Africa is now full of orphaned kids, who are scraping by without mother or father. Some of these kids become child soldiers, some just exist. Consider: all these orphans might provide an opportunity to create a dynamic new African nation.

Little kids don't have much cultural baggage. I propose that a series of giant kibbutzes be established in Africa. Young kids without families would live in communal dwellings. As Plato suggested in the Republic, taking all kids away from parents and raising them together is a great way to inculcate them with your chosen cultural beliefs. Maybe the Mormons could run (and fund) this. The kids would grow up moral, chaste capitalists, working hard and not spreading AIDS. They would form the backbone of a new African nation, which would grow in power both economically and in population.

Well, its better than what is going on now.
-- bungston, Sep 24 2003

Plato's Republic http://ball.tcnj.ed...lic_5_1775_2325.htm
This chapter has the some of the wildest social engineering ideas in it - including communal raising of children, like education for men and women, group marriages etc. [bungston, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Remember that we are essentially conducting a massive Darwinian experiment in southern Africa, to come up with AIDS-resistant humans. We should ship these kids to Detroit and all the other US cities, for when we run out of population here.
-- DrCurry, Sep 24 2003


Detroit rocks.

I question how happy anyone in Africa would be knowing the next generation might be Mormon. What stops the battle from moving to the kibbutzes(sp?)? What's in it for the Mormons? This would seriously screw up their ancestry databases...
-- phoenix, Sep 24 2003


Seen in the local blurb paper: "Best thing about Detroit: No tourists."
-- RayfordSteele, Sep 24 2003


And that's a fact. The less people outside of Michigan know about it, the better.
-- phoenix, Sep 24 2003


This would require a really big pig's head.
-- kevindimie, Sep 24 2003


Would some religious group be willing to do this? We know they would; and this is where it gets scary, and not much fun either. Plato’s philosopher/kings had much simpler motivations - to have a very good time, without the kids, while being supported by the slaves. But I think you are about as serious as Plato was.
-- Fussass, Sep 24 2003


"Consider all these [slaves] might provide an opportunity to create a dynamic new African nation." Call it Liberia.
-- FarmerJohn, Sep 25 2003


I thought that platonic kibbutz was an oxymoron.
-- madradish, Sep 25 2003


Pssst, bungston - Africa is a continent.
-- thumbwax, Sep 25 2003


I am not proposing that the whole African continent be mormonized. Just a nation _in_ africa - an african nation.
-- bungston, Sep 25 2003


They could call the country Mbutah.
-- kevindimie, Sep 25 2003


Strange. I just made myself a slice of toast and was wondering where Mbutah was
-- lostdog, Sep 25 2003


Leave out the mormons. Those kids probably want Pepsi, not Coke.
-- ghillie, Sep 25 2003


The difference is the cultural engineering. The Blues Brothers hung out with Cab Calloway and were heavily inculcated with Chicago blues culture.

Simplifying things to bumper sticker levels: african cultural heterogeneity fosters war, cultural homogeneity in the absence of Islam fosters AIDS. This plan addresses the needs of the children and is at the same time a cultural engineering experiment. Initially I thought the moslems would be the ones to run the kibbutz, but there has been too much press on them lately, so I picked mormons. Mennonites would be OK too.
-- bungston, Sep 26 2003


Each one could be tied to a Christian.
-- FarmerJohn, Sep 26 2003


Actually there is a real project in Israel (at the Yemin Orde Village) to teach African immigrants to prepare to establish a communal effort for change in their parent countries, mainly Eritrea.
-- pashute, Nov 08 2015



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