Reason for starting Social Thought in 1989

The baby boom generation holds a series of wrong-headed

ideas, which I believe will cause serious harm to our society as these

ideas are incorporated into public policy in the coming decades. Baby

boomers are already represented widely in public office and will

become more significant in the current and coming decades.

This generation also listens to public radio and some of the

baby boomers might be willing to consider better ideas.

The key wrong-headed ideas of the baby boomers are:

(1) The ideal environmental life is to live in a small commune

in the country, far from the city, using self-sufficiency skills

and providing home schooling. WRONG!

(2) Most social problems can be solved by person-to-person

encounters and getting to know each other. This applies to

domestic problems such as race and international problems

such as war. WRONG!

(3) Human beings around the world are very much the same with

only superficial differences. We have the same values, goals

and aspirations for our children. WRONG!

(4) Biological forces are the major source of our behavior, desires

and social behavior. Many of these forces originate in our

genes. WRONG!

 

Social Thought is based on widespread academic insight gained

by thinkers in quiet graduate school environments in the late 1960's

and 1970's while we hippies were getting stoned and fantasizing our

own society.

 

Human beings only exist as part of a (particular) society. The

hypothetical wild child, raised by wolves, is an animal with no

human attributes ---- that can't survive.

 

So far, most animals that have been studied (ethology), down to

the shrimp, can only survive when trained by their parent; they are

social, just as we are. Most birds and mammals, and many

intermediate species, die without infant training and culturation.

 

Human societies are very complex and radically different

around the world. All our behaviors, desires and values are the by-

product of the institutions that have been created within our specific

societies.

 

Understanding our own institutions is central to understanding

human behavior. Failure to recognize that fact is where the baby

boomers went wrong and this wrong-headedness will cause great

future misery in our society.

 

Social Thought is about the way institutions work. Institutions

include language, nation, era, geographic locale, religion, family and

the economy.