Sounds like someone woke up late last Friday and didnt get the $25 microwave he wanted.
But what is missing, in many people, is an intellectual curiosity and desire to find and utilize that information. I wouldn’t say it’s a conspiracy, but it is certainly regrettable, and curious that the powers that be have allowed the situation to become so dire.
I think it’s also unfair to mention the access to information without mentioning the lack of access to formal training. I can look up damn near any fact I want, but without the proper foundation, perspective, training, and certification, it is ofdramatically less use to me in my everyday life. I can read every book they assign in law school or med school, but I can’t practice law or medicine. To do that, I have to spend several thousand dollars, and spend several years in a classroom. Information, and access to it, it not as useful if you can’t use it directly to improve your life, or understand the world better. Most of the information people receive is basically trivia.
It’s probably about a dollar per watt.
Oh, well, why didn’t you just say so? No big news, every George Carlin fan knows that!
I think he means what knowledge are people lacking that makes them “ignorant”?
Or did you just read The Great Transformation, decided that Christian Socialism is the way to go any everyone else is ignorant for not following it?
Well…I think I’ll take modern society over primitive society any day. I mean, it was all well and good for the best hunters to give up the choicest cuts of meat to The People and take only the scraps for themselves (total bullshit IMHO, but it’s a nice fantasy), but most likely those mighty hunters would be lucky to live to their 30’s…as would the rest of their society. To me, this is sort of like the quandary of an illiterate society not having eye sight problems. Thanks, but I think I’ll take literacy and civilization over having good eye sight…and probably dieing fairly miserably at a young age.
While I agree that children today aren’t taught critical thinking the way I would prefer, I don’t think it has anything to do with Capitalism or some conspiracy…it has more to do with our society and what is feels is important. We have access to information and resources that the ancient ELITE couldn’t even have dreamed of…it’s just a matter of using those resources. Our school system doesn’t emphasize this kind of learning however…not because they are trying to control us or due to some dark sooper sekrit conspiracy, but because our public education system plays to the lowest common denominator, and uses standardized tests as their metric for supposed progress…and since their funding is based on those standardized tests, THAT is what is emphasized in our school system…learning to take those tests and do well enough to keep the gravy train running.
-XT
I disagree. So far as I know, educational institutions mostly want their students to pass their courses with the highest possible grades, as that way it makes them eligible for more resources. That’s not the same thing at all.
As for those who determine public policy, IMO what they are more likely to want is that people think the policies they set have been essential to their well-being, whethere true or not, as that way they are more likely to keep their rather cushy jobs.
I think maybe YOU want me to be an uncritical thinker and easily manipulated.
I have this image of a horse…and water.
Wolverines are small, vicious animals. They lead a solitary existence in the woods. Their pelts are worthless so they are rarely hunted.
If you right-click it, you can set it as your desktop wallpaper.
There was a Benny Hill sketch…
Teacher: Use the word “horticulture” in a sentence.
Benny Hill: You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think.
I second the validity of Cervaise’s post. A cromulent response to multi-boardal spam embiggens us all.
‘embiggens’…what a great word! And I never knew what ‘horticulture’ meant before. I’m learning a lot from this thread, even if you high brow types are throwing around $10 words like we weren’t in a recession or something…
-XT
I’m pretty sure Dorothy Parker is credited with that quip, though it’s entirely possible it predates even her.
And I may be totally mixing the horticulture quip up with another sketch completely. I THOUGHT my first exposure to the joke was Benny Hill. I may be wrong. sigh
CA (Corporate America) has developed a well-honed expertise in motivating the population to behave in a desired manner. Citizens as consumers are ample manifestation of that expertise. CA has accomplished this ability by careful study and implementation of the knowledge of the ways of human behavior. I suspect this same structure applies to most Western democracies.
A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions. The greater the voice of the citizens the better the democracy.
In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.
Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.
An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. Critical thinking is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.
“Thomas R. Dye, Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, has published a series of books examining who and what institutions actually control and run America. to understand who is making the decisions that affect our lives, we also have to understand how societies structure themselves in general. Why the few always tend to share more power than the many and what this means in terms of both a society’s evolution and our daily lives. they examined the other 11 institutions that exert just as powerful a shaping influence, although somewhat more subtle: The Industrial, Corporations, Utilities and Communications, Banking, Insurance Investment, Mass Media, Law, Education Foundation, Civic and Cultural Organizations, Government, and the Military.”
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/12-dye.html
Can you be more specific in your definition of “Corporate America” ? Like, maybe narrowing it down to thirty or forty actual corporations? Without that, Corporate America could extend all the way down to the clerk at 7/11. If he part of the conspiracy or a victim of it?
He isn’t thinking of a society where everyone is a critical thinker - he’s thinking of a society where everyone is a critical thinker who has never heard of game theory.
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Question Authority… just when should we do that? I mean, it may be appropriate sometimes, but not other times… maybe?