School Type Thoughts #06
Aight, let me get a few things out of the way.
There's some "weirdness" about the whole realm of Academia... but I can't dig into it, but I know someone who could... So that'll be its own page, when I figure out what to focus on and get some talking points.
I made a page about Red & Blue Lodges, but I'll have to build it up more, when I get more coherent input and things to include. There's a very, very foggy "thing" about how the Red Lodge has more influence over consumer goods industries, manufacturing and distribution, but the Blue Lodge has gobs of influence over the mainstream media and Academia. But this also varies from region to region. I'm not sure about all the finnicky details and differences among the different states of USA, or how things are done in other countries.
Gonna jump from elementary to high and back. In my experiences at some high schools, I actually found out that teen moms are some of the more quality individuals. One technical high school had a very high proportion of pregnant teens compared to the regular public HS. Out of all the teen moms, only one was absolutely HORRIBLE, but that was one extremely rotten egg, out of 10-15 good ones. Most of them were very patient and tolerable people. The bad one doesn't wreck the average.
Also, at that very same technical school with all the teen moms, someone on staff thought it was a good idea to have a 2-3 foot long banner, in full color, of a car-crash wrecked face with the eyes missing and metal things poking out, and there's torn skin and embedded objects, the whole photo is macro, and there's some text on there about drunk driving... Guess where they put that. They hung that in the mess hall for like a month, where teen moms and their toddlers, and all the other people eating in the mess hall, saw that for like a month. True facts. Why would anyone put that there??
Students come to elementary and later schools, with an "us vs them" attitude. Or at least that's common. People and their dispositions vary. Anyway, Cuz I already went over early childhood traumas and understandable lack of trust of "authorities", mixed with hardwired instinct to blindly trust tall people, and yeah, children are scrambled in the head right from the get-go.
"Us vs Them" is a very, very common general mindset, but that's an article for another time.
School is all about being told that you are a dumb pleb and know nothing, and that the only people worth listening to, are baffos in white labcoats, pointing at a picture of a CGI space ball. That all the world has been thoroughly explored and documented, every discovery has already been discovered, everything can be explained by labcoat baffos, all inventions have already been invented, and you totally have a bright future and can become President of the USA.
Teachers are just doing their jobs and they have to enforce the rules. Oftentimes, they really do sympathize inside, but outwardly they can't show that. They have to outwardly be a cold brick wall of enforcement.
But we children, who were betrayed by the "adults" in our lives, and we're not supposed to live in this batshit insane dumpster fire of a world, we didn't CARE about subtle nuances. We saw an oppressor. The Oppressor sure didn't show any sympathies he may have been harboring. He just oppressed, because that's his job and that's that.
School sucks and we weren't compensated. We were just punished if our grades got too low, and any "incentives for good grades" were hypothetical at best. Doesn't help that when you're out of HS, suddenly everyone's hounding your ass over COLLEGE COLLEGE COLLEGE. It's a wonderful thing that Jesus doesn't care about your unpaid indoctrination, and whatever BS you absorbed won't matter when God judges the world. It'll be like none of this ever mattered at all!
All of these pressures coming from all sides - the pressures of stressful home situations, and the pressures of school and classmates, children easily became very gloomy and irritable. They just wanted to do things they thought were cool and fun, and not be bothered to memorize meaningless "dates" and "names" of people who only exist in paintings and "documents". Of course, children want to eat candy and jump on furniture and play vidya all day, so they have to be kept in line. Look at where not spanking children, and giving into their every demand got us today.
Interesting things happen, when different things happen at the same time. Something comes from that. What happened during the 90's, was a massive increase in the accessibility of consumer tech and internet, to people of modest income. Children imprint on the things around them, that's what "nostalgia" is, and some mental things can become addictions. Maladaptive Daydreaming, is a common problem a lot of people have today. It's like it comes from being a child when interactive digital media was rapidly becoming a bigger and bigger part of everyday life.
Books were still a blast, though. We generally didn't care for "boring" historical period fiction, like some story about a boy who somethingorother native american teen guy something something, and then winter hit and they all froze to death, the end. But then again there was a cool story about an Inuit guy meeting a spirit bear and touching him, but I kinda forgot how it went... But not all historical setting fiction was dull!
Wayside Stories and other short, episodic books, were real convenient reads. Back when time was slower, we could sit down and get lost in a book. They weren't overly padded out with "look at how smart the author is!!" junk, and were pretty accessible and not too over our heads. Some were really dumb, but they had their own stupid charm to them.
High school is probably the #1 killer of the enjoyment of reading for pleasure. Some of the mandatory HS Lit was good, but others were just heinous. Also remember "Night"? Yeah, fountains of blood and stuff. And a wooden rollercoaster of doooom. I'm sure the teachers who had to read it with the class every year, had maaaany questions about this book. Fun fact, there's a deleted section where the main character and his pal, go out at night to rape German girls for "revenge". Probably just humping their legs in a dark alleyway.
Anyway, students who previously loved reading for fun, soon came to associate reading with being a chore and a hassle, and all their joy and appreciation is sucked out from them. School is where dreams go to die.
If there wasn't a huge, world-shaking expansion of the scale and scope of consumer technology and home computers and video game consoles, I can only wonder how different things would be in the theoretical 2020 timeline where that didn't happen the way it did. Many students wanted to literally escape to the worlds depicted in consumer media aimed at children and DND fans.
There were "attitudes", "zeitgeists" to decades, and 90's was about Eeedddggggjjj, the 80s were about rad new neon pink and cyan stuff, and beep boop machines, and the 00's are about "lol the past sucks, let's erase the past right now, slide it right on outta there. The future is NOW, grandpa!!"
Looks like the government is telling the mass media producers, what kinds of themes and attitudes to promote to children and teens. Gotta get 'em while they're young. Stuff about Popular Media goes here. But I guess, "pop culture in general, can go in here, cuz why not. The title's just... there.
Children had access to media produced even in the 70s and 80s, but naturally went for the "newfangled electronics" stuff. Seeing ye olde computers, the black and white monitors and the big, textured pale beige and fake wood casing, was pretty interesting. This world of tech was here before us, and people thought of that tech as being "new". Interesting thing for a 5yo to think about, at the time.
The games, were... interesting, but I can't really remember anything right now. But it was a golden age of PC gaming. But we didn't have access to the stuff for adults, but we had enough flashy, colorful (if you got the 2 color monitors out of the whole computer lab!), interesting games where you could tinker around and do neat things. KidPix was great. Some of the titles had all kinds of little details that gave them so much depth. And that stuff would have been super easy for a tiny team of programmers to put together in just a few hours! Time was so much slower back then, and there weren't so many pressures on people. People could have stressful lives, but things are probably exponentially worse, now that there's mass surveillance and malicious hackers and glowies and shit. People had IRL friends and hobbies in the 90s. Now, small businesses are being forced to close down, and popular hangouts are also shut down. All because of some 33 orange CGI blob that doesn't exist.
Retrospectives on whole decades, tend to only focus on the mass media and consumerism aspects. Makes sense, when you consider the sheer CONTENT of music, movies, print, news, radio, etc. You have all those copyrighted materials to throw together and call it "a retrospective". They don't usually get into everyday life, in the real world. The thoughts and doings of real human beings.
Mass media and the false flag major news events of the decade, were all edgy, doom, mortal kombat and sulking nihilism type stuff. But IRL, there was a general sense of optimism. Yeah there were the people who wore black lipstick and frowned all the time, but that was just their hobby. Sure, people always do have very hard times in their lives, regardless of what year it is. But there was a sense that there was a LOT of tangible progress being made, and equalization among all groups of people. The gaps between ethnic groups and socioeconomic groups were shortening.
Look at how many teens right now today, are saying that different races are supposed to be enemies? And most of them are SJW's! There's a "game", called "Tumblr or Stormfront". If you grabbed a post and blurred out the race, they read the same. "Progressives" are more racist than skinheads today! Whoda ever thunk.
In 2005, someone mused that we are the first generation to actually grow up WITH the Internet. The Internet grew up to be a soulless demon monster, puppeted by corporations, and in its veins ran many disgusting freaks who do evil things. The original "Wild West", as it's always called for some reason, won't ever be back. There's nothing new under the sun, and there's not going to be a 2040. I can only wonder how horrible 2030 would be, if that ever becomes a thing.
The 90s were a time of young people imprinting on the rapidly-developing, flickering, colorful new thing. There's something about flickering lights that temporarily alters a person's mental state. It's mildly addictive for about 10 minutes. There was a LOT of this stuff, exploding into everyone's lives. Rich people AND poor people, which was a new development.
Gonna wrap up this page, and ramble about the Internet on the next one.