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Why Nerds are Unpopular (Long, and worth it.)
by Decius at 1:52 am EST, Nov 29, 2004 |
] Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder
] it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant
] nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of
] breeding children.
]
] Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and
] nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately
] designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things
] that could endanger children.
...
] Adults can't avoid seeing that teenage kids are
] tormented. So why don't they do something about it?
] Because they blame it on puberty. The reason kids are so
] unhappy, adults tell themselves, is that monstrous new
] chemicals, hormones, are now coursing through their
] bloodstream and messing up everything. There's nothing
] wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that kids
] will be miserable at that age.
]
] This idea is so pervasive that even the kids believe it,
] which probably doesn't help. Someone who thinks his feet
] naturally hurt is not going to stop to consider the
] possibility that he is wearing the wrong size shoes.
]
] I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids
] are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it
] should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at
] thirteen?
. . .
] The mediocrity of American public schools has worse
] consequences than just making kids unhappy for six
] years. It breeds a rebelliousness that actively drives kids
] away from the things they're supposed to be learning. To a great extent, the sleeping American populace has woken up to the fact that there is a problem with the way that they operate their society. Littleton style mass murders are both new and unique enough to indicate that something has changed, but also common enough to indicate that this change is not an aberration. People want to do something about it. Unfortunately, by all accounts, the dialog even years later is wanting. People seem to grasp onto oversimplified solutions. They blame access to firearms, violent video games, industrial music, etc... These things are easy to attack, but the people attacking them can never seem to explain why their presence doesn't consistently produce the problems they are concerned with, nor why the problems they are concerned with sometimes exist without the presence of the specific cause they cite. This demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scope of the issue. I have always felt that these problems were systemic and structural rather then limited and specific, and that we are unlikely to be able to see them, understand them, or address them as a society because we do not want to change the things that we would need to change. Part of the problem is that we see teenage suicides and mass mur... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ] |
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RE: Why Nerds are Unpopular (Long, and worth it.)
by noteworthy at 6:23 pm EST, Nov 29, 2004 |
Decius wrote:
] It is wrong to show our children in high school the kind of
] indifference you'd project toward an enemy in war. These
] people are not your enemy; they are your responsibility. I don't know who suggested to you that it is a good idea to project indifference toward your enemy in war. Regardless, this is not consistent with the general advice on the matter. In fact, as was posted here on January 22, 2004, in an entry entitled "Eleven Lessons from Robert McNamara", you'll find that Lesson Number One is EMPATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY McNamara goes on at some length about this, both in the Errol Morris documentary "The Fog of War" (also recommended here) and in his memoirs, "In Retrospect." And more than a few scholars and commentators have explained that Sun Tzu's Lesson Number One is basically the same thing. Here are two: an article entitled "On the pedagogy of 'small wars'", published in International Affairs, volume 80, number 1 (January 2004). This is a respected journal in the field. Here, the author says that "'Knowing thy enemy' and 'knowing thyself', Sun Tzu's formula for victory, requires abandoning flattering accounts of western identity and learning to empathize with those we call terrorists." Also, the point is made explicitly in an article entitled "Bush and the Art of War", published by Intervention Magazine (with which I have no prior experience) in August 2004. Its recent articles seem to present it as a Blue magazine, although they claim to be "an ideologically eclectic group transcending the old liberal/conservative divide." According to the web site, its original Advisory Board included Peter Arnett, Daniel Ellsberg, and Studs Terkel, among others. |
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RE: Why Nerds are Unpopular (Long, and worth it.)
by Decius at 8:27 pm EST, Nov 29, 2004 |
noteworthy wrote:
] Decius wrote:
] ] It is wrong to show our children in high school the kind of
] ] indifference you'd project toward an enemy in war. These
] ] people are not your enemy; they are your responsibility.
]
] I don't know who suggested to you that it is a good idea to
] project indifference toward your enemy in war. Regardless,
] this is not consistent with the general advice on the matter. No one did, and this is an excellent point. I was merely attempting to pre-emptively dodge a straw man arguement that is often presented here, typically by conservatives, that attempting to empathize with "bad people" is counter productive when a good show of force is in order. I don't want to have to prove that its worthwhile to understand the "root causes" of, for example, Palestinian discontent, in order to continue with my point, which is about high schools in America. |
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RE: Why Nerds are Unpopular (Long, and worth it.)
by janelane at 9:56 pm EST, Nov 29, 2004 |
Decius proclaimed:
] It is wrong to show our children in high school the kind of
] indifference you'd project toward an enemy in war. These
] people are not your enemy; they are your responsibility.
]
] You must equip them with the perspective needed to make the
] right decisions, and you must identify and eliminate the
] pressures you have created that drive them to these ends.
]
] We don't seem to be doing either. I have little optimism that
] we will. I highly recommend that people check out "Geeks" by Jon Katz (2000). It's subtitled "How two lost boys rode the internet out of Idaho." Note the excerpt below where Jon has asked one of the "two lost boys" about how the Columbine shootings happened. -janelane /// Highschool is set up for other people -- jocks and preppies, sports. You are not valued at all. You are constantly taunted, humiliated, elbowed, laughed at. The classes are boring and most of the teachers don't care if you live or die. People hate you for having ideas, for talking about them, for being different. You are never, ever invited to anything. High school is like a universe of parties, groups, activities, to which you are the only person who doesn't have the key, who never gets an invitation.
You start to get angry, then you start to hate. They just slice away your humanity, piece by piece, and the hate becomes bigger and bigger, until there's nothing left but hate. If you don't have good friends or a teacher or a parent to talk to, then one day, there's just no humanity left. You're all hate. You have no connection to the world. And so you snap.
--Jesse Dailey, p. 144 of Geeks by Jon Katz |
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Why Nerds are Unpopular (Long, and worth it.)
by k at 10:38 am EST, Nov 29, 2004 |
* People seem to grasp onto oversimplified solutions. * I have always felt that these problems were systemic and structural rather then limited and specific * Part of the problem is that we see teenage suicides and mass murders as the problem, rather then as symptoms of larger problems. [ I will read the article later but wanted to highlight these specific points made by Decius beforehand, because I found them partiularly critical. That last is one of the most important, I think. We do the same thing in medecine. Treatment vs. prevention. Arguably we do the same thing in criminal justice, to a large extent... trying to rehabilitate criminals rather than eliminate societal ills. Setting our sights on the video games, access to assault rifles, the rejection of church/religious values is like a doctor claiming the root cause of someone's death was going out in the cold without a jacket. It may have contributed, or worsened the outcome, but the disease is certainly deeper than that. Likewise, arguing that the kid who snaps is "evil" or "crazy" is no better than blaming illness on spirits or god's wrath. Americans, in general, need to shift their focus from treatment to prevention. Dialogue will be mostly pointless until that happens, i think. -k] |
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