Early learners

Susan sent me this link to this rather fancy new children's furniture - their very own cubicle. Well, maybe they didn't intend for it to be represented in that way. Maybe not. But that's what it is.

I couldn't help thinking about the role of children's shows when I saw that. Of course, I'm always thinking about children's shows. It's what I do. But have you seen Higglytown Heroes? It's rather entertaining but the message of every show is that you should work hard. Each episode highlights a different job and shows how important they are to the community.

They're heroes you see.

It's quite a nice thought actually. The local pizza delivery guy does deserve credit. Many people doing their day to day jobs deserve more credit than they get.

But the message in each show seems to be simply - get out there and work, children! Work! Work! Work!

And I can't help wondering who those children are going to end up working for. Children learn from television and this is one show that has a clear message it is teaching. Some are less clear and some are plain disturbing (I may review some children's shows at some point, showing the lessons as they appear).

I've rambled on in the past about how we're living in this age of distraction. Bombarded by choices and yet also shackled by the things we think we need or should have.

Not shackled simply because that's the way life went or just happened to end up. No. Shackled because it serves some people's interests to keep us that way. Like modern day slaves.

But willing slaves.

And to make someone a willing slave, just like getting them hooked into a cult, you have to do a certain amount of conditioning. If you expect it to continue all their lives, you have to do a lot of conditioning. And that has to start early.

That's what schools are for, I guess.

Many schools grew from a need to create work forces of a certain level and, importantly, with certain leanings and loyalties in how they think. Often religiously motivated. To serve the machine.

We still do that today, but it's corporations now. The religion aspect has faded somewhat, though the history of the corporation seems tied to religion if you go back far enough - that's simply about who was holding the power at the time.

Now, we're creating our work force even before school. With shows, toy furniture. It's conditioning.

Is this conditioning something we should accept?

Or reject?

It's a Globademic!

Ah, the media love their scares.

I love how the word 'epidemic' is old hat now. It's not alarmist enough. It's 'pandemic' now. I'm sure someone will jump on and tell me how it's appropriate because of the spread and so on but, firstly, 'epidemic' was good enough in similar situations in the past and also includes being widespread as part of its defininition and, secondly, the media were using the term 'pandemic' before this actually was one.

I'm voting for globademic next. Then galactademic. And unidemic. And possibly infinidemic after that. It depends just how scared the media wants us to be.

We never seem to get tired of them. Bird flu, SARS, mad cow disease, ebola monkey virus, salmonella, and so on and so on. And that doesn't even get into the terrorism, millennium bug and god knows what else. Whip the people up into a frenzy to take their minds off the shit that people are doing in the world. Who is going to care about what crimes are being commited by their government in their name when they're spending every waking moment worrying about the next flu epidemic? Sorry, pandemic. Globademic.

We live in the Age of Distraction.

And yet this swine flu has hit a serious amount of people. One of the symptoms of our Distraction is the short attention span. There could be people dying in six months time from this and nobody will give a shit because we've moved on to the next scare. Emu flu or something. I hope my good net buddy from the Daily Grail, Red Pill Junkie, is doing well and hasn't been hit with it or had family hit with it.

I have to wonder though. The pharmaceuticals industry is too huge, worth too much money, and has proven itself to be without morals and, in some cases, totally criminal. And I wonder about computer viruses. I don't believe in most computer viruses. I can't help feeling those anti-virus companies meeting the supply, are also creating the demand. And if it came to light that the pharmaceuticals industry was doing the same thing, I wouldn't be remotely surprised. Money overrides morality and the more money to be made, the easier it is.

And you can be damn sure that, right now, there are people in the pharmaceuticals industry cracking open the champagne bottles.