any "gifted" folks here - need stories @ curriculum

[Luther Blissett]

I was coming on here to say roughly the same thing, that I generally consider everyone intelligent but that individual people choose to concentrate in arenas of their own choosing. Some of it may superficially seem like garbage but if one digs deep enough there tends to be something meaningful at play. Take the "officialseanpenn" instagram account as a case study. Before long it becomes apparent that she's intelligent and is working a thesis out.

That being said, last night I was supposed to run a meeting with other activists regarding a long-term project with an academic bent. Leading a meeting is not something I ever do and I knew right away that they weren't getting it even though they were all interested in the subject coming in.

Those peers of mine with whom I dig in deep and refuse to relent just never absorb any information even though I know they're all intelligent people. I'm just the beleaguered conspiracy guy to them and I just repeat the same fights over and over again — methane release, ptech, the meat industry, new Jim Crow, Frank Olson, etc. — but every time we're starting from scratch and all the data I bring is received as if they never heard it before. When we debate, it's not as if they don't want to have a discussion: they openly welcome the idea of having these long, drawn out arguments wherein I provide statistics and evidence and they counter with feelings and belief. I would love to do an analysis of it someday because I don't think most people in my position would have the patience to maintain a relationship like that with a group for 13 years straight like I do.

But they're all smarter than me in other ways too. They all have something else going on upstairs. And yes, I can only imagine what someone like Jeff thinks when we all miss a very clear point. He probably knows who Jeffrey Alan Lash was.

I think about that "time before the Internet" often. I was too poor to access it before 1999 or so but all throughout the 90s I quested for knowledge and stressed out over my inability to reach it. I distinctly remember the brand of ennui that would set in after finishing a zine or book knowing that I had already read everything else in the house that I wanted to read. It's not a sensation that I miss though in the hyperreality of 2015 some draw links to attention deficit or The Spectacle. I'm glad it's gone, it frustrated me.

[Nordic]

Well sure, everybody has something they can teach you, but that's not what I was talking about.

I'm starting to believe (I chose that word on purpose) that plants are way more intelligent than we've ever given them credit for. The entire plant world. How many billions of years were they on earth before sentient animals? How again does macroevolution work? Nobody seems to know. Adaptation, sure, that's easy, we can demonstrate it, but macroevolution? Maybe the plants are truly the Gods of our universe. Perhaps they created us for their own amusement or to somehow help them out (seems we're not doing a good job of that these days).

Why am I going off on this tangent? I don't know. I was thinking about how we consider "intelligence" to be the ability to absorb and process information and make new connections based on that information that can lead us to solve problems or gain new insights. Somehow I thought of this thing (above) that I've been thinking about lately, and have been for quite some time (but just lately have been giving it more thought) as to "Creation" (yes, literally), and especially the creation of animals with eyes, ears, noses, stomachs, hearts, etc.

Not long ago I was walking in a grove of Redwood trees, and realized that you can literally hear the silence emanating from them. I've always marvelled at how silent the groves were, but this time I was in an area that was actually pretty populated with regular human and city sounds, and I swear the trees just cancelled the sounds out and actually seemed to radiate silence. Not just cancelling it with their physical presence, but with some other method. What is that? How is that?

This may sound strange, and is probably fodder for a new thread, but I think I'm coming full circle in my life and am entering into being religious again.

Maybe I'll start a new thread with those thoughts. I can talk about things like that here, and really nowhere else.

[jlaw172364]

@Nordic

I was that kid who figured out he didn't exist. I actually would try and stay up late to see him, because I didn't believe the story at all. My parents would try and stop me, which I also found suspicious. I eventually proved it conclusively after numerous interferences when I was 8 years old; I found the presents hidden away a month ahead of time, and then they were presented as being from Santa. Before that, I was merely a conspiracy theorist who was repeatedly gaslighted for fun and amusement.

[nashvillebrook]

Maybe we've all been corralled and isolated here through social engineering as part of an ongoing operation. Jeff Wells, what is your relationship to the gifted program?

Speaking of social engineering, I wonder if the move toward "independent study" (away from "enrichment") wasn't a "warehousing" effort intended to dumb us down. It certainly had that effect. For the couple of years that I did this I lost out on math and science which was taught during the time that we drove off to the other school to do gifted. I never made up the lost time in math, and got by in science only b/c I liked biology.

[coffin_dodger]

Maybe 'gifted' kids were actually the least prone to indoctrination, wires-all-crossed misfits that were happily convinced they were 'special genius material' and packed off to 'special lessons' - where they were shown flash cards and told they could move wooden blocks by thinking about it - to keep them from holding back the indoctrination of the 'normal' kids. Maybe.

[jlaw172364]

@coffin_dodger

That would kill another bird with the same stone, wouldn't it.

[82_28]

I think that every entity in the Universe is "smart" and perhaps smarter than me. But, if we're just going with humans, I think that every soul has something to offer whether it be helpful, benign or evil. I think "WE" are just a loose band of vagabonds who would not know one another were it not for the Internet. In some ways I don't even remember the days of no internet. It's kind of impossible to imagine when you couldn't just look something up.

Not sure how old you are 82-28, but there used to be these things called "encyclopedias". They were a collection of things called 'books' made out of paper that contained a large body of knowledge arranged in alpha order.

Edit: I am of course just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.

You've always been an asshole, BPH. A loveable asshole.

Since you brought it up, I actually was going to include that I read encyclopedias every day as a kid -- my family had the whole nine years -- I think we were lacking Z and that always bothered me.. But things like "what was Eddie Murphy's last movie?" could not be found of course. Thus I would get on my skateboard and go to the library and check out the microfiche and print shit out. I'm 40.

[Belligerent Savant]

I think that every entity in the Universe is "smart" and perhaps smarter than me. But, if we're just going with humans, I think that every soul has something to offer whether it be helpful, benign or evil. I think "WE" are just a loose band of vagabonds who would not know one another were it not for the Internet. In some ways I don't even remember the days of no internet. It's kind of impossible to imagine when you couldn't just look something up.

Not sure how old you are 82-28, but there used to be these things called "encyclopedias". They were a collection of things called 'books' made out of paper that contained a large body of knowledge arranged in alpha order.

Edit: I am of course just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.

Don't forget the Dewey Decimal System.

[BrandonD]

Well sure, everybody has something they can teach you, but that's not what I was talking about.

I'm starting to believe (I chose that word on purpose) that plants are way more intelligent than we've ever given them credit for. The entire plant world. How many billions of years were they on earth before sentient animals? How again does macroevolution work? Nobody seems to know. Adaptation, sure, that's easy, we can demonstrate it, but macroevolution? Maybe the plants are truly the Gods of our universe. Perhaps they created us for their own amusement or to somehow help them out (seems we're not doing a good job of that these days).

Why am I going off on this tangent? I don't know. I was thinking about how we consider "intelligence" to be the ability to absorb and process information and make new connections based on that information that can lead us to solve problems or gain new insights. Somehow I thought of this thing (above) that I've been thinking about lately, and have been for quite some time (but just lately have been giving it more thought) as to "Creation" (yes, literally), and especially the creation of animals with eyes, ears, noses, stomachs, hearts, etc.

Not long ago I was walking in a grove of Redwood trees, and realized that you can literally hear the silence emanating from them. I've always marvelled at how silent the groves were, but this time I was in an area that was actually pretty populated with regular human and city sounds, and I swear the trees just cancelled the sounds out and actually seemed to radiate silence. Not just cancelling it with their physical presence, but with some other method. What is that? How is that?

This may sound strange, and is probably fodder for a new thread, but I think I'm coming full circle in my life and am entering into being religious again.

Maybe I'll start a new thread with those thoughts. I can talk about things like that here, and really nowhere else.

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

-Francis Bacon

[Luther Blissett]

Well sure, everybody has something they can teach you, but that's not what I was talking about.

I'm starting to believe (I chose that word on purpose) that plants are way more intelligent than we've ever given them credit for. The entire plant world. How many billions of years were they on earth before sentient animals? How again does macroevolution work? Nobody seems to know. Adaptation, sure, that's easy, we can demonstrate it, but macroevolution? Maybe the plants are truly the Gods of our universe. Perhaps they created us for their own amusement or to somehow help them out (seems we're not doing a good job of that these days).

Why am I going off on this tangent? I don't know. I was thinking about how we consider "intelligence" to be the ability to absorb and process information and make new connections based on that information that can lead us to solve problems or gain new insights. Somehow I thought of this thing (above) that I've been thinking about lately, and have been for quite some time (but just lately have been giving it more thought) as to "Creation" (yes, literally), and especially the creation of animals with eyes, ears, noses, stomachs, hearts, etc.

Not long ago I was walking in a grove of Redwood trees, and realized that you can literally hear the silence emanating from them. I've always marvelled at how silent the groves were, but this time I was in an area that was actually pretty populated with regular human and city sounds, and I swear the trees just cancelled the sounds out and actually seemed to radiate silence. Not just cancelling it with their physical presence, but with some other method. What is that? How is that?
…

Fully agree, and I totally contradicted myself on purpose, calling my yuppie engineer and biologist friends dumb after claiming that everyone has something to teach us.

This is my first summer gardening and I mostly failed at it. I've noticed that I'm wracked with feelings of guilt over the greens and vegetables that died.

[brainpanhandler]

Well sure, everybody has something they can teach you, but that's not what I was talking about.

I'm starting to believe (I chose that word on purpose) that plants are way more intelligent than we've ever given them credit for. The entire plant world. How many billions of years were they on earth before sentient animals? How again does macroevolution work? Nobody seems to know. Adaptation, sure, that's easy, we can demonstrate it, but macroevolution? Maybe the plants are truly the Gods of our universe. Perhaps they created us for their own amusement or to somehow help them out (seems we're not doing a good job of that these days).

Why am I going off on this tangent? I don't know. I was thinking about how we consider "intelligence" to be the ability to absorb and process information and make new connections based on that information that can lead us to solve problems or gain new insights. Somehow I thought of this thing (above) that I've been thinking about lately, and have been for quite some time (but just lately have been giving it more thought) as to "Creation" (yes, literally), and especially the creation of animals with eyes, ears, noses, stomachs, hearts, etc.

Not long ago I was walking in a grove of Redwood trees, and realized that you can literally hear the silence emanating from them. I've always marvelled at how silent the groves were, but this time I was in an area that was actually pretty populated with regular human and city sounds, and I swear the trees just cancelled the sounds out and actually seemed to radiate silence. Not just cancelling it with their physical presence, but with some other method. What is that? How is that?
…

Fully agree, and I totally contradicted myself on purpose, calling my yuppie engineer and biologist friends dumb after claiming that everyone has something to teach us.

This is my first summer gardening and I mostly failed at it. I've noticed that I'm wracked with feelings of guilt over the greens and vegetables that died.

Someone should totally start a thread on plant life/intelligence.




When I grow things from seed, something I had not done until recently, I find I feel a sort of paternal instinct. I'm very protective of those plants in an almost fatherly sort of way. The older I get the more I find I appreciate all life forms. We have about a half acre plot of land and there are all sorts of critters that live here. We more or less let the yard grow. We only mow a few paths and a couple of small patches of grass. We have chipmunks (these are the vandal troublemaker hooligans), rabbits (they never stop breeding or eating. One small patch of grass never needs mowing. The rabbits do it.), grey squirrels (their behavior is fascinating. They are the burnouts of the bunch, constantly getting inebriated), a groundhog that lives under the shed, a little brown bat that sleeps on the porch between two panes of glass when it gets over 90 degrees, raccoons, opossums, the occasional fox, voles, field mice, endless birds... Jays that pretend to be a hawks (they can mock other birds calls), robins (there were babies this year.).... too may to list, insect life that is endlessly fascinating to me. I watched a parasitic wasp carry a caterpillar into a nest the other day. I watched a bird catch a loudly protesting cicada out of midair yesterday. Every day, if one pays attention, there is some sort of wild kingdom moment going on. The rabbits are a little twitchy if you get too close, but I can sit 6 feet away from them and watch them eat. They were born here and grew up here and accept us as we accept them. We grow a little garden and they get into it and I pretend to be angry at them for it, but we just sort of share with them and the chippys.

[Elvis]

Someone should totally start a thread on plant life/intelligence.

I can think of one:

Can Plants Think?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37541

[Sounder]

Nordic wrote…

Well sure, everybody has something they can teach you, but that's not what I was talking about.

I'm starting to believe (I chose that word on purpose) that plants are way more intelligent than we've ever given them credit for. The entire plant world. How many billions of years were they on earth before sentient animals? How again does macroevolution work? Nobody seems to know. Adaptation, sure, that's easy, we can demonstrate it, but macroevolution? Maybe the plants are truly the Gods of our universe. Perhaps they created us for their own amusement or to somehow help them out (seems we're not doing a good job of that these days).

Why am I going off on this tangent? I don't know. I was thinking about how we consider "intelligence" to be the ability to absorb and process information and make new connections based on that information that can lead us to solve problems or gain new insights. Somehow I thought of this thing (above) that I've been thinking about lately, and have been for quite some time (but just lately have been giving it more thought) as to "Creation" (yes, literally), and especially the creation of animals with eyes, ears, noses, stomachs, hearts, etc.

Not long ago I was walking in a grove of Redwood trees, and realized that you can literally hear the silence emanating from them. I've always marvelled at how silent the groves were, but this time I was in an area that was actually pretty populated with regular human and city sounds, and I swear the trees just cancelled the sounds out and actually seemed to radiate silence. Not just cancelling it with their physical presence, but with some other method. What is that? How is that?

This may sound strange, and is probably fodder for a new thread, but I think I'm coming full circle in my life and am entering into being religious again.

Maybe I'll start a new thread with those thoughts. I can talk about things like that here, and really nowhere else.

The rub is in, what is intelligence?

we consider "intelligence" to be the ability to absorb and process information and make new connections based on that information that can lead us to solve problems or gain new insights.

We are very good at arranging our categories and creating a web of correspondences (connections) to give shape to those categories. We are not so good at recognizing that information is context dependent and compromised by willfully imposed false assumptions. (Thank-you Plato for your bit part)


Unfortunately when (most) all energies of intellect are used to show better ‘understanding’ of categories and connections then to that degree folk become supporters of the status quo.

All the best minds in the world basing their assumptions on a split model of reality, go figure.

Humans seem to think they can make the World and Source in their image, and that’s not too bright.

I doubt that plants would do that.

[semper occultus]

[LilyPatToo]

I left RI 7-8 months ago, due to what I perceived as an unspoken ban on serious discussions of the paranormal or mind control program abuses, which were what drew me here in the first place. But I looked in yesterday to see if things had changed and found this thread. Been struggling ever since--with no luck at all--to recall more about the "special" class I was put into in 4th grade ('57?) in a W PA elementary school. Even back then, I had almost complete amnesia about what we did there, though my memories of the regular classes I still attended were (painfully) clear in my mind. I was in utter misery in school then and I wish I could forget the bullying from some of the teachers and from other kids. Not sure if it was how undersized I was or perhaps my giftedness in vocabulary/reading/English, but I was a bully target until college, where I bloomed at last.

It was 2 boys (Greg and Terry) and myself and we met in the library. I do remember writing a play that was put on for the local radio station, but the rest is pretty much a blank. My mother, an elementary school teacher herself, had a fixation on that class and would pin me to a kitchen chair and grill me about what we did there. I remember how she'd chain smoke with shaking hands as she got angrier and angrier at my missing memories and inability to tell her what went on.

Which I'm here to tell you was seriously weird even back then, in a childhood full of abuse, dissociation and chunks of missing time. And I'm certain that she was the person who handed me over to a program when I was very small. Her motive, like that of some other experimented-upon kids I've met since, was a promise of IQ enhancement and she had an almost feverish fixation on my being a genius, which I wasn't, though my IQ was high. I think she was horrified at what she'd done and grasped at any indication that I was gifted and her decision was justified. To her dying day, she would send me a check every time anyone called my artwork "genius"...a really bizarre thing she never ever did with my sister, who's also bright and had a normal childhood and subsequent life.

There was no such thing as a gifted or accelerated track in our school system in the '50's (Indiana PA was a college town in a rural county), so I have no clue what that class was or who was behind it. Terry died very young and I've lost track of Greg. His last name is so common that I doubt if I'll ever find him to see if he remembers more than I do. When I read Twyla's post a ways back about big clunky earphones, I got a millisecond memory flash of having them placed on my head in that library, but all I can now recall was the weight of them and of how depressed and completely hopeless I felt. I was suicidal intermittently as a child, so I'd have to say that being "gifted" was no blessing and being placed in that special class only made my life more difficult.

LilyPat

PS Like some other RI people with pasts like mine, I came here years ago from Whitley Strieber's site's forum. There was a thread there on special classes, since Whitley had been in a super creepy one that he's written about. Threads there drop off the board very quickly and I never found a way to access them after I was banned, but I'm sure there have been others. That site was a honey-pot that sucked in mind control program survivors and while I was there the real world harassment amped up and got really scary. Meaning, I assume, that it was being monitored. The people behind all this crap must adore the internet...