June 24, 2010<\/p>\n
Mr. Beck,<\/p>\n
In college, I took a few classes that described learning\u00a0 and attempted to mold a definition for it. The only take-home from those classes\u00a0 was that everything is skewed unless you were a witness to an event and wholly\u00a0 engaged to receive all perceptible information. Even then, that information will\u00a0 be immediately filtered through your knowledge and experiences. I studied eye-witness testimony and its\u00a0 validity statistics. Here is a quick test-at-home example. Get a few people\u00a0 together that you know, trust and communicate well with. You, as the moderator\u00a0 of the exercise, will say one word that is uniformly familiar to all. I like to\u00a0 use the word “vacation”. (common phrases work too) Ask the group to sit quietly\u00a0 until asked to comment or even move. Say the word or phrase you have chosen and\u00a0 wait a few seconds. Ask them to write a description of the word and a belief or\u00a0 experience related to it. The papers you receive will have vastly different\u00a0 information.<\/p>\n
I have many issues with many things, but mostly I take\u00a0 issue with the purposeful omission of education that would encourage thought.\u00a0 Grade schools are afraid to teach kids how to think for themselves because the\u00a0 students might find out how full of crap most of the faculty is. Image building\u00a0 people have no business in education. Parents hide information from their kids\u00a0 because they are afraid that their image may be\u00a0soiled by disclosing the poor\u00a0 choices they made. Hell, they make crap up because they are often ignorant and\u00a0 too lazy to find out. Bosses and leaders of all types hide information because\u00a0 they are afraid of the same thing. Best interest of the country? People should\u00a0 stop lying. They should also stop repeating information as fact when is probably\u00a0 filtered through 800 other people. Ever play telephone???? Another component to\u00a0 your “teaching” should be the inclusion and education in critical thinking.<\/p>\n
Fear of being judged has been a major component in building\u00a0 the disaster train we are riding that is steaming forward to a place with no\u00a0 tracks. Housing crisis? People wanted to be\u00a0like the Jones\u2019s and others enabled\u00a0 for personal gain. Economy slow? Yeah, maybe we aren\u2019t buying refrigerators\u00a0 because the credit is maxed\u00a0and there is no cash. I am extremely happy that the\u00a0 credit market is tight. American consumers need to be taught a hard lesson about\u00a0 living beyond your means. You want to know what my founding father taught me??\u00a0 Dad was born in 1914 (or so, haven\u2019t seen the proof!) He lived a life of truth,\u00a0 honor, courage, dignity, humility and compassion. All of those lessons were at\u00a0 the core of my rebellion. Only now am I finding out how correct he was. Dad\u00a0 wouldn\u2019t have bought an item unless it was NEEDED. New car? Hell no. Not until\u00a0 the old one died. He would say aloud, \u201cI don\u2019t have anyone to impress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Insecurity drives some really bad choices and behavior.\u00a0 Call it what you choose, but when forced into listing what is needed\u00a0to be happy\u00a0 a healthy person will only have a list of a very few things. Family is common as\u00a0 well as having a productive purpose in life too. When I do this exercise with\u00a0 the kids I work with the immediate list is an echo of the society and cultures\u00a0 that have taught them. Shoes? X-Box?? Money and more money and even more money\u00a0 is needed. <\/em>Gangs, drugs and materials\u00a0 are all attempts to be\u00a0happy or cover things up when you aren\u2019t. When did these\u00a0 items surpass comforts to head the list of needs? It happened when greed\u00a0 surpassed the best of our morals and values. It happened when people decided\u00a0 that power and money was critical and the survival of the nation was something\u00a0 to worry about later. I love the phrase \u201cshort term pleasure, long-term\u00a0 consequence) Later is now\u2026<\/p>\n People complain about jobs going to China. They shop at the\u00a0 price breaker stores. Take some random samples of the merchandise in these (and\u00a0 so many other) stores and where it is made. People worry about the environment\u00a0 and then throw away the cheap crap they bought at the price breaker stores while\u00a0 they drive the car to the price breaker stores to get more. People complain\u00a0 about working long hours. Then get off and try to enjoy the fruits of the\u00a0 lifestyle they couldn\u2019t possibly support. People complain about who is running\u00a0 the country, but no one took the time to find facts, because those TV ads must\u00a0be true. Some people complain about things are going only to get-off on the\u00a0 verbal masturbation as to cover the misery of their pathetic lives they built\u00a0 and continue to build.<\/p>\n Our courts have watered down justice. Suing is now a bona\u00a0 fide method for getting income. Our schools have given up on real education. The\u00a0 bar is so low that everyone will pass. Didn\u2019t pay your taxes? NO PROBLEM, we can\u00a0 negotiate a settlement so the other guy has to carry the load!!! (pissed at you\u00a0 for supporting this with a commercial ((AND Fox for running the ambulance\u00a0 chasing lawyer and tax dodge ads)). Every kid is a winner on the team.\u00a0 Everything is abuse, so PLEASE DON\u2019T EVEN consider introducing discipline. Poor\u00a0 work performance? Hell no! I was discriminated against! OMG, what did you\u00a0 say???? That hurt my pitiful little feelings and you must apologize and maybe\u00a0 even give me some money because by golly those like me comprise a whole \u00bd of one\u00a0 percent of the population and we will dictate our beliefs to the masses or they\u00a0 will pay too!<\/p>\n The generations that have lived and learned these lessons\u00a0 are increasing in their number and have trickled (now flowing) into positions of\u00a0 authority and power. Don\u2019t EVER ask the question about why things are messed up.\u00a0 WE CREATED this! It did not fall out of the sky yesterday.<\/p>\n Unfortunately some people choose to misuse the “ignorant\u00a0 masses” for their own gain. Another one of the problems with letting lawyers run\u00a0 things is that they know all they have to do is create doubt in the mind of the\u00a0 jury. You want conspiracy? If you make enough commotion with the left hand, the\u00a0 audience will completely miss the right hand slowly pulling out the knife\u2026<\/p>\n There is a video out there of another exercise that\u00a0 demonstrated this. Please use your search engine of choice to find the\u00a0 psychological \u201cexperiment\u201d that uses a gorilla and people passing a basketball\u00a0 around. DO NOT TELL anyone about it. Find the video and do the exercise with\u00a0 your folks. PLEASE, this will give you another platform to teach. Companies,\u00a0 powerbrokers, politicians and the like know how to work people. Only when you\u00a0 teach the audience the magicians trick will the magic go away. I will argue that\u00a0 some folks won\u2019t want to see because they are comfortable with the illusion.<\/p>\n People are ignorant and have been allowed\u00a0to be\u00a0that way\u00a0 for a long time. Truth is really nonexistent. At best we have firsthand accounts\u00a0 of events. People do not change until they are more uncomfortable than the\u00a0 behaviors they have been addicted to. If there are no perceived consequences or\u00a0 the consequences are not great enough then almost all people will continue to\u00a0 make the cost-benefit analysis of continued previous path for their lives.<\/p>\n Here is how to shut people up. Ask them to prove their\u00a0 loquacious logorrhea. Still have them\u00a0 bitching? Ask them what they have done to change things for the better and how\u00a0 their lives are an honest model for other to emulate.<\/p>\n I have spent about\u00a0 16 years \u201cfixing\u201d the jacked up lives of the kids that our society has created.\u00a0 That is my contribution to our nation. Now, I have been unemployed for a year\u00a0 because the economy won\u2019t support jobs like mine. Feels good to fix the kids\u00a0 that society messes up and then be denied work while the liars, cheats and\u00a0 thieves prop up the bastards that mostly perpetrated the crimes that led us to\u00a0 this point.<\/p>\n There is so much \u201cnoise\u201d that the soft music of common sense, love, truth, justice, honor and\u00a0 others like them have the same chance of being\u00a0 heard as a cricket chirp in a stampede. ONLY if you are close to the cricket and\u00a0 listening closely will you hear it. People are not listening and they are not\u00a0 close to faith hope and charity? No Mr. Beck, those concepts are outdated.\u00a0 People want easy, immediate and comfortable. If they mattered to the majority of\u00a0 people then I would not be writing this letter to you.<\/p>\n Sincerely,<\/p>\n Robert A. Grier<\/p>\n PS \u2013 If you know of\u00a0 a company that wants a world changer, problem solver and all around good guy,\u00a0 then please send them my way. I still need a job\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" June 24, 2010 Mr. Beck, In college, I took a few classes that described learning\u00a0 and attempted to mold a definition for it. The only take-home from those classes\u00a0 was that everything is skewed unless you were a witness to an event and wholly\u00a0 engaged to receive all perceptible information. Even then, that information will\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103,"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragpages.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}