I know everyone says that when you get your driver's license, you have freedom, but when you get your pilot's license, that is freedom. Being at the controls of an airplane on a calm, beautiful, serene morning is just something that you can't find anywhere else. Getting up into the air, you can catch the sunrise.  I'm up here experiencing this. Like how many people get to experience flight? So much of my work has gone into the aircraft that you can sit inside the plane and say, I made that where I've seen that in CAD and I've worked on that specific part and now I'm sitting in an aircraft and I'm looking at that part and I know it's going to fly. There's something really cool about being able to be part of that entire design process where you design a part, you make a part, it goes in an airplane and that airplane flies. I would say that that's the coolest part about my job. I get to be part of that entire life cycle of the development of Aliyah. A bunch of the stuff that I'm working on at Beta is backed up by the math that I'm learning at UVM so I'm able to take the content of the classes and just directly apply them to my work at Beta. So I've been able to kind of merge the two and utilize both to benefit my education. Learned an incredible amount about what I wanted to do with my career, what my passions were. I found aviation which has been life-changing. Beta is like the perfect job. You get to play around with airplanes, you get to design an airplane. It's a group of individuals who are driven and kind of pushing at the forefront of the aviation industry. Normally you go into school and you learn concepts and then you're like, this is great but where do I apply these? So Beta gives me kind of an outlet to apply all of the skills that I've learned at UVM to a real-world engineering problem so it's super satisfying. Of course I want to be here.


As much as centrists like to tone police the left, lately their own tone has been getting a little bit out of control and their calls for Bernie Sanders to drop out haven't just gotten expectedly louder, we all expected this, knew it would happen. But they are now getting a little bit nastier and they've resorted to name calling in order to cry bully Bernie out of the Democratic Party primary. So as the Hills, Amy Parnes and Jonathan Easley report, Joe Biden's allies are privately grumbling that Senator Bernie Sanders will not get out of the presidential race, preventing the party from uniting ahead of the general election. Sanders' decision to stay in the race has Democrats worried they are repeating the problem of 2016 when a long primary fight was seen as hurting Hillary Clinton, the eventual nominee. At the same time, frustration is growing among some of Biden's aides and allies behind the scenes as the coronavirus pandemic has effectively sidelined Biden and President Trump's approval rating has been on the rise. Team Biden believes that it's impossible for him to fully pivot to taking on Trump while Sanders is still in the race. And there are growing fears that they're losing valuable time. I think he should get out, one Biden aide said. It's a lost cause for him and everyone knows it. If you really care about beating Donald Trump you'd get out and help consolidate the party in what is already a very stressful time for the nation. It's not helpful to anyone to stay in, period. The aide also said Sanders is unlikely to win more policy concessions from Biden by remaining in the race. Quote, I don't think they can push Biden any more to the left than he's gone. How far to the left has he gone, exactly? The aide said. But what he can do is solidify support and make sure we don't have another four years of Donald Trump. The longer they stay in, the worse it is. At a certain point it looks selfish and self-centered. Somehow he's made this all about himself. Quote, he's had lots of time to bow out gracefully and now he needs to do the right thing. One major Democratic donor said, It's April. We're dealing with a global pandemic. The country is in a deep recession and the last thing we need is Bernie Sanders telling us what we're doing wrong.  Time is of the essence. We all need to be on the same team right now. Another fundraiser was more blunt.  It's over. Bernie folks are clinging as they always do.  Drop out so we can unify dickhead. These people are so insufferable. No, how about this?  If I were Bernie Sanders, I would stay in all the way until the convention and then run as an independent against Joe Biden.   Quote, Biden says he'll contest the Democratic nomination if no one gets a majority of delegates. If Sanders leads in delegates but doesn't have a majority, Biden said he'll fight for the nomination. So now that Biden doesn't have a majority, he has a plurality even though he's in the lead, it seems like going by Biden standards, Bernie Sanders should in fact stay in and fight for the nomination because back then Biden didn't cite concerns about the need to unify and beat Donald Trump. He just said, I'm going to stay in and fight for the nomination. So guess what?  And if you think that bullying Bernie out of the race is going to help us unify, you've got another thing coming because I'm going to vote for the Green Party if Bernie drops out when he drops out, if that's the case. And you can cry about that.  Because after all of the time that we have spent fighting for our nominee for our candidate, when we were in the lead, all we heard from the media for about two straight weeks was how the Bernie bros would react in the event they stole the nomination away from us. Was that the party is the one that actually has the most say during nominations, it's not actually voters.  I am not going to fall in line.  They think that if they spit in our faces, slap us across the face, stab us in the back, call us dickheads and then tell us to unify that everything will be peachy keen. No, that's not the way that things work. And to think that Biden can't possibly go any further left or he won't.  What he adopted Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy proposal that will undo the damage that he caused? What other concessions could he make? There's nothing he can do. He's already gone so far to the left to appease Bernie Sanders and it's not working.   And if they lose to Donald Trump, mark my words, they're going to blame you. They're going to blame me. They're going to blame third party voters. They're going to blame Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders supporters. But just know they made this bed and they have to lie with it, right? They're the ones who created the standard that you should stay in even if you lose just to make sure you can maybe contest the convention. Still went out. I don't think Bernie would contest the convention. But I mean, at a minimum, he's just trying to get a plurality of Pledge delegates, which is more courteous than what they were willing to do to him when they just outright wanted to steal it from him.  Bernie should stay in the race. And if you think that we're going to unify with you, we're not going to unify with you. So you can try all you want to bully Bernie Sanders. But, you know, eventually if he obeys you and he drops out and endorses and ultimately campaigns for Joe Biden, if you think that we're going to listen to Bernie Sanders, you've got another thing coming because I'm not voting for Joe Biden.  I don't know. Go to Fox News and see if you can pull in more center right people. I don't know, but you're not getting my vote. So take that and shove it.


Hey guys welcome back to come again if you're new to the channel make sure you smash that subscribe button and click on the Little bell so you can stay up-to-date on all our videos is Batman I could give you the same old spiel About how young Bruce Wayne watched his parents get shot down by a mugger outside of theater I could also tell you that Bruce Wayne then dedicated his life to training his mind body and spirit to become the best in the World in order to battle crime But that story has been told before over and over and over again This is a new story Today I'm going to tell you the truth of who Batman really is Let's start with the inspiration behind Batman in order to do that We have to take a look at some of the heroes who came before the Caped Crusader Batman made his first appearance in 1939 with Detective Comics number 27 created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger So who came before him that helped inspire this pop culture icon? well on July 31st 1930 a Mysterious narrator of the Street and Smith radio program Detective story hour known as the shadow debuted and in print form the shadow magazine on April 1st 1931 The shadow and Batman have shared many adventures through the years in one-shot comics most recently with 2017's Batman the shadow from DC Comics and 2017's the shadow Batman from Dynamite Comics in Many of these stories Batman admits that the shadow was some of his earliest inspiration and in others the shadow was actually many of Bruce Wayne's mentors on February 17th 1936 in a daily newspaper strip the phantom debuted The phantom was the inspiration behind most superheroes today being drawn with no pupils in their eyes The original name of the phantom according to Lee folk was actually the gray ghost Which would later become the name of a Batman character Next up we have Doc Savage who debuted in the Street and Smith Doc Savage magazine in March of 1933 Doc Savage is a physician scientist inventor explorer researcher and musician a team of scientists Assembled by his father trained his mind and body from birth to near superhuman abilities This training gave him great strength and endurance Photographic memory mastery of martial arts and a vast knowledge of many different sciences The spider first appeared in the spider volume one number one in October of 1933 a Millionaire playboy who often ventured into the criminal underworld disguised as small-time hood Blinky McQuaid The spider held a badge of inspector under the name Rupert Barton in Scotland Yard and The rank of lieutenant in the FBI Harry Houdini was a real-life inspiration for Batman as a master illusionist stunt performer and escape artist Houdini was born March 24th 1874 Houdini was also a legendary skeptic and questioned everything which appeared to be paranormal and became the scourge of fake spiritualists everywhere Tarzan was another of Batman's inspirations from fiction Tarzan first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes in 1912 Tarzan is a son of a British Lord and Lady who were marooned on the Atlantic coast of Africa by mutineers His mother dies while he was an infant and his father was killed by the leader of the ape tribe that Tarzan was adopted by Sherlock Holmes in which most of Batman's detective skills were inspired by first appeared in a study in scarlet in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle It is said that Sherlock Holmes is the world's greatest detective and if that's so it would make Batman the world's second greatest The black bat first appeared in black bat detective mysteries between 1933 and 1934 and a second black bat Debuted in July of 1939 in which he shared similar costume designs as Batman But completely inspired Batman's scallops on his gloves as Bob Kane fully admitted the black bat also inspired the origin story for one of Batman's greatest enemies to face But that's a story for another day With that being said who do you think was the biggest influence on the creation and evolution of Batman in The golden age Batman was written in a pop comic style He showed little remorse when dealing out his form of justice and oftentimes killed criminals Even going so far as to carry a gun which has been completely done away with sense and has even began going by a no kill rule In the 1950s Batman stories became more science fiction oriented in the 1960s Batman became a member of Justice League of America in the brave in the bold number 28 of February 1960 By 1964 sales of the Batman fell drastically and as a result DC nearly killed off Batman completely But editor Julia Schwartz was assigned to the Batman titles and presided over the drastic changes over the character Which began in 1964's detective comics number 327 It was here that Batman returned to his detective origins space aliens time travels and 50s characters such as Batwoman and Batmite fell out of favor and thus disappeared completely from the titles in 1966 Batman received a new campy redesign for the Adam West television series And thus had a profound effect on the comic books as well The birth of the modern age Batman started with Frank Miller's limited series of the Dark Knight Returns between February and June of 1986 With this interpretation of the character also brought about a return to older darker elements to Batman The Dark Knight Returns inspired the 1989 Batman movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton Which in turn inspired a darker tone for all Batman properties that followed It was after the movie Batman Returns in which Bruce Tim's Batman the animated series brought the most profound changes to the Batman character and Franchises from a complete revamp of mr. Frasers origin to the creation of great long-lasting characters like Harley Quinn and even helping to rebrand the Joker Batman's primary character traits can be summarized as wealth physical prowess deductive abilities and obsession The driving force behind Bruce Wayne's character is his parents murder and their absence Bob Kane and Bill Finger discussed Batman's background and decided that there's nothing more traumatic than having your parents murdered before your eyes Despite his trauma He sets his mind on studying to become a scientist and to train his body into physical perfection to fight crime in Gotham City as the Batman an inspired idea from Wayne's insight into the criminal mind Batman is often treated as a vigilante by other characters in his stories Frank Miller viewed the character as a Dionysian figure a force for anarchy that imposes an individual order Dressed as a bat Batman deliberately cultivates a frightening persona in order to aid him in crime fighting a Fear that or originates from the criminals own guilty conscience There you have it guys our breakdown of who Batman really is None other than the combination of the shadow the spider the black bat Doc Savage Tarzan Harry Houdini the Phantom and Sherlock Holmes For more information on these characters you can find videos on the shadow the Phantom and the black bat right here on comic You can follow their adventures in the pages of DC comics Moonstone comics and more recently Dynamite entertainment And as I said before guys if you liked this video make sure you smash that subscribe button and click the little bell To receive notifications on all our upcoming videos hit the like button make sure and leave us a comment So we know how you felt about the video and don't forget to share with your family and friends until next time I'm Shannon for comic in we're all geek culture collides


The payoff on the end right as we talked about earlier the show is unsuspecting kindness gets rewarded so you have a great connection with someone they help you give you food shelter and then the end of the show you give them something that's life-changing. What's been your favorite life-changing moment during both seasons of really being able to give someone an amazing gift? I know that the stories have varied from rent to travel to opportunities that these people never imagined was there one in your mind that really stands out. Yeah definitely I was in Pittsburgh and I was going up to people and asking if I could stay with them and they were saying no which is fine and then I saw I went up to this one chap and I said can I stay in your house tonight after talking to him for a little bit and he goes look I'm really sorry but I'm homeless.  Every part of my being was like Leon you're not sleeping on the streets of Pittsburgh but there was that one little counterintuitive voice that said Leon my good friend you are staying on the streets of Pittsburgh tonight and that's exactly what happened and his name was Tony and he taught me a profound lesson he taught me that true wealth is not in our wallets but it's in our hearts and if a homeless man with nothing can be kind then why can't I if a homeless man with nothing can be kind then why can't you and he taught me another lesson that is that kindness is free it doesn't matter how much money you have it doesn't matter how little money you have kindness is free and sleeping on the streets of Pittsburgh for that one night changed everything for me because it made me realize that again like with the motorcycle diary says another way to live and if he can be kind then I have no excuses the next morning I took him on kindness one in the sidecar and I put him up in an apartment and I sent him back to school he always wanted to be a chef so and he always says to me you changed my life and I always say the same thing Tony you changed my life and that's the truth you know yeah I mean the lessons that come out of it I remember you in Tijuana and the family opening their home and the first thing the family says is they apologize to you you know we're so poor our house is in poor shape really sorry for you to have to experience this obviously the cameras are there and then the moment you're sitting on the couch thinking about if the roles were reversed someone was on your doorstep in London knocking on your door would you open your house to them and you know that moment for me sitting next to Amy watching the show just thinking like you know I don't know that we could do it either you know we often look at our own safety our own personal well-being and our homes is very sacred and here all these people who have you know less than you can imagine are willing to open their door give you a tamale give you a couch to sleep on I'm assuming the lessons along the way have changed you your view now and opening up your home and and of kindness and generosity how has it shifted and what's been the biggest lesson there so I was in Santa Monica about a year ago and there was a guy that was this is the first time I've ever shared this publicly there was a guy that was walking the the trail I can't remember the name of it the Pacific Coast Trail and he was ending up in LA and he was about to sleep on the beach and I felt connected to him you know and I was like okay and I said well look do you want to come and stay in my house he's like yeah sure so he ended up staying in my house now I locked my door my personal door but whatever you know I trusted him I felt it was I guess I didn't trust him enough to not lock my door but if you feel connected to someone it doesn't take long to to trust them but you can't connect from the mind you have to connect from somewhere somewhere else you have to connect from your heart so yeah that that that happened and I would do it again


Whenever I play a Star Wars video game, I inevitably turn evil the moment that I climb aboard a Starship. I guess I just don't know the power of the dock side. Video games have progressed a phenomenal amount in the past few years, to the point that they're actually being taken seriously as a medium for legitimate storytelling. However, they've still got kind of a bad rap for being unsophisticated or purile, and unfortunately, it's not really hard to see why. For every complex piece of interactive fiction with characters that you care about and a plot that grabs your spleen and squeezes, there are at least 10 video games where you play a guy who runs around and shoots things. Of course, with advancements in the sophistication of hardware, video games have gotten much more complex, but some of the best-selling, most successful franchises still haven't broken a level of complexity of, say, the Bernstein Bears. One of the primary ways that video games lag behind other, more established forms of media is in their relationship with morality. Moral sophistication is one potential hallmark of a mature story in just about any medium. Characters are conflicted, shades of gray abound, actions have unforeseen consequences, all leaving the audience wondering, just what does it mean to be a good person? Intuitively, you might expect an interactive medium like video games, where the audience actually helps to build the narrative, to excel at telling stories that investigate the meaning of choice, and some of them have. The very first game with a real implementation of a moral choice system was Dungeons & Dragons, first published in 1974. No computers yet, just dice, tables, and imagination. D&D developed a two-axis system where your character selected from one of nine possible alignments, ranging from lawful to chaotic and good to evil. Choosing one of those moral alignments was just as important as whether you picked a wizard or a fighter, because failing to adhere to your chosen alignment carried harsh penalties. Like if you were playing a lawful character and decided that they should bend the rules even just once, they could be set back months of experience and lose crucial abilities. However, the D&D alignment system actually served a distinct purpose in gameplay. It forced players to make consistent moral decisions in a fictional world that would otherwise be without consequences. That threat of punishment for straying from their character's moral compass forced players to think more about their character's choices as separate from their own, and even to make choices that were morally uncomfortable. That's a pretty incredible achievement for a storytelling medium. It takes a hell of a work of art to make the audience complicit in what they feel are immoral acts. Regardless, many people felt that D&D's alignment system was overly simplistic in its dichotomies and categories, and then video games happened. And with them, the Karmameter, a mechanic that seems specifically engineered to squish complexity in storytelling. All of these games heavily feature morality systems that basically boil down to getting good points or getting evil points. Also, in order to ensure that players won't mistake their options for each, video games with Karmameters tend to have binary moral decisions at wildly unrealistic ends of the spectrum. A singular decision to either adopt an orphan or eat them isn't really a mature exploration of morality. To add insult to injury, many video games will hold additional content hostage like extra abilities, missions or cutscenes, unless you go all in as either a saint or a sadist. So video games have a lot of problems in trying to mandate moral decisions in a way that isn't ham-handed. Some of them manage it, but it's generally considered to be a pretty rare thing. However, there is something about them that gives them a very interesting and important moral aspect that has very little to do with what the developers and writers intended. The act of playing a video game carries an inherent moral conundrum that's pretty much unique among other media. When I pick up a controller, I am choosing to participate in something, not just to consume it. Games like Spec Ops The Line and The Stanley Parable make a point of highlighting this involvement, but it's really intrinsic to every video game. By engaging with it, we are making a very meaningful decision to play a part in that story. Take this video by Goldvision, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek but very poignant examination of what it means to try and live a peaceful and blameless life in GTA V's Los Santos. In a virtual world designed to reward larceny, violence and apathy, he struggles to be ethical and just. It seems a little bit silly at first, but if you think about it, he's making a more meaningful moral decision than any dialogue wheel has ever offered. What's especially cool about that agency is that just like really good books and art, it makes people think about morality. Check out this paper published recently by Matthew Grizzard at all at the State University of New York.  The very best art aspires to engage audiences on that level, something that video games, even really crappy video games, necessitate by default. That's something to be respected and admired. Although the way that morality is designed and written into video games could seriously stand some advancement, a medium for truly meaningful moral inquiry is already there. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some noobs to frag. Have you experienced a moment in video games that made you question your own morality? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and I'll see you next week.


Chapter 8 of Proposed Roads to Freedom. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Selma Meyer. Proposed Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Russell. Chapter 8. The world as it could be made. In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope. They are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them than of the joy that they might create in their own lives. And in the lives with which they come in contact, it is not so that life should be lived. Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy. They see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence. In their private relations, they are not preoccupied with anxiety, as they should lose such affection and respect as they receive. They are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes of itself without their seeking. In their work, they are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but concerned with the actual matter that has to be done. In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression. A life lived in this spirit, the spirit that aims at creating rather than possessing, has a certain fundamental happiness of which it cannot be wholly robbed by adverse circumstances. This is the way of life recommended in the Gospels and by all the great teachers of the world. Those who have found it are freed from the tyranny of fear, because what they value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside power. If all men could summon up the courage and the vision to live in this way in spite of obstacles and discouragement, there would be no need for the regeneration of the world to begin by political and economic reform. All that is needed in the way of reform would come automatically without resistance, owing to the moral regeneration of individuals. But the teaching of Christ has been nominally accepted by the world for many centuries, and yet those who follow it are still persecuted as they were before the time of Constantine. Experience has proved that few are able to see through the apparent evils of an outcast life to the inner joy that comes of faith and creative hope. If the domination of fear is to be overcome, it is not enough as regards the mass of men to preach courage and indifference to misfortune. It is necessary to remove the causes of fear to make a good life no longer an unsuccessful one in a worldly sense and to diminish the harm that can be inflicted upon those who are not wary in self-defense. When we consider the evils and the lives we know of, we find that they may be roughly divided into three classes. There are first, those due to physical nature. Among these are death, pain, and the difficulty of making the soil yield a subsistence. These we will call physical evils. Second, we may put those that spring from defects in the character or aptitudes of the sufferer. Among these are ignorance, lack of will and violent passions. These we will call evils of character. Third, come those that depend upon the power of one individual or group over another. These comprise not only obvious tyranny, but all interference with free development, whether by force or by excessive mental influence, such as may occur in education. These we will call evils of power. A social system may be judged by its bearing upon these three kinds of evils. The distinction between the three kinds cannot be sharply drawn. Purely, physical evil is a limit which we can never be sure of having reached. We cannot abolish death, but we can often postpone it by science and it may ultimately become possible to secure that the great majority shall live to low age. We cannot wholly prevent pain, but we can diminish it indefinitely by securing a healthy life for all. We cannot make the earth yield its fruits in any abundance without labor, but we can diminish the amount of the labor and improve its conditions until it ceases to be an evil. Evils of character are often the result of physical evil and the shape of illness and still more often the result of evils of power, since tyranny degrades both those who exercise it and as a rule those who suffer it.  For all these reasons the three sorts of evil are intertwined. Nevertheless, speaking broadly, we may distinguish among our misfortunes those which have their proximate cause in the material world, those which are mainly due to defects in ourselves and those which spring from our being subject to the control of others. The main methods of combating these evils are for physical evils, science for evils of character, education in the widest sense and a free outlet for all impulses that do not involve domination. For evils of power, the reform of the political and economic organization of society in such a way as to reduce to the lowest possible point the interference of one man with the life of another. We will begin with the third of these kinds of evil because it is evils of power especially that socialism and anarchism have sought to remedy. Their protest against inequalities of wealth has rested mainly upon their sense of the evils arising from the power conferred by wealth. This point has been well stated by Mr. G. D. H. Cole. What, I want to ask, is the fundamental evil in our modern society which we should set out to abolish? There are two possible answers to that question and I am sure that very many well-meaning people would make the wrong one. They would answer poverty when they ought to answer slavery. Face to face every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages and painfully conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means of charity, private or public. They would answer unhesitatingly that they stand for the abolition of poverty. Well and good, on that issue every socialist is with them but their answer to my question is nonetheless wrong. Poverty is the symptom, slavery, the disease. The extremes of riches and destitution follow inevitably upon the extremes of license and bondage. The many are not enslaved because they are poor. They are poor because they are enslaved. Yet socialists have all too often fixed their eyes upon the material misery of the poor without realizing that it rests upon the spiritual degradation of the slave. Footnote 59. Self-government and industry. G. Bell and Sons. 1917. Pages 110 to 111. I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that the evils of power in the present system are vastly greater than is necessary nor that they might be immeasurably diminished by a suitable form of socialism. A few fortunate people, it is true, are now enabled to live freely on rent or interest and they could hardly have more liberty under another system. But the great both, not only of the very poor but of all sections of wage earners and even of the professional classes are the slaves of the need for getting money. Almost all are compelled to work so hard that they have little leisure for enjoyment or for pursuits outside their regular occupation. Those who are able to retire in later middle age are bored because they have not learned how to fill their time when they are at liberty and such interests as they once had, apart from work, have dried up. Yet these are the exceptionally fortunate. The majority have to work hard till old age with the fear of destitution always before them. The richer ones dreading that they will be unable to give their children the education or the medical care that they consider desirable. The poorer ones often not far removed from starvation. And almost all who work have no voice in the direction of their work. Throughout the hours of labor they are mere machines carrying out the will of a master. Work is usually done under disagreeable conditions involving pain and physical hardship. The only motive to work is wages. The very idea that work might be a joy like the work of the artist is usually scouted as utterly utopian. But by far the greater part of these evils are wholly unnecessary. If the civilized portion of mankind could be induced to desire their own happiness more than another's pain if they could be induced to work constructively for improvements which they would share with all the world rather than destructively to prevent other classes or nations from stealing a march on them the whole system by which the world's work is done might be reform the root and branch within a generation. From the point of view of liberty, what system would be the best? In what direction should we wish the forces of progress to move? From this point of view, neglecting for the moment all other considerations I have no doubt that the best system would be one not far removed from the advocated by Kropotkin but rendered more practicable by the adoption of the main principles of guild socialism. Since every point can be disputed, I will set down without argument the kind of organization of work that would seem best. Education should be compulsory up to the age of 16 or perhaps longer. After that it should be continued or not at the option of the pupil but remain free for those who desire it up to at least the age of 21. When education is finished no one should be compelled to work and those who choose not to work should receive a bare livelihood and be left completely free. But probably it would be desirable that there should be a strong public opinion in favor of work so that only comparatively few should choose idleness. One great advantage of making idleness economically possible is that it would afford a powerful motive for making work not disagreeable and no community where most work is disagreeable can be said to have found a solution of economic problems. I think it is reasonable to assume that few would choose idleness in view of the fact that even now at least 9 out of 10 of those who have say 100 pounds a year from investment prefer to increase their income by paid work. Coming now to that great majority who will not choose idleness I think we may assume that with the help of science and by the elimination of the vast amounts of unproductive work involved in internal and international competition the whole community could be kept in comfort by means of 4 hours work a day. It is already being urged by experienced employers that their employees can actually produce as much in a 6 hour day as they can when they work 8 hours. In a world where there is a much higher level of technical instruction than there is now, the same tendency will be accentuated. People will be taught not only is it present one trade or once more portion of a trade but several trades so that they can vary their occupation according to the seasons and the fluctuations of demand. Every industry will be self-governing as regards all its internal affairs and even separate factories will decide for themselves all questions that only concern those who work in them. There will not be capitalist management as at present but management by elected representatives as in politics. Relations between different groups of producers will be settled by the Guild Congress. Matters concerning the community as the inhabitants of a certain area will continue to be decided by Parliament. While all disputes between Parliament and the Guild Congress will be decided by a body composed of representatives of both in equal numbers. Payment will not be made as at present only for work actually required and performed but for willingness to work. The system is already adopted in much of the better paid work. A man occupies a certain position and retains it even at times when there happens to be very little to do. The dread of unemployment and loss of livelihood will no longer haunt men like a nightmare. Whether all who are willing to work will be paid equally or whether exceptional skill will still command exceptional pay is a matter which may be left to each Guild to decide for itself. An opera singer who received no more pay than a scene shifter might choose to be a scene shifter until the system was changed. If so, higher pay would probably be found necessary but if it were freely voted by the Guild it could hardly constitute a grievance. Whatever might be done toward making work agreeable it is to be presumed that some trades would always remain unpleasant. Men could be attracted into these by higher pay or shorter hours instead of being driven into them by destitution. The community would then have a strong economic motive for finding ways of diminishing the disagreeableness of these exceptional trades. They would still have to be money or something analogous to it in any community such as we are imagining. The anarchist plan of a free distribution of the total produce of work in equal shares does not get rid of the need for some standard of exchange value since one man will choose to take his share in one form and another in another. When the day comes for distributing luxuries old ladies will not want their quota of cigars nor young men their just proportion of a lapdog. This will make it necessary to know how many cigars are the equivalent of one lapdog. Much the simplest way is to pay an income as a present and allow relative values to be adjusted according to demand. But if actual coin were paid a man might hoard it and in time become a capitalist. To prevent this it would be best to pay notes available only during a certain period say one year from the date of issue. This would enable a man to save up for his annual holiday but not to save indefinitely. There is a very great deal to be said for the anarchist plan of allowing necessaries and all commodities that can easily be produced in quantities adequate to any possible demand to be given away freely to all who ask for them in any amounts they may require. The question whether this plan should be adopted is to my mind a purely technical one would it be in fact possible to adopt it without much waste and consequent diversion of labor to the production of necessaries when it might be more usefully employed otherwise. I have not the means of answering this question but I think it exceedingly probable that sooner or later with the continued improvement in the methods of production this anarchist plan will become feasible and when it does it certainly ought to be adopted. Women in domestic work with a married or unmarried will receive pay as they would if they were in industry. This will secure the complete economic independence of wives which is difficult to achieve in any other way since mothers of young children ought not to be expected to work outside the home. The expense of children will not fall as it present on the parents. They will receive like adults their share of necessaries and their education will be free. Footnotes 60 Some may fear that the result would be an undue increase of population but such fears I believe to be groundless. See above chapter 4 on work and pay also chapter 6 of Principles of Social Reconstruction George Allen and Unlimited There is no longer to be the present competition for scholarships among the abled children. They will not be imbued with the competitive spirit from infancy or forced to use their brains to an unnatural degree with consequent listlessness and lack of health in later life. Education will be far more diversified than at present. Greater care will be taken to adapt it to the needs of different types of young people. There will be more attempt to encourage initiative in young pupils and less desire to fill their minds with a set of beliefs and mental habits regarded as desirable by the state chiefly because they help to preserve the status quo. For the great majority of children it will probably be found desirable to have much more outdoor education in the country and for older boys and girls whose interests are not intellectual or artistic. Technical education undertaken in a liberal spirit is far more useful in promoting mental activity than book learning, which they regard however falsely as wholly useless except for purposes of examination. The really useful education is that which fellers the direction of the child's own instinctive interests supplying knowledge for which it is seeking not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires. Government and law will still exist in our community but both will be reduced to a minimum. There will still be acts which will be forbidden for example murder but very nearly the whole of that part of the criminal law which deals with property will have become obsolete and many of the motives which now produce murders will be no longer operative. Those who nevertheless still do commit crimes will not be blamed or regarded as wicked. They will be regarded as unfortunate and kept in some kind of mental hospital until it is thought that they are no longer a danger. By education and freedom and the abolition of private capital a number of crimes can be made exceedingly small. By the method of individual curative treatment it will generally be possible to secure that a man's first offence till also be his last except in the case of lunatics and the feeble-minded for whom of course a more prolonged but not less kindly detention may be necessary. Government may be regarded as consisting of two parts the one, the decisions of the community or its recognized organs the other, the enforcing of those decisions upon all who resists them. The first part is not objected to by anarchists. The second part in an ordinary civilized state may remain entirely in the background. Those who have resisted a new law while it is being debated will as a rule submit to it when it is passed because resistance is generally useless in the settled and orderly community. But the possibility of governmental force remains and indeed is the very reason for the submission which makes force unnecessary. If as anarchists desire there were no use of force by government the majority could still band themselves together and use force against the minority. The only difference would be that their army force would be ad hoc instead of being permanent and professional. The result of this would be that everyone would have to learn how to fight for fear a well-drilled minority should seize power and establish an old-fashioned oligarchic state. Thus the aim of the anarchist seems hardly likely to be achieved by the methods which they advocate. The reign of violence and human affairs whether within a country or in its external relations can only be prevented if we have not been mistaken by an authority able to declare all use of force except by itself illegal and strong enough to be obviously capable of making all other use of force futile except when it could secure the support of public opinion as a defense of freedom or a resistance to injustice. Such an authority exists within a country. It is the state but in international affairs it remains to be created. The difficulties are stupendous but they must be overcome if the world is to be saved from periodical wars each more destructive than any of its predecessors. Whether after this war a league of nations will be formed and will be capable of performing this task it is as yet impossible to foretell however that may be some method of preventing wars will have to be established before our utopia becomes possible. When once men believe that the world is saved from war the whole difficulty will be solved. They will then no longer be any serious resistance to the disbanding of national armies and navies and the substitution for them of a small international force for protection against uncivilized races and when that stage has been reached peace will be virtually secure. The practice of government by majorities which anarchists criticize is in fact open to most of the objections which they urge against it. The most objectionable is the power of the executive in matters vitally affecting the happiness of all such as peace and war but neither can be dispensed with suddenly. There are however two methods of diminishing the harm done by them. One, government by majorities can be made less oppressive by devolution by placing the decision of questions primarily affecting only a section of the community in the hands of that section rather than of a central chamber. In this way men are no longer forced to submit to decisions made in a hurry by people mostly ignorant of the matter in hand and not personally interested. Autonomy for internal affairs should be given not only to areas but to all groups such as industries or churches and important common interests not shared by the rest of the community. Two, the great powers vested in the executive of a modern state are chiefly due to the frequent need of rapid decisions especially as regards foreign affairs. If the danger of war were practically eliminated more cumbersome but less autocratic methods would be possible and the legislature might recover many of the powers which the executive has usurped. By these two methods the intensity of the interference with liberty involved in government can be gradually diminished. Some interference and even some danger of unwarranted and despotic interference is of the essence of government and must remain so long as government remains. But until men are less prone to violence than they are now a certain degree of governmental force seems the lesser of two evils. We may hope however that if once the danger of war is at an end men's violent impulses will gradually grow less the more so as in that case it will be possible to diminish enormously the individual power that makes rulers autocratic and ready for almost any act of tyranny in order to crush opposition. The development of a world where even governmental force has become unnecessary except against lunatics must be gradual but as a gradual process it is perfectly possible and when it has been completed we may hope to see the principles of anarchism embodied in the management of communal affairs. How will the economic and political system that we have outlined bear on the evils of character? I believe the effect will be quite extraordinarily beneficent. The process of leading men's thought and imagination away from the use of force will be greatly accelerated by the abolition of the capitalist system. Provided it is not succeeded by a form of state socialism in which officials have enormous power. At present the capitalist has more control over the lives of others than any man ought to have. His friends have authority in the state his economic power is the pattern for political power. In a world where all men and women enjoy economic freedom they will not be the same habit of command nor consequently the same love of despotism A gentler type of character than that now prevalent will gradually grow up Men are formed by their circumstances not born ready made. The bad effect of the present economic system on character and the immensely better effect to be expected of communal ownership are among the strongest reasons for advocating the change. In the world as we have been imagining it economic fear and most economic hope will be alike removed out of life. No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty or driven into ruthlessness by the hope of wealth. There will not be the distinction of social classes such an immense part in life. The unsuccessful professional man will not live in terror and as his children should sink in the scale the aspiring employee will not be looking forward to the day when he can become a sweater in his turn. Ambitious young men will have to dream other day dreams than that of business success and wealth wrung out of the ruin of competitors In such a world most of the nightmares that lurk in the background of men's minds will no longer exist On the other hand ambition and the desire to excel will have to take nobler forms than those that are encouraged by a commercial society. All those activities that really confer benefits upon mankind will be open not only to the fortunate few but to all who have sufficient ambition and native aptitude. Science, labour saving inventions, technical progress of all kinds may be confidently expected to flourish far more than at present since they will be the road to honour and honour will have to replace money among those of the young who desire to achieve success. Whether art will flourish in a socialist community depends upon the form of socialism adopted. If the state or any public authority no matter what insists upon controlling art and only licensing those whom it regards as proficient the result will be disaster but if there is real freedom allowing every man who so desires to take up an artist's career at the cost of some sacrifice of comfort it is likely that the atmosphere of hope and the absence of economic compulsion will lead to a much smaller waste of talent than is involved in our present system and to a much less degree of crushing of impulse in the mills of the struggle for life. When elementary needs have been satisfied the serious happiness of most men depends upon two things their work and their human relations. In the world that we have been picturing work will be free not excessive full of the interest that belongs to a collective enterprise in which there is rapid progress with something of the delight of creation even for the humblest unit in human relations the gain will be just as great as in work. The only human relations that have value are those that are rooted in mutual freedom where there is no domination and no slavery no tie except affection no economic or conventional necessity to preserve the external show when the inner life is dead. One of the most horrible things in socialism is the way in which it poisons the relations of men and women. The evils of prostitution are generally recognized but great as they are the effective economic conditions on marriage seems to me even worse. There is not infrequently in marriage a suggestion of purchase of acquiring a woman on condition of keeping her in a certain standard of social comfort. Often and often a marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by being harder to escape from. The whole basis of these evils is economic. Economic causes make marriage a matter of bargain and contract in which affection is quite secondary and its absence constitutes no reason for liberation. Marriage should be a free, spontaneous meeting of mutual instinct filled with happiness not unmixed with a feeling akin to awe. It should involve that degree of respect of each for the other that makes even the most trifling interference with liberty and utter impossibility and a common life enforced even against the will of the other an unthinkable thing of deep horror. It is not so that marriage is conceived by lawyers who make settlements or by priests who give the name of sacrament to an institution which pretends to find something sanctifiable in the brutal lusts or drunken cruelties of a legal husband. It is not in the spirit of freedom that marriage is conceived by most men and women at present. The law makes it an opportunity for indulgence of the desire to interfere where each submits to some loss of his or her own liberty for the pleasure of curtailing the liberty of the other and the atmosphere of private property makes it more difficult than it otherwise would be for any better ideal to take root. It is not so that human relations will be conceived when the evil heritage of economic slavery has ceased to mold our instincts. Husbands and wives, parents and children will be only held together by affection where that has died it will be recognized that nothing worth preserving is left. Because affection will be free men and women will not find in private life an outlet and stimulus to the love of domineering but all that is creative in their love will have the freer scope. Reverence for whatever makes the soul in those who are loved will be less rare than it is now. Nowadays many men love their wives in the way in which they love mutton as something to devour and destroy. But in the love that goes with reverence there is a joy of quite another order than any to be found by mastery. A joy which satisfies the spirit and not only the instincts and satisfaction of instinct and spirit at once is necessary to a happy life or indeed to any existence that is to bring out the most impulses of which a man or woman is capable. In the world which we should wish to see there will be more joy of life than in the drab tragedy of modern everyday existence. After early youth as things are most men are bowed down by forethought no longer capable of lighthearted gaiety but only of a kind of solemn solidification by the clock at the appropriate hours. The advice to become as little children would be good for many people in many respects but it goes with another pre-stepped. Take no thought for the morrow which is hard to obey in a competitive world. There is often in men of science even when they are quite old something of the simplicity of a child that has held them aloof from the world and respect for their work has led the world to keep them alive in spite of their innocence. Such men have succeeded in living as all men ought to be able to live but as things are the economic struggle makes their way of life impossible for the great majority. What are we to say lastly of the effect of our projected world upon physical evil? Will there be less illness than there is at present? Will the produce of a given amount of labor be greater?  I think the answer to all these questions turns in the end upon the degree of intellectual vigor to be expected in a community which has done away with the spur of economic competition. Will men in such a world become lazy and apathetic? Will they cease to think? Will those who do think find themselves confronted with an even more impenetrable wall of unreflecting conservatism than that which confronts them at present? These are important questions which furthers ultimately to science that mankind must look for their success in combating physical evils. If the other conditions that we have postulated can be realized, it seems almost certain that there must be less illness than there is at present. Population will no longer be congested in slums. Children will have far more of fresh air and open country. Children will be only such as are wholesome, not excessive and exhausting as they are at present. As for the progress of science, that depends very largely upon the degree of intellectual liberty existing in the new society. If all science is organized and supervised by the state, it will rapidly become stereotyped and dead. Fundamental advances will not be made because until they have been made they will seem too doubtful to warrant the expenditure of public money upon them. Authority will be in the hands of the old, especially of men who have achieved scientific eminence. Such men will be hostile to those among the young who do not flatter them by agreeing with their theories. Under a bureaucratic state socialism, it is to be feared that science would soon cease to be progressive and acquire a medieval respect for authority. But under a freer system, which would enable all kinds of groups to employ as many men of science as they chose, and would allow the vagabonds wage to those who desire to pursue some study so new as to be wholly unrecognized, there is every reason to think that science would flourish as it has never done hitherto. Footnote 61. See the discussion of this question in the preceding chapter. And if that were the case, I do not believe that any other obstacle would exist to the physical possibility of our system. The question of the number of hours of work necessary to produce general material comfort is partly technical, partly one of organization. We may assume that there would no longer be unproductive labor spent on armament, national defense, advertisements, costly luxuries for the very rich, or any of the other futilities incidental to our competitive system. If each industrial guild secured for a term of years the advantages or part of the advantages of any new invention or methods which it introduced, it is pretty certain that every encouragement would be given to technical progress. The life of a discoverer or inventor is in itself agreeable. Those who adopt it as things are now are seldom much actuated by economic motives, but rather by the interest of the work together with the hope of honor. The modus would operate more widely than they do now since fewer people would be prevented from obeying them by economic necessities. And there is no doubt that intellect would work more keenly and creatively in a world where instinct was less thwarted, with a joy of life is greater, and where consequently there would be more vitality in men than there is it present. There remains the population question, which ever since the time of Malthus has been the last refuge of those to whom the possibility of a better world is disagreeable. But this question is now a very different one from what it was a hundred years ago. The decline of the birth rate in all civilized countries, which is pretty certain to continue whatever economic system is adopted, suggests that, especially when the probable effects of the war are taken into account, the population of Western Europe is not likely to increase very much beyond its present level. And that of America is likely only to increase through immigration. Negroes may continue to increase in the tropics, but are not likely to be a serious menace to the white inhabitant of temperate regions. There remains, of course, the yellow peril. But by the time that begins to be serious, it is quite likely that the birth rate will also have begun to decline among the races of Asia. If not, there are other means of dealing with this question, and in any case, the whole matter is too conjectural to be set up seriously as a bar to our hopes. I conclude that though no certain forecast is possible, there is not any valid reason for regarding the possible increase of population as a serious obstacle to socialism. Our discussion has led us to the belief that the communal ownership of land and capital, which constitutes the characteristic doctrine of socialism and anarchist communism, is a necessary step toward the removal of the evils from which the world suffers at present, and the creation of such a society as any humane man must wish to see realized. But though a necessary step, socialism alone is by no means sufficient. There are various forms of socialism, the form in which the state is the employer and all who work receive wages from it, involves dangers of tyranny and interference with progress, which would make it, if possible, even worse than the present regime. On the other hand, anarchism, which avoids the dangers of state socialism, has dangers and difficulties of its own, which make it probable that within any reasonable period of time it could not last long, even if it were established. Nevertheless, it remains an ideal to which we should wish to approach as nearly as possible, and which, in some distant age, we hope may be reached completely. Syndicalism shares many of the defects of anarchism, and, like it, would prove unstable since the need of a central government would make itself felt almost once. The system we have advocated is a form of guild socialism, leaning more, perhaps, toward anarchism than the official guildsman would wholly approve. It is in the matters that politicians usually ignore, science and art, human relations, and the joy of life that anarchism is strongest. And it is chiefly for the sake of these things that we included such more or less anarchist proposals as the vagabonds wage. It is by its effects outside economics and politics, at least as much as by effects inside them that a social system should be judged. And if socialism ever comes, it is only likely to prove beneficent if non-economic goods are valued and consciously pursued. The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others. It must be a world in which affection has free play, in which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy have been dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development of all the instincts that build up life and fill it with mental delights. Such a world is possible. It waits only for men to wish to create it. Meantime the world in which we exist has other aims, but it will pass away, burned up in the fire of its own hot passions, and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world full of fresh hope with the light of mourning in its eyes. End of chapter 8, recording by Thelma Meyer, Brooklyn, New York. End of Proposed Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Russell.


Imagine that you are at a large family dinner for one of the holidays. There is a cozy atmosphere, but there are also a lot of implicit norms about how you should behave, and ethics of how you should eat, how you should talk with your relatives, and perhaps even how you should look for such an occasion. But suddenly, someone mentions a controversial topic and you feel that lightning and thunder erupts even between close family members. Things have become political. This contrast between before and after a conflict emerging during dinner can be said to reflect how many of us think about the difference between on one hand shared norms in everyday life that we usually associate with the term ethics or morality, and then on the other hand, the more or less peaceful conflicts of politics. In this sense, ethics and politics seem to reside in two completely different worlds. As some say, you cannot go into politics without entering a different arena, but you also cannot stay on the moral high ground if you do not suppress the confusion, conflicts and politics about what the right and wrong thing to do is. But is this idea of two divided worlds really true? The thesis in my project is that there is a certain relation between ethics and politics and that we can use the concept of civility to characterize such a relation. Civility can be many things, right from simple norms of politeness to grand ideals about how we should organize a democratic society. But whenever civility arises, it is both a moral norm and a contested idea up for political debate. But civility can thereby also become that missing link between ethics and politics which we surely need whenever trouble erupts at the dinner table or anywhere else in our lives. My project is about exploring what civility is and what it can do for us in all those cases where we find it hard to connect our standards about right and wrong with all that tension and conflict in society that we are also a part of. What I show philosophically is that to be civil can be thought of as finding new ways of handling this problem. That as a new and original interpretation key to the very relation between ethics and politics the concept of civility can make us understand both some of our deepest confusions and our highest aspirations. Thank you very much.


Hi and welcome to the session. My name is Shashi and I am going to help you with the following question. Question says, examine that sine modulus of x is our continuous function. Let us now start the solution. Function f is given by fx is equal to sine x. Function g is given by gx is equal to modulus of x. For let us consider fx is equal to sine x. This is a sine function and we know sine function is continuous at every real number. It implies function f is continuous at every real number. Let us consider the function gx equal to modulus of x for all real x. Modulus function and we know modulus function is continuous at every real number. It implies function g is continuous at every real number. Find out composite of f and g that is f o gx. We know f o gx is equal to f gx modulus of x. No, fx is equal to sine x. So, f of modulus of x is equal to sine modulus of x. Now we have seen that functions f and g are continuous for every x belonging to real number. Therefore, the composite function f o gx is equal to sine modulus of x is also continuous for all real values of x. So, we can write since f and g are continuous for every x belonging to real numbers. So, composite function f o gx is equal to sine modulus of x is also continuous for all real values of x.  Then if g is continuous at c and if f is continuous at gc, then f o g is continuous at c. Or we can say composite of continuous functions is also continuous. So, this is our required answer. This completes the session. Hope you understood the session. Good bye.