Socrates | Straightspeak

This is us …

By DHughes|2022-05-06T10:21:55-04:00May 6th, 2022|Categories: business, community, politics, social|Tags: abortion rights, Alito's leaked memo, Allegory of the Caves, Community, David Sloan Wilson, democracy, E.O. Wilson, equality, Fox News, Fox Ntion, Plato, Putin, Socrates, Tucker Carlson, US Supreme Court, war in Ukraine|

still trapped in Plato's cave! "The prisoners would mistake the shadows for reality." – Socrates, The Republic, Book VII (20 min) About 2,376 years before Fox News was founded (1996), Plato wrote his renowned Allegory of the Caves (380 BCE), introducing it with Socrates saying, "And now, I said, let me show in an allegory how far our nature Read more...

This is us …

By DHughes|2022-04-19T11:03:52-04:00April 14th, 2022|Categories: politics, social|Tags: Charles Darwin, Derek Chauvin, Hitler, Jonathan Haidt, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Plato, Putin, Russian invasion, Socrates, Steven Pinker, The Atlantic, Trump, Ukraine war|

Are Will Smith, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Derek Chauvin, Ginni Thomas, Irma Grese, Marjorie Taylor Greene, angry truckers and KKK members just high profile primates in the lab of the failing human experiment? [Photo Top row/L-R: Chris Rock/Will Smith; Vladimir Putin; George Floyd/Derek Chauvin; Bottom row/L-R: Trump; Kim Jong-un; Ginni Thomas/Clarence Thomas; KKK; Irma Grese (Senior Nazi SS Officer); Read more...

The foxes will never fix the hen house of democracy …

By DHughes|2017-03-16T10:38:15-04:00March 15th, 2017|Categories: community, communitywatch, politics, social|Tags: Cobourg, Plato, Port Hope, Socrates, Trudeau, Trump|

and the hens will never stop being a bunch of chickens Three things you might not know Why did the turkey cross the road? To prove he wasn't a chicken. But being a bunch of turkeys doesn't get us anywhere either, except over to the other side of the same road, which, as Plato established 2,400 years ago, is Read more...

Dumb and Dumber – no, it’s not a movie; it’s reality

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:41:08-05:00November 20th, 2012|Categories: social|Tags: chimpanzees, Einstein, Gerald Crabtree, Greeks, Jared Diamond, Lucretius, Semb and Dumber, Socrates|

Socrates, Plato, Lucretius would not have allowed Einstein to pass out of the fifth grade. (vk.com) We humans are dumber than we were 1000 years ago Are we devolving rather than evolving? Is the human brain, which is 98.4% the same as a chimpanzee’s, slowly deteriorating? If Lucretius (99-55 BC) had known Einstein would he have considered him Read more...

My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title "Five Generations to Freedom."

It's historical fiction because, unfortunately, I can not find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, the facts just aren't there. I have written three books based on other families and their genealogy but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left few records – slavery.

My great grandmother, on my father's side, was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a white, French plantation owner in Grenada and a black slave named Mary, who worked on the Count de Poulain's plantation. Amelia was raised in her father's home and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage, she "disowned" her mother Mary. Once, when Mary visited her daughter, Amelia told her, "Get out and never come back." And Amelia, as a mother herself (twelve children), told all of them, "Marry white." And many did, including my father. My mother was white Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where dad became a doctor.

It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary (we do not know her last name) to free themselves from the bondage and stigma of their black heritage. But today, my children embrace it and are damn proud of it. Unfortunately, the 150 years in between has been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying, Filled with anger, rejection, shame, fear, violence, murder and ... love, romance, kindness, perseverance and pride.