"Consent of the Governed": Now a Commodity

[coberst]

“Consent of the Governed”: Now a Commodity

 

Commodity—an article of commerce

 

“According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day”—An excerpt from Al Gore’s book “The Assault On Reason” contained in May 28 issue of TIME.

 

We have traded our democratic inheritance for a few hours of vapid TV distraction.

 

I am convinced that we have one avenue out of this terrible predicament into which we have fallen; we American adults must significantly improve our level of intellectual sophistication.

 

This can easily be done in a most delightful way; we adults can take one hour a day that we now spend on a couch before a TV screen and utilize that time studying the books that will enlighten us as to who we are and why we do the things we do.

 

Self-actualizing self-learning is a simple and powerful solution to a most dangerous and pressing situation. We have nothing to lose but our apathy and ignorance; and we have everything to gain, including our self-respect and the respect of generations to come.

[InfiniteNow]

We have traded our democratic inheritance for a few hours of vapid TV distraction.

Why are you suggesting that television watching and democratic inheritance are mutually exclusive?

 

 

What's next, skateboards and the internet? Your choice of the cause of the "terrible predicament into which we have fallen" seems arbitrary to me.

[C1ay]

I frequently watch 2 or 3 hours of the Science Channel, National Geographic, PBS, Discovery Channel and/or The Learning Channel each day. Are you suggesting I should stop this learning endeavor to study something else for an hour a day?

[InfiniteNow]

we American adults must significantly improve our level of intellectual sophistication.

Your statement here implies that 1) there are no american adults who meet your desired level of intellectual sophistication, and 2) that the issue to which you refer is specific to Americans (which I assume you mean those inhabiting USA, not South America or Canada?).

 

This can easily be done in a most delightful way; we adults can take one hour a day that we now spend on a couch before a TV screen and utilize that time studying the books that will enlighten us as to who we are and why we do the things we do.

I agree. Erotica literature and porn can significantly improve one's libido, imagination, and understanding of what makes us who we are and why we do the things we do. That... and cookbooks.

 

We have nothing to lose but our apathy and ignorance; and we have everything to gain, including our self-respect and the respect of generations to come.

The challenge here is that you seek to improve the lives and outlooks of those who are apathetic, yet those who are apathetic won't bother to pick up the books you suggest. How do you circumvent this?

[coberst]

Why are you suggesting that television watching and democratic inheritance are mutually exclusive?

 

 

What's next, skateboards and the internet? Your choice of the cause of the "terrible predicament into which we have fallen" seems arbitrary to me.

 

TV watching takes free time.

 

Learning takes free time.

 

Learning is important for citizens in a democracy.

 

Therefore the connection.

[coberst]

I frequently watch 2 or 3 hours of the Science Channel, National Geographic, PBS, Discovery Channel and/or The Learning Channel each day. Are you suggesting I should stop this learning endeavor to study something else for an hour a day?

 

 

Absolutly. I am talking about serious learning. Watching stuff on TV is not serious learning in my book. TV learning is for the dilettante and the children, not for the serious adult.

 

I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ‘Lewis and Clark Expedition’. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.

 

The time for games are over. This is a serious matter.

[coberst]

InfiniteNow

 

There are a few Americans who qualify for the level of intellectual sophistication I speak of. I read there books but I have never met them personally except when I was in college.

 

I think that denigrating jokes about such important matters do not set a good example for young people.

 

Your post verifies the accuracy of your statement “The challenge here is that you seek to improve the lives and outlooks of those who are apathetic, yet those who are apathetic won't bother to pick up the books you suggest. How do you circumvent this?”

 

I try to circumvent this problem by posting this OP and similar posts. Also I try to suppress all anti-intellectual displays when I encounter them and I try to appeal to the sense of responsibility that I suspect reside in some adults.

 

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Mead/

[InfiniteNow]

I think that denigrating jokes about such important matters do not set a good example for young people.

 

It's always the mention of porn that puts people's panties into a wad. My comment was intended as humorous, but that makes it no less accurate.

 

More importantly...

 

The classification of an example set by a person as "good" is both subjective and context dependent. What makes your horse higher than that of any other?

 

What you're really saying, coberst, is matters of importance are only those in which you are interested, and that the only meaningful measures of responsibility are those to which you subscribe. You're not trying to improve the world, you're trying to make it more like you.

 

 

Btw, if you think I'm apathetic, you need to get out more. :doh:

[Buffy]

There are a few Americans who qualify for the level of intellectual sophistication I speak of. I read there books but I have never met them personally except when I was in college.

I've got enough degrees from top 20 schools to "qualify" dear, but quite frankly you come off like a pompous know-it-all, and I think you'll few people are likely to be persuaded by your pontificating no matter how right you happen to be.

 

You might want to consider more effective methods of persuasion than calling people stupid idiots.

 

Watched the series finale of Veronica Mars tonight,

Buffy B.A., M.B.A.

[Boerseun]

Well, not defending or attacking anyone here, but...

 

...I've quit watching TV completely, a few years ago, not because of Coberst's reasoning, but simply because THERE'S NOTHING WORTHWHILE ON IT. It's a big ol' waste o' time, consisting out of almost 50% advertising. And if you're willing to sit in front of the idiot box for four hours each day, you're prolly absorbing between 1 to 2 hours' worth of advertising, making you the perfect consumer slave the illuminati wants you to be in their preperation for taking over the world. They spice up their ads with subliminal flashes that contains maps for their spaceships parked close to the Giza pyramids that they built thousands of years ago by casting cement in big molds over the hyperspace microwave relay towers that they use to communicate with their home planet in real-time.

 

I'm serious. I saw it on a program on the Discovery Channel the other day.

 

Even 'serious' programming like Discovery Channel and National Geographic, are more and more becoming superficial bullshit advertising vehicles. Watching sports is like watching running, kicking and jumping billboards. News programmes are skewed towards the political opinions of the editorial staff. It's all one continuous stream of incredibly offensively irritating mindless bullshit that is streamed 24/7 in ever-increasing numbers to more and more consumers to buy more and more bullshit. I have banned television from my house about four years ago, and I have never been happier.

 

Read a good book rather. Although it is a personal decision. For me, the idiot box is history. Although I'm not supporting Coberst's point of departure, I have to agree with his ultimate recommendation. Sell your TV for cash. Go to town and have a few beers with the money. That is really all your TV is good for. Trust me.

[coberst]

I've got enough degrees from top 20 schools to "qualify" dear, but quite frankly you come off like a pompous know-it-all, and I think you'll few people are likely to be persuaded by your pontificating no matter how right you happen to be.

 

You might want to consider more effective methods of persuasion than calling people stupid idiots.

 

Watched the series finale of Veronica Mars tonight,

Buffy B.A., M.B.A.

 

You build a strawman and then courageously go forth and knock it down.

[C1ay]

The time for games are over. This is a serious matter.

 

Good. Get serious then and provide some proof of your claims. I'd wager that you can't though. Programs like the "Mechanical Universe and Beyond" by CalTech offer real education. Since you claim they don't then I'm calling you on the "Support your claims" rule.

[coberst]

Good. Get serious then and provide some proof of your claims. I'd wager that you can't though. Programs like the "Mechanical Universe and Beyond" by CalTech offer real education. Since you claim they don't then I'm calling you on the "Support your claims" rule.

 

 

As Karl Popper informs us we cannot prove the truth of a factual statement, however, we can prove that it is false.

[Qfwfq]

I second Boerseun, I've also done away with watching TV. Neither do I support the pompous attitude of Coberst and I'm not here to call anyone an idiot just 'cause they choose to watch TV, nor to tell people what to do.

[coberst]

I second Boerseun, I've also done away with watching TV. Neither do I support the pompous attitude of Coberst and I'm not here to call anyone an idiot just 'cause they choose to watch TV, nor to tell people what to do.

 

 

It appears that the moderators of this forum all seem to commit the straw man fallacy, or is it that they do not recognize what they are doing?

[InfiniteNow]

It appears that the moderators of this forum all seem to commit the straw man fallacy, or is it that they do not recognize what they are doing?

 

Quite funny you would make such a comment since only 2 moderators and 2 admins have posted in this thread. Tell me again how ALL of the moderators of this forum commit straw man fallacies?

 

 

 

Back to the topic of the thread... I recognize that your motivation is to improve the minds of people, and in so doing you can ultimately improve the society in which we participate. However, to make such a blanket statement about television viewing really defeats your purpose. It is too "black and white," fails to take into account the positive aspects of data distribution through screen and speaker, and also does nothing to speak to the other variable which limit the growth of the human mind. Further, you are confusing causation with correlation.

 

It's not like if televisions all magically disappeared everyone would suddenly become self-actualized because they read more books.

 

You're basing your entire argument on a weak premise that just doesn't cut it. You can either answer the criticisms rationally, or you can keep attacking all those who bring to your attention the holes in your idea. I think I know what someone who was self-actualized would do...

 

 

Now, I'm going to watch the Wizard of Oz... They have a really cool straw man with no brains. ;)

[coberst]

Quite funny you would make such a comment since only 2 moderators and 2 admins have posted in this thread. Tell me again how ALL of the moderators of this forum commit straw man fallacies?

 

 

 

Back to the topic of the thread... I recognize that your motivation is to improve the minds of people, and in so doing you can ultimately improve the society in which we participate. However, to make such a blanket statement about television viewing really defeats your purpose. It is too "black and white," fails to take into account the positive aspects of data distribution through screen and speaker, and also does nothing to speak to the other variable which limit the growth of the human mind. Further, you are confusing causation with correlation.

 

It's not like if televisions all magically disappeared everyone would suddenly become self-actualized because they read more books.

 

You're basing your entire argument on a weak premise that just doesn't cut it. You can either answer the criticisms rationally, or you can keep attacking all those who bring to your attention the holes in your idea. I think I know what someone who was self-actualized would do...

 

 

Now, I'm going to watch the Wizard of Oz... They have a really cool straw man with no brains. ;)

 

 

On several occasions your moderators have committed this straw man fallacy. The most recent case is by Qfwfq, which I quote below. It also seems to me that you have committed the fallacy in your post. For some reason people seem to be unable to discuss the issues I raise and evidently they feel compelled to distort the matter.

 

I suggest that no one, including you, is comfortable dealing with the issues I raise and feel they must distort my statements or make them into an amusing antidote.

 

I have thought a lot about this problem, because it seems to be universal. My conclusion is that our educational system has created a psychotic aversion to self-learning.

 

There is strong evidence that our educational system has graduated students with a neurosis directed at self-learning; there seems to be a strong aversion to serious scholarship that is without an educational institution’s imprimatur.

 

What is neurosis?

 

Becker says “isn’t the development of the ego the key to the general problem of neurosis?” The ego grows by putting anxiety under its control; thoughts and feelings are dangerous for the existence of the organism, ergo the ego “vaccinates itself” with small doses of anxiety as a defense mechanism against anxiety.

 

The ego controls our levels of anxiety by a restriction of our allowed experiences. The ego develops by “skewing perceptions and by limiting action”. The ego grows by “a dispossession of the child’s own inner world”. The ego’s technique mechanism is one of the best, it is self-deception. The child’s humanization is accomplished by giving over her aegis to the parent. Are the child’s educational efforts at humanization also accomplished by giving over its intellectual aegis to the teacher?

 

Our motives are buried deep in the unconscious and are veiled by our ignorance of our self. “One’s motives reside in his skewed perceptions, in the way he dispossess himself of genuine self-reliance”; Freud discovered “conscience as limited vision and as dishonest control over one-self…Neurosis is merely a process of interference with simple animal movements, of the blocking of the forward momentum of action.”

 

Neurosis blocks our most “eager and engrossing acts, acts of an excited infant [and of an excited adult] in a world of wonders”. The result being that we all tend to earn a sense of support passively, by “renouncing action and the satisfaction of making [our] own closure on action.”

 

Quotes and ideas about neurosis (not about self-learning) are from “The Birth and Death of Meaning”—Ernest Becker

 

 

 

Qfwfg'S post

I second Boerseun, I've also done away with watching TV. Neither do I support the pompous attitude of Coberst and I'm not here to call anyone an idiot just 'cause they choose to watch TV, nor to tell people what to do.

 

 

 

Description of Straw Man Fallacy

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X.

2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).

3. Person B attacks position Y.

4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

Examples of Straw Man

1. Prof. Jones: "The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000."

Prof. Smith: "What are we going to do?"

Prof. Brown: "I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it."

Prof. Jones: "We could reduce our scheduled raises instead."

Prof. Brown: " I can't understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones."

2. "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

3. Bill and Jill are arguing about cleaning out their closets:

Jill: "We should clean out the closets. They are getting a bit messy."

Bill: "Why, we just went through those closets last year. Do we have to clean them out everyday?"

Jill: "I never said anything about cleaning them out every day. You just want too keep all your junk forever, which is just ridiculous."

Fallacy: Straw Man