Re: MeToo Children's Program

[stocks.hunt@yahoo.com]

On Jul 21, 6:12 pm, mdj <mdj....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 21, 3:59 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > It extends at least as far as Australia, where the television is
> > > drenched in banal (mainly US produced) pop media that numbs the brain.
>
> > I think that the transformation of the media world into one huge
> > Short Attention Span Theater is most associated with "modernity",
> > and the US has always been a big purveyor of modernity, for better
> > or worse.  ;-)
>
> I'm certainly not implying it's a US specific phenomena. It's far more
> cost effective for local broadcasters to purchase ready-made content
> than produce their own.
>
> In fact, an economic explanation would seem the most parsimonious; any
> organisation motivated by profit will gravitate towards products with
> the highest margin. In media, this means the cheapest to produce
> content that people will still consume. Publicly funded broadcasters
> are important. Certainly here, they produce and acquire far higher
> quality content than their commercial counterparts.
>
> Of course, caveat emptor, and it's the buyers we should be concerned
> with.
>
>
>
> > >> Perhaps the problem is that we have learned to make devices
> > >> to saturate our senses before learning the discipline not to
> > >> overuse them to the point of desensitization.
>
> > > Maybe I'm just too cynical, but it seems to me that societies power
> > > brokers have always preferred a quiet, compliant population that
> > > doesn't think too much. From the original broadcast medium of
> > > clergyman on pulpit, through newsprint and to television today, there
> > > has always been a steady supply of mind-numbingly vacuous
> > > 'information' for the unwashed masses to consume.
>
> > > I think you're spot on wrt education though - it's only through the
> > > application of critical thinking that the mind becomes enlightened and
> > > then demands quality. The problem is, how do you get a society to
> > > value something the majority of people simply do not have?
>
> > IIRC, Socrates devoted much of his life to a search for a way
> > to "teach virtue" to the citizens of Athens...
>
> > It didn't work out too well for either Socrates or Athens.  ;-)
>
> > Perhaps we can do better this time--the stakes are certainly higher.
>
> One would certainly like to think so, but I'm not convinced the
> problem is any better understood now :-) At least in some countries I
> suppose, lynching of outspoken intellectuals is frowned upon, albeit
> only in the physical sense...
>
> > I would superficially expect that the technorati (like us), with
> > their engineering-discipline backgrounds, would tend to be quite
> > good at critical thinking on the scale of the problems that confront
> > us, but apparently "detailed thinking" and "global thinking" are
> > different substances.  Studies have shown that the majority of
> > engineers are rather narrowly focused, and prone to dogmatic belief
> > rather than to critical examination of data and careful conclusion.
>
> I suspect you could repeat the studies for any given field and get
> similar (or worse) results.
>
> It's an inherent paradox of pedagogy that whilst attempting to impart
> the virtues of critical thinking and skepticism, the system demands
> servility to authority. Socrates understood this dilemma well :-S I
> guess we can only hope that subverting the credulity of youth (a human
> feature) to promote reasoning based on faith (a human foible) is a
> cultural affectation we'll grow out of ...
>
> It's like the Buddhist who approaches the hot dog vendor and says
> "Give me one with everything!"
> Not having anything smaller, he hands the vendor a fifty. After
> waiting a moment for his change he asks "What about my change?"
>
> To which the vendor replies, "Change, comes only from within"
>
> Matt

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