PeakOil is You
Our Simulated Lives
Re: Our Simulated Lives
by Heineken » Sun 03 Dec 2006, 16:09:09
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mommy22', ' ')And what we are giving the next generation as a whole.
A bucket of ashes, if you ask me.
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---I & my bro.
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---I & my bro.
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Heineken - Expert
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Re: Our Simulated Lives
by spudbuddy » Mon 04 Dec 2006, 02:14:32
I love reading reminiscences about simpler, less technical times.
It saddens me a great deal that kids today need so much technology (and artificial energy) - to "play".
It saddens me even more that the issue of "independent" mobility for kids seems like such a non-issue to so many people.
Waiting endlessly for chauffeured adult accompaniment for everything they do (as a wise author thus quoth: looking at the world through tinted glass like visiting dignitaries)
- not too terribly dignified, I'd say.
I grew up in the early sixties in a small farm community up north - a place full of farmers who saved everything - consequently the town was full of neat stuff that was old even when my grandfather was youngish.
They still had a horse-drawn milkwagon (which I got to drive to school a couple of times.)
People still had iceboxes, instead of electric refrigerators. There was an icehouse - a big barn of a place down the end of my street - and us kids would sneak inside on a hot summer day for free sustainable air conditioning.
(my grandfather used to refer to tall leafy trees as God's air conditioning.)
We used to sneak (at the ripe old age of 5) into the "used" car lot next door to the icehouse on Sunday mornings (heathens that we were) and fool with the cars there.......
These were 40's models, and even late 30's.
Seems most of them had starter buttons on the floor beside the clutch..........
We knew precious little about cars, but we soon discovered that if you kicked that button, and the battery was still juiced, and the car was still in gear (which they often were, parked) well, the thing would jump forward 2 or 3 feet and scare the living crap out of us!
We had a ball, didn't hurt anybody or anything (pissed off the lot attendant on Monday mornings when he'd show up at work and discover that his neatly parked cars were scattered all over the lot.)
But the best thing?
Ah - rainy Sundays.
We'd draw lots.
By that I mean we'd play a rousing game of scissors, rock and paper.
And the loser.....................
Had to get out of the car and climb up on the front hood...................
and make the windshield wipers work! (by hand)
So the "family" could see where they were going, on vacation, dont'cha know!
You know - we survived McCarthy, somehow - got tricked and lied to (I remember the bomb drills spent underneath desks holding sheets of paper over our head to keep the "fallout" outa our hair)
- but we had resources then - and somehow a worldview all our own that didn't exactly come out of any politically correct media circus. (hell - I didn't see a tv until I was 7.)
I get a real kick out of reading all the writers here who ponder how it is they actually survived their childhoods. Used to be not all that difficult.
Back then when you ran out your back door to goof around the neighborhood, you were just a bunch of kids at play.
Now - they call it "kids at risk."
sad world.
cheers.......
It saddens me a great deal that kids today need so much technology (and artificial energy) - to "play".
It saddens me even more that the issue of "independent" mobility for kids seems like such a non-issue to so many people.
Waiting endlessly for chauffeured adult accompaniment for everything they do (as a wise author thus quoth: looking at the world through tinted glass like visiting dignitaries)
- not too terribly dignified, I'd say.
I grew up in the early sixties in a small farm community up north - a place full of farmers who saved everything - consequently the town was full of neat stuff that was old even when my grandfather was youngish.
They still had a horse-drawn milkwagon (which I got to drive to school a couple of times.)
People still had iceboxes, instead of electric refrigerators. There was an icehouse - a big barn of a place down the end of my street - and us kids would sneak inside on a hot summer day for free sustainable air conditioning.
(my grandfather used to refer to tall leafy trees as God's air conditioning.)
We used to sneak (at the ripe old age of 5) into the "used" car lot next door to the icehouse on Sunday mornings (heathens that we were) and fool with the cars there.......
These were 40's models, and even late 30's.
Seems most of them had starter buttons on the floor beside the clutch..........
We knew precious little about cars, but we soon discovered that if you kicked that button, and the battery was still juiced, and the car was still in gear (which they often were, parked) well, the thing would jump forward 2 or 3 feet and scare the living crap out of us!
We had a ball, didn't hurt anybody or anything (pissed off the lot attendant on Monday mornings when he'd show up at work and discover that his neatly parked cars were scattered all over the lot.)
But the best thing?
Ah - rainy Sundays.
We'd draw lots.
By that I mean we'd play a rousing game of scissors, rock and paper.
And the loser.....................
Had to get out of the car and climb up on the front hood...................
and make the windshield wipers work! (by hand)
So the "family" could see where they were going, on vacation, dont'cha know!
You know - we survived McCarthy, somehow - got tricked and lied to (I remember the bomb drills spent underneath desks holding sheets of paper over our head to keep the "fallout" outa our hair)
- but we had resources then - and somehow a worldview all our own that didn't exactly come out of any politically correct media circus. (hell - I didn't see a tv until I was 7.)
I get a real kick out of reading all the writers here who ponder how it is they actually survived their childhoods. Used to be not all that difficult.
Back then when you ran out your back door to goof around the neighborhood, you were just a bunch of kids at play.
Now - they call it "kids at risk."
sad world.
cheers.......
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spudbuddy - Peat
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Re: Our Simulated Lives
by spudbuddy » Mon 04 Dec 2006, 11:34:09
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shannymara', 'T')hanks, spudbuddy. I have a 3 year old and I'm constantly having to say and do things to attempt to offset the fear and control most people exert. I hope it's having some positive impact on him. It's not easy, protecting him from vehicles and toxins while at the same time trying to preserve his wild nature. Quite a fine line to walk. Meanwhile we also have to concern ourselves with legal issues. What a mess... It's hard to find ways to let your kids be human these days. 
"Harmless mischief" was more than just a Huck Finn fantasy back then - it was kind of a rite of passage for many.
Our world is extremely child-unfriendly (for all the family value rhetoric).
Kids don't "make" our world - (they sure brighten it up, though).
That job is left to adults.
Which raises an interesting question:
What kind of power have we relinquished, as parents, as citizens - to the re-designers of our public domain?
Main street used to be where kids went - browsing comic book stands, toy shelves, 5 and dime junk, movie posters, back alleys, (while making fun of billing and cooing teenagers after-schooling behind diner plate glass.)
This all sounds very Rockwellian, I know......
But there it is. Now they don't go anywhere without the vehicularly omnipresent supervised correction.
All that mad energy used to burn a lot of calories - in spite of all the junk we consumed. (I was pretty voracious back then - I think a lot of kids were - we were like small omnivorous bears - browsing and sluicing our way through the infrastructure - the world was our oyster bar, our smorgasboard, slops bucket, feedbag.)
Every class had one (1) fat kid - usually teased but hardly ever ostracised. Somehow we just decided it was bad gonads or something.
Although teckie-toys seduce a lot of kids into passive sit-down play, sometimes I wonder how I can blame them, when their world is so restricted.
If I had ever had to wait until I was old enough to drive before I gained any kind of independent mobility, I would have gone mad, I think....
Adults were ok - but the need to ramble....lurks deep in the heart of childhood.
(and if it doesn't - why is that?)
All us oldsters wondering how we survived all the dumb things we did as youngsters - do we remember great fear over that? Of course not.
Fear is a big industry now. Jumping at shadows.
I don't believe for a second that the dangers present back then were as great as those that exist today. Any parent's worst nightmare is real enough. We can be thankful we're not trying to raise kids in northern Thailand...
Somewhere in America, a school banned playing tag in its schoolyard. Risk management. Liability and doctor's bills.
What next? Virtual tag?
Children are wild things, after all. Tamed by the long slow process of working their way up the ladder to adulthood.
Or will they resemble the performing bears in a Russian circus?
Maybe the saddest thing of all - remembering a time when even the poorest kids around had beaucoups of toys. The best toys were junk no-one wanted. A climbing tree. A lookout that cost nothing but the energy it took to climb the hill.
Before hitting the beach - a quick trip to the local service station to beg a used inner tube from the tire man. Rafts on the river, made out of driftwood, logs and old planks, knocked together with rusty nails and a rock.
Didn't have a dog? Wanted a dog?
Just walk down the back lane and whistle. In short order the closest lonesome mutt would come posting to close attention in short order - dog for the day.
I was always "borrowing" bikes....would always return them to the exact spot....they were never locked. I actually learned how to ride on an ancient 30-inch standard....my feet a good foot off the ground while sitting.
Life needs to get the hell off the plasma screen and back into bricks and mortar, I think.
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spudbuddy - Peat
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Re: Our Simulated Lives
by coyote » Wed 06 Dec 2006, 03:34:07
Hate to sound like a broken record, but this trend also has implications for the future of the planet:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you want your children to grow up to actively care about the environment, give them plenty of time to play in the "wild" before they're 11 years old, suggests a new Cornell University study.
"Although domesticated nature activities -- caring for plants and gardens -- also have a positive relationship to adult environment attitudes, their effects aren't as strong as participating in such wild nature activities as camping, playing in the woods, hiking, walking, fishing and hunting," said environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell...
Interestingly, participating in scouts or other forms of environmental education programs had no effect on adult attitudes toward the environment.
"Participating in nature-related activities that are mandatory evidently do not have the same effects as free play in nature, which don't have demands or distractions posed by others and may be particularly critical in influencing long-term environmentalism," Wells said.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you want your children to grow up to actively care about the environment, give them plenty of time to play in the "wild" before they're 11 years old, suggests a new Cornell University study.
"Although domesticated nature activities -- caring for plants and gardens -- also have a positive relationship to adult environment attitudes, their effects aren't as strong as participating in such wild nature activities as camping, playing in the woods, hiking, walking, fishing and hunting," said environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell...
Interestingly, participating in scouts or other forms of environmental education programs had no effect on adult attitudes toward the environment.
"Participating in nature-related activities that are mandatory evidently do not have the same effects as free play in nature, which don't have demands or distractions posed by others and may be particularly critical in influencing long-term environmentalism," Wells said.
Cornell
Hiking? Fishing? Perish the thought! These mallrats will grow up not giving a damn about the wild. They'll pay environmentalism some lip service, in an "Oh--Migod!" kind of way, but they won't really care.
And oh, they'll never ever know the taste of fresh-caught trout grilled on open flame...!
Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive...
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive...
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coyote - News Editor
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Re: Our Simulated Lives
by smallpoxgirl » Wed 06 Dec 2006, 04:44:03
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OneLoneClone', 'I')'m staying here in UNSIMULATED San Fransisco. We've got old buildings, with real history. All the apartments in my building have arated 'root celllar' closets (none of my neighbors know what they are for, tho), and clothes lines to the next building. Nothing simulated about it.
The only difference between SF and LA is that SF is full of "progressives" searching desperately for the right upscale boutique to buy themselves some authenticity. The reality of SF is $3000/mo lofts and a starbucks in every building. Heck, some developer probably bought those clotheslines in China and installed them so he could tack on an extra $400/mo to the rent for a "historic" loft."We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
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smallpoxgirl - Expert
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