Teachers

[Ben@Forest]

I’m convinced that the UK is overpopulated and that most people don’t understand that overpopulation doesn’t mean you’re now standing on someone else’s head. Whether very low population density is (overall) a good thing or not I wouldn’t like to say, but I do see some downsides to that too.

What certainly is true is that our population density massively impacts upon wildlife here, some species have artificially huge numbers (such as roe deer) and others just hang on (hazel dormouse). And of course it is contentious when those species which were artificially introduced by us (such as hedgehogs on Scottish islands) are controlled.

Whenever someone says we are a rich country which can take more refugees or we need more economic migrants they have no interest in the species, flora or fauna, we share these islands with. It is a shame, but perhaps inevitable, we only think of our own species first.

[Carlton green]

I’m convinced that the UK is overpopulated and that most people don’t understand that overpopulation doesn’t mean you’re now standing on someone else’s head. Whether very low population density is (overall) a good thing or not I wouldn’t like to say, but I do see some downsides to that too.

What certainly is true is that our population density massively impacts upon wildlife here, some species have artificially huge numbers (such as roe deer) and others just hang on (hazel dormouse). And of course it is contentious when those species which were artificially introduced by us (such as hedgehogs on Scottish islands) are controlled.

Whenever someone says we are a rich country which can take more refugees or we need more economic migrants they have no interest in the species, flora or fauna, we share these islands with. It is a shame, but perhaps inevitable, we only think of our own species first.

In terms of sustainable living people have very little idea of either what that means or of how that might be achieved. We are most blinkered and short term in thought. Do humans live in balance with their environment? I’d say not, we’re creatures of immediacy, emotion, greed and gratification who lack the desire, knowledge and breadth of vision required to be any different.

What’s all of this got to do with Teachers? Well the whole of society’s structure is barley functional and fundamentally faulty, and that includes child care in its many forms. Without a better functioning society then, as part of the general mismanagement, things like care of the young and their preparation for adult life will significantly suffer. There are no easy answers but a better appreciation (and acceptance) of the much much wider than appreciated breadth and depth of what sustainable living includes (it doesn’t start and stop at being green) would be good.

[Jon in Sweden]

Interesting. I didn't know that. Houses are extraordinarily cheap here. You can pick up a reasonable 3 bed house in fair condition (with basement and modern heating system) for £50-60k.

This must be partly because the UK has 650 people per sq mile and Sweden has 57 (from Infoplease).

I remember reading once that the biggest sawmill premises in the UK would fit 30 times into the biggest sawmill premises in Sweden. That's partly because Sweden has a massively bigger forestry industry, but l imagine also because land is cheaper and there won't be the pressure to fit the business into a confined space, or if trying to expand, being told by the local authority that field next to you is earmarked for possible housing development, so not there please.

It's even less here. We're in one of the lowest population density areas for the south, with just 12 people per square kilometre (31 per square mile).

I passed a pulp mill near Grums, on the northern edge of Vänern (W Europe's largest lake). 900 employees, 760,000t of timber a year (the UK only produces 11.2 million in total) and the appearance of a small city/port. Very impressive.

For the house prices suggested I’m surprised that the building costs are covered.

They're not. You can't make money building houses here. You build a house because you want to live it, generally. Plus, the locals treat older houses like we treat older cars. Lower value due to higher running costs and repairs.

[Cugel]

In terms of sustainable living people have very little idea of either what that means or of how that might be achieved. We are most blinkered and short term in thought. Do humans live in balance with their environment? I’d say not, we’re creatures of immediacy, emotion, greed and gratification who lack the desire, knowledge and breadth of vision required to be any different.

What’s all of this got to do with Teachers? Well the whole of society’s structure is barley functional and fundamentally faulty, and that includes child care in its many forms. Without a better functioning society then, as part of the general mismanagement, things like care of the young and their preparation for adult life will significantly suffer. There are no easy answers but a better appreciation (and acceptance) of the much much wider than appreciated breadth and depth of what sustainable living includes (it doesn’t start and stop at being green) would be good.

What humans are is largely determined by their nurture, as the nature part of humans is incredibly plastic. We can believe and behave in a vast range of ways, with a very large set of possible permutations of belief/behaviour derived from very different experiences and contents of our nurtures.

Our nurture comes from various sources but is often summed up in the various virtual edifices we call "culture". Nearly all culture consists of traditions - ways of belief and behaviour evolved over time in the various human collectives, from tribe to nation state and all sizes & types of social institutions in between.

Formal and informal education is the installation of various cultural artefacts and their traditions into those born within, and subject to, the life of one or more social groupings. Various armatures are used to install the education, from mass media artefacts (books, radio, TV, films, plays et al) to institutions (family, school, work, clubs et al) that reinforce or direct all this culture and the consequential beliefs and behaviours.

In short, how a society believes and behaves, including the variations found, is determined by our past and the way we understand it, encapsulated in language, history and myth.

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Some histories, myths and languages seem to contain much that causes we humans to behave in unnatural ways - to act against our basic nature or only with those more damaging aspects of it. It's rare to find a human that achieves any sort of balance in belief and behaviour that balances their own interests & abilities with those they live with in the social matrices that support them.

Some cultures and the nations they are encapsulated within, end up much more "nasty" in belief & behaviour en masse than others. They also tend to be the cultures that cause individual lives to be brutish and short. We Blighters seem to have become (or or becoming) one such nation/culture.

Obvious effects are: the preference for hate over love in daily life; fragmentation of the overall culture into competing parts inclusive of a few "winners" and lots of "losers"; the demise of many institutions that preserve or support society and its denizens; the dominance of one kind of human nature that prides itself in being "red in tooth and claw" via use of physical and virtual tools of oppression, from a rabid police force to a neglectful or totalitarian government.

One institution of culture preservation and development - education - is becoming moribund, along with many others. The education best preserved is that of the public school, where the main theme seems to be the teaching of the behaviours, attitudes, beliefs and tools of oppression by a single dominant class. Other sorts of education are now dying of neglect.

Cugel