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Can you see the blinders?

coberst

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Oct 16, 2007
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Can you see the blinders?

Quickie from wiki: “Blinders, also known as blinkers or winkers, are a piece of horse tack that restricts the horse's vision to the rear and, in some cases, to the side. They usually are made of leather or plastic cups that are placed on either side of the eyes, either attached to a bridle or to an independent hood. Many racehorse trainers believe this keeps the horse focused on what is in front of him, encouraging him to pay attention to the race rather than other distractions, such as crowds.”

Our culture and its associated educational system prepare young people for the work place so that as they reach adulthood they can easily assimilate into a work force that will help to maximize production and consumption, i.e. they will help maximize GDP. Our educational system graduates young people with a “set of winkers” sturdily attached to the cultural tack that will restrict the individual’s intellectual vision to those personal and community activities that will best enhance national GDP.

As a result our citizens are not prepared to deal with the complexities that result from our ingeniously developed high tech culture.


“Tradition” is a word for a complete set of blinders. Tradition provides us with sets of assumptions that we pick up, not through a process of contemplation, but through a process of social osmosis. Of course our family and our immediate community provide more provincial assumptions.

Our Western tradition is primarily forged from a Judeo-Christian heritage. Our idea of the universal moral status of each and every person is equal because we are created “in the image of God”. That which makes us equal is our essential human characteristic of reason. “That is, we all stand equally under the same moral laws, and so have the same duties toward ourselves and others. As rational, all are due equal respect as moral agents.”

“But the fact is that what we come to regard as this ‘universal’, ‘formal’, ‘limiting’ principle of reason (i.e. the principle of universal moral personhood) is only one among the many possible principles, values, goods, and ends we might reasonably come to embrace. It just happens to be the foundational principle for our moral tradition. But to say that it is foundational for our tradition does not make it a formal principle of reason itself.

Quotes from Moral Imagination by Mark Johnson
 

Feops

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Our culture and its associated educational system prepare young people for the work place so that as they reach adulthood they can easily assimilate into a work force that will help to maximize production and consumption, i.e. they will help maximize GDP. Our educational system graduates young people with a “set of winkers” sturdily attached to the cultural tack that will restrict the individual’s intellectual vision to those personal and community activities that will best enhance national GDP.

As a result our citizens are not prepared to deal with the complexities that result from our ingeniously developed high tech culture.[/b]

Contradicts itself. Otherwise tripe, rubbish, a copy/paste void of any real input.
 

proteanmix

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I like this topic! :D

Can you see the blinders?

Quickie from wiki: “Blinders, also known as blinkers or winkers, are a piece of horse tack that restricts the horse's vision to the rear and, in some cases, to the side. They usually are made of leather or plastic cups that are placed on either side of the eyes, either attached to a bridle or to an independent hood. Many racehorse trainers believe this keeps the horse focused on what is in front of him, encouraging him to pay attention to the race rather than other distractions, such as crowds.”

Our culture and its associated educational system prepare young people for the work place so that as they reach adulthood they can easily assimilate into a work force that will help to maximize production and consumption, i.e. they will help maximize GDP. Our educational system graduates young people with a “set of winkers” sturdily attached to the cultural tack that will restrict the individual’s intellectual vision to those personal and community activities that will best enhance national GDP.

I kind of experienced this yesterday at work and I had conflicting thoughts. We're getting a new Learning Management System and we had a big three day training about a two months ago a little three hour refreshers here and there since then.

Getting this LMS is quite interesting I think as far as who wants to learn it and who's optional to learn. I'm one of the people who has to learn it, but there are a handful of people for whom it would be incredibly useful for them to know it and be familiar with it. I've noticed the people who don't have to know it are making little attempts or aren't maximizing there attempts to learn it. They've skipped the meetings where it's being taught to us or leave the meetings early.

What's causing the conflict in me, well it's not really a conflict but I just wonder what I would do if if I wasn't one of the people that's required to know it, would I want to learn it? I like to think yes and I notice where one of my conflict patterns with people is that I get frustrated and upset when I'm left out of the information loop or when I'm not privy to things that I think I should know. Whether I need to know or it's just FYI is debatable, but I always want to know even if I don't do anything with the information.

As a result our citizens are not prepared to deal with the complexities that result from our ingeniously developed high tech culture.

Going back to my work example, one of the reasons why I don't think anyone wants to learn it is because they may become responsible for it and if it doesn't succeed no one wants to take the blame. Ignorance is bliss for the win! When you have complexity where the chance of failure is equal to the chance of success there's not really an incentive to take it on unless you have to or you're motivated to do so without incentive. In a significant amount of situations, I think people do recognize the complexity which is why they don't want to get involved.

What does complexity mean? Take a complex social problem like how to reduce occurrences of HIV/AIDS among a specific population or increase high school graduation rates in a county. Sometimes tackling problems like these requires concerted efforts to research, plan, educate, execute, outreach, etc. You have to break the bigger problem into smaller problems. I think people are often intimidated by the scope of complexity and doubt whether their efforts will make any difference. They don't know where to start or how to get the ball rolling. And if it all goes wrong, it's their fault.

I've been in a complex situation for a few months and they're are gotdamn hard! Hard decisions to make, based on information that if you make the wrong decision or don't choose the best option from a buffet of options can lead to deathly results, knowing which questions to ask and who you should ask, which leads to follow which are most reliable or most promising...this is not something that most people want to deal with exactly because they do understand what it entails.

And then you have some people who simply don't think to know or to ask or investigate. Some people don't have the stamina and fortitude to plow forward and they know this about themselves and don't. Some people plow forward only to get a concussion. Are most people meant to handle these things and should they be expected to?

“Tradition” is a word for a complete set of blinders. Tradition provides us with sets of assumptions that we pick up, not through a process of contemplation, but through a process of social osmosis. Of course our family and our immediate community provide more provincial assumptions.

Heuristically, these things are called schemas and they're not bad. Every situation does not need to be dissected and help open with straight pins. Schemas are built into our brains; we really can't get rid of them. I think recognizing when you're in a schema or using one and it's not working anymore is a method of breaking out of the straitjacket of negative social osmosis. Sometimes merely being aware of the existence of something is helpful in getting people to thinking about it, but you have to become aware of it first and see it as a real thing with real consequences.
 

Blank

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Our school systems don't prepare us for work unless if you're in a trade school. You'd be surprised at how many graduate students don't even have a clue as to how to obtain jobs in their fields.
 

coberst

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Oct 16, 2007
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Proteanmix

I have been posting on Internet forums for more than four years and have concluded that many, if not most, people are like the turtle. If they encounter something new they withdraw into their shell until it goes away.
 

coberst

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Oct 16, 2007
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Our school systems don't prepare us for work unless if you're in a trade school. You'd be surprised at how many graduate students don't even have a clue as to how to obtain jobs in their fields.

K-12 generally prepares us for work by teaching us the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. College generally prepares us to enter some form of profession.
 
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