the third wave

[garyb]

the third wave

[next to nothing]

nice story. lacking some essentiall bits though. wheres the bad guy? where's the turnover?
i give it a weak 3/10.

[kensuguro]

reminds me of the stanford prison thing. Actually, what surprised me was how good the teacher was in coming up with ways to implement these principles. He definitely must have thought about this before... anyway, it's a little scary to think he even made some of the conscious choices he made, even considering the momentum of the situation. Bottom line is, somewhere in his heart, he may have been looking to do something like this. It's not every day someone comes up with such ideas, and executes it so well.

[garyb]

It's not every day someone comes up with such ideas, and executes it so well.

yes it is.

humans are well studied. their behavior can usually be predicted. what is P.R.?


man, that monkey is STILL awesome....

[kensuguro]

well, I meant I was surprised a typical teacher came up with these efficient ways to create this phenomenon. These things aren't easy to pull off. It's not easy for a normal person to plan these things out, and especially to execute it well. Like he needs to be able to make convincing public performances, create a public "face", etc.. stuff like that takes talent and thought.

Perhaps this experiment proves just that. It may have shown that this teacher, had hidden talents to lead and move a large group of people. In a way, the power is instilled with structure in this case, but still, it takes a heck of a performance to get your point across to a bunch of teens... and even the faculty. I can easily imagine this "experiment" being a big flop, if the teacher didn't have these skills.

[Tau]

This as a very interesting read... Thanks Gary. I agree with Ken that the most disturbing "character" is the teacher, who seems way too well prepared for such a spontaneous experiment. I was surprised to read all of this took place in just one week...

[garyb]

well, the technique is well understood by those who study such things. anyone who really wished to learn the technique can. the info is in the public library here in the USA anyway. in fact Hitler learned his program of eugenics here. Ken's mention of the Stanford Prison Project is a good example of how these things are part of our everyday lives and yet are invisible to us.

i'm not sure that the story is non fiction, although the process described is non fiction. this is exactly how the 3rd reich was sold to good people, through the children. the techniques were old before the Nazis used them. the Rhodes and Milner groups wrote of them as did the Galtons and even Plato. currently, similar processes are the basis of most of the educational systems. some more and some less blatant. the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights even says that our right to education IS the RIGHT the have the dictator's policy(in this case the UN) stamped into us via education, and that this is a PRIMARY purpose of education when they say(in the Uni Dec) that education "shall(my emphasis) further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace". without such techniques, how can this be done?


the fact that we are such social creatures is both the blessing and bane of humanity's existance.
there's not much actual thinking going on....

[Tau]

Man, there's so much to get out of this text, fiction or not... The tendency of the human beings, individually, or in groups, to accept authority, and transfer responsibility to unknown others is quite dangerous. It reminds me of the magnetic tape: if in presence of a strong enough magnetic field, the particles in the tape all align to a predefined pattern. Then, after being presented to another magnetic field, they are imposed with another pattern, which they store until another magnetic disturbance occurs. You can, of course, control both processes, in order to erase and record your music on that tape. In a way, all this reminds me a little bit of that, but there's way too much to talk about in here to keep to a short post...

It seems that education is a big problem these days, and there are two main causes I can think of: one, education follows follows the above paradigm too much - formating is a better term for it; and two - what is being taught as the foundations of thinking, as the basis of knowledge to our future generation is completely deformed by the present state of greed and financial competition that has come to our planet. Corporate education, on a need-to-know basis, good for robots.

But that all starts early: kids are grouped by age, independently of development and interests. Everyone is denied the presence of nature, plants and animals, the natural world of sunsets and stars is more and more veiled. "Education" follows economical interests. It's sad to see governments designing programs to un-educate their people, and castrate creativity. They are creating problems so that in the future, nobody will remember true and simple things. And the Sun will revolve around the Earth again.

PLease excuse my ranting. Let me bring in some thoughts from a portuguese thinker from the 20th century, called Agostinho da Silva. He used to say that forcing kids to learn how to read and write just because they are a certain age was too violent. Kids should be taught "on demand", that is, they should be allowed to learn about what they want to learn, and society should provide the teachers for those demands- whatever those were. When eventually the time comes to learn how to read and count, the child will ask for it. I read about an experiment in a primary school in western europe (can't remember where) that was exactly like this. The kids would go in, and the teacher would ask "What would you like to learn about today?"

Happy thoughts!

We need them for a better Earth!

T

[garyb]

Tau, i agree with this in principle, but i don't think that kids should have the entire choice. kids don't have enough experience to make all the decisions for themselves.

also, sometimes one must be violent for the childrens' sake. once again, kids' experience level is too low. the adults have a responsibility to guide the young ones based on experience. the problem with this is that if the adults were miseducated, if they were only indoctrinated instead, they will pass the same along to the children....

[Tau]

Yup, I agree on both statements. There always has to be a balance, but the key here is that each student was more involved with the learning. This was with kids around 6-7 years old, and they were in school, so that was not a complete option . I also believe that this actual experiment happened on a rural area, and I'm pretty sure the philosopher was also counting on the presence of mother nature as a stimulus and teacher. I mean, if you never see a real live chicken in your life...

But it's not just the sterility of the environments, it's the whole thing that everything must be kept secret, or else people will panic, or the enemies will find out, or we will lose money, etc, etc, etc.

Everything is Top Secret. All they can teach in schools (well, public ones) are old theories, quantised and dissected to be rendered mechanical and useless, probably unrelated to any sort of business really going on now. Progress is haltered, revolutions are frowned upon. Cures for diseases held up until the uneffective drugs pay up. You cannot research unless backed by a corporation, you cannot speak out freely about your own representatives, freaky science is being built all over the earth so that it fits the hoax... We have to bend our intelligence to their story. Everybody hush! No disturbing the play!

"We have no comments on that issue, thank you."

Until there is a radical shift in the whole paradigm of human civilization, we are in a sort of "gap". We know this state of things won't last, and everybody's (well, not everybody) calling out for a catastrophe, a wipeout. Now, in the meantime, what are we going to teach our kids? That man landed on the moon in 1969? or maybe, how to use a computer to surf the internet, "I hear you can find everything there..."

[kensuguro]

Well, in terms of freedom in schools, kids don't get to choose what they study, as much as have the freedom to act and do whatever they want. Of course, this is more extreme in the US, but Japan is following suite. It sounds cool in principle, but obviously brings horrible consequences.

The kids are encouraged to be themselves, express themselves, etc. That's the okay part. But it's a seed for out of proportion individualism, the loss of social cohesion, or as the "teacher" put very well, a sense of "community". Community, the group type thinking is usually tied negatively to words like "corporate", "rat race", "no identity" and forgotten that it's also integral to "team". Which obviously people engulfed in individualistic thinking, personal choices, always "being in control" is not very good at. Once that gets out of proportion, the sense of belonging and the understanding of the outer system (society) becomes so weak, that it assists in acting completely disruptively. Japan's class rooms are quickly loosing that sense of community, with class riots, teachers getting stabbed, etc.. It's a pity since "wa", or "harmony" is the spirit of Japan.

I don't think certain level of repression of this sort of stuff is a bad thing. Even a rigid community structure like the teacher created might be a good thing. Think military, boy scouts, girl scouts, after school sports... it's quite similar in the way that they have a rigid structure of power and command. So, those things definitely help impose a schema for following societal norms.

It's always a trade off I think. You teach 'em to stay in the box, and you get safe but conservative people. You let them free, and you get good people that think out of the box, but also get a bunch of bad people that are completely detached from society.

[garyb]

the question is, who is in charge of setting the agenda?
or
whose agenda is implimented?

dicipline and order are good, but not to the point that reality is lost, people are scapegoated or a that malevolent idea or force sets the table as the example of the Third Reich illustrates...the techniques in the story are the EXACT techniques used to make the Thrid Reich a reality. i think that's the point, to explain how such a thing happens.

[Tau]

once again, i agree with you both.

ken: the author of the text seems to imply that, through discipline, learning is enhanced. sense of community is also increased, as well as interdependence and solidarity. but the problem is: what exactly was learned? what was taught? Just a bunch of rules, and a subtle reorientation of the world's order to those people. And the students united, but against "others", not against the "enemies of knowledge", or the "enemies of freedom".

rules and dictations are more easily learned, followed and obeyed if accompanied by the corresponding "receptive" (subdued) position. this way, the "program" emanated is more easily received. but these are techniques, like mental projection, or telepathy, or mind-messing. to call this education is a misconception. it should be part of the education, but never the whole of it.

the no-discipline approach that is now so in vogue in the west is also just plain wrong. It simply substitutes the dictator with television. I don't advocate that either.

Discipline should be exercised with love, especially at a young age. Therefore it is necessary to pay a lot of attention to each individual's growth and development, needs and interests. If you send a child to school at the age of 6 to learn, it's only fair to ask him/her what he would like to learn about first.

But the key thing here is that soon the lies will be so many, that we won't know what to teach our kids.To dictate, you need a program, an agenda. What is your governments agenda? What is the current state of the art in science? What are they planning for the next generations?

if we have the fortune of watching children grow up with nature near by, they are the ones that will point our attention to what matters. If we don't distract them with our delusions or stuff them with things they do not need to learn.

In the experiment, the teacher had a really hard time learning about all the things the kids were asking in order to teach them. But that was commitment!

T


edit: i have no problem with community, or team work. it is beautiful and powerful. it's the motivations behind team work that may not be the best possible ones. Usually people compete against other groups of people or other interests, or menaces. It's good for progress, but it's also why we're being kept in a state of permanent war/unsafety - so we don't go relaxing too much and forget our duties... to the lords If we had peace, we could unite in teams against boredom, domination, disease, ignorance etc... since we are, in all practical terms, in a state of war, education reflects that. The people are being taught to know nothing. to take tv as the world and forget about reality.

[Cochise]

Nice tale.
Full of starting points for many reflections.

Somehow kind of mind food I'd forgotten to need.

I never liked teachers a lot, though; as well as I really dislike manipulation, even if it's for educational purpose only.

[Cochise]

I'm not sure the experiment was helpful for the pupils in order to make them recognize the boundaries between discipline and blind discipline. Most likely it gave them the idea of discipline associated with something bad.
Though, I've read the tale late in the night, and of course I was tired.
I will read it again.

[Shroomz~>]

If their parents took some time to talk to them they understand it or forget it and do what their parents told them.

This point doesn't mean much at all when most of the world's parents over 60 don't have a clue what's going on & don't really care in most cases.

[braincell]

Interesting that for the first time in history in the United States there are more single childless adults than adults with children yet we still give tax breaks for children even though they are eating up our resources. It's not like we don't have enough people like in Japan. With the cost of fuel the way it is we would be wise to pay people not to have children. I hope voters wake up soon. Why do people reproduce? Ironically, the people with the least money have the most children. Most of my married friends are divorced and with children. It's a lot of pain for the children and the adults. Why go through all that?

[garyb]

Interesting that for the first time in history in the United States there are more single childless adults than adults with children yet we still give tax breaks for children even though they are eating up our resources. It's not like we don't have enough people like in Japan. With the cost of fuel the way it is we would be wise to pay people not to have children. I hope voters wake up soon. Why do people reproduce? Ironically, the people with the least money have the most children.

stop hating humanity, please.

what you just wrote is exactly what you overlords Bush, McCain, Obama, Clinton, Gates, Rockefellor, Carter and others condone, straight-up Eugenics. a person's value is not measurable in dollars.

Margaret Sanger was a well-known Eugenicist. Adolph Hitler was very impressed by the "social" work done by Eugenicists in the USA when he visited and, as he wrote in "Mein Kampf", his ideas that became the foundation of the Third Reich were formed by association with those Anglo-American Eugenicists.

[braincell]

Too many people in the world, dragging down the economy everywhere.
Passing your genes down is a very ego-centric thing to do. We don't have natural predators like other animals do. I'm all for educating people but if they have 10 children and I have to put them all through school when I have none. It doesn't seem fair. I will pay for 2 children that is it. Then they should be burdened with the rest not me. No more free unlimited children. You want children, you pay for them.

[garyb]

there are NOT too many people in the world.

self loathing is the worst, most disgusting form of hate.