Why can’t we discuss this in a polite manner?
Posted by maebius on 09 Sep 2009 at 05:45 am | Tagged as: Esoteric, Games, Moon Muse, Questions
This is a shorter post than I honestly want it to be, but I wanted to toss out a rough-draft for commentary and archival purposes, since I’m doing a bit more on the topic behind-the-scenes.
I’m guilty of it too, but why is it that people are so frikkin afraid of thinking for themselves? Related topic: why are Debate clubs and such seen is such a negative light by the “cool kids” and harbor suck a “geeky” label? Heck, in that regard, why are Geeks/nerds shunned so in our younger years when those same types often turn around and be “successful” on the corporate community?
I digress.
As a gamer, I enjoy the playing and discussion of various electronic games in various formats. Yet all across the internet, stating a preference for one game almost invariably results in hostile commentary in the forms of “Us vs Them” from other game-preferring crowds. Even among the same game (such as World of Warcraft) one faction is all but universally reviled as “the enemy” from players of the opposing faction.
Tobold makes a few points more related to this topic here: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/09/art-of-discussion.html
Likewise, the recent speech by our president is shrouded in all sorts of “news-worthy” drama and incidents of blatantly ignorant avoidance. (ignorant in my opinion, which I do also understand follows my own Us Vs Them complaints).
Some schools refused to broadcast the event, to appease protesting parents and avoid in-fighting between the supporters and opposers of our President. To me, this totally goes AGAINST the message itself. His message was not controversial, unless I’m just failing to see how “Work hard, do better” is controversial.
Granted, Sharon Astyk mentions that perhaps the common school -> college -> consumer-job -> house+car+stuff is not the best option, but I still think that the message from our president was broad enough to work. Hard work = good results. In today’s society, at least, school is still a very good indicator of opportunity. What gets my goat is that some schools refused to show it, out of fear or something, in order to appease those who disagreed.
In my opinion, school is about learning. Learning is more than just 2+2=5 [sic], or that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14-hundred 92. It is about thinking bout things, and being exposed to (without being force-fed) concepts you disagree with, in order to figure out for yourself Why you disagree.
Even if your dream is to be a street-corner prophet, having a basic grade-school education will help your plans and influence public opinion more than a being a drop-out.
In my own life, our elementary school cut recess last year. The state mandates Phys-Ed (gym) a certain amount of time per day. This didn’t fit the schedule so they cut free play-time. For High-schoolers, this isn’t an issue, but for my own kindergarden child, I and many other parents protested. We lost, since the decision was that Gym was active time too. (I still disagree and the war’s not over…)
Yet there again is the point I’m thinking here. Did you read any of the above examples and feel either a smug agreement or a trickle of bile at my “wrongness”?
Why is it that many topics, from games, to real philosophical issues, can be so hard to discuss fairly and intelligently? Do our ape-subroutines kick in that hard, and emotions naturally still rule over rationality?
No wonder we are where we are at. Such huge strides in some cultural sectors, such slow ruts in others.
Your thoughts?
It’s certainly starting at a younger age. I’d mentioned on Facebook about a week ago that debate classes need to be re-introduced into our public schools in my area. Kids do not know how to debate, how to lose, and how to be respectful of dissenting opinions. I was called a moron, idiot, hypocrite, and bitch – and this was after neatly disproving their points and maintaining respectful tones with teenagers despite their unwillingness to do the same for me. Kids don’t comprehend the need for facts – but being passionate about something is not enough. And most of them are learning this bad behavior at home too.
We’re doing our kids a disservice by not teaching them that louder, meaner, and more rude/disrespectful does not mean correct. Critical thinking skills have been flung out the window in exchange for disrespect and arrogance. (If you’re cocky enough everything you do is right??) It’s a really sad time for “education” as well as relations between people – especially those with opposing ideas.
I remember when I was a kid, Reagan addressing the kids in school. We all had to watch it. No one complained, and my parents REALLY didn’t like Reagan. I felt about GW Bush the way my parents felt about Reagan, and if I’d had a kid in school at that time, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to not let my kid watch the President of the MF’ing United States on tv. Like him or not, he’s still the president and therefore important enough to pay attention to.
There is a whole lot of craziness out there these days. More so than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of craziness. This is just getting to the point of complete dislocation and dissociation. People can’t disagree politely because they don’t seem to actually be capable of thinking. I hate using “people” as an aggregate like that, but there really seem to be growing numbers of people who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag, let alone construct a cogent argument. It seems like the thoughts they have in their heads are the ones placed their by TV and the radio.
Which actually answers my question as to why they would be so terrified of having their kids exposed to ideas they disagree with – if the only way to have an idea is for someone else to put it there, you have to be extra careful who you allow in. Imagine, if your kid listened to Obama and you listen to Glen Beck – you’d have to hate your own kid, and wouldn’t that suck? And your kid might think you were an idiot.
I can’t tell you how outraged I was that schools refused to show the president’s speech. Is that the best we can do? I don’t like you so I won’t listen? How can our schools respond like angry, spoiled children and still teach our children to be respectful, thoughtful, thinking people who can hear a new idea, think about it, and then either agree or disagree?
I’ve had several beefs with the public school system (don’t get me started about the damage they did to my son in one short year) and both my kids now go private. For some reason, this angers people to no end. I hit my head against the system hard enough to find that it would not budge and that, at that juncture, I could not change it. Unfortunately for the rest of the kids out there, at that point I had to worry about rescuing my son before it got worse. I am not sure the public system can be saved. I know that’s a strong statement. I sincerely hope that I am very wrong and that someone will show me and fix it. That would, by far, serve the most students and families.
Thanks all for the commentary. I agree, that it is a sad time, not just in our schools, but society in general.
On the Obama speech thing, Nettle hit the nail on the proverbial head. I listened to Presidential speeches, and while I didn’t really care about it like those dorks in Debate club did, I was at least taught to be respectful enough to understand that someone in that position had some important things to say. So I half-listened, and formed my opinions on the topics.
It never ocurred to ME either to avoid the speech. Hearing the reaction on hte news jsut blew my perception of “people” off track. I mean really now.
Today’s schools? They’d rather just avoid the confrontation and not air it. That is horrible!
I may be over-generalizing, but I find it very soul-crushing how the Internet brought us all together, and then gave birth to the “internet fuckwad theory” which brought all of us collectively backwards in social evolution.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
Nettle, I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps the schools/parents would have been ok with the kids watching the speech if there’d been an explanation of all things covered with Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck immediately following so they’d know what to think about what Obama said?
I just learned last night (because of busy schedules) that only one teacher was showing the speech at Mini Me’s school and anyone could go that wanted to but the information was not readily available to the students that they could see it if they wanted to. Therefore most of the students missed it – according to plan?
POTUS just doesn’t mean what it used to mean. I was in the same boat with Reagan. Didn’t like him but the office was treated with reverence despite that. Now you can’t expect respect at all.
Sorry… rambling (again).