Posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2018, at 19:42:23
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on July 6, 2018, at 19:55:37
I found some of the ideas interesting, thanks for posting it.
I am wary of statistics. The more I learn about statistics the warier of them I come to be.
Data collection. Data storage. Data security. And then the particular statistical tests that are run on the data. And then the results that are shared (often words only and not the actual test that was run and the numbers that came out). The purpose of the data we hear about (the data analysis or commentary that we hear about) has an agenda... Either way...
I guess, at the end of the day, despite very attempt to confuse up the language and tower of Babbel the issue... It comes down to the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. And people see that their children grow up to have significantly less than they had growing up and less than they had as adults, too. It seems undeniable that that is the case for more and more people... You don't have to travel very far in the world from wherever you are locally placed and see with your very own eyes that people really aren't doing so well...
The stats are dodgey about how many people there actually are in the world, too. But that number keeps growing and growing and growing and growing and growing...
A basic economic assumption seems to be that there are a finite amount of resources that people fight over and there are winners and there are losers. There are losers. There is this idea that you get to be a winner by being smarter than everyone else and working harder than everyone else... That that is what things are about.
And most people jump into that game. Because you have to choose sides: Will you have or will you have not?
And then people from both sides become sucked into that ideology, somehow...
And everybody feels like they hvae everything to lose by things being different.
The whole money thing...
I mean...
Some people go where they please and take what they please. Other people do not.
But I'm wary of this, too.
Marketing...
I mean... People *want to believe* life it like that for some (want to aspire to it). Might snap and snarl that they aren't doign so well temporarily -- but would gladly inflict on others everything that was inflicted on themselves.
There used to be this 'blame the victim' mentality. I thought society had moved beyond that. But I now see it's back full force in government policy and so on. It is apparently common knowledge that victims most likely go on to offend against others. So identifying people as victims is one and the same as idenfitying people as future offenders. There was this thing in NZ a little while back with this study that wanted to identify future victims (you know the idea 'are your parents Maaori? (Yes means there is a statistical association, you see the 'burden of being Maaori', or similar) are your parents on welfare?...) They wanted to tag 'vulnerable children' and track them to, you know, see what happened. Because, you know, people can do whole degrees in these sorts of things...
It was stopped... But of course it wasn't really. It's being done all the time. I suspect that's what's mostly gone wrong with my life in this country. I've been tagged as a have not because of my Mother...
At teh end of the day... The pieces of paper and the numbers written on them...
Actual physical material concrete stuff. Who gets what, where, when... Boom bust cycles 'it's only temporary'. The idea of some people getting into deep dept (so the 'have' is only temporary). Others... It's all they've ever known...
I still worry about the marketing...
I genuinely believe that there are a small group of people with genuine morality. There is something Pascal's wager about this. You have to live your life as though there were and being the change you want to see because the alternative (not living that way and then being dismissed by those people as being one of the psychopathic majority) would be the worst possible outcome.
Most people have brought into the ideal of a few people doing what they want when they want because they want... Whether they have or have not... The're as bad as each other really (either are ruinign things for us all - or would do so if they had opportunity).
I don't know.
I just keep coming back to 'marketing, really'.
____
I went to this talk a while back on something something in Japan. A Russian leader person visited and there was an attempted assasination. The leader person wanted to leave - but the Japanese leader people were all apologetic and there was...
A public outpouring of grief. There was some emotion... Some ideology... And this idea of falling on your sword because of shame - not because of your own actions, but because of the actions of another. Anyway, this lady fell on a sword and there was a letter found that she wrote explaining how she had fallen on her sword out of grief about the attempted assassination - that's how badly she felt about the whole thing...
And the talk was about her as something of a national hero. Because the whole display... Well... It sort of made it... Uh... Socially inappropriate, or something, for the Russian to cut the tour of Japan short. The idea was that it must have been some isolated guy who tried to assasinate him, rather than the assassination being more organisationally motivated, you see.
Anyway...
I got to thinking about it. And about how convenient that emotion / social strategy was in the situation.
An invading army was traditionally motivated by the spoils of war. By raping the women, particularly. If you could convince a potentially invading army that the women would fall on their swords (disembowel themselves out of shame) then that would help demotivate the invasion...
And I got to thinking whether she was a national hero or a national matyr. A national... Scapegoat. Whether the whole thing had been staged by the national military, even.
It was all awfully... COnvenient. You see.
I think a lot about how 'good' marketing is for things like supermarkets. I mean... It is pretty freaking amazing. I mean supermarkets are all 'progressive food enterprises' monopoly over here, these days, I think. Our people's lives are prematurely shortned by diseases of malnutrition. I mean obesity. I mean obesity resulting from malnutrition. We are a primary producer of food for England, traditionally. Also for large cities in the USA, Australia, and (increasingly) Hong Kong. Anybody curious at all about what food is available on the shelves / how that food is marketed to citizens of a country that is largely about teh primary production of food for foreign markets? Anybody curious about how much dairy content there actually is in any of the items like ice-cream or yoghurt or cheese or even butter (mostly salt) or even milk? In a country that is largely devoted to producing it for foreign markets - I mean.
I just walk around teh supermarket and am very much aware of the securtiy cameras tracking eye gaze and product placement and so on and so forth.... One rule 'house wins'.
Anyway... All these marketing techniques to make people happy with the fact that basic items like milk and butter and cheese and meat and so on are not for us... Potato weevels, even.
Apparently the Irish potato famine led to the population decreasing in number. I heard it is the only population to have decreased in number, so. I mean, I heard that the population of Ireland today is still pre-famine number.
I think the biggest lie we're sold is that we need to keep breeding more and more and more and more gamma babies as the solution to everything.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1099420
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20140225/msgs/1099503.html