Maxims, rules of thumb and other observations on human cognition and sociocultural affectations

This will be added to on an irregular basis...
  • What is said to humans directly is received with skepticism and considered with dubiousness while that which is heard in passing, especially that which most conforms to their mentality or prejudices, is readily believed.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive latency between exposure to new information or experiences and the ability to think dispassionately and intellectually about it.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive spectrum starting with the moment of exposure to new information or experiences and ending with some point at which the thing is effectively "in the past" for them.
  • This cognitive spectrum is linked to the emotional process often referred to as shock, anger, denial and acceptance.
  • The more and faster information or experiences are presented to people and the closer the quarters and the lesser the distance between people, the more their early reactions in the passionate emotional stage are reflected back to them in the manner of responses to those reactions from others in light of those responses.
  • The more outrages which are suffered without sufficient time to allow emotional bleed-off, the farther the bar for subsequent reaction and outrage are pushed, and the more further events must progress before reaction and outrage.
  • It is possible for serious detriments to eventually sit below this threshold for long enough for their damaging effects to build and multiply until their entire society undergoes some reactive convulsion.
Bookmark and Share

Monday, August 11, 2008

The number one enemy of children: their self-proclaimed protectors...

Study: Network TV likes sex, but not in marriage - washingtonpost.com

This quote is basically true:


The central problem that if you're actually bothering to take care of, raise, supervise, and otherwise deal with your own kids, you don't need external protecting groups is still being missed.

When television became a child babysitting service, instead of babysitting their kids themselves, people insisted on making television clean enough to babysit their kids, not actually raise their own.

When the Internet became ubiquitous, what happened? The new medium was targeted to be the new babysitter and the babysitter which was chosen hadn't volunteered but it would now be drafted and what happened? A slew of laws ineffective to the point of uselessness because the point was never effectiveness, but aggrandizement of those pushing and writing the laws. Laws struck down whole or in part again and again by a court system ultimately beholden to their own version of the Torah: the US Constitution.

In all this, the point continues to be ignored: the job of parenting and babysitting is that of the parents and their assigned and trusted individuals, humans all. Televisions and Internet connected computers are merely items. Appliances. Inanimate objects without thought, feeling, creativity, or free will. They merely transmit the doings and ramblings of other people.

Since when should all the other people you know, and those you don't, from you neighbor to people on the far side of Earth have to live down to whatever you consider a safe enough standard of content for your children to be exposed to?

More over, since when should you not be personally involved with your own kids and rely on the television and Internet?

Your mindset, you would-be protectors of kids' virtues, is what had brought us to enormous teen pregnancy rates, drugs, divorce, anti-religiousness, and all the other ills starting in childhood. Your mindset is what has caused the dramatic surge in incest, intergenerational sex, child abuse, and neglect. All because you have no idea of and no interest in what your kids are doing as long as there's some law on the books for you to cover your otherwise naked asses with, letting you sleep at night without a guilty conscience grinding you, making you cringe at the very thought of your parenthood.

Yet, it will continue with the very same parents who lie about their own childhoods, their own indiscretions, their own moments of naive freedom away from the prying eyes of their own parents... buying their kids computers which they allow in the privacy of their own bedrooms, webcams for the computers, and completing the unholy trinity, a high speed Internet connection. They will keep buying them cell phones with cameras. They will keep leaving the digital cable and satellite with the parental controls unlocked.

Meanwhile the kids will be broadcasting nudes of themselves to friends, and watching porn on the family television bill, and mom and dad oblivious to why their next thing is to make a move behind their backs to meet some stranger for an illicit rendezvous at a hotel when they're only thirteen.

As I've said before, a pious man can think nothing more in a strip bar than if the girls are cold. A well raised person is not drawn into the world of naively self-delusionary sexual obsession where people believe childishly that they're ready for it or have some sort of control on their emotions. Well rounded and centered people don't have those issues. People who are raised by television and the Internet DO.

FOR FUCKS' SAKE PEOPLE, RAISE YOUR OWN DAMN KIDS. DO IT FOR THEM.