What Sticks Are For

Thanks for the link, siliconshaman.

That webcomic is funny, but I had never seen it before!

Wordsmith-Sensei, thanks for the first link and commentary.

Will rant sooner or later about it.

Will go RTF...Article.

"Boys with Sticks" was a great article, thanks for sharing.

My rant was going to be about tools in general, and how the more useful, complex tools are less common than they were even half a generation ago. I had in mind "planned obsolescence" as one major culprit, and how it turned entire cities into ghost towns as customers moved to those who planned further than five years ahead.

"The only place that can manufacture anything nowadays is China," is how some people speak of it in disgust, but it may be worse than that, because factories retool quicker in China as well, there may not be a general plan to make anything last much longer than it takes to get paid for selling it, or 90 days to 18 months depending on the sector.

The comments on the article made me think of something else, though: how can people create a space for multi-role individuals?

The military, from a superficial view, has only one role, but from even a casual glance, lots of people learned non-military skills which benefited themselves and thus society. It would vary with place and era, I hear the "golden era" of the military-educational path is long over the U.S., from someone who went through it and got several doctorates (I think, "only" three), but moving from military to industry was more a matter of creating a place that couldn't be found otherwise, I think.

Sticks, and weapons in general, have their place. Even the "Lord of War" said: "I'd rather my guns fire and miss, once they fire." (since he sold the bullets as well). I do think that some weapons, like land mines, maybe shouldn't be manufactured in the first place, as they cause more damage to civilians, long after the fact, than anyone else.

To get back to the point, if I can remember it... tools which are too expensive by orders of magnitude, than the market can bear... planning to replace something only because it was old, not because it is broken in design, are all some of the consequences of the paranoia of some conglomerates who were afraid of competition.

Over time, it created a different breed of business, although I think this evolution of business and ethics, esp. of businesses based on generating not just financial profits, but social prosperity, is something which has been constrained by narrow-minded entities for at least the last several decades, in general.

In the worse case, making effective tools to prosper humanity becomes impossible.

I haven't researched to what degree this is a major problem, but I get the sense that progress is stagnant or regressive, in the general case, because of a general drive to make people conform to types, all of whom work in factories, none of which will exist in five years. (Something better might exist, it depends on whether the firm reforms or falls under the sword of a transient CEO who moves onto the next thing after cooking the books with his sharp object, an expert Certified Accountant).

In Japan, thus, I was very happy to see Shinto-Buddhist well-maintained shrines bordered by skyscrapers and shops selling PlayStation gear, and although the culture has a reputation for being insular, I found it open and friendly, because I am myself, friendly.... try getting venture capital without being from Standford, sometime, and you'll see what an insular culture really is.

So sticks are good, and I think complex tools are even better... I wish they were more of the real, fun, complex tools, at a cost-effective price, meaning... time to learn them, and access to marketplaces to fund getting more of them and gauge quality more objectively. It is a solved problem from some people, but only if they have the right superficial type and sub-geographical location.

Not so much for me, although lower cost Mindstorms and Tecnhics would be great, but for people who have no choice but to develop based on toys, many of the things I learned on don't have widespread equivalents nowadays.

About super-powers, yes, that is an awesome one we all have... humankind has human kindness.

Thanks again, made me smile!

The Play Deficiency of Schools
(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/

I didn't realize it was that serious, it is indeed subtle.

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.

I generally think the school system should be limited to two hours a day or less of indoctrination.

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.

>>
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.