins.
“But it also means changing the internet and Canadians’ hearts and minds about who Indigenous people are.”
You mean changing minds in a positive way, right? Because this just looks like social and emotional manipulation in service of maintaining a oppressed/oppressor narrative that benefits no one in Canada.
Let’s file this under common sense facts we should all know.
- Cellphones are connected to social media one of the greatest detractors from long term attention span and focus.
- Children are not particularly good at self regulation and control
- Thus, we should enforce standards of conduct around the use of cell phones at school to encourage responsible use of said technology.
“When British Columbia school counsellor Tulani Pierce started noticing mental health trouble in some of her students last year, she said it gave her an idea: ban cellphones in the classroom.
They were distracted and they had a hard time putting their phones away, she said.
It’s been five months since students at Chatelech Secondary School on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast have been banned from using their cellphones without permission, and Pierce said they’ve seen promising results.
“We are seeing improved mental health, we’re seeing decreased bullying, we’re seeing more engagement in class, we’re seeing more social interaction, kids are playing again instead of being on their phones and we’re seeing increased academic success.”
Duh? Does it take a degree in counseling to connect the notions that distraction devices, erm… cause distraction?
“She said when the students were first told about the ban, some were angry and upset, while others “were extremely relieved.”
“We care about our kids that much and the reason why we did this was because of the mental health, academic achievement and equity issues,” she said, adding that not all families can afford cellphones for their children.
Robert Schumann, a physical education teacher at the school, said he has watched the gradual rise of cellphone use in schools for over two decades, and the ban is a turnaround for students.
They are joking around and actually engaging in classes, Schumann said, and he attributes the transformation to the school’s no-cellphone policy.”
Not being hyper-focused on the online world results in more real world interaction. This is ground breaking.
“However, former Vancouver School Board chair Patti Bacchus disagrees with a ban, saying it’s a “1960s solution to a 2023 problem.”
The education commentator said she has no doubt that cellphones could be a distraction in class, but over her last 10 years working in many schools, she doesn’t see phones as a big problem.
“I would not want to be a teacher tasked with enforcing this and constantly having to police somebody who brought their phone to school,” Bacchus said.
Students have lives going on outside of the class, such as taking care of siblings or doing part-time jobs and they may need phones to manage these tasks, she said.”
Students need to focus on learning while in the classroom. Teachers of even middling ability should be able to set up an environment that facilitates this basic requirement.
Students since 1960 and before have been able to function without being tethered to the digital world. Students will be fine.
“Bacchus said people also need to accept the fact that phones are ubiquitous components of modern life, and the technology is not going away.
Instead, she said teachers should perhaps take the opportunity to talk about addiction, list the pros and cons of using phones and leave it up to students to decide.”
Ubiquitous does not mean necessary. And again students are stupid and ignorant and will make self serving decisions not in their best interests. That’s why we have adults and not other students teaching them.
“Learn about it from that perspective, use it as an educational opportunity as opposed to, let’s just make rules and hide from it because that is not education,” Bacchus said.
Pierce said her goal is to see students across Canada taking a break from their phones in school rather than constantly checking social media notifications and responding to texts.”
Having rules, standards, and expectations is how effective education actually works. Making rules addresses problems/situations in the classroom and sets the stage for children to learn in a environment that is conducive to learning.
Pierce’s goals and methods are not coherent. I’m not seeing the path between “leaving it up for the students to decide” to “students [voluntarily] taking a break from their phones”. If you can see the way please let me know in the comments.
Cell phones are great, just not great in all contexts.
:)
A deliciously wriggling can of worms this topic is. I lean toward the answer being yes, but having rights in our society isn’t a guarantee of justice or fairness. I would hope that by the time sentient AI becomes a thing, we have our own house in order so we can be a good example to our AI children.
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