OT - 10 steps to fascist police state

"Jose" wrote in message
.. .

Most people =prefer= to watch a white SUV drive down the highway.

=That= is the problem. It is us, collectively, who decide what is
profitable to the media companies. I agree that in doing so, we are
handing over the keys to our brains, and at some point it will be too
late. But the power was not siezed by them, it was given to them.

That was pretty much my point. WE are society, not the corporations who
control the media.

But millions of people have already "handed over the keys to their brains"
and, the fact is, showing the faces of murderers prompts copycats. There
would be no "copycat killers" if they weren't handed a role model by
somebody selling them ads.

Earlier this month a kid in Oregon fired a rifle into a high school. Later
he said he was inspired by a documentary about Columbine. That's what I'm
getting at: Kids who idolize symbolic antiheroes will emulate them to
capture the same 15 minutes of fame.

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/20...columbine.html

-c

But millions of people have already "handed over the keys to their brains"
and, the fact is, showing the faces of murderers prompts copycats. There
would be no "copycat killers" if they weren't handed a role model by
somebody selling them ads.

Earlier this month a kid in Oregon fired a rifle into a high school. Later
he said he was inspired by a documentary about Columbine. That's what I'm
getting at: Kids who idolize symbolic antiheroes will emulate them to
capture the same 15 minutes of fame.

I see it the other way around. People are responsible for their own
actions. If they have handed over the keys to their brains, they are
responsible for the result. (Despite the fact that we have to live with
it). But handing over the keys to our brains is exactly what you seem
to be proposing.

Your theme seems to be that we can't do it (properly) ourselves, because
we are making "bad" choices. Who is going to decide what's a bad
choice? Government? The Pope? The PTA? The League of Parents of
Small Children? Gatt himself? We already have too much meddling in our
private lives by the superstitious, the power hungry, the righteous, the
misguided, and the stupid.

The scariest video I've ever seen was a short clip about kidnapping. A
car drives up to a kid and asks where Mulberry street is. The kid goes
up to the car to answer, and inside of a few seconds the back door
opens, somebody snatches the kid, and the car drives away.

What was scary was not that kidnapping is so easy, but rather, the
message which followed, which was that kids should run screaming if
somebody drives up and asks directions. It turns kids into assholes who
are so disconnected from society and so mistrusting of those around that
they will grow up into people who would think nothing of firing a rifle
into a crowd at school.

That was twenty years ago. Those kids have grown up now.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

The scariest video I've ever seen was a short clip about kidnapping. A car
drives up to a kid and asks where Mulberry street is. The kid
goes up to the car to answer, and inside of a few seconds the back
door opens, somebody snatches the kid, and the car drives away.

What was scary was not that kidnapping is so easy, but rather, the
message which followed, which was that kids should run screaming if
somebody drives up and asks directions. It turns kids into assholes
who are so disconnected from society and so mistrusting of those
around that they will grow up into people who would think nothing of
firing a rifle into a crowd at school.

That was twenty years ago. Those kids have grown up now.

Jose

My wife was in Junior League a few years back and they do a project for 5
year old kids called Safety Town. They work with them on every thing from
how to cross the street to how to not talk to strangers. Near the end of
this WEEK of training I was asked to walk into the play ground looking for
my dog that I lost and see if the kids can put what they learned about not
talking with or going away with strangers to practical use.

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with me.
Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids from
inside the building.

Near the end of
this WEEK of training I was asked to walk into the play ground looking for
my dog that I lost and see if the kids can put what they learned about not
talking with or going away with strangers to practical use.

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with me.
Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids from
inside the building.

What would you have them do? Refuse to talk to you and run screaming?
What kind of adults would they turn into?

We get the kind of society we create.

Yes, there are dangers, yes children need to be taught how to
discriminate between good people and bad people (even grownups have a
hard time with that), and yes, "my child" is different. But there is a
real societal cost to this kind of training, which could easily be far
worse, and far harder to undo (because it's a far longer term), than
watching movies without purple dinosaurs.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
. net...

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with
me. Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids
from inside the building.

What would you have them do? Refuse to talk to you and run screaming?

Say "Hang on. I need to go ask permission to go with you."

Is this difficult to grasp?

What kind of adults would they turn into?

Ones that teach their kids to get permission before wandering off with
strangers?

We get the kind of society we create.

Ones that teach their kids to get permission before wandering off with
strangers?

-c

[gatt] Say "Hang on. I need to go ask permission to go with you."

Ok, that's reasonable. That was not the message I took away from the
video I saw, which was to run screaming.

I guess I didn't make myself clear. These kids after being taught safety for
a week were willing to not just talk to me but walk away from the play
ground into the parking lot where I could have easily stuck them in a car an
driven away.

It wasn't clear, but that was because I read too quickly. What I take
away from this is that five year olds are hard to teach behavior to.
This is not surprising - it is why it takes so long to raise children.
I suspect it comes down to a perception of safety. Kids percieve adults
to be safe, not dangerous. For the most part, they are right.

My impression (in general) is that our "safety conscious culture" is
going a bit overboard, and that this will have (is having) long term
adverse consequences. And although children are not little airplanes,
the same kind of thinking applies to them too. (just to bring it on topic)

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
...
[gatt] Say "Hang on. I need to go ask permission to go with you."

My impression (in general) is that our "safety conscious culture" is going
a bit overboard, and that this will have (is having) long term adverse
consequences. And although children are not little airplanes, the same
kind of thinking applies to them too. (just to bring it on topic)

Yeah, I agree with you wholly. I'm sure we've all seen both ends of the
spectrum; overprotective parents whose kids end up in trouble and
underprotective parents whose kids do the same. Or who don't end up in
trouble at all. (I ended up on both ends but managed to stay out of
trouble.)

If a kid doesn't skin his knees he'll not learn that missteps have painful
consequences, nor will he learn that he's tough enough to endure those
mistakes and improve because of them.

-c

Jose wrote:
Near the end of
this WEEK of training I was asked to walk into the play ground
looking for my dog that I lost and see if the kids can put what they
learned about not talking with or going away with strangers to
practical use. I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to
walk off
with me. Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were
watching the kids from inside the building.

What would you have them do? Refuse to talk to you and run screaming?
What kind of adults would they turn into?

We get the kind of society we create.

Yes, there are dangers, yes children need to be taught how to
discriminate between good people and bad people (even grownups have a
hard time with that), and yes, "my child" is different. But there is
a real societal cost to this kind of training, which could easily be
far worse, and far harder to undo (because it's a far longer term),
than watching movies without purple dinosaurs.

Jose


I guess I didn't make myself clear. These kids after being taught safety for
a week were willing to not just talk to me but walk away from the play
ground into the parking lot where I could have easily stuck them in a car an
driven away.

And to answer your questions I would want them to go to an adult they knew
and tell them that a stranger was trying to get them to go to the parking
lot with them.

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:28:42 GMT, Jose
wrote in :

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with me.
Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids from
inside the building.

What would you have them do?

Five year olds should be supervised by a parent. Anything less is
irresponsible.

Five year olds should be supervised by a parent. Anything less is
irresponsible.

I've heard the same about fifteen year olds.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.