It's partly because of guys like you that regular people who work up the courage to explore outside the orthodox system are labeled 'crack pot'.
Good work. You couldn't have done a better job of counter intelligence than had you been doped up and paid off by the CIA. --It's not that your ideas are entirely nuts, (though I'd be highly suspicious of them given your inability to recognize that you are acting like a tool), --but that you present them in such a bi-polar, chaotic manner as to not just invalidate yourself, but to invalidate the ideas.
And what better way to suppress knowledge than to litter it with druggies who give people the impression that the ideas themselves cause of some kind of mental illness which render the infected party with a crazy beard with chicken bones stuck in it?
Pull it together man, otherwise you're just barking at the darkness all by yourself.
Remember, this is the man who, when he found out his partner was dying, didn't send flowers, but rather got into a gleeful debate with his other partner about how they were going to screw him over for his shares. That qualifies as something a little different than just ruthless business practice. It indicates a man who is missing essential human parts; who, to put it bluntly, cares more about himself than he does about human suffering, or curing disease, or finding potable water, etc.
I'm just pointing out how it is; people have short memories and the Beatles had it wrong.
And that doesn't make me an idiot, but it does make you an emotional reactionary.
I dislike death and destruction no matter who perpetrates it, and right now, Israel is behaving abysmally. I have plenty of Jewish friends who are outraged by the actions of the Israeli government and certainly do not offer apologist nonsense to justify genocide.
This is not a matter of, "Well, OTHER nations also kill people, so why can't we?" That's crap. ALL killing is hideous, and Israel happens to be doing a lot of it with great boldness and the world community is too frightened of being labeled 'anti-semitic' to speak out against it as would happen with any other conflict. I wonder if you know exactly how bad it is. You seem not to. --But let me tell you, I've known people who served as soldiers in the IDF who are patently insane; who laugh and joke with sick glee about getting high on various drugs and tormenting and killing people without provocation as though they were lower life-forms. Sick, sick, sick. There is NO valid justification for such behavior.
--And there is a great deal of history behind the whys and wherefores which have led to this situation, much of which is rooted in the screwed up history of the bible, and the manipulation of mankind throughout the ages to bring us all into a time where people are turned against people as we are today.
My personal belief is that Jews are in fact being herded to Israel for eventual destruction. --The history of violence in Europe contains numerous tales of Zionist subversive actions against Jews themselves, trying to make Jews retreat to Israel for 'protection'. Now why would they do that? Why would the Zionist movement, some of the originators of which were actually working with Nazi interests, want all the Jews in one place, surrounded by nations which they provoke endlessly? --And what would happen if one day Washington suddenly decided to stop funding the Israeli military?
The mind-job perpetrated upon the Jews is huge, and it is tragic, and the only way to work through it is to accumulate knowledge, rather than absorb only the messages provided by the media. Here's a good site with a lot of solid info you might want to look at.
This system sounds very awkward to deploy. (200 pounds of extra junk attached to each squad car in a fleet? Seriously? Or do they suggest only deploying special 'car-stoppers' to high-speed chases?) This device also sounds like it would be really hard to aim at a discrete target, (as an offending vehicle would be both moving and doing so on the same plane as every other car on the road, raising the possibility of unwanted collateral effects. --And just how safe is it to suddenly cut power to all of the digital control systems in a moving vehicle?
Honestly, shooting at tires sounds about as reasonable. And less expensive, too. --As long as we're looking at dumb ideas, why not just endorse that scheme which would require the outfitting of all cars with state-controlled kill switches?
In my mind, the last really good tech idea brought to police forces was the walkie-talkie. Even the humble taser is earning a bad reputation, with its ever-growing list of abuses and unintended fatalities.
I can't wait to see how things will devolve with the introduction of the 'pain raygun'.
What's wrong with regular detective work, exactly? Seems effective enough to me. --What with the U.S. having by far the highest percentage of its population behind bars as compared to every other developed nation on the entire planet.
He's a very smart man. --Rape and pillage to gain your wealth, realize that your life-span is finite and that the world hates you. Hm.
Will Gates invest in anything which would minimize MS's returns? Will he promote openness in information and software and knowledge? Not likely. Gates might actually think that he suddenly cares about people, but I find that hard to believe. It seems more that he is trying to put his muddy name through the washer so that history will remember him with love rather than for all the many nasty things he's done. He's no better than any other self-loving selfish personality. Rockefeller and Hearst were the same way.
I especially love the solution at the end, (the difference between power ground and case ground). Wiring up a switch like that would have been exactly the kind of joke I would have played when I was younger.
I'm sure I'll be paying off a karmic debt on such pranks for years to come.
Well! That certainly sounds far more reasonable than my 'arson' advice. You sound like a graceful survivor.
Still. . . It still irks me that one should need to think in crafty ways just to continue contributing to a collective where everybody is supposed to hold common goals and help each other out.
Being asked to sign something like that is insulting, disrespectful and just plain wrong. --The argument that, "Because we provided the knowledge and experiences during their time at our company, employees owe us all their resulting thoughts and actions," is deeply flawed. --Disney makes employees sign similar agreements with regard to any ideas or drawings they come up with even in the privacy of their own homes after work hours; (Does a script or drawing an animator makes result from having a desk under a Disney roof or do ideas possibly have something to do with their unique imaginations and personalities and the supreme effort it takes to create something new?) If a company really thinks that creativity comes down 100% to the resources provided, then perhaps employees should just sit at their desks and drool and see how much salable output results. At the very least, there should be a profit sharing model in place, (beyond the regular paycheck, that is!). CEOs should kiss the floors walked by the people who form the life-blood of their companies, and employees should be offered appropriate compensation for their efforts. But no. Instead, you are referred to as, "Human Resource Material" on some business plan you'll never see.
Reasonable discussion simply cannot take place when your employer would bleed you dry and eat your liver if they thought they could legally profit by it.
Some days I wish I were Batman so I could perform some "ethical cleansing" with impunity.
Seriously. There are many other ways to forge a happy living. Get the heck out of there and tell your boss he's a spineless piece of shit for not doing the same when he was told to hand out those new contracts. That's my advice.
Thanks for the awesome link! I just finished watching the film.
I found it to be informative and effective in defusing the terrorist fear factor; both good things. However, there are a couple of fairly major points I would raise before offering this film my endorsement. . .
1. No mention of the concept of False Flag operations. --That is, given the strong indications that the CIA and Mossad have been involved in many of the bombing incidents subsequently blamed on Islamic Terrorists, I find it disappointing that the writer/producer, Adam Curtis, made no mention of this dimension of the problem. Perhaps, as a film maker, Curtis decided to avoid exploring this as it would have further complicated an already complex issue. But still. . , leaving out the London Train Bombings and all of the evidence of foul play stemming from within the government would have gone a long way to making this film a more complete exploration of the whole subject.
2. And I also found Curtis' presentation of the concept of Liberalism disingenuous. I realize that editorializing in a documentary is considered bad form, (though he certainly felt confident enough in making many bold statements without offering evidence), but I felt it was entirely inappropriate to present and leave dangling with no counter-argument the idea that Socialist values are the root cause of Western problems and by this omission, allowed it to stand a legitimate motivation for Neocons and Islamic terrorists, however poorly executed their actions. Curtis is clearly smart enough to know the power television has in planting ideas without being necessarily overt, and I found his doing this to be sneaky. --And presenting Bush Sr. , Nixon and the CIA as moderate forces. . ? Pardon me? I find it very difficult to believe that Curtis was unaware of the Iran Contra hearings and similar. Curtis strikes me as having more than just a bias. He's either a fool or he has some kind of creepy personal agenda.
So ignoring this and the various blind spots deliberately left in the material, this was an otherwise fairly decent film. But I wouldn't trust this Curtis guy any further than I could throw him.
I don't know about the U.N., but I certainly don't trust the Bush admin.
As fascism evolves, the media and communication in general inevitably suffer. We've certainly seen this already to a degree. I'd feel more at ease if the internet on/off switch wasn't in the hands of the U.S. military. (When you dig thoroughly enough, you see the ties.)
Imagine how cut off you'd feel if the internet were to suddenly go off line.
It's the modern way for anti-Semites (on both the Left and Right) to say "Jew" while appearing to be socially correct.
Jew? Hardly. More like "American Tyrant-Lunatics bent on turning the Middle East into a glowing crater at the behest of the Zionist Tyrant-Lunatics in anticipation of the Apocalypse where Jesus will come and blow up all the Jews who don't convert."
Or something along those lines.
You will note my use of the word, 'Lunatic'?
Please also note; 'Zionist' and 'Jew' mean very different things, Zionists being about as anti-Semitic as you can get, an average of 70 slaughtered Palestinians per day all being genetically Semitic. But who wants to pay attention to such mundane details during a genocide, eh?
Truths also need to be pointed out frequently. As do various nuggets of metaphor.
There are endless metaphoric parallels to be found in the relationship between the names of people and entities and their various true intentions.
In this case, the AT&T logo looks like a freakin' Death Star. This has been pointed out before, and I'm going to point it out again. Intentions are often announced right there in full view for any who wish to look. It can be seen in almost any name in the media, and the ratio of 'obvious' to 'imporant' seems to increase proportionately.
The President and his Veep can be well described by their own names which in sophomoric slang refer to reproductive organs. (And which also indicate who wears the pants in that relationship).
And another of my favorites. . .
Compare, Bill Gates with Mark Shuttle-Worth. (A gate being a deliberate limiting force, versus worthiness being shuttled back and forth between points.) Neat, huh?
Call 'em. Be polite but firm. If you are a member of their party, mention that, too and let them know if you think are representing their party poorly.
AND report back with your stories. If I were an American, I'd be on the phone in a flash.
I've eaten yellow things before. And Red things. Real things. Like those cherry tomatoes before they're ripe. They're not my first pick. I'd rather have a red tomato. Or a red berry. But Blue?
Blue food barely exists in nature. There are two foods which are blue. Blue Berries and nasty French Cheese.
And how many blue berries grow in the jungle, anyway? --Of course, jungles are filled with all kinds of weird and un-cataloged beasties and plants, some of which may indeed be blue, but they could just as likely be toxic and bitter tasting. . . My point here is. . , my point. . .
Well, what I'm saying is that maybe there were other processes at work in the test subject's decision-making process. Heck, I don't even like blue smarties, and I don't have hair on my bum.
And anyway, I thought cognitive dissonance was the psychological result of believing one thing while evidence to the opposite exists right in your face. That's the more entertaining take on it, anyway. Nobody is going to throw a fit over blue M&M's. But reality versus sacred cows. . . Man, you can start wars over stuff like that! Cuz, you know, some things really are true while others really are not. Everything else is opinion. Funny how wrong people with strong opinions are generally the first to start shooting.
Say. . . Did they ever try selling boxes of all red Smarties?
I bet if they did, it flopped. Life, after all, is all about making decisions. When the decisions have all been made, you're better off dead.
Eventually the events disturbing the world will grow so black and so vile and so wide-reaching that the warm & fuzzy wombs of studied ignorance in which so many choose to live will be encroached upon and flooded.
Good. The deliberately blind are largely to blame for this whole state of affairs. Let them drown.
No, the supposed purpose of police, and the way we protect ourselves, is to ensure that people's actions do not infringe upon other people's basic rights, most importantly the right not to be killed.
You just like saying the word, "No," don't you? The only thing you did here was shuffle semantics around. We're actually in agreement with respect to the larger points. I think in this case, putting a granny in prison is stupid. Broad-stroking every case with the exact same solution is senseless when the universe is endlessly unique at every turn. Every case is not identical, and should be measured and given consideration based on that uniqueness. I'd suggest that granny performs some kind of daily community service for the next 20 years to pay back the debt she owes. Plucking her out from the middle of her family and community would likely do more harm to the people around her than overall good to the system.
But the absolutely most mind-blowing points are covered in this video.
I should have mentioned that this video is a very slow-starter, but the opening info is important in order to grasp the whole enchilada. --It's well worth watching all six parts. One of the weird points which led the researcher to start investigating was a test her son told her about having written in school. She asked him what some of the questions on it were, and found them odd enough that she decided to ask the principal to see the test. She was denied, and in fact told that parents were not allowed to see the test, and that the children were not allowed to see their own test results. Okay. So she made a big stink and after weeks of work, finally got to see the test; one of the questions on it was the following. ..
"If you and you friends are planning an act of vandalism, do you. .."
A. Report this to an adult. B. Report this to the Police. C. Leave the group and go home. D. Go along with the group.
The correct answer to the above question is, "D. Go along with the group."
Watch all six parts of this video. By the end, your hair will be standing on end.
In 1918, Alexander James Inglis, Harvard University's first Professor of Secondary Education wrote a book called the "Principals of Secondary Education" in which he made the following recommendations. . .
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
I don't know about everybody else, but I was certainly aware that the system was totally broken in an evil kind of way while I was struggling through the middle of it. I just barely managed to crawl across the graduation finish line, having made enemies with several of the staff. I was young, and I could have done much better had I another go at it, but the whole thing seemed monumentally evil at the time. When I came across Ingli'e work, it made a lot more sense.
But the absolutely most mind-blowing points are covered in this video.
So, under your ideal of criminal justice I could kill someone with little consequence?
I didn't say that. Payment should be made in a rule of law society. --If you presented no flight risk and no further danger to society, I'd probably have you performing some kind of public service suitable to your skills for the next twenty years. If you were too disgruntled to do a good job, then you could always be demoted to floor sweeping. If you started shaking your mop at people while growling, then you get to stay in prison. But hate and a desire to 'hurt you back' would certainly not be the motive.
And "removing people from society as long as they pose a threat" isn't the idea either, because otherwise white collar crimes wouldn't carry jail time.
Surely you are not suggesting that white collar criminals do not threaten society.
[revenge is] about respect for a morally culpable being.
I can't say I've ever heard that definition before. We're talking about that thing which Hitchcock said was a dish best served cold?
But I agree with a portion of what you say. I think payment for wrong-doing is the key. I suggest that the woman, if she is guilty and if it morally makes sense, (that is she didn't kill an abusive husband in self-defense or whatever), be required to put in several years worth of daily public service, or similar. Jailing a grandma makes only the flimsiest of sense.
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This puts another puzzle piece together for me.
-FL
Good work. You couldn't have done a better job of counter intelligence than had you been doped up and paid off by the CIA. --It's not that your ideas are entirely nuts, (though I'd be highly suspicious of them given your inability to recognize that you are acting like a tool), --but that you present them in such a bi-polar, chaotic manner as to not just invalidate yourself, but to invalidate the ideas.
And what better way to suppress knowledge than to litter it with druggies who give people the impression that the ideas themselves cause of some kind of mental illness which render the infected party with a crazy beard with chicken bones stuck in it?
Pull it together man, otherwise you're just barking at the darkness all by yourself.
-FL
Remember, this is the man who, when he found out his partner was dying, didn't send flowers, but rather got into a gleeful debate with his other partner about how they were going to screw him over for his shares. That qualifies as something a little different than just ruthless business practice. It indicates a man who is missing essential human parts; who, to put it bluntly, cares more about himself than he does about human suffering, or curing disease, or finding potable water, etc.
I'm just pointing out how it is; people have short memories and the Beatles had it wrong.
And that doesn't make me an idiot, but it does make you an emotional reactionary.
-FL
This is not a matter of, "Well, OTHER nations also kill people, so why can't we?" That's crap. ALL killing is hideous, and Israel happens to be doing a lot of it with great boldness and the world community is too frightened of being labeled 'anti-semitic' to speak out against it as would happen with any other conflict. I wonder if you know exactly how bad it is. You seem not to. --But let me tell you, I've known people who served as soldiers in the IDF who are patently insane; who laugh and joke with sick glee about getting high on various drugs and tormenting and killing people without provocation as though they were lower life-forms. Sick, sick, sick. There is NO valid justification for such behavior.
--And there is a great deal of history behind the whys and wherefores which have led to this situation, much of which is rooted in the screwed up history of the bible, and the manipulation of mankind throughout the ages to bring us all into a time where people are turned against people as we are today.
My personal belief is that Jews are in fact being herded to Israel for eventual destruction. --The history of violence in Europe contains numerous tales of Zionist subversive actions against Jews themselves, trying to make Jews retreat to Israel for 'protection'. Now why would they do that? Why would the Zionist movement, some of the originators of which were actually working with Nazi interests, want all the Jews in one place, surrounded by nations which they provoke endlessly? --And what would happen if one day Washington suddenly decided to stop funding the Israeli military?
The mind-job perpetrated upon the Jews is huge, and it is tragic, and the only way to work through it is to accumulate knowledge, rather than absorb only the messages provided by the media. Here's a good site with a lot of solid info you might want to look at.
-FL
Honestly, shooting at tires sounds about as reasonable. And less expensive, too. --As long as we're looking at dumb ideas, why not just endorse that scheme which would require the outfitting of all cars with state-controlled kill switches?
In my mind, the last really good tech idea brought to police forces was the walkie-talkie. Even the humble taser is earning a bad reputation, with its ever-growing list of abuses and unintended fatalities.
I can't wait to see how things will devolve with the introduction of the 'pain raygun'.
What's wrong with regular detective work, exactly? Seems effective enough to me. --What with the U.S. having by far the highest percentage of its population behind bars as compared to every other developed nation on the entire planet.
Yeah. That little detail.
-FL
He's a very smart man. --Rape and pillage to gain your wealth, realize that your life-span is finite and that the world hates you. Hm.
Will Gates invest in anything which would minimize MS's returns? Will he promote openness in information and software and knowledge? Not likely. Gates might actually think that he suddenly cares about people, but I find that hard to believe. It seems more that he is trying to put his muddy name through the washer so that history will remember him with love rather than for all the many nasty things he's done. He's no better than any other self-loving selfish personality. Rockefeller and Hearst were the same way.
But hey, who says money can't buy you love?
-FL
I especially love the solution at the end, (the difference between power ground and case ground). Wiring up a switch like that would have been exactly the kind of joke I would have played when I was younger.
I'm sure I'll be paying off a karmic debt on such pranks for years to come.
-FL
Still. . . It still irks me that one should need to think in crafty ways just to continue contributing to a collective where everybody is supposed to hold common goals and help each other out.
Humans. . . Ugh.
-FL
-FL
Being asked to sign something like that is insulting, disrespectful and just plain wrong. --The argument that, "Because we provided the knowledge and experiences during their time at our company, employees owe us all their resulting thoughts and actions," is deeply flawed. --Disney makes employees sign similar agreements with regard to any ideas or drawings they come up with even in the privacy of their own homes after work hours; (Does a script or drawing an animator makes result from having a desk under a Disney roof or do ideas possibly have something to do with their unique imaginations and personalities and the supreme effort it takes to create something new?) If a company really thinks that creativity comes down 100% to the resources provided, then perhaps employees should just sit at their desks and drool and see how much salable output results. At the very least, there should be a profit sharing model in place, (beyond the regular paycheck, that is!). CEOs should kiss the floors walked by the people who form the life-blood of their companies, and employees should be offered appropriate compensation for their efforts. But no. Instead, you are referred to as, "Human Resource Material" on some business plan you'll never see.
Reasonable discussion simply cannot take place when your employer would bleed you dry and eat your liver if they thought they could legally profit by it.
Some days I wish I were Batman so I could perform some "ethical cleansing" with impunity.
Seriously. There are many other ways to forge a happy living. Get the heck out of there and tell your boss he's a spineless piece of shit for not doing the same when he was told to hand out those new contracts. That's my advice.
-FL
I found it to be informative and effective in defusing the terrorist fear factor; both good things. However, there are a couple of fairly major points I would raise before offering this film my endorsement. . .
1. No mention of the concept of False Flag operations. --That is, given the strong indications that the CIA and Mossad have been involved in many of the bombing incidents subsequently blamed on Islamic Terrorists, I find it disappointing that the writer/producer, Adam Curtis, made no mention of this dimension of the problem. Perhaps, as a film maker, Curtis decided to avoid exploring this as it would have further complicated an already complex issue. But still. . , leaving out the London Train Bombings and all of the evidence of foul play stemming from within the government would have gone a long way to making this film a more complete exploration of the whole subject.
2. And I also found Curtis' presentation of the concept of Liberalism disingenuous. I realize that editorializing in a documentary is considered bad form, (though he certainly felt confident enough in making many bold statements without offering evidence), but I felt it was entirely inappropriate to present and leave dangling with no counter-argument the idea that Socialist values are the root cause of Western problems and by this omission, allowed it to stand a legitimate motivation for Neocons and Islamic terrorists, however poorly executed their actions. Curtis is clearly smart enough to know the power television has in planting ideas without being necessarily overt, and I found his doing this to be sneaky. --And presenting Bush Sr. , Nixon and the CIA as moderate forces. . ? Pardon me? I find it very difficult to believe that Curtis was unaware of the Iran Contra hearings and similar. Curtis strikes me as having more than just a bias. He's either a fool or he has some kind of creepy personal agenda.
So ignoring this and the various blind spots deliberately left in the material, this was an otherwise fairly decent film. But I wouldn't trust this Curtis guy any further than I could throw him.
-FL
It's a language group, but who's arguing.
Not me. --After all, how is it that languages are able to evolve from common roots? Genetics and language are endlessly intertwined.
-FL
As fascism evolves, the media and communication in general inevitably suffer. We've certainly seen this already to a degree. I'd feel more at ease if the internet on/off switch wasn't in the hands of the U.S. military. (When you dig thoroughly enough, you see the ties.)
Imagine how cut off you'd feel if the internet were to suddenly go off line.
-FL
Jew? Hardly. More like "American Tyrant-Lunatics bent on turning the Middle East into a glowing crater at the behest of the Zionist Tyrant-Lunatics in anticipation of the Apocalypse where Jesus will come and blow up all the Jews who don't convert."
Or something along those lines.
You will note my use of the word, 'Lunatic'?
Please also note; 'Zionist' and 'Jew' mean very different things, Zionists being about as anti-Semitic as you can get, an average of 70 slaughtered Palestinians per day all being genetically Semitic. But who wants to pay attention to such mundane details during a genocide, eh?
-FL
There are endless metaphoric parallels to be found in the relationship between the names of people and entities and their various true intentions.
In this case, the AT&T logo looks like a freakin' Death Star. This has been pointed out before, and I'm going to point it out again. Intentions are often announced right there in full view for any who wish to look. It can be seen in almost any name in the media, and the ratio of 'obvious' to 'imporant' seems to increase proportionately.
The President and his Veep can be well described by their own names which in sophomoric slang refer to reproductive organs. (And which also indicate who wears the pants in that relationship).
And another of my favorites. . .
Compare, Bill Gates with Mark Shuttle-Worth. (A gate being a deliberate limiting force, versus worthiness being shuttled back and forth between points.) Neat, huh?
-FL
--Yeah, or a story to make sure that Bush knows who owns the media and that it can turn on him the instant he stops playing ball in Israel.
Anybody not wearing that metaphoric tin foil is part of the problem.
-FL
AND report back with your stories. If I were an American, I'd be on the phone in a flash.
-FL
-FL
Blue food barely exists in nature. There are two foods which are blue. Blue Berries and nasty French Cheese.
And how many blue berries grow in the jungle, anyway? --Of course, jungles are filled with all kinds of weird and un-cataloged beasties and plants, some of which may indeed be blue, but they could just as likely be toxic and bitter tasting. . . My point here is. . , my point. . .
Well, what I'm saying is that maybe there were other processes at work in the test subject's decision-making process. Heck, I don't even like blue smarties, and I don't have hair on my bum.
And anyway, I thought cognitive dissonance was the psychological result of believing one thing while evidence to the opposite exists right in your face. That's the more entertaining take on it, anyway. Nobody is going to throw a fit over blue M&M's. But reality versus sacred cows. . . Man, you can start wars over stuff like that! Cuz, you know, some things really are true while others really are not. Everything else is opinion. Funny how wrong people with strong opinions are generally the first to start shooting.
Say. . . Did they ever try selling boxes of all red Smarties?
I bet if they did, it flopped. Life, after all, is all about making decisions. When the decisions have all been made, you're better off dead.
-FL
Good. The deliberately blind are largely to blame for this whole state of affairs. Let them drown.
-FL
You just like saying the word, "No," don't you? The only thing you did here was shuffle semantics around. We're actually in agreement with respect to the larger points. I think in this case, putting a granny in prison is stupid. Broad-stroking every case with the exact same solution is senseless when the universe is endlessly unique at every turn. Every case is not identical, and should be measured and given consideration based on that uniqueness. I'd suggest that granny performs some kind of daily community service for the next 20 years to pay back the debt she owes. Plucking her out from the middle of her family and community would likely do more harm to the people around her than overall good to the system.
-FL
I should have mentioned that this video is a very slow-starter, but the opening info is important in order to grasp the whole enchilada. --It's well worth watching all six parts. One of the weird points which led the researcher to start investigating was a test her son told her about having written in school. She asked him what some of the questions on it were, and found them odd enough that she decided to ask the principal to see the test. She was denied, and in fact told that parents were not allowed to see the test, and that the children were not allowed to see their own test results. Okay. So she made a big stink and after weeks of work, finally got to see the test; one of the questions on it was the following. .
"If you and you friends are planning an act of vandalism, do you. .
A. Report this to an adult.
B. Report this to the Police.
C. Leave the group and go home.
D. Go along with the group.
The correct answer to the above question is, "D. Go along with the group."
Watch all six parts of this video. By the end, your hair will be standing on end.
-FL
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
I don't know about everybody else, but I was certainly aware that the system was totally broken in an evil kind of way while I was struggling through the middle of it. I just barely managed to crawl across the graduation finish line, having made enemies with several of the staff. I was young, and I could have done much better had I another go at it, but the whole thing seemed monumentally evil at the time. When I came across Ingli'e work, it made a lot more sense.
But the absolutely most mind-blowing points are covered in this video.
-FL
I didn't say that. Payment should be made in a rule of law society. --If you presented no flight risk and no further danger to society, I'd probably have you performing some kind of public service suitable to your skills for the next twenty years. If you were too disgruntled to do a good job, then you could always be demoted to floor sweeping. If you started shaking your mop at people while growling, then you get to stay in prison. But hate and a desire to 'hurt you back' would certainly not be the motive.
-FL
Surely you are not suggesting that white collar criminals do not threaten society.
[revenge is] about respect for a morally culpable being.
I can't say I've ever heard that definition before. We're talking about that thing which Hitchcock said was a dish best served cold?
But I agree with a portion of what you say. I think payment for wrong-doing is the key. I suggest that the woman, if she is guilty and if it morally makes sense, (that is she didn't kill an abusive husband in self-defense or whatever), be required to put in several years worth of daily public service, or similar. Jailing a grandma makes only the flimsiest of sense.
These cases need to be examined individually.
-FL