PING! Errant

Hey Errant, i'm moved to reply to your last to me (?) (link at bottom). You thought that i was misunderstanding you, but i wonder if you were misunderstanding me? For instance, when you said: "but without an education they'd only qualify for low-skilled labor..." == i think immediately of how groanup-centric(k) that whole value system is. Entrapped, i think, even. The VERY idea of basically THINKING WITHIN 'THE BOX' kind of thing! What you probably term "realistic for the vast majority"; and yet i think of a future when kids are valued FOR THEIR OWN HEARTS, with no "need" to suppress that while they gain an alleged "good education". Don't get me wrong, education has its merits, but has been rendered (at least in the u.s.a.), as "New York Teacher of the Year" (thrice i think it was) John Taylor Gatto (and so many others) would say, into more and more of an impersonal institutional deadening of the spirit!! So i see that you are "taking for granted" a value system, and i'm saying you OUGHT, to be truly a friend to kids, to LET KIDS have INFORMED CHOICE!!(And you may assume that i'd be a hypocrite, but i was raised to explore diverse cultures and i would continue that right along with neocolonial values since they surround everyone so thoroughly --but mostly in our own internalizations of their dictates!! (i think!) You said: "adultism misses the mark" == Well maybe i'm missing something, but basically that construct is accurate, in my view. IT is an ideology of hierarchy according to the awful (but institutionally convenient) hierarchy of age-ism. It has been built all around us and into our hearts, via "manufacture of consent" and psychological genocide, i see. We are SO REDUCED from who we were born to be, after all!! You see that, don't you? You said: "How much freedom do you really need if you have the privilege of having whatever you want at your fingertips? Not that there's anything wrong with having such material comforts, but these conveniences skew the balancing act between freedom and safety such that freedom seems less essential." == Wow. As if material "wealth" could replace human contact? As if running free (to explore the ADVENTURE of life) could be replaced by ...er...iphones...heh. Well, it has, and yet, see what they miss. (To argue with myself a bit, heh: i think the big picture strategy of elites is to keep dumbing each generation down more and more so that they are unable to even imagine life beyond "Thunderdome" ...referring to the MadMax movie... But you sound like a typical professional worker with kids or overworked parent trying to justify your perversions (!) of so-called "freedom" aspirations. Free-dumb, "in my proverbial book". Like Bush1 (pres) said: "Freedom is not free." Yeah, and so it follows that FREE IS NOT FREEDUMB! The PERVERSION of statecraft and its SEVERELY ALIENATED CONSTRUCTS, for ONE! The STUCKness in ONLY ONE WAY TO DO THINGS, for "two"!! The enTRAPment that we all go thru (where we get psychologically genocided NO MATTER WHAT CLASS WE HAIL FROM). All true perversions so that EMPIRE can be Maintained. Is it not so? Bottom line: What a sad way to interact with the amazing spirit and powerful visions of the current and future generations!! i don't mean to offend you in particular, but truth is truth. And why we've been "needed" as a powerful distraction (for our "usefulness" as scapegoats and possibly worse). What is it? You've been AFRAID all of your life (for, no doubt, good reasons); but you want others to join you in that deadening? Sounds like "Misery Loves Company" too much to me. Looking forward to having attitude adjustments where i may need them!!