Peter Pan Advice

          That I would be labeled as suffering from a peter pan complex I'd imagine would come as little surprise to anyone who has taken a passing glance at my blog, or met me.  Much of the time the same folks that would say I have never grown up often also bitch about me pointing out logical fallacies in their decision making process. Our cultural ideas of adulthood, and the expected path for development are in my opinion not just flawed, but counter productive to my development as not a human, who knows how long I'll be one. It's my development as a whole being, of the mind learning to be master of emotional, and physical being.  Not devoid of emotional content, or physical desires, this only leads to repression, and usually uncontrolled outbursts.  The ability to think clearly becomes clouded as another energy center takes over for the duration.  What is mature, or adult, who decided on the ideals?
         Rites of Passage might be developmentally some of the most important events a self aware being can experience.  Being acknowledged by the public as having transitioned from one group to another, or one phase of life to another.  Cultures through out recorded history have used these ceremonial events. They mark the death, and rebirth a phoenix moment in an individuals life. It actually causes a person to think of themselves differently, as well as be viewed by the wider world differently.  Most of what we think of as reality, is a mental overlay, it is and is not real.  Most of the systems of human centered survival, are high levels of energetic organization. Meaning they would suffer greatly from effects of entropy if not tended.  From ideas of community, to finance, education, governance, the list is almost endless. I'm not saying these are not real, I'm saying we made them up, their reality relies on our acceptance of them as meaningful, and applicable.  These ceremonial events filled with ritual, and formal meaning mark an acceptance of the veracity of these institutions, and the ideas they hold.  These would be fine if the patterning, the indoctrination they presented was reflective of greater reality, for me that answer has been no. Only that what these do is not teach, it's indoctrinate into a system that for me holds very little value.  Before I get bogged down in the pitfalls of the US, the effect of the ceremony itself is what I am getting at.  What we think of as self, our idea of ego identification is altered in dramatic ways by participation in these events.  In altering the way the individual, and greater reality labels the individual. After a certain point in the system an individual must set aside their own ideas, and thoughts to represent the ideas held by the established order. This is mind control, or shaping, mentoring, the differences being of method, and intention. With each ceremony the individual is invested a bit more into the system that offered the accolade, it creates ready defenders regardless of the logic of the position held. This is an amazing strategy, it co-ops opposition, as well as shuts down rational thought or dialog. It is the same one used often by royalty in taking control by making nobles of another country to invested to oppose. Creating defenders out what would normally be adversaries.
        Take a moment, and watch the movie hook, even peter pan was lured by playing pirate, and only by becoming peter pan once again was able to save what really mattered, the children. Not just his, but the lost boys too. It's never to late to become a kid again!

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Trying a Different Approach

I am a slacker, my life is a cautionary tale, not something to aspire to or emulate.  Do not misconstrue that the I in me would wish to be any other than me.  Only that the emotional, and psychological traumas I needed to inflict upon myself to become as I am, are not anything I would wish upon anyone.  In searching answers to those ultimate questions I pulled an icarus. Not once, or even twice, nah I'm not that bright.  I had to push it till it cost me my top teeth, and partially my bottom ones, still getting over that one.  People have talked about genetic, cellular and other types of memory.  Now we are even to the point of beginning to grapple with ideas of moving without moving.  It's possible, without a doubt, it's not even that difficult when you've grasped for inkling of our true position in creation, and it fried you back into your place.  We can make black holes, we can warp space and time, we end up in the formless abyss, and no one but our dead mourns our passing.  I love people, I love the planet, all life can snuff out in our little corner of existence, and there might be some metaphorical tears shed on what ever plane of existence you and yours hail from.
Do we really have the right to take chances with the planet, solar system, galaxy, or on and on?
some folks seem to be interested in how I see things, some are offended, I'm ok with that too.  I know what I like, I feel what I need, I feel what the people around me need, using people loosely.
If we meet and you think you would like to chat, I'm happy to do so, if I offend, just tell me to please stop, and go away, and I will.  What I can not abide is total trickery, and dishonesty, I'm to good at it, and it hurts me to much to inflict those kinds injuries on myself.
I'll try to do a better job with some pix, and the like at showing kind of how I see this world, and why sometimes it makes me cry when others are so happy!  btw, if there is any confusion, I an hetrosexual male, that is so in love with women that they are my kryptonite.  it's pretty much the same with everyone, but we all get to pick where, and what we eat right?
Never been suicidal, not that I feel people do not have to right to decide the fate of what can be in this experience the only thing they can ever hope to claim ownership over, which is really just stewardship, we have horribly misunderstood, like so much of our K based systems, in such a rush to get somewhere.  They forgot that Wisdom, knows when, and where to apply knowledge, and thats why Wikipedia, has a capital W. No it's just that what is point of suicide in a zero sum universe. what comes in goes out, it's hotel california, we either come to grips, or we just keep blowing bubbles.

Much Love
Jack

there was a song from when I was teenage drunken drop out in the punker days

If some of your brightest kids are seemingly like the metaphors in this song, you might wanna take a look in the mirror before asking how things got this bad.  I was almost a perfect reflection of a child raised for the most part by the stuff around me, mostly tv, music, games, starting as early as I can remember.  I was never mommies monster at all, just a reflection of the monsters so many of us have become.
gonna try to finish up some e-mails, change get outside, and upload some pictures to instagram, in case anyone is curious what I'm about today.

Is Love The Real Cult of Personality?

Through out this really messed up journey, that I'm told humans call life, I say that not as slight to the word, it's all the baggage.  Even through how cross wired I alway seem to be atm, I think thats the blessing and the curse I guess.  When you step off the matrix grid, and step back on it in bare feet.  We are all so busy everyday running around looking for the next thrill, the next greatest thing. Some bit of fluff, and we only like our medicines sugar coated, and hell I like that stuff too.  I just do not like the feeling I have clean up after folks all the time.  Cuz these arn't my Kids.  What do you do when you find the perfect child care, and you realize it so soon, that everyone wants this person to have children of their own and raise them.  That is a trend through out my Life, everyone wanted me to be the father of their children.  When I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm making most of it up as a long just attempting to keep some measure of personal sanity while everyone around me has their own ideas on what I should or should not be doing.  I have never desired to bring any children into this world because I love children.  The world I was being presented with was both amazing, and terrifying, I was on the whirlwind tour, and I'm not sure when it started.  There is an old story my mother told me, about when I was only 2 or so she says, I don't remember much anyway.
Anywhoo, It was something about walking in on my grandpa jack garvin alot the memories surrounding times I spent with him are kinda hazy, that kinda protective scary.  As if you personally always feel ok around a person, though you know they are dangerous to others.  Mom tells me that she walked in on me taking apart a tv set, with my gjg, and when they walked in it was so shocking that it was like spell being broken.  There is something occurs when falling in love with another person, and I'm talking sexual desire, though it's often confused as such.  Love is just where you see yourself reflected in another. That complete desire to be connected, sets up a link, bidirectional communication of a sort.  This is all well and good, and everyone likes to play and swap energy, cuz of course how could there ever be anything other than just energy right?  People seem to think I'm some kinda super genius or some crap, wtf is that, IQ has nothing to do with numbers. And this is a free magic lesson, you can take it or leave it, as everyone has been trying to tell me. The ball is in my court. Only no one seems to be completely open and honest with me, and I'm begining to get the gist.
Love is the ultimate cult of personality, what else can draw some into some 1 else so completely that worlds are born and torn apart so quickly and dramatically that no one even notices, hardly even the people that were there.  The messed up thing about my life is, all I wanted to ever do was play, when really it was never about play at all.  It was the passion, the fire that is the real world, with the scrapes and bruise, they heal and mend given enough time, and according to my sources thats just a trick of relative motions, My life journey thus far, I have an inkling it's just about to get going into a completely other direction again.  Has been not just about learning about life and death, those are not all that important, as much as they are crushing and liberating when turn to personal abundance, and loss.  It's all the good gooy center sweet sticky stuff we are missing, SHWAG is just an acronym for shit we all get right?  I was always about substance, it was about how expensive the restaurant, or home I lived in was.  Personally a little sanctuary where I can find a bit of solitude, when I grate upon my friends.  There has been a running theme in my life, I was always playing monkey in the middle for everyone group I got shoved into, is some vain glorious attempt to make everything ok. Take away the muck and mire of the real world they inhabited. How can that possibly be my responsibility,
I am the same person that dropped out of high school, not once but twice.  Than dropped out of College. Got a position of working from home at 18, mind you this was maybe 1988 or so. It was to figure out what portion of a companies electric consumption was able to be considered taxable in the state of NY. At the time I didn't think much of it, come on, I was lounging at home punching numbers into spread sheets, from lotus 123, and I believe it was microsoft though it might have been word perfect. It was great I believe it was like 10 or 15 an hour or so, and they gave me an estimated time they expected it to take, 8 to 10 hours or so per report.  It was work, I was plowing through crap like crazy, it's just what I do. As began to get a clearer image of what they were doing, I realized it was all disordered, they had no organizational skills what so ever.  They were duplicating work all over, and expecting me to do the same.  I streamed lined the process to about 3 or 4 hours per report.  This of course sets up the dilemma. They are expecting them to take much longer, and I admit I was tempted to just over bill, and be done.  I didn't choose that path, instead I went and told them exactly what I had set up, which they said they were really happy with, only now they did not me anymore. Thank you good bye.  I wonder how long they used my system that set up for them, to save them precious time in their lives to actually enjoy the retard abundance they were surrounded with already to over flowing, and I get sent off with a thanks bye.  There was a sense of feeling cheated, or not quite cheated, as technically they followed the letters of the law.  But arn't letters all equal to numbers, and if there are only 9 of those, and they all are infinite unto themselves, arn't we just left with a 1, and the void. cuz the 0 is not the void, though often mistaken for it.  The void is more of sweet dissolution, of stillness an expansion or contraction of perception that allows one take a break from all the stress and pushing and pulling of a binary world, and 0 is just a place holder, a cipher, a riddle and key, it's just another symbol on some twist path to madness and for perhaps a select few reemergence into sanity, From the crazy overlay of artificial reality, by the projections of the mind.
We got ingressed from the computer, and tv screens, we flashed it right into our brains, and then we get plucked, spindled and mutilated while some unseen hands happen by and grab a little nugget from remains.  This is such an place, Cuz I was the one that remembered my original love of machines, cuz I was a real boy all the time. and so is binary, cuz 0 is just place holder, it doesn't mean anything. it's just gibberish, and what do you get when you take the voids away 111111111111111 which is always yes. you only need to understand completely ridiculous nature of programing languages, I never was a hacker, though I've heard stories of things I've done, they were plucked from my mind, and wiped away.  It was never about attempting to take anything for me, I always knew it didn't mean anything real. I was in the real world already. I was just playing with the toys I was given in the manor I found entertaining at the time. Hacking has nothing to do with computers, but it makes for a sweet framework.

I'm not sure I was ever any of those kids here, it's like a twisted lost fragment from someone else.

make up your own mind, and be nicer to each other, everyone likes to play, just not the same games.
Domination is for sure not kindness ever, cuz how can there be choice offered unless you trick it in, kinda like the randomness factor in the digital verse. it's not real. thats only a sweet sticky syrup, to gives us an excuse for choices we regret in the rear view mirror.  That to me is sad way to go about this, and I'd rather have a little honest quiet discussion like someone around us has got any sense.

make up your mind, I make up mine, thats choice, not push, or pull, poke prod or what have you.
Life isn't a sprint if it is it's already over with, the thing about a singularity, is once it's popped it's gone and going on forever. But none of us like that idea, some somewhere somewhen, some whatever it is, figured it out for us, it's called creation and equalization of pressure differentials. Once understood those can be harnessed in a crazy amount of ways.  Ever take a look or stop a min to think what a wifi card is?  how it works? and how the energy is all around us already it's in the wifi hot spots, step in a cloud and it just pours in, if you connect to the appropriate contact points that would normally plug it into an internal wifi laptop. I'd imagine similar functions could be worked around blue tooth devices.

Be kind, and gentle, and if that still isn't working walk away. there is always more void

Jack

Do You Have What It Takes!!!! A Love Letter to Humanity

     Humanity vrs Death

This has been the age old question, to conquer the end.  We all face it, we all find our own answers, and we think we have it all figured out.  When your world is black and white, or written in binary this might satisfy.  Like everything else we are, this is just a holdover from previous developmental cycles.  These go back not to when we had words for me to write this down, but back to primordial ooze of single celled organisms.  The universe or God, or as it's coalescing into my essence as panversal is in and of itself conscious, it is structured energy, which is what everything is. Information processing.  As every would be sage, poet, musician, blade of grass, and grain of sand has been telling us forever.  This is a love story, this is a passion play, the stories do not even change, they get rebranded, updated, but for at least the last 6 thousand years we have all learned variations of these same stories.  Oh the names change, characters get makeovers, and  costume changes,  But from the Chinese dragon emperor's, to the Dogon's of the Sahara, the Aboriginals of Australia, down the lines it goes, not in one place but in them all.  We came from the stars, that concept has been twisted around to mean so many things to so many people, from the ubermensch of the aldebaran to Pharaonic gods of Egypt, Right on back to the what we are told is our earliest civilizations in Sumer, and I'm not here to today argue that point.  I do not care when, or where, or actually even who.  I'm a big picture person, I do really well at taking a dispassionate stance and getting as wide a view as possible calling it like I see it.  A valuable skill if you can find work for it, most of my friends just say I think to much, and they are sometimes right.  In taking that position expansive view point, the patterns just kinda pop out, like the rivers in this text if you let your eyes unfocus, and just like that, the information you get from the text is not the same, and that view is not even on whole thought of as particularly useful.  The people are interested in the words, not the rivers, so I learned to see the words like everyone else around me did, only they didn't seem to say the same thing to me as to everyone else.  As a matter of fact they said the same as the rivers, and they were almost all saying the same things.  Even when they seemed disjointed, or unrelated the same words were always there.

From the ecstatic altered state inducing dances of the Whirling  Dervishes, or Tantric sex practices, Yoga, and Breathing techniques, in joyous upliftment of the celebration of life.  On down into the depths of despair, and  tragedy, and depravity.  They all contain at there core I am alive, I am here, shouting into the darkness, longing for or hoping against that return response.  I'm here I see you! This is the most wonderfully terrifying moment for all of us, and in our polarized, 2 dimensional world view of dark versus light we have left room for only 2 options.  Some say it's love/hate, some fight/flight, it doesn't matter what the choices are labeled as, the important part is the limiting of choice.  It's the offer of false simplicity, and simple is easy, and comforting, even at it's worst it's at least predictable. I mean if I only have 2 choices, there is always a 50% chance I'm right.  This is very useful in long term evolution of life. Kill or be killed is valid for much of what we think of as life. The response of nature is always the same, no matter the method used to carry it out, the answer for nature is always, I want to survive.  The fox is in hen house to eat to survive, and we made it nice lunch box, and then killed it when it came to collect the meals we so kindly laid out for it.  We penned in the range animals, and kept all the goodness of their flesh to ourselves. We killed the wolves not because they ate people, like dogs around the food bowl we chased off our rivals.  This existential crisis of just the struggle to survive molded us and shaped us into the most successful predator on the planet bar none.  That being on the top of the food chain looking down on all the lesser species is pretty nice spot, it's good to be the king no doubt.  Being at the top, and staying at the top are not the same, and getting to top means your not what you were when you started.  We celebrate our predatory nature everywhere, from world wars to gold diggers, from pirates to emperors.  The monuments to our depravity know no bounds, from triumphal arches to tombs we proclaim our divine heritage of immortality.  All in the confused attempt to be remembered, to live on, to proclaim our own mastery over all we survey.  This is where our delusions of grandeur really kick in,  We start to believe our own hype, and our success translates into leisure time as we have come to call it.  This is the true mark of a successful predator, how little time they spend on survival. For those fortunate few at the top of the food chain, it's everywhere, this new found leisure time allows for reflection.  Not just to plan the next meal, but more abstract, things not so immediate in the world currently inhabited find the space to become known.  A shift starts to occur, to manage your food, because lets face it, your not as young as you were last year, and well how many times can you chase a rabbit till the thrill gets old.  So we take the tasty stuff, and shape it, bend it to our will, protect it from those who would take it, you know normal human stuff.  At this point we already won, we have no natural predator to contend with, nothing to keep our expansion in check.  As predators though we are ever vigilant, lest some scavenger steal our kill, if we lack a predator we make one up, when we run out decent prey, we move on looking for new places to hunt.  With nothing else left to do we even hunt each other, oh we give it all sorts of reasons, but it always come down to the 2 choices we decided were the only ones we have.  We do it because we want what they have, or we are afraid they will take whats ours.  Having nothing else to contend with, having effectively already won the struggle for day to day survival, ensuring our genetic heritage is continued.  We have time to place ourselves in the cosmic fun house, and the picture is as majestic as it horrifying.  This is when we begin to get that glimpse of our next existential crisis. Having conquered death in an immediate fashion, it becomes a personal struggle, the, but what about me's kick in.  We know our blood will be flowing and pumping even if it's through anothers veins, but still it isn't enough.  The I is screaming in terror, what happens to me, I did all this work to get here, and I'm still going to die. After fighting death for so long, we begin a new battle, now we are after time.  How many years can you cling to life becomes the new game, and being predators we play it with gusto.  In the time game anything not you becomes a greater threat the longer it hangs around,  just like an infection setting in, or how food rots, we start to learn with profound shock, if your not living, your dying.  Or a bit more accurately, when you stop growing, you start dying, even closer, if your not expanding your contracting.  This of course is still only a 2 choice idea, it's still locks us into an illusion of choice.  If the battle is life and death, and answer shouted by everything is always life how do we reconcile this dichotomy.  How can we celebrate the victor in the arena when he dripping in the blood, sweat, and feces of his opponent.  How do we tell our children, that it's not ok to hurt others, and when we decide they are no longer children shove a gun in their hand and tell them to kill their neighbor, or be killed.  No death is not our boogeyman any more, we coax, and torture nature to provide not what we need, or even what we reasonably desire.  We squeeze the golden goose till it bleeds gold, till it's lushest oziest parts are dripping down our chin, staining our silk tie, cotton shirt, lizard skin belt, leather pants, and fur trimmed alligator boots till we puke.  We squeeze the last drop, fish the oceans dry, not out of need, for our needs are modest, we do it because we have been offered no other options.  Consume, or be consumed.  Once our opponents are long dusty, and our glory is fading we miss the good old simpler days, those we overcame taking on status in the telling of our own stories.  Yes we carry our demons with us, and with every passing year they become larger, and our deeds in over coming them more heroic.  We Proclaim it to all Money doesn't grow on trees you know, and the giving tree withers it's leaves stripped bear, it's bark yanked free, it's flesh made pulp and reconstituted so we can make some pretty pictures on it, and call it ours.  I don't hate money, money is an idea, and in the realm of ideas I swim with the sharks.  I've been exposed to the trivium, and quadrivium, pi, phi, and even the Harris curve, our newest choice of curves, a new path to follow, a new star before our eyes.  We build our temples to our creators, where babies cries are shunned. We rip our ugly growths from our own flesh, and call it cancer, and deny it's attachment to our emotions.  Oh make no mistake we have damned ourselves for sure, for in our process of becoming, we have to live with what we've done. This is our state of terror, our splash of liquid light, our stairway to heaven, and highway to hell. Dharma, Karma, Sin, our triplets of story, our mistresses of fate.  Weighing our heart against perfection, the living can not pass, for the living sit in judgment, while the dead just watch it pass. The living write the story down, building, destroying, crafting. Deluding themselves all the while, with pretty little dreams, of I can do no harm.  We label ourselves dogs, and wolves, black widows, snakes, bears and list goes on and on, than we wonder why we kill.  Our own sophistication has become our trap de jour, and I'm crazy enough to be handing out peter pan advice. In our marvel of our own magnificence our march to greater contrast, our rush to ever bigger, bolder, badder.  We circle our wagons, lock down the prison, close the bathroom door, all because we can't stand the smell of our own shit.  I've been eating shit my whole life, there is no possible way for me to deny it, I gave my top teeth eating the shit put in front of me, oh it's lies were so sweet.  The numbing of the mind, of the soul, of the heart, that sweet oblivion of nothingness to take away the anguish of being a pimp or ho.  I'm so tired of eating shit for being me, for seeing things I see, I will always chose my truth over your lies, I have to, it's the only way I can live, and die with myself.

Life eats Life, it's all there is, when you make it all one, we end up eating our own shit, you might think me mad, and that is fine we are all mad here, that is not in question.  The question we are asking is can we live with ourselves, for eating ourselves.  Meat is Murder, and it's all sucking off someone elses tit, we all know these things, they are not new or novel. Don't believe me, well take a look at these. shit burger  it doesn't even matter if it's a hoax, or fact, that it's there.  That we have become so pained by where meat comes from that people have even contemplated this rings alarm bells.  If thats not your speed how about this.

    That is adorable little girl is Taylor Momsen, in the Grinch, many of you know here from a tv show she did that I don't recall. Some know now, as the lead singer of The Pretty Reckless.  For much of America she grew up on their tv screens, I missed that part as I was absorbing myself in other worlds to escape the pain of lying in my bed. While I was distracted by the glitter of the lights in the distance, She went from singing 

Fahoo Fores Dahoo Dores
Welcome Christmas Come this way
Fahoo Fores Dahoo Dores
Welcome Christmas, Christmas day
Welcome, welcome fahoo ramus
Welcome, welcome dahoo damus
Christmas day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp

More lyrics http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/dr_seuss/welcome_christmas-lyrics-1146415.html#ixzz3U6AtBZ30

To a lovely young woman who's words I hear on many lips, from many tongues.  Thank you Ms. Momsen, while I do not really do the fan thing, I see you, and your beautiful to me.  This is the price of our denial of nature, this bitter pill is our salvation. In our death spiral of guilt, over all our perceived failures, our pitfalls of loss, we finally give up the ghost. Not because we have to die, because we no longer can take the pain of being alive, and what we have to do to stay that way.

The world devours it's young, Because we like sweets, and babies taste best. It doesn't matter how twisted the appetite. The old say youth is wasted on the young, while the young scream never trust anyone over 30.  The age old struggle, the old lion wants to keep his pride, while the young just wants a piece of tail.  The widow ate her suitor after he dropped of his seed, not from grief hatred or malice, she knows he'll eat the young, cuz it's good to be the king, But not when there can only be one.

I love you all, it's just a matter if you can accept the only love I know how give, cuz its a jagged little pill.

listen to the music, not just the beat, pay attention to the story, it's your soul speaking

Make up your own mind

Jack

aka

panseybard

 

Your Children, Your Choice

               Peter the Pirate

Many of you would most likely see me as suffering from a peter pan complex, and that might be one of the kinder labels tossed in my direction.  While I do not argue the label, there is the inclination to challenge the validity of the mainstream concept of an adult.  Most in making the judgement are not questioning my intelligence, maturity, or understanding.  Often it's quite the opposite, with my analysis, and understanding being valued, and sought.  The seeming disconnect happens from my perspective in large part due to how people define an adult.  So what makes a well adjusted adult human?  Is it being able to conform and fit in, becoming a "successful contributing member of society"?  To a degree this would seem an obvious answer, how could one argue with being a success?  What happens when a culture is sick, is it still the rational choice to become what that culture covets?  This is of course the idea, that being considered sane in an insane society is not a measure of psychological health.  Take a little stroll with me, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find a little bit of the Pan you once were.

                Institutionalized

In the west we are so proud of our institutions, be they educational, financial, religious, the list goes on and on.  We leave off the flip side, prisons, mental hospitals, we do this because in general people have been taught to see the world in terms of polarity.  This of course ignores the fact, these are opposames masquerading as opposites, with the outcome of being institutionalized.

  : to cause (a custom, practice, law, etc.) to become accepted and used by many people : to establish (something) as an institution

: to put (someone, such as a mentally ill person) in an institution

These are connotations of pavlovian conditioning, not education, or child development. Taken to it's extreme the goal of an institution is to become indispensable, and condition those in it to become unable to function without it.  There is ample evidence this has been intentional, of course labeled as conspiracy theory.  Frankly that it has gotten that most dismissive of labels only warrants closer inspection.  Take moment, and look for yourself, Dodd Report, deliberate dumbing down,

or even though I'm leary of Alex Jones. Our much vaunted education system was hijacked long ago to keep a fresh supply of human capital ready for exploitation by the corporate institutions.  We want to believe so badly in basic beneficence of our culture, that we ignore some basic facts.  Entrenched systems of power seek to protect their position. Our leaders are selected from, and by these same institutions.  People say they wish only happiness for their children, or they wish for their child to be the best them they can be. Than they package them off to be institutionalized so they can find their place in society.

              Taking Candy from the Mouths of Babies Mama's

Marketing and Consumerism go hand in glove, like peanut butter, and jelly, and damn have we gotten good at it.  I have no doubt even Edward Bernays would be amazed by the level of sophistication our propaganda has risen to.  I call it propaganda because that is exactly what it is, structuring information to create a desired outcome.  In this case parting someone from some currency in exchange for a product, or service.  As corrupt and shortsighted as this economic model might be on the whole. When directed at children, it might just be a crime against humanity.  An extreme statement to be sure, but one that is not very difficult to back up.  Critical reasoning skills are needed in order to counter the automatic psychological processes exploited by advertisers.  Child development, and psychology experts are employed by organizations who have as their motivation profit. These folks use all their skill and understanding, not to enrich the life of your child.  Nah it's used to know how to make advertising that gets your child to ask for the product in as few as views as possible.  So what you say, my 5 year old does not make the buying decisions in my household.  Only our experts on conditioning have that all worked out as well.  We all have a surrender point, where we will agree to almost anything if only to make something stop.  If you think this is something exploited only in interrogation, just think back to how many times you have caved to repeated pestering by your child.  This is so well understood, even the big media creation outlets, such as disney, or nickelodeon have a nice predictable path set out for your childs idols.  Introducing the faces they will grow up watching, engendering a sense of connection and trust.  Using techniques as having the stars be just older than the audience, exploiting that natural tendency of looking up to those ahead of you.  Transitioning actors with a generation, so as a group ages there is a continuity, and trust is deepened. This is even taken to the point of switching from childrens tv shows to music seemingly just as your teen has seeming grown headphones.  In this obvious industrialized exploitation, and abuse of our young, it's unclear to me what is more disturbing.  That it's happening at all, or that those who are supposed experts on child development, and psychology have raised no moral objections.    

    Judged by Our Hero's

There is a metric often used to understand the health of a culture, as well as where in the development cycle a civilization is.  Who, and what are held in esteem shift as a civilization goes through it's life cycle. When a culture goes into decline, false or trivial accomplishment are celebrated beyond reason.

Activities that while they may have value, like sports, music, acting, cooking. Become blown to a status usually reserved for royalty.  People that once would have considered a liability regardless of a skill or talent become held as idols.  Style trumps substance, as leaders, and people stop asking is it right, in favor of is it legal, or can I get away with it.  You'd like to imagine we are unique, the greatest nation, of the greatest people to ever grace the earth.  While we do have unique traits, these stages of empire have happened for as long as there have been empires.  The United States of today have far more than the eagle in common with the Roman empire.  Ask yourself how many household names do we have today, that are just famous.  They are not famous for doing anything, they are just famous for being rich, or outrageous.  So while some jump on folks like Charles Barkley for saying he is not a role model, I applaud.  Mr Barkley may be many things, even may be a good role model, but if he is, it has nothing to do with how well he did on the basketball court.

As always make up your own mind

Jack

aka

PanseyBard