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I can play the first part. :) If I can find the second part, I’ll work on that too. :)
The Minuet in G major is a keyboard piece included in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. Until 1970 it was attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV Anh 114), but it is now universally attributed to Christian Petzold.[1][2][3] It is a 32-measure piece primarily in the key of G major, but measures 20-23 are in D major.
We can lump this video in with the others that attempt to shed light on issues in society that matter while discreetly hawking their wares in the background. The best form of advertising? I’m not sure, but the commercial makes space for some thinking about how generational experiences are becoming increasingly stratified and foreign to one another.
Are today’s youth doomed to be nothing but cloistered vid-heads who only know nature through what they have seen on the screens of their tablets? Possibly but I’m thinking that much of the fuss we see about losing out youth to technology is a direct result of our societies ruthless quest for economic productivity, seemingly at all costs.
Productivity has ever increased, but at what social cost? Remember when only one bread-winner was required to live a reasonable life and raise children? Successive generations have had to work harder for less money, just to stay in place. Community life has taken a back seat to the lifestyle focused the individual and consumption – social technology directly feeds into our atomization and separation from others.
The leaders of our society have learned the lessons of the past. All that New Deal/Civil Rights/ Second Wave Feminist scared them shitless and having witnessed what an organized community of like minded people can accomplish are doing their best to ensure that it (social change benefiting the masses) does not happen again. People with common interests, common community and commitment to bettering their own interests change society. Isolated lone-wolves mired in consumptive practices do not. Hence witness the trajectory of our society in which the ‘tailored-experience’ is all the rage; the idea that making choices (ones that are carefully circumscribed mind you) is empowering; and sadly the idea that social power resides in competition and being ‘unique’. These are all hallmarks of society geared toward preserving a status-quo that benefits a particular segment of society.
The video is playing up the same fears every generation has about the next. Are some of the concerns valid? I think so, but nothing that cannot be overcome with realization that social media friends are not the same as having friends in real life. Sharing (not the facebook variety) your life with others is a necessary part of healthily existing in society and cannot be replaced by social media. Can social media/technology be used to enhance and facilitate our social interactions? Of course, but it is not a replacement for the attachment and community humans need to be healthy and happy.
Societal analysis aside,I for one am glad that video games have come as far as they have. Video games are an immersive experience for me that allow me to spend some time outside of the real-world. At the same time I do realize that video gaming is just one aspect of life and must be balanced with other pursuits/activities/interests.
Admittedly, one must be careful in allocating time to video gaming as hours seem to disappear, especially when playing with your friends . It is very easy to lose yourself in the experience and come out bleary-eyed on the other-side wondering why the hell it is 2am and why you’re not sleeping. :)
This.
46 seconds of dialogue.
Cultural institutions reflect the values of society. ‘Nuff said.
“…But I do feel a special place of contempt for the absolute army of twenty-something, socially privileged, very well educated, young white women, who speak about prostitution in terms of “sex work” and “empowerment” and this utter nonsense when they have spent years educating themselves… in order to keep themselves out of the social class of women who are most commonly used in prostitution.“And you know… formally prostituted women like myself have been delivered and expected to digest the most galling lie about our own histories, that is, we have been told that our imprisonment was liberty – that our slavery was freedom. And when we talk about prostitution, we’re talking about an area of life where women are ritualistically coerced, abused, forced, and silenced. And somehow, in some magical realm that is dressed up as reality, we are expected to believe that these deeply dis-empowering elements add up to empowerment. This is bulls**t, and it is dangerous bulls**t – so blatant that it is worthy not only of our utmost contempt, but of our relentless resistance. And it comes from one particular category most forcefully: and those are the women, the young, white, privileged, college educated women I’ve just described.”
—Rachel Moran, Irish feminist activist and author and founder of SPACE International (Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment) speaking in an interview with Resistance Radio.
Women in video games, destroying men’s lives everywhere!!!
Spending your time harassing people just doesn’t seem like productive or pro-social behavioural choices. According to a study recently undertaken it seems there is a positive correlation between unskilled players and the amount of abuse they heap on other players, especially females.
“Some male players, however — the ones who were less-skilled at the game, and performing worse relative their peers — made frequent, nasty comments to the female gamers. In other words, sexist dudes are literally losers.
In today’s online environment, alas, this is not an idle observation. According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 40 per cent of Internet users have personally experienced harassment. While both genders are frequent victims of this abuse, women tend to get the worst of it: They are “particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking,” Pew said.“
Well that is an interesting conclusion. Speaking from personal experience being harassed never helps one’s game. Heaping abuse on a member of your team won’t help their performance, in most cases it will worsen the situation. So, really we can add self-immolating to the list of qualities for loser harasser dudes.
““As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status,” Kasumovic writes, “the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.”
Like your mother always said, bullies just feel bad about themselves.”
Well, it seems like an almost tailor made explanation for sad phenomena known as GamerGate. Low status dudes threatened by women kicking their asses in video games, perhaps getting better and competing with women might be the answer? Of course not! And thus the most obvious(?) answer(?) and logical(?) recourse is embarking on a epic whingefestival – made most memorable because of its harassment of women – because their male fee fees are being bruised all to shit.
It bears repeating here as this article and Gamergate illustrate beautifully the first rule of misogyny – ” is that women are responsible for what men do.”
Hat Tip: @bleatmop for bringing this article to my attention.
The year is 2015. In this age the availability of information has never been greater – and yet, the abuse that is religious teaching, is regularly foisted on children across the globe. One would think that in this information age a rational parental-agent would attempt to look for the best way to transmit the necessary cultural values to children.
I postulate this cultural transmission should involve the following –
1. The formulation of strong emotional and social attachments with immediate and extended family.
- Realizing that nothing else works without strong attachments to parents/caregivers
- Working on the social bonds that strengthen the individual and the community as a whole.
- Realizing and respecting the common goals and aspirations of everyone in similar situations – The requirements of shelter, food, security.
2. Ethical guidelines based an empathetic understanding of the needs and feelings of others – key questions would include:
- Would I like this (action, situation, circumstances et cetera)to happen to me?
- Would I like it if this person acted like that toward me?
- If everyone did what I was doing would the world/my community be a better or worse place?
3. Understanding and exploring the world would be a fact based experience.
- Reading
- Listening and asking questions of elders to better understand their experience and to learn from their accumulated knowledge
- Engaging with the world via the arts – Music, Visual Arts, Writing, Poetry – etc.
Hmm, and there I go thinking that I had appropriately delimited my topic. Grrrr… The point is that, even with this small cross-section of cultural transmission, there is no need to fall back on religious teachings/ideology that have no basis in fact.
We should not have to lie to children to get them to be good human beings. Raising children within the secular bounds of an attached caring family unit is possible and a desirable societal outcome. Children should be raised without the twin detriments to healthy maturation: religious guilt and fear. Guilt and fear stunt the growth of curiosity and more importantly, the learning of empathetic ethical behaviour.
So, if we can raise good human beings without all the toxic religious mumbo-jumbo why do so many people choose to do so anyways?
Worth the reblog for the infographic alone, but also has great linkage. DWR approved. :)
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
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