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Children's Railways of the Former USSR

dzd-ussr.ru

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Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#41

Post by Teever »

erulabs wrote: post #40
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and a lot of them lived back when being accused of heresy by the church was literally a death sentence. So again, not exactly an environment that fostered critical thinking, certainly one that punished speaking out against the church in any sort of way. Galileo, for example, was condemned on his death bed by the pope and buried in an unceremoniously small room next to the novice's chapel for almost 100 years bef…

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagine that Christianity provided no academic contributions to the world. To some extent, it invented academics. This is more or less z I am not a Christian and was for a long time a fairly militant atheist - but this point is historical fact.

I don't think that this fact some how dismisses the likelihood that many people throughout history merely pretended to be Christian simply to avoid being burned at the stake.

That's what organized religions did/do to non-believers. They burned them at the stake. Or stoned them to death, Or drowned them, or exiled them.

If your goal is to make contributions to society, in that context you're damn well going to say whatever you need to say about your personal beliefs to ensure that kind of shit doesn't happen to you. Hell, even if you don't care about making contributions to society you're still gonna say what ever needs to be said to ensure you don't end up burned at the stake.

The end result of all these theistic threats is that a lot of people who made great contributions to society did so under the auspices of religious organizations not because they genuinely believed in the tenants of those organizations, but because they had to.

And those organizations made those threats, and continue to make those threats because they know that this is the outcome -- that people will do things in their name to avoid the shit that the religion can do to them.

It's a racket, much akin to the mob coming up to a shop keep and telling them that it would be a shame if something were to happen to their business if it didn't have some kind of 'protection' that the mob can offer them.

It's no coincidence that the Catholic church and the mob originate from the same part of the world.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#42

Post by anovikov »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #9

> Then, why is it "Children's?", you might ask. Because it is operated by the schoolchildren, 9-15 years old. This blew my mind, and immediately made me think of John Taylor-Gatto [1] who won numerous teaching awards trying, but ultimately failing, to convince American teachers to show children the same respect. My 30 year old masters students are not even allowed to run their own WiFi network never mind an actual RA…

These children were mostly railway workers' kids. Whole purpose of it was to teach them railway jobs were cool to make them follow their parents' steps.

In the Soviet Union, and to a great extent in Russia till now, railway system is very independent from the State. It's frequently called a state within a state. It has it's own power stations, construction departments that build among other things, housing for workers, their own hospitals and even their own medical schools, it's own police, their own hotels and Black Sea resorts for workers, in the Soviet times they had even their own Gulags. It's a closed-loop system largely independent from the rest of it. So they have their own take on schooling, too.

Happened that way because after the Revolution of 1917, the state largely collapsed and was unable to do shit for at least next 6-7 years. Railway had to figure out how to work on its own.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#43

Post by dmingod666 »

erulabs wrote: post #40
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and a lot of them lived back when being accused of heresy by the church was literally a death sentence. So again, not exactly an environment that fostered critical thinking, certainly one that punished speaking out against the church in any sort of way. Galileo, for example, was condemned on his death bed by the pope and buried in an unceremoniously small room next to the novice's chapel for almost 100 years bef…

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagine that Christianity provided no academic contributions to the world. To some extent, it invented academics. This is more or less z I am not a Christian and was for a long time a fairly militant atheist - but this point is historical fact.

Religion is a human need - maybe not an obvious animalistic one but because it crops up with every civilization, I think it isn't something on the outside, it's something within us.

Wheather you think it's a means of social control, a way to create distinct in-vs out group, a means to cope with death or whatever you attributes you give to it..

Just because you can rationalise it doesn't mean it goes away.. just like you can't suppress base biological urges by "thinking them away", atleast not in the long term.

Religion just comes back up in other places in forms that don't even look like the original thing but shows all the signs of it.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#44

Post by pempem »

Teever wrote: post #41
erulabs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagine that Christianity provided no academic contributions to the world. To some extent, it invented academics. This is more or less z I am not a Christian and was for a long time a fairly militant atheist - but this point is historical fact.

I don't think that this fact some how dismisses the likelihood that many people throughout history merely pretended to be Christian simply to avoid being burned at the stake. That's what organized religions did/do to non-believers. They burned them at the stake. Or stoned them to death, Or drowned them, or exiled them. If your goal is to make contributions to society, in that context you're damn well going to say wha…

while these are interesting points, both posts are strongly euro-centric.

Religion was one of the stronger organizing forces of the old world and so good and bad both have roots in it. It was more stable than the leadership of kings/queens/chieftans which was blood-run and disrupted by the murder of either the existing leadership or the entire bloodline. Chaotic at best.

Learning/education has been shown to be part of religious teachings long before JC was even a discussed historical figure. For example, Buddha taught under Bodhi trees, Hindu philosophers under Banyans and so on. All kinds of 'modern' conceptions came from religious individuals, because most everyone was religious. It was deeply intertwined with early culture and simply belonging to a given geo-community

Our rejection - and I do mean our - of religion and easier coexistence culturally as atheists and agnostics is relatively recent.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#45

Post by WalterBright »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #26
nonrandomstring wrote: post #9

> Then, why is it "Children's?", you might ask. Because it is operated by the schoolchildren, 9-15 years old. This blew my mind, and immediately made me think of John Taylor-Gatto [1] who won numerous teaching awards trying, but ultimately failing, to convince American teachers to show children the same respect. My 30 year old masters students are not even allowed to run their own WiFi network never mind an actual RA…

> This scared the living shit out of governors and politicians who realised such a radical agenda might create young adults able to think and politically organise. Can you provide any examples of this? I'm skeptical of this claim given that Gatto was a prominent Libertarian, which don't really believe in political organization. The Libertarian movement is inherently individualistic. Not to mention his work with a Chr…

> The Libertarian movement is inherently individualistic.

Where do people get these ideas? Libertarianism is all about freedom, including the freedom to cooperate with others.

For example, a baseball team is all about voluntary cooperation for a common goal. Nobody is forced to play. Baseball has nothing whatsoever inconsistent with Libertarianism.

What Libertarianism lacks is forcing people to conform and cooperate.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#46

Post by WalterBright »

dmingod666 wrote: post #43
erulabs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagine that Christianity provided no academic contributions to the world. To some extent, it invented academics. This is more or less z I am not a Christian and was for a long time a fairly militant atheist - but this point is historical fact.

Religion is a human need - maybe not an obvious animalistic one but because it crops up with every civilization, I think it isn't something on the outside, it's something within us. Wheather you think it's a means of social control, a way to create distinct in-vs out group, a means to cope with death or whatever you attributes you give to it.. Just because you can rationalise it doesn't mean it goes away.. just like…

The current belief in "The Simulation" has all the trappings of a newly forming religion.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#47

Post by watwut »

Teever wrote: post #41
erulabs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Aquinas (just to name one) was a scholar of the highest order and was absolutely not just pretending to be a Christian. It’s a strange worldview to imagine that Christianity provided no academic contributions to the world. To some extent, it invented academics. This is more or less z I am not a Christian and was for a long time a fairly militant atheist - but this point is historical fact.

I don't think that this fact some how dismisses the likelihood that many people throughout history merely pretended to be Christian simply to avoid being burned at the stake. That's what organized religions did/do to non-believers. They burned them at the stake. Or stoned them to death, Or drowned them, or exiled them. If your goal is to make contributions to society, in that context you're damn well going to say wha…

Many people, yes depending on how you define many. But majority or them? No.

But, no, in general people in the past believed their own religions. We are atheists culture and large atheist traditions at this point, we have hard time imagine it.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#48

Post by watwut »

kgeist wrote: post #39
deepdriver wrote: post #3

The steam locomotives (scroll down for color photos) look remarkably like Thomas the Tank Engine: http://www.dzd-ussr.ru/towns/gorky/foto1-eng.html Those photos are from the late 1990s, so maybe the resemblance is intentional.

Thomas the Tank Engine is virtually unknown in Russia, so I doubt it

Way more plausible is that Thomas the Tank Engine was drawn based on how real world trained looked like.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#50

Post by LambdaComplex »

WalterBright wrote: post #45
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This scared the living shit out of governors and politicians who realised such a radical agenda might create young adults able to think and politically organise. Can you provide any examples of this? I'm skeptical of this claim given that Gatto was a prominent Libertarian, which don't really believe in political organization. The Libertarian movement is inherently individualistic. Not to mention his work with a Chr…

> The Libertarian movement is inherently individualistic. Where do people get these ideas? Libertarianism is all about freedom, including the freedom to cooperate with others. For example, a baseball team is all about voluntary cooperation for a common goal. Nobody is forced to play. Baseball has nothing whatsoever inconsistent with Libertarianism. What Libertarianism lacks is forcing people to conform and cooperate.

What you describe may very well be a valid definition of "Libertarianism," but Libertarianism's modern form (at least in the United States) seems to fundamentally rely on the belief that individuals are on equal footing with megacorporations and that therefore removing restrictions on said megacorporations will result in them acting in ways that are better for society rather than worse.

But, given things such as the historical existence of company stores/scrip and the things mentioned in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, I find such beliefs to be overly optimistic: we already have historical proof that companies will fail to pay workers with real money and will sell unsafe food to the public unless forced to do otherwise by government intervention.

Companies have less "freedom" now than they did 100 years ago, and we are better off for it.

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