still not fully constructed, but in order to move on Im going to have to post it now
Herod In Bethlehem Part One
Narrative, a Response and a Narrative from Thurnez Isa
As a child I remember a great snowstorm in the late 80's. It was just before March break, and it expended my break from elementary school by a week. I don't remember if it was the greatest on record, but it definitely made the list.
As a kid I used to love to play in snow storms. I couldn't bring my smaller toys out into a storm, and generally my toys were just the almost antique toys of my father or uncle which I reused. Snow also prevented skating, and if it was sticky tobogganing. But I never needed such devices to have fun. Such petty aid was not needed in defeating imaginary enemies, dragons, dinosaurs, robots, fires, floods, zombies, or armies.
Now there is beeping lights, cellphones for tweens, video worlds constructed to be close to reality, and anything else to destroy the ability to visualize something from nothing. The day's of stick swords, cardboard snow racers, snow armies are slowly fading, if not already gone.
Mammals learn to navigate through the world with childhood play. Humans learn to problem solve, to be creative, to learn through abstraction through their childhood imagination. Most importantly they learn to be curious. Why does everything in our modern surrounding seem to be leaning away from that?
Children's minds are now managed, tagged and shaped by physical constructions of imagined societies. These imagined societies tell them how to act, how to grow up, how to be a good citizen within that society - how to construct reality.
Problem solving doesn't exist in this society. New ideas are a threat. What is needed is only slight modifications of old ideas. So they given the old ideas before their imagination could construct ideas from nothing.
Things which construct our reality, for example religion, know that to our reality is constructed quickly, and once constructed it is harder and harder to break out of that construction. They need to prevent curiosity. The curious mind goes out to explore, it finds new knowledge which challenges old assumptions. For example, it's no coincidence that religions which seek the most control over it's members morality also hate science the most. The curious mind can become the educated mind, and the educated mind seeps in all direction, like water on a hard floor. It uses the ability to learn in all aspects of it's life, and it's more likely to become liberated from those who seek to control it.
But the most dangerous of all is that curiosity can find beauty throughout the world without the need of physical constructions.
This is easily seen in advertisement, which more and more no longer even considers child as a marketable entity.
Hear me out here.
Children, especially little girls, are forced to grow from toddlers to tweens - a monstrous classification of inspiring teenagers - in order to enjoy the next level of entertainment. In the marketer's world children are forced to grow up and always desire the things which will perpetuate this, never giving the child a chance to develop.
Toy's for all sexes are given ready personalities. This was already started when I was a kid back in the 80's. Everyone knew the personality of GI Joe, what he stood for, and how to play with him. The toy had a constructed reality preset.
Personally I'm noticing the results of all this form of childhood here at school. Today in History Class, which I took as an interesting elective, the professor went over his usual one hour and fifteen minutes lecture. It was an animated and interesting lecture on problems in the soviet system manifesting in the 70's - and yes all 20th Century history classes are pretty much only about Nazis and Soviets. Sitting quietly in the back I could get a good view of all my classmates. He went off into a rant about Western conceptions of the Eastern block. This was something unrelated to the exam, but interesting non the less. The people my age or older are always attentive and if you catch their expression it is usually one of curiosity, or chuckling at the funny bits. I've always noticed the younger students are always fidgety, preoccupied with petty computer games or texting on their cellphones. Three hour lectures will always slowly filter out half the class, just as lectures at the last half of a semester dwindle down to a third of the students.
Today as the lecture went over I noticed two strange expressions among the young people. The first was annoyance over a longer lecture, which a strange thing to see on a supposed intellectual, and the other was complete and a utter lack of curiosity. You see usually for them lectures are just an opportunity to take notes for the test, and anything unrelated is uninteresting and serves no point. This is something I noticed before many times.
My friends who were working on teaching degrees, whether for high school or elementary, told me that modern teaching techniques involve not staying on a topic for more then 20 minutes, since a modern student's attentions spans doesn't exceed that, and more importantly use lots of visuals, since the modern student can not visualize something using their imagination.
Theirs is a world of beeps, lack of curiosity and physical constructions, and they are good citizen's within it.
Quote from: Thurnez Isa on March 26, 2009, 04:32:15 PM
still not fully constructed, but in order to move on Im going to have to post it now
Herod In Bethlehem Part One
Narrative, a Response and a Narrative from Thurnez Isa
As a child I remember a great snowstorm in the late 80's. It was just before March break, and it expended my break from elementary school by a week. I don't remember if it was the greatest on record, but it definitely made the list.
As a kid I used to love to play in snow storms. I couldn't bring my smaller toys out into a storm, and generally my toys were just the almost antique toys of my father or uncle which I reused. Snow also prevented skating, and if it was sticky tobogganing. But I never needed such devices to have fun. Such petty aid was not needed in defeating imaginary enemies, dragons, dinosaurs, robots, fires, floods, zombies, or armies.
Now there is beeping lights, cellphones for tweens, video worlds constructed to be close to reality, and anything else to destroy the ability to visualize something from nothing. The day's of stick swords, cardboard snow racers, snow armies are slowly fading, if not already gone.
Mammals learn to navigate through the world with childhood play. Humans learn to problem solve, to be creative, to learn through abstraction through their childhood imagination. Most importantly they learn to be curious. Why does everything in our modern surrounding seem to be leaning away from that?
Children's minds are now managed, tagged and shaped by physical constructions of imagined societies. These imagined societies tell them how to act, how to grow up, how to be a good citizen within that society - how to construct reality.
Problem solving doesn't exist in this society. New ideas are a threat. What is needed is only slight modifications of old ideas. So they given the old ideas before their imagination could construct ideas from nothing.
Things which construct our reality, for example religion, know that to our reality is constructed quickly, and once constructed it is harder and harder to break out of that construction. They need to prevent curiosity. The curious mind goes out to explore, it finds new knowledge which challenges old assumptions. For example, it's no coincidence that religions which seek the most control over it's members morality also hate science the most. The curious mind can become the educated mind, and the educated mind seeps in all direction, like water on a hard floor. It uses the ability to learn in all aspects of it's life, and it's more likely to become liberated from those who seek to control it.
But the most dangerous of all is that curiosity can find beauty throughout the world without the need of physical constructions.
This is easily seen in advertisement, which more and more no longer even considers child as a marketable entity.
Hear me out here.
Children, especially little girls, are forced to grow from toddlers to tweens - a monstrous classification of inspiring teenagers - in order to enjoy the next level of entertainment. In the marketer's world children are forced to grow up and always desire the things which will perpetuate this, never giving the child a chance to develop.
Toy's for all sexes are given ready personalities. This was already started when I was a kid back in the 80's. Everyone knew the personality of GI Joe, what he stood for, and how to play with him. The toy had a constructed reality preset.
Personally I'm noticing the results of all this form of childhood here at school. Today in History Class, which I took as an interesting elective, the professor went over his usual one hour and fifteen minutes lecture. It was an animated and interesting lecture on problems in the soviet system manifesting in the 70's - and yes all 20th Century history classes are pretty much only about Nazis and Soviets. Sitting quietly in the back I could get a good view of all my classmates. He went off into a rant about Western conceptions of the Eastern block. This was something unrelated to the exam, but interesting non the less. The people my age or older are always attentive and if you catch their expression it is usually one of curiosity, or chuckling at the funny bits. I've always noticed the younger students are always fidgety, preoccupied with petty computer games or texting on their cellphones. Three hour lectures will always slowly filter out half the class, just as lectures at the last half of a semester dwindle down to a third of the students.
Today as the lecture went over I noticed two strange expressions among the young people. The first was annoyance over a longer lecture, which a strange thing to see on a supposed intellectual, and the other was complete and a utter lack of curiosity. You see usually for them lectures are just an opportunity to take notes for the test, and anything unrelated is uninteresting and serves no point. This is something I noticed before many times.
My friends who were working on teaching degrees, whether for high school or elementary, told me that modern teaching techniques involve not staying on a topic for more then 20 minutes, since a modern student's attentions spans doesn't exceed that, and more importantly use lots of visuals, since the modern student can not visualize something using their imagination.
Theirs is a world of beeps, lack of curiosity and physical constructions, and they are good citizen's within it.
This is a good Post!
I wonder if students that were educated during the "teach to the test" mentality display this sort of lack of curiosity and interest only in passing the next test in order to get to the next class....
I don't know
to be honest my ideas aren't fully clear yet...
I may have to come back and rewrite part one... but I don't think I can do it till I sit down to write part two.. so no one use it for anything yet please
I posted what I got now cause I don't think part two will make any sense to anyone
and to get feedback of course
"...the educated mind seeps in all direction, like water on a hard floor."
Love this line!
Love the whole thing but the seepage line especially. :mittens:
(http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:HD2Yq3WyONfI8M:http://content9.flixster.com/question/50/72/32/5072323_std.jpg)
They're called books. They require a little effort on your part, and make no beep-beep-beep-beeps!
The mind is like a dog, really. Without regular exercise it'll become a fat useless piece of shit that just sits in the corner licking it's balls.
The Machinetm prefers these ones - they are less inclined to bite
I liked this. Not necessarily very
beeping new or revolutionary, but a nice piece of writing, still. :mittens:
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on March 26, 2009, 06:12:54 PM
The mind is like a husband, really. Without regular exercise it'll become a fat useless piece of shit that just sits in the corner licking it's balls.
The Machinetm prefers these ones - they are less inclined to bite
Fixed.
Hey! Guess what?
Go fuck yourself!
LMNO
-husband.
See?
he licks his balls and bites! :lol: