[ExI] Artificial Battles was Natasha's brand new doctorate

spike spike66 at att.net
Sat Jul 14 17:27:30 UTC 2012


>... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
Subject: [ExI] Artificial Battles was Natasha's brand new doctorate

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 11:13 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>... My proposal for our race: get rid of those artificial battles which 
> are physically dangerous: the kinds that involve military anything or 
> any kind of physical injury or serious death to anyone.  Keep and 
> nurture the rest of them, while inventing new and interesting 
> challenges in which humans and corporations may compete, the result of 
> which is excellence for all and superiority for some.

>...Have you never seen an infomercial?

Not in the past decade, but I know approximately what they are.

>...  These mind-penetrating jingles and artificial gotta-have-it responses
are masterful exploitation of psychology and culture...

Cool, a competition for mind-penetrating jingles!

>... but you are caught in the crossfire when your child becomes infected
with this meme...

How well I know.  Read on please.

>...  Even if you say "No" there are grandparents whose immunity [so strong
when you were a child] failed the moment your own kids arrived...

Oy, you understate your case Mike.  My son is now 6, the youngest of the
grandchildren, and the only grandchild for three of the six grandparents (my
parents split and remarried a long time ago.)  So it will come as no
surprise that my son ends up the recipient of piles and piles of toys and
clothes from older cousins as well as mind-numbing stacks of gifts from
grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and colleagues.  He has no access to
commercial television after we turned off the cable four yrs ago (we weren't
using it, no point in paying for it.)  My son has few or no perceived needs,
but he gets piles of stuff from everywhere, so many toys he has no time to
play with so many of them.

This presents a new problem for me, since I grew up in a time when the
economics of scarcity were still very much in play.  I have a meme deeply
rooted which equates work with reward.  I can't quite convince myself that
the economics of scarcity is a completely outdated notion, so I am training
my son to work at things in exchange for rewards, but it is difficult to
reward him.  He has too much stuff already to the point he has no room for
more.  So what now?

>...The marketing environment is producing arguably toxic levels of
competing memes.  I'm horrified and fascinated by where evolution will take
this trend.   *http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UFUwjvYtsU   Mike

Ja me too.  I can't say I am horrified really.  I am old enough to remember
when Americans were involved in actual warfare, the kind which required the
physical presence of large numbers of involuntary participants.  This is
something which can justifiably cause us to be horrified.  Marketing?  Not
so much.  Mind control compelling proles to buy stuff they don't need?
Hmmm, I would use the adjective concerned rather than horrified.

spike






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