to teach or not to teach...

[Yojimbo]

I am not sold on the idea that racisim is hard wired into our brains, so I have faith that- given the proper community and environment - that a society free of racisim could come about. On education: I do think it would be extremely important for the children of the new society to receive a decent education that goes beyond just simple knowledge needed to subsist such as hunting, foraging, farming, butchering, basic gunsmithing & auto repair, food preparation, but an education that includes ensuring that the population be literate, be aware of history, solid mathematics, basic chemistry, etc. To go the opposite route, I fear, would plunge mankind into the dark ages again. My fear with post-apocalyptic societies is that you would have groups and towns unified under disparate religious or philosophical beliefs. Given the history of society, I think that when this sort of rhetoric becomes part of each enclave's political policy, the potential for conflict between the different collectives becomes more pronounced. I know of a Methodist church in Hawaii who's property borders land owned by a local Mormon church, and their respective congregations came close to throwing blows over a simple issue of property lines and whether or not a fence that the Methodists had put up had crossed over into the Mormon owned lands. We all know of the issues in the Gaza Strip and Iraq that are sparked from religious differences. Hell, I know of families that have been nearly torn apart because their relative married a person who is not of the family's religious background. So though I think that racisim could be flushed out of society, I think that it would be impossible to flush religion out of society. In this regard, I believe that entire "My church, my god, right or wrong" concept would eventually cause problems between groups of different backgrounds. Our only hope, therefore, would be that the populations are educated enough to be able to put aside their philosophical differences to work together and settle any differences in opinion that they may have.

[Trencher]

Yojimbo: Racism is sort of a religion, and the same behavoir that creates religious thought creates racism. Both are systems of belief and I think that racsim can not be flushed out by any means only combated by other systems of belief. I did not mean to say that racism was ingraned in the human brain from birth.

[Wyldwraith]

Yojimbo is right, What he's saying is a more elaborate example of the basic principle I outlined. Ie: The absence of education leads to a corresponding rise in the influence of superstition and ideological zealotry. Collectives will always find elements in another collective that they distrust/dislike based on differences in both groups. Whether the two populations agree to disagree or launch a crusade/jihad/cleansing versus "the unbelievers" depends entirely on the emphasis each group has placed on legitimate education in their communities. After all, it's no coincidence that most hotspots of ideology-based conflict, be they racial/religious/sexist in nature correspond to populations with extremely low levels of education. Why would a post-apocalyptic society be any different? Then there's inherent conflict between "barbaric" and "civilized" societies. The educated population is prone to dehumanizing the less progressive population, while the traditionalist/less advanced population resents the higher quality of life their civilized rivals enjoy, while expressing contempt for the very means that provide that higher quality. All of this is elementary. Easily understood by anyone with so much as a high school education. Without that education though...what's to stop a carbon-copy repeat of the rise and fall of a New Roman Empire? Tens of thousands more lives destroyed, all because the survivors of the apocalypse doomed themselves to repeating the history they never learned.

[Yojimbo]

Yojimbo: Racism is sort of a religion, and the same behavoir that creates religious thought creates racism. Both are systems of belief and I think that racsim can not be flushed out by any means only combated by other systems of belief. I did not mean to say that racism was ingraned in the human brain from birth. I hear you, Trencher, and agree with your statement that racism is a sort of religion - it stands to reason since racism is a type of philosophy just as religion is a philosophy. I agree that both are systems of belief. I did not mean to imply that you specifically had said that racism was ingrained in humans from birth, so I apologize if it came off that way. However, there were a few posts which implied exactly this thought - that racism will never dissappear because it is instinctive and not a learned thought process- and it was this thought that I dispute. I do feel that if each community groups itself by religious or philosophical belief that it would be inevitable that conflicts would arise that could be as potentially damaging with the same destructive results that would come about from race-based conflict. The absence of education leads to a corresponding rise in the influence of superstition and ideological zealotry. Collectives will always find elements in another collective that they distrust/dislike based on differences in both groups. Whether the two populations agree to disagree or launch a crusade/jihad/cleansing versus "the unbelievers" depends entirely on the emphasis each group has placed on legitimate education in their communities. After all, it's no coincidence that most hotspots of ideology-based conflict, be they racial/religious/sexist in nature correspond to populations with extremely low levels of education. In total agreement with Wyldwraith's well written statement, which I truncated above. I too believe that the only hope post apocalyptic society would have to reduce conflicts between the enclaves would be enlightenment though education, and along those same lines I believe that enlightenment through eductation is society's only hope to save our pre-apocalyptic world.