[X] My Assistant

[Pando]

Enjoy that one...

http://www.msnfound.com/MetaGenerator.ashx...backlot_p_h.wmv

(Doug, please move this outta here if it doesn't belong, don't know where else to put it...)

[dvandorn]

I'm glad you're familiar with it, Dan. As a speechwriter, I know you must crib from a lot of sources (who doesn't?) -- and if you crib from the gentleman in question, well, you're stealing from the best.



I've always been impressed with the line I first quoted -- the author was acutely aware that people will remain in ultimately self-destructive situations because they fear change. Things have to get *really* bad before they get motivated to try and change things for the better.

If fear of change is so powerful that people will endure great hardships and abuse just to avoid it, we have to consider that most of the odd behaviors we see in today's world (including those who insist that we never landed on the Moon) are probably being motivated by fear of change.

I mean, look at the consp1racy nuts and those who promote intolerance -- a lot of their message boils down to their wanting to *force* the world to be simple enough for them to understand (and control), and for it to *stop* changing so fast, so they can *maintain* control.

I'm personally convinced that the exponential rate of change that the past few generations have lived through have taken a heavy toll on the individual and mass psyches of the cultures of mankind. Two Hundred years ago, every person on Earth knew everything there was to know about the things they used and wore and watched and lived. Their worlds were small, but they were sure of their places in them.

Now, people can easily find ways to feel completely insignificant, without the ability to truly understand even the simplest of the tools they use, much less feel like they are anything more than a very small cog in an unimaginably huge machine. This results in psychoses which provide people with something they apparently need -- a sense of their own importance, a means of simplifying the world to their ability to understand, and a means to feel in control of their own worlds. Their psychoses manifest in different ways -- from being convinced that everyone else is believing a lie but only *they* know the truth, to believing that the universe is only 6,000 years old and that any evidence to the contrary was put there on purpose by God to confuse us and tempt us into the sin of hubris. In each case, the basic tenet of the belief is an untestable statement of faith -- which is psychologically indistinguishable from a basic psychotic break.

And please, while we can dismiss the m00n-h0ax crowd as ineffective idiots, there are others who manifest their lack-of-control, fear-of-change psychoses in much more destructive ways. And in far too many instances, the most destructive of the manifestations become rampant in an entire given culture, supported and even orchestrated by power-hungry men wielding distorted (or downright prostituted) versions of a given spiritual faith. (Just as one example, I don't think you could create terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, which use suicide attacks, without playing primarily on your adherents' fear of living in a Cosmos that was not perfectly and neatly ordered, with their own brand of Islam being the only correct interpretation of the true will of Allah. You see how the Al Qaeda world-view simplifies the world -- superior, correct, divinely-inspired Us against all the inferior, incorrect, evil Thems [defined as anyone who is not Us] -- and ensures you of a sense of personal importance? It fits the pattern exactly.)

There are a lot of different manifestations, but IMHO it's undeniable that there's one root cause -- being born into a world that's too complex for you to ever hope to understand, using tools you could never duplicate, relying on literally tens to hundreds of thousands of people you've never met (and will never meet) to provide you with food, clothing, shelter and all of the amenities you enjoy -- it creates both an individual and a cultural need for *something* to provide us with a sense of control, of being able to make some kind of difference, of being able to assure one's self of one's own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

And we're creating psychotic behaviors to satisfy those needs.

That's not good. It's unhealthy, and it's ultimately very, very dangerous.

It's a problem that involves all of Mankind, and it's a problem that's not being addressed in *any* systematic way. Anywhere. The only systematic *appreciation* of the problem is in places where unscrupulous, power-hungry people are *using* this ubiquitous need to persuade people to do ULTIMATELY self-destructive things, like committing suicide. Or just persuading them that their government gets a perverted kick out of h0axing them.

But, in every event, *using* them. Not helping them.

This is the only arena in which I can see that we could actually gain some traction against all of the fear-based, irrational behaviors that threaten us in this modern age. We don't need to change human nature by doing away with this very basic fear. We just have to find a moral, ethical, universal and truthful way of *satisfying* that need -- a way that doesn't incite people to self-destructive, psychotic behaviors.

Now, all I have to do is invent that, and get everyone to buy into it, and find a way to implement it over the protests of those who profit by keeping others afraid and psychotic... gee, that and five bucks will buy me a cup of coffee.



-the other Doug