Posted on 09/15/2010 9:15:59 PM PDT by stolinsky
The problem is that we are spending so much time with contrived entertainments that we tend to become addicted to exciting electronic images. Worse, we become addicted to excitement itself, and we have difficulty distinguishing artificial images from reality.
When I was a kid, I looked out the car window when my family went for a drive. The view of small towns and farms wasn’t exciting. But there was nothing else to do, so I got used to not being excited all the time. I learned about the lives of ordinary people.
I learned to see the farmer in bib overalls working on his old truck as an interesting and valuable citizen. I learned not to be an elitist. So when I went to college, I didn’t see myself as better, just better educated. I knew that I was learning facts, but not acquiring wisdom. I knew that wisdom comes from religion and life experience. I knew that my uncles, who never finished high school, were wiser than many of my professors.
Unlike President Obama, I didn’t presume that I was entitled to decide for everyone what was best for them. My upbringing didn’t allow me to become that arrogant and egotistical. I didn’t develop into a self-righteous narcissist. When I got my diploma, I knew I was attending a graduation, not a coronation.
(Excerpt) Read more at stolinsky.com ...
BRILLIANT. DEAD ON TARGET.
Thank you for this. Thankfully, there are a few of our kids generation raising their own in peace, minus the electronics, but it is so rare, as to lose sight of the past where we could lie on green grass and stare through the tree tops to the clouds puffing along their way. I must say I don’t envy the whole family piled in the car
for cross country trips with no AC, windows wide open, and a big orange drink!
I believe that Neil Postman beat you to the idea by about 25 years.
Amusing Ourselves To Death:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
The postman always rings twice ...
Wait a minute, Mr. Postman.
This is set to get worse. I posit that in twenty years, technology will be advanced to the point of what is seen in the Matrix virtual reality world, where your brain will not be able to distinquish between real and simulacrum.
If you could create a fantasy world where you can do all you want, be who ever you want, why would you ever want to return to “reality”?
Even now we have almost conquered the sight and sound aspect. All that needs to be done is trick the rest of the senses and it’s all over.
Want to go to a football game but don’t want to deal with the drive and the crowds? VR will put you on the 50 yard line. Even better, you could take part in the game...
This also brings up some interesting possibilities and some serious moral conundrums.
If you have sex with virtual person, are you truly cheating on your significant other? Does virtual sex put prostitution out of business? You can’t get a STD from a simulacrum.
If you can trick your brain that you are ingesting simulated narcotics that normally would be illegal in the real world, without the danger but all of the various psychotropic results, does the real narcotics trade disappear? Does virtual bar hopping stop driving while intoxicated? Things to ponder...
If a pedophile molests virtual children, has he broken a law? Furthermore, should we as a society, recognizing that he has a predilection that can be easily sated by providing him with alternative that makes our “real” children safe, deny him that alternative? What if criminal punishment was to “sentence” a person where they could live out their days in a VR world where they can act on their predatory desires as much as they want without ever harming a real person? Would make prisons in the convential sense obsolete, and would be much more cost effective in terms of building, maintaining and staffing a conventional prison. Damn sight safer too for all involved. No guard stabbings, no riots, no prison gangs, no prison rape, and no recidivism.
I can see how easily it would be to be addicted to the virtual entertainment and virtual world.
Years ago, a reporter caught Muhammad Ali in a mistake. Unfazed, Ali replied, “I never said I was the smartest; I said I was the greatest.” Well, I never said I was completely original—nobody is. I’d be satisfied to be correct most of the time.
Update: First they came for the communists, but the Secret Service stopped them at the White House gate.
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