busyTo this I will add that the stick is one of the first tools or weapons that humanity ever mastered. Apes still use them today to open rotten logs, fish for termites, etc. A stick is a little more versatile than a rock, because it can poke or pry. So it's a very useful tool for exploring things safely.
This makes it the fundamental tool of adventurous children, and indeed, everyone who sets foot off pavement in most of the South. This is a stick; the stick is your friend. Sweep it ahead of you in long grass. Use it to keep scary things at arm's reach. Prod things that might be dangerous with a stick, not your finger. You can also use it to remove things from your path, such as a spiderweb.
As I see more and more calls for taking tools away from people, I worry, because the two things that most separate us from other animals are our wits and our tools. Taking away tools says we don't have the wits to use them responsibly -- says that humans are no more than dumb beasts. If people aren't using tools responsibly, it's not because the tools are bad. It's because the people don't have the knowledge and skills to be responsible with them. You can't fix that by taking away the tools, can't foolproof the whole world, because fools are so ingenious. I once saw someone create a chemistry accident with a can of Lipton tea and some water -- and by chemistry accident, I mean that people in the vicinity fled coughing and hacking from the choking cloud of powder in the air. You have to teach people how the world works, how to handle the hazardous parts of the world, and how to be responsible with all of that.
Perhaps related
September 9 2015, 00:53:09 UTC 5 years ago
(my summary of it)
on aeon, an article I read a while back, but, I don't think I shared it yet:
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play/
Re: Perhaps related
September 9 2015, 01:16:16 UTC 5 years ago
Re: Perhaps related
September 10 2015, 03:52:49 UTC 5 years ago
Perhaps it also motivated me to talk a long walk in the evening... that an pleasant weather... pedometer puts it at over 7,000 steps, I think, although I really don't know how accurate it is, only my third time trying it out and I haven't RTFM for it fully.
I think that those senses can atrophy, or the mental representations of them, rather, if we don't use them often... so it helps to review your body as an adult, and do the things that touch the extremes a bit, if not stretch them.
The walk was full of many little adventures, and it helped my mood somewhat.
Re: Perhaps related
September 10 2015, 04:14:07 UTC 5 years ago
It can be as subtle as kids who can't sit still in class and fuss with their clothes a lot, or as life-wrecking as kids who fall so often they keep winding up in the emergency room and have hysterics over a scratchy tag. This has taken time for doctors to form plausible theories about what is going so damn wrong. There are other factors, such as nerve poisons from pesticides and other chemicals; but sensory processing disorders and motor disorders often respond so well to play therapy that it's becoming a pretty obvious connection that children need to move or things go wrong.
>> Perhaps it also motivated me to talk a long walk in the evening... that an pleasant weather... pedometer puts it at over 7,000 steps, I think, although I really don't know how accurate it is, only my third time trying it out and I haven't RTFM for it fully. <<
Cool.
>> I think that those senses can atrophy, or the mental representations of them, rather, if we don't use them often... so it helps to review your body as an adult, and do the things that touch the extremes a bit, if not stretch them. <<
They can. It causes problems for adults who become bedridden. After a couple weeks, muscles atrophy enough to make people wobbly when they get up. Leave it for months and they need serious therapy to walk again. It's not just muscles that go, but nerves that forget how to work together.
>> The walk was full of many little adventures, and it helped my mood somewhat. <<
Yay!
Re: Perhaps related
September 10 2015, 09:53:16 UTC 5 years ago
I was pleasantly surprised to find they are other, working models, with even less formal structure, and a focus on justice via democracy rather than domination via imposition.
Not sure how I can contribute to changing that for the future, yet, but I do think it is a critical issue.
Schools being prison barracks that produce unstable soldiers who are unable to enjoy life due to brain damage, induced by society that effectively rapes the mind/souls of its own children, doesn't bode well for the future of humanity.
Still, most people don't take school that seriously... yet. Even in Japan, actually, there was a lot of play there. I got to visit two or three schools, but due to laws about pictures of minors, I didn't take any footage. May write about it later. Was real fun.
Re: Perhaps related
September 10 2015, 17:44:32 UTC 5 years ago
For many students, that would be ideal. It is a model available to very few, because it is inconvenient for adults.
>> I was pleasantly surprised to find they are other, working models, with even less formal structure, and a focus on justice via democracy rather than domination via imposition. <<
Waldorf and Montessori are among my favorites, both based on a detailed study of child development and what kids actually need to learn: an enriched environment, and adults to get them started or help when they're stuck.
>> Not sure how I can contribute to changing that for the future, yet, but I do think it is a critical issue. <<
Talk about it, write about it, read about it. Don't let the stupid shit go unchallenged.
>> Schools being prison barracks that produce unstable soldiers who are unable to enjoy life due to brain damage, induced by society that effectively rapes the mind/souls of its own children, doesn't bode well for the future of humanity. <<
Painfully true.
>> Still, most people don't take school that seriously... yet. Even in Japan, actually, there was a lot of play there. I got to visit two or three schools, but due to laws about pictures of minors, I didn't take any footage. May write about it later. Was real fun. <<
A crucial problem today is that school impacts survival at a much younger age, hence the rise of youth suicide and devastating psychological problems. The ones who disengage are the dropouts, another rapidly growing group.
Re: Perhaps related
September 11 2015, 07:31:55 UTC 5 years ago
A crucial problem today is that school impacts survival at a much younger age, hence the rise of youth suicide and devastating psychological problems. The ones who disengage are the dropouts, another rapidly growing group.
<<
Yeah, I view songs like "Don't Jump" (Tokio Hotel) as anti-suicide. They sing in both English and Japanese, but seem to have translated that song specifically out of what I call "artists' compassion", where someone can't help directly but perhaps they can at least shed light on a positive path or way of overcoming, or at least coping, with the issue.
On that same vein, they are some interesting things which deal with serious things like dropouts and also "exceeding age/expectations" for intelligence or awareness... but in a superficially entertaining way.
I guess this is what Manly P. Hall calls "useful entertainment".
Serial Experiments Lain, for example, deals with someone who is more introverted/intelligent, and also, dealing with the suicide of one of her peers. It is a modern take on Ishtar's journey to the underworld in grief, and subsequent resurrection with a jewel.
Although, I never thought of it that way, as I only read that myth years later... but I did appreciate that they dealt with serious issues.
C:The Money of Soul and Possibility Control speaks of the effect of unbalanced economies (fractional reserve banking, uneven access to venture capital as bubble cash not backed by value to society, and stock speculation) on the future and present of human development.
Yet, C presents it largely as a game within an animated world. I think, also, their budget was cut (ironically), so the story feels a bit rushed at the end and such, but perhaps if that was the case, it shows the contrast between the support for useful entertainment and distracting entertainment.
I, myself, straddle both the dropout coastal cliff and academic sea, but that is a long story... I tried to drop out of school at age 8, but in that one day I realized that I needed to express myself "better", but better became "more subtly and vision-based, strategic, from an over-looking view" rather than just becoming more assertive or expressive; because the inertia of the current system makes people want to enforce it with proclaiming their victim-hood rather than change it.
Not everyone, of course... but the obsequious nature of the groups that I "grew up" with disgusted me to no end, and even in fringe groups I don't feel comfortable because they "should" be more brave.
They are people working on reforming the local educational system, from within and I do some tutorial work with adults mostly, but I think that in aggregate, it isn't yet enough... to say nothing of the wider world, like the "war on play" that is going on, and worse of all, it is well-intentioned, so an even faster way to hell-on-earth.
Ultimately, I am hopeful and actively working to change it, but the deeper I get, the more concerned I am that a gentle correction might be needed "at the top", although that "top" may not be the figureheads, but rather, skulkers who don't appear directly accessible.