Sig 136: a form of manipulation you can't refuse - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14896168
"You're laughing now but it'll all end in tribes.". (Ibn Khaldun in 10 words or less)

So I've been reading Ibn Khaldoun, and listening to historians discuss his work and his life. My challenge was to distill his thinking into something the length of a commercial slogan. Something like: "You deserve a break today," or "Just slightly ahead of its time," but with an Ibn Khaldunish vibe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun
#14922980
If you terrorize children with cars for long enough, they'll eventually hide in their basements and play videogames alone

The 20th Century saw the death of city streets as social spaces where children played and adults walked.
Instead, these streets became the deadly private space for roller-coaster toys we call "cars," which involve playing a video game (piloting around obstacles) in order to win the thrill of g-forces tearing around corners at high speeds.

Children were first herded into playgrounds - those caged toy zones provided by car companies in the 50s - and then later, into private basements where they play alone with digital toys.

The end of normal childhood was one result of mass car ownership. This is a death much more important than the million or so people who get killed by them in collisions each year. And it was done using brainwashing. TV-viewer zombies killed their own children's socialization process.
#14926034
QatzelOk wrote:If you terrorize children with cars for long enough, they'll eventually hide in their basements and play videogames alone

The 20th Century saw the death of city streets as social spaces where children played and adults walked.
Instead, these streets became the deadly private space for roller-coaster toys we call "cars," which involve playing a video game (piloting around obstacles) in order to win the thrill of g-forces tearing around corners at high speeds.

Children were first herded into playgrounds - those caged toy zones provided by car companies in the 50s - and then later, into private basements where they play alone with digital toys.

The end of normal childhood was one result of mass car ownership. This is a death much more important than the million or so people who get killed by them in collisions each year. And it was done using brainwashing. TV-viewer zombies killed their own children's socialization process.


Another reason I'm an agrarian traditionalist.
#14926852
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Another reason I'm an agrarian traditionalist.

Hooray for you, but this doesn't help anyone else, or anyone else's children.

Cities used to be an excellent place for childhood socialization. Farmers used to live in massive, extended families, and this is virtually the only way to give kids a healthy socialization process on a farm.

Today, most rural kids are criminally under-socialized, and they grow up consuming even more drugs, anti-depressants and useless gadgets than urbanites do.
#14926853
911 forced Capital to kill millions

Manifest Destiny forced Capital to kill millions.

The Cold War forced Capital to kill millions.

Hitler-Hamas-Hezbollah forced Capital to kill millions.

Libyan students forced Capital to kill millions.

**Viewers, stay tuned to see what events will cause Capital to kill millions next!**
#14926967
QatzelOk wrote:but this doesn't help anyone else, or anyone else's children.


Correct. But if one does not start with themselves its hard to get started at all.

In this polarizing age, its hard to convince others of anything, but at the very least I can do right by those closest to me. I do try to convince others of the virtues of such, but like I said, I can only control my own circumstances, I have no power over others outside of my own home.

QatzelOk wrote:Cities used to be an excellent place for childhood socialization. Farmers used to live in massive, extended families, and this is virtually the only way to give kids a healthy socialization process on a farm.


I agree with all of this, ALL of it, so I understand your concern with my choice, but I have little recourse especially if I want to even begin to approximate a more fulfilling lifestyle closer to nature and in communion with people at a real (and not superficial) level.

My parents are next door and my own family is growing and will likely be massive itself. My kids may not grow up with a massive extended family (because it was the generations preceding mine that decided to opt out of that older model); however, their children will have such because the decisions I am making TODAY. Once again, I think we should start with ourselves and those closest to us, especially in a time when no one wants to listen to each other. When a man plants a tree, its not necessarily so he can reap it fruits in his lifetime, but so that the next generation can. My life was not connected to the land and to people, my children will be better off, but still not ideal, but the model we are pursuing has the seeds of hope for a better future.

One piece of solace I do have now is from the Permaculture and Homestead movements of which I am a part. I am a major advocate of sustainable local permanent agriculture and these movements are some of the few I have seen where you will find back-to-the-earth leftist hippy types and conservative homeschooling Christians with large families and all working together and getting along. Its kinda surreal given our current climate and I quite enjoy it, it would make a great research topic for a sociologist.

QatzelOk wrote:Today, most rural kids are criminally under-socialized, and they grow up consuming even more drugs, anti-depressants and useless gadgets than urbanites do.


I don't know if its "worse," I think it depends on where in the city we look and what criteria we decide to use. I lived in a ghetto when I was in Pittsburgh. (In fact the recent shooting of Antwon Rose was about 6 houses away from I lived when I was getting my Masters degree). The situation for people there was neither good nor natural, some aspects were better than my rural Rustbelt community, but most were worse. This is the same for any socio-economic sector, all have pros and cons, but in America the universal factor seems to be an artificial, superficial, and consumerist existence that is made worse and not better by state policies.

I think we would agree on much Qatz if we ever decided to focus on our common concerns; unfortunately, places like PoFo make it hard to see each other's humanity.

The fact we are even critiquing artificial human relations through a medium like an anonymous internet forum is a tragic Irony in itself.
#14927062
Victoribus Spolia wrote:I can only control my own circumstances, I have no power over others outside of my own home.

What you are describing here is our lack of any kind of community.

While you may very well be giving the best life you can to your children, healthy childhooe requires a functional community. In a functionning community, we ALL can have an impact over people outside our own homes.

My biggest arguments are against things like cars, suburbia and mass media. And these are the modern technologies that I believe have most destroyed our natural socialization which we need if we are going to survive.

While much of what you write centers on the decicisions You made for Your family, my concerns are for the group decisions that We have made that are destroying all Our families, and the individuals who make up families or non-families.

In a functionning community, families are just one part of socialization, and gangs (religious cliques, organized crime) aren't necessary or feasible. So I guess the community-destruction process pre-dates the latest techno-poisons that I obsess about. But I can best comment on the technological changes that I myself have witnessed and studied.

Perhaps monogamy was a disaster for socialization a few thousand years ago as well. I know a lot about non-monogamy as well!
#14928325
One Degree wrote:“It takes a community to raise a child” says those destroying our communities. People are blind to their own actions.

I like and stand firmly by that expression: "It takes a community to raise a child."

If that is true, then it means that children aren't really growing up anymore. Adults today are just old children who never had the community they would have needed if they were to have grown up.

That adults today drive "big trucks" and can't really discuss serious subjects.... is a sure sign that we have stopped maturing. And if this generalized arrested-development has gone on this long, it's because dumb old children buy more stuff than smart adults.
#14929722
Corporate mercenaries are in Afghanistan and Iraq practicing... for their future war against us

Mark Twain: "There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . ."
https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/twain.html

He also mentionned that all the tactics that the American military perfects abroad, come back and are eventually used on Americans themselves.

........................................

Capitalism is walking us right up to extinction with Mickey Mouse ears on our heads
#14933485
I finally took my own Mickey Mouse ears off 18 years ago when I stopped watching TV or movies. Because of this, the brainwashing is wearing off more and more, and I can make clever, pithy statements that don't wreak of jaded materialism.

"American interests" always refers to the business elite, and never the people. 'America' is not a nation, and 'Americans' means: the fans of the elite.

Have you noticed that the definition of "American interests" doesn't involve 99% of the people who live in the United States? No? Still got your Mickey Mouse ears on? :lol:
#14934958
Decky wrote:Business elite eh?

**Zionist puppet-master image**


Tomayto, Tomahto

"Business elite" does NOT refer to the people of this planet who are the most entrepreneurial - many of whom are very poor in resource-consumption, but to those who have fashioned a notch for themselves by rigging the system from the top.
#14934972
Adults today are just old children who never had the community they would have needed if they were to have grown up

soundtrack (warning: French)

The lyrics in French wrote:A l’heure qu’il est
Mes voitures de plastique
Sont devenues vraies depuis longtemps
Et finalement les affaires et l’argent
Ont remplacé mes jouets d’avant
Et c’est le temps qui court, court

...

And looking back...
I changed my plastic dinky-cars
for real ones a long time ago.
And business and money
replaced the games I used to play

And time keeps running... running out


This is an old Barry Manilow tear-jerker (Could it be Magic) that French artists re-wrote as electronic-dance (Le Temps qui court) with completely different lyrics. Manilow's lyrics are kind of depressingly dumb, but the French lyrics are more socially interesting.

But here, the idea that television raises our children to the point that their "plastic cars become real ones," rather than the knowledge of past generations being passed along... is important in the song's panic at the too-rapid passage of time.

With five hours spent in front of TV or videogames each day, there is simply no time to grow up. And no community to help you with the process. So you just imitate what you saw on TV as a child... or the videogames you played in the basement alone...

Et c'est le temps qui court....
#14937842
Watch me and you'll never make a wise decision again!

ON MAKING BAD DECISIONS ON A REGULAR BASIS

The whole idea of television advertising is to make you waste your money on useless things that won't improve your life or anyone else's. Otherwise, if products were useful (like water, fresh air, or excercise), they wouldn't need to be advertised.

The latest trend is always something expensive and useless. Clean tap water and fresh air are never trends.

WATCH ME

[youtube]DeTsQQ22Uwc[/youtube]
The man who said "just watch me" (Pierre Elliot Trudeau) knew he could do anything because he had television on his side, and therefore, viewers would always support his every whim.
#14940398
Watch me and you'll never make a wise decision again!

Paul Street wrote:...mass cognitive competence is assaulted by the numbing, high-speed ubiquity of U.S. television and radio advertisements. These commercials assault citizens’ capacity for sustained mental focus and rational deliberation nearly sixteen minutes of every hour on cable television, with 44 percent of the individual ads now running for just 15 seconds. This is a factor in the United States’ long-bemoaned epidemic of “Attention Deficit Disorder.”


Commercials ... are dedicated to persuading consumers with wholly irrational claims. They rely not on the reasoned presentation of evidence and logical argument but on suggestive emotionalism, infantilizing manipulation, and evocative, rapid-fire imagery.


the United States’ supposedly “free” and “independent” media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation’s economic and imperial elite
#14988701
Image
Smallpox Blankets! has been brought to you by:
Citibank, ConAgra, and Trails-to-Rails


This is a reference to the most important business types (corporations, trusts, companies) who really promoted and financed the "opening up" of the West, and of all other parts of the Americas.

They have always had their thumb on commercial media and religious institutions as well.
#14989860
Brought to You By
the movie

[youtube]adGf8MV69as[/youtube]

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Mea Culpa: the inadvertent way to leave fingerprints

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