Yuyutsu - The answer is currently 'no'. The government is too greedy for power and control. It wants to force everyone to be indoctrinated in its school-system in order to become part of its economic 'work-force'. It cares not for the values of others.

Depending on your level of desperation / flexibility / inventiveness / resourcefulness, its actually quite possible to drop out of the system to whatever extent you desire. Most 'society dropouts' of my acquaintance opt for only a partial withdrawal from mainstream society although I do know a few hermits cum troglodytes who are around the 90% level. Remember the old hippy communes of the 1960s - 1970s, they still exist to this very day in one form or another. i live in a community, that while it would never be considered a commune, has many of the advantages thereof without the disadvantages. Then there is Crystal Waters in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, zillions of dropout communities clustered around Nimbin & similar small towns in northern NSW, and that peculiar whatever it is semi-religious arrangement in the central highlands south west of Sydney. People who 'drop out' have as many reasons to do so as there are stars in the sky. For me it was a combination of healthy environment, lack of city hassles, ability to be mostly self-sufficient, adequate resources to setup in comfort, total absence of gubmunt muppets etc. The Crystal Waters mob are much the same, Nimbin people ditto except they are inclined to imbibe more than a bit of the dreaded weed, but to each their own. I can't recall the name right now of the place or the tribe who run the joint in the central highlands but they can only be described as peculiar. For what its worth, they had their origin in the Freeman Movement when it was in its heyday (remember all that taxation is theft / Strawman / Maritime Law / constitution is invalid / gubmunt departments are yankee corporations / Bilderbergs / depopulation agenda / chemtrails stuff)

Hi antiseptic. This is fun on a rainy Sunday afternoon, isn't it?

Mark Christianson, who wrote the topic under discussion, appears to think that society should be free of rules, but that is not my premise. I think that you would agree that the purpose of governments is to manage functioning societies for the benefit of its citizens, defining what rights it bestows upon its citizens, and giving as much personnel freedom as possible without those freedoms impinging too much on other people's rights and safety.

And I can see that we do agree upon the antics of our educated brahmin caste. They love to embrace any cause calculated to get up the noses of anyone who is not of their demographic group, for the purpose of displaying their social separation from both the Great Unwashed, and the successful business class (who are usually their long suffering parents).

A university education was once the sole preserve of the Establishment, but tertiary education today has caused the number of people with degrees in Australia to explode to an incredible 15% of the population. But the actual status of this educated caste is very ill defined. There are educated people who gravitate towards the Establishment and the business class, and there are those in the humanities who are decidedly less successful who usually go on to infest the public service and academia in general.

What is happening is a blending of two opposites. Social climbing superiority combined with Socialist Egalitarianism. Bourgeoisie and Bohemians are getting all mixed up together. Some of them are rich, and some of them are poor, but they all stridently claim (especially the poor ones) that it is their education and commitment to "progressive" social ideals which identify their class. What the poor ones really resent, is that some members of the despised working class actually have higher wages than they do.

They are not just politically correct, they are politically exquisite, who love to play the champions of morality. These are the characters who are guaranteed to man the barricades for every fashionable cause imaginable.

Dear Praxidice,

I have no personal interest in the hippy lifestyle. In fact, I see them (and so do the gubmunt muppets) not as dropouts but as part and parcel of Western and Australian society, just like the tamed mainstream churches, both unofficial but quietly-state-sponsored pressure-valves.
I'll only believe them genuine dissenters once they refuse welfare-payments, national-grid electricity and internet, state-supplied water, money, roads, shops, cars, an ambulance to pick them up if they have a heart-attack, etc.

Personally speaking, I am relatively comfortable.
While I suffer in minor-to-moderate ways from gubmunt like anyone else, I managed to create an environment for myself where I am less harassed by those muppets than average. Rather, my main concerns are:

1) By calling what they do 'democracy', they harass others in MY name. It is therefore immoral for me to accept and allow it. I just refuse to take on the role of oppressor. Had it been my free choice (and everybody else's), then perhaps I would even choose to be part of this society, but I have no moral right to agree to belong to a society that forces itself on others, even if it's just one person, against their will.

2) The uncertainty about what the state might decree in future. Who knows what's in store? compulsory RFID microchip implants perhaps (reminding me of Nazi number-tattoos in their concentration camps)?

The biggest problem is not what the government currently does, but what it CAN potentially do by the powers invested in it.

Why should I care how government indoctrinates children? He-he-he I am no longer school-age... I'm not a hippy... I'm not a welfare recipient...

Yet we must remember:

"When they took the Jews, I didn't say anything because I'm not Jewish. When they took the homosexuals, I didn't say anything because I'm not a homosexual. When they took the Gypsies I didn't say anything because I'm not a Gypsy. When they took the Catholics I didn't say anything because I'm not Catholic. When they came to take me away, there was no one left to speak up for me."

Yuyutsu

Some very good points. I'm largely self-sufficient, don't live in the suburban jungle & don't have any significant dealings with gubmunt muppets on a daily basis, although I choose to avail myself of certain 21st century trappings. If perchance the muppets did get too big for their boots, the community could possibly secceed (geographically it would be easy) although the legal situation is another issue. I wouldn't be in the least surprised what big-brother schemes are foisted on us in the future, needless to say they are likely to focus more on the big cities than remote itty-bitty communities. Most cities already have extensive video surveillance in place, ostensibly for our own safety, and extension of these is certain. Some police services already have number plate recognition technology & this will inevitably spread. Plastic money transactions & public transport cards are routinely tracked although its not difficult to fool the latter. All landline phone, mobile phone,satellite phone, internet & even some GPS activity is trackable and in fact probably is routinely tracked via the Echelon system. That doesn't leave a lot of areas where we aren't being watched. When we see the microchip implants rolled out there won't be much time left for gubmunts, 42 months if my understanding is correct.

Yes, it's a good day to be inside thinking and pontificating here in Brisbane.

I tried to give a somewhat religious flavour to my description of the approach to learning within so much of the humanities, because I took Christensen's main point to be that the secular humanist ideology has developed within the institutions of modern Western states into a quasi-religious doctrine as rigidly inflexible as any militant religion and aggressively proselytised by the state and those who want to be seen as committed to propagation of the faith.

An explicit commitment to relevant doctrine is a part of official reports and is demanded as a condition of contracts and employment agreements with state bodies and public companies and increasingly with private companies as well, fearful of the consequences of being perceived as insufficiently pious. Those in the public eye who commit some form of doctrinal error are denounced as sinners from the pulpit of the media by self-appointed protectors of the faith. Even children must be doctrinally sound or risk the wrath of these moral arbiters, as the poor young girl discovered who was publicly vilified by the moral guardians of the press for barracking a football player who is a member of a group that is protected as a core part of the doctrine.

Apparently a wealthy black man's perception that his skin colour is being mocked is a doctrinal justification for public bullying of a young girl by our moral guardians clad in their rainbow panoply of righteousness.

Dear Antiseptic,

You refer to a story where a young girl supposedly abused an adult negro football player, who must have been much heavier, taller and faster than her. I am not familiar with this story - how was it possible? would you kindly fill me in with the details?