The Hugh Manatee Challenge

[DrVolin]

It seems Nahom is as well known as Fred Jones to a certain age set. Top Google result: http://www.wowwiki.com/Nahom

Just northwest of the Hall of Origination? West of the tomb of the precursors? 'a great and powerful weapon was built into Nahom's temple'.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

wow. Some actual discussion using logic and propaganda principles. I'm impressed.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Synopsis: "Rise of the Guardians" tells the story of a group of well-known childhood heroes (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost and Sandman) – each with their own extraordinary abilities. When an evil spirit known as Pitch (also known as The Boogeyman) lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.

Gee, if military psyops targeting kidz using fiction was being exposed....how would spooks co-opt the theme?

"Guardians."
Guardian ethos, the moral framing justification for militarism and the police-state, both.

"Pitch." Both public relations/marketing AND...sports as paramilitary culture. Niiiice!!

[JackRiddler]

Synopsis: "Rise of the Guardians" tells the story of a group of well-known childhood heroes (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost and Sandman) – each with their own extraordinary abilities.

This isn't the first militarization of Santa Claus. It won't go far with the movies' main 12+ demographic but I don't know for sure it will flop with the intended brainwash target audience of age 8 and lower (and the parents who give in to them). Hope so. Also, since when are these "heroes"? They're all forms of elven or animal magic figures, each recently repackaged for consumer society. Can't nobody write no more?

Hard to decide which producers deserve the worse hell - the ones who came up with this League of Extraordinarily Boring Corporate Elves or "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter." One point on which I've tended to agree with Hugh is the impact of constantly adding fictionalized and quasi-fiction versions of historical events and figures in a society where people know so little and such distorted history in the first place. Perhaps after this summer more people in the 13-15 set will have seen AL:VH than can name the sides or any of the issues in the Civil War. (You might even have self-serving education experts or PR personnel telling you why this is a good thing, because it will get them interested in the real story! As if.)

So yeah, that's my prediction. Some historian will bemoan AL:VH and this will prompt a TV talk campaign to explain why it's a good thing for inspiring more interest in "history."

[slomo]

I will say this: today I caught myself in a habit I've developed of looking for the hidden payload in the juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated headlines appearing on the same magazine cover.

I don't know what that says about me or Hugh's influence on this board.

Weren't you doing that years before you ever discovered RI?

I honestly can't remember! RI has rewired my neural circuits so thoroughly that I can't imagine life beforehand...

[Plutonia]

Synopsis: "Rise of the Guardians" tells the story of a group of well-known childhood heroes (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost and Sandman) – each with their own extraordinary abilities. When an evil spirit known as Pitch (also known as The Boogeyman) lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.

Gee, if military psyops targeting kidz using fiction was being exposed....how would spooks co-opt the theme?

"Guardians."
Guardian ethos, the moral framing justification for militarism and the police-state, both.

"Pitch." Both public relations/marketing AND...sports as paramilitary culture. Niiiice!!

In this case, allowing for the possibility of "co-option" by spooks is generous, Hugh - it seems so obviously designed from conception to propagandize and I bet most people here would agree.

You seem to have created (or at least reinforced) the very resistance to your analysis that is so frustrating to you. That's a common enough problem - shadow boxing. Happens all the time!

Some others have suggested that you modify your language, be less dogmatic in your assertions, but aren't just asking that you to stop beating them with that metaphorical club you wield.

Since you value rationality foremost, doesn't it make sense to learn (just as you've learned about psyops) how to interest people in what you have learned?

Why is this thread different?

Could it be because it started out with a question and an invitation to participate in the seeking of an answer to the question? Right. Let's get to it!

An invitation is always going to be more effective than a club. (Nice bit of irony there.)



I don't suppose that you've read any Alfred North Whitehead, the math guy and the educational philosopher?

Romance is the first moment in the educational experience. All rich educational experiences begin with an immediate emotional involvement on the part of the learner. The primary acquisition of knowledge involves freshness, enthusiasm, and enjoyment of learning. The natural ferment of the living mind leads it to fix on those objects that strike it pre-reflectively as important for the fulfilling of some felt need on the part of the learner. All early learning experiences are of this kind and a curriculum ought to include appeals to the spirit of inquiry with which all children are natively endowed. The stage of precision concerns "exactness of formulation" (Whitehead 1929, p. 18), rather than the immediacy and breadth of relations involved in the romantic phase. Precision is discipline in the various languages and grammars of discrete subject matters, particularly science and technical subjects, including logic and spoken languages. It is the scholastic phase with which most students and teachers are familiar in organized schools and curricula. In isolation from the romantic impetus of education, precision can be barren, cold, and unfulfilling, and useless in the personal development of children. An educational system excessively dominated by the ideal of precision reverses the myth of Genesis: "In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them" (Whitehead 1925, p. 285). But precision is nevertheless a necessary element in a rich learning experience, and can neither substitute for romance, nor yield its place to romance. Generalization, the last rhythmic element of the learning process, is the incorporation of romance and precision into some general context of serviceable ideas and classifications. It is the moment of educational completeness and fruition, in which general ideas or, one may say, a philosophical outlook, both integrate the feelings and thoughts of the earlier moments of growth, and prepare the way for fresh experiences of excitement and romance, signaling a new beginning to the educational process.

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pa ... -1947.html

[slomo]

Plutonia, it strikes me that Hugh and GoroAdachi have much in common. In my view, they both deal in similar types of linguistic free-association, but their interpretations could not be more dissimilar. Hugh seems focused on very narrow attribution to a single human organization, while Goro sees a giant cosmic narrative, a conspiracy of the gods.

Everyone knows I lean towards the latter interpretation, and in fact I find the free associations of both Hugh and Goro crazy sometimes. I guess the reason I find Hugh annoying (in addition to his off-putting attitude) is that even when Goro's flights of fancy border on insanity, his narrative opens doors, creates wide open spaces to explore in the mind, while I find Hugh's narrative restrictive and claustrophobic, providing no avenue for escape. I mean, if the CIA is that powerful in its ability to control time and space, is there any hope at all of escaping the iron prison?

[Plutonia]

Plutonia, it strikes me that Hugh and GoroAdachi have much in common. In my view, they both deal in similar types of linguistic free-association, but their interpretations could not be more dissimilar. Hugh seems focused on very narrow attribution to a single human organization, while Goro sees a giant cosmic narrative, a conspiracy of the gods.

Everyone knows I lean towards the latter interpretation, and in fact I find the free associations of both Hugh and Goro crazy sometimes. I guess the reason I find Hugh annoying (in addition to his off-putting attitude) is that even when Goro's flights of fancy border on insanity, his narrative opens doors, creates wide open spaces to explore in the mind, while I find Hugh's narrative restrictive and claustrophobic, providing no avenue for escape. I mean, if the CIA is that powerful in its ability to control time and space, is there any hope at all of escaping the iron prison?

Probably the biggest difference between Goro and Hugh is presentation!

Both are fixated on the minute details of giant conspiracies, a cosmic (or sacred) one in Goro's case, profane in Hugh's, but both infer a state of general helplessness for we subjects in the face of their apparent omnipresence and omnipotence. Interestingly, in light of what you've said slomo, Hugh's narrative does include an escape hatch ie learn about it and free yourself!, while Goro's does not.

I think it's possible for Hugh's narrative to "open doors" too - the human psyche, individual and collective, neurology, mind and social science are just as fascinating as Goro's cosmic synch's, and are likely related phenomenon - as in the aphorism "you'll see what you believe." Goro may have an edge because he allows a central mystery, which Hugh doesn't, and that's tantalizing, but there is a mystery in the phenomena that Hugh describes too - it's us.

No, I think that if Hugh and Goro were to change places, Goro would be stomping around in frustration here too.

[slomo]

Perhaps it's a matter of taste. I know that many people find atheism and materialism liberating because they don't want to be beholden to cosmic forces, at least ones that bear intentionality towards humans. I guess for me, a sense of the sacred is liberating because it provides a way for me to find meaning by participating in a larger narrative. For others, I guess that might be stifling. I do not find it rewarding to spin eternally on the hamster wheel of evading every clever trick the CIA throws my way... but that might just be me.

I agree that Goro would be equally challenged by RI.

[Plutonia]

slomo, you've flattened the out my points to one dimensionality!

Adepts of the sacred are not repelled by materialism! Being attuned to the sacred, they find the sacred everywhere. That's Goro - finding evidence of inexplicable super-non-human intelligence in space program insignia.

I don't know if Hugh is an atheist or not, but he's certainly a materialist, and he finds evidence of inexplicable super-human intelligence in movie posters and headlines!

How are these phenomena not related? And where is their commonality? It's us. We are the center of both paradigms!

It's that same old dilemma, the human condition, the tension of spirit incarnate. Do we look to the stars or do we look to out feet? Either path is valid because both point back to us.

[slomo]

Plutonia, I don't mean to flatten things out. Sometimes it is easier to speak in simple terms, at the risk of over-simplifying. Of course the material is a subset of the total sacred Being! But for some, it is more comforting to focus only on our feet, and for others it is more comforting to look up towards the stars. That is what I meant.

From Hugh's hostility towards "woo", I infer that he is the type that would prefer the solid ground that meets his feet. In my professional life I am restrained from considering anything else but solid ground, but in my online life I like to reach for the stars, and hope that I can experience everything in between.

[Nordic]

I like how Hugh has used this thread to rain down more verbal bird droppings of his "theories" upon our heads but has yet to actually address the OP, as I predicted.

The one thing we can predict with great accuracy is hughks behavior.

Another prediction -- he is loving this thread - it's all about him, with a great many people going to great lengths to rationalize his crazy talk, desperately trying to find some value in it.

Why?

[Plutonia]

Sorry slomo, I'm not meaning any criticism of you at all.

I think we are talking apples and oranges. My central point was just that Hugh fails because his presentation is alienating and you are saying that Hugh fails with you because you prefer the mystery of the stars.

c'est tout.

[slomo]

Sorry slomo, I'm not meaning any criticism of you at all.

I think we are talking apples and oranges. My central point was just that Hugh fails because his presentation is alienating and you are saying that Hugh fails with you because you prefer the mystery of the stars.

c'est tout.

Both, in my opinion. I'm willing to consider philosophies I find uncomfortable if I think the other person is similarly open to dialog. So I think we are agreeing, more or less?

[Plutonia]

That's a yes, slomo. We aren't actually arguing, it just looked like it.

I like how Hugh has used this thread to rain down more verbal bird droppings of his "theories" upon our heads but has yet to actually address the OP, as I predicted.

The one thing we can predict with great accuracy is hughks behavior.

Another prediction -- he is loving this thread - it's all about him, with a great many people going to great lengths to rationalize his crazy talk, desperately trying to find some value in it.

Why?

I guess that's addressed to me, Nordic.

Because lots of otherwise good, caring people are prone to alienating behavior - me for instance.

Because of how television affects the brain.

Because there is something so ungovernable about people that the social engineers daren't leave us alone with out thoughts for a moment - pre-school, school, college, university, corporate employment, then shopping, drugs, TV and entertainment to fill up every gap.

Because, compared with anywhere else, this is the place for crazy talk.

Because Hugh is an old-timer here and as such is an established member of the community, no matter that he's marginalized.

Because I don't have a problem with Hugh or his attempts to point out psyops where he sees them.